If you’re a major follower of B2B marketing, then there’s a good chance that you’re using ABM or Account-Based marketing as a strategy. Big companies are also using ABM to get the big accounts, although these accounts are only a selected few, not the whole bulk. In fact, SiriusDecisions recently released their own ABM survey and it’s interesting to note that around 90 percent of today’s marketers have realized the potential of Account-based marketing.
In today’s form of business, it’s no longer surprising why ABM is popular among B2B companies. The companies who use ABM as a marketing strategy often close good deals with their targeted accounts, have better sales alignment, and have also increased their pipeline velocity.
What is ABM?
For those who are not familiar with Account-based marketing, it is a strategic approach to any business marketing where the company communicates with any individual prospect or client account as markets of one. Think of it as a strategy where instead of marketing your products and services to a crowd of people, you do the exact opposite; instead, you are marketing all your services and products to one major customer or client. This major client can be anyone of reputation or, in modern cases, a big company that will buy or use all of your major products and services without question.
For companies who are using account-based marketing, they can expect the following benefits:
• Get the best value out of ABM
• With compelling content, companies can inspire their clients
• Get higher deals due to early engagement
• Account relevancy is increased
• Account strategies result in aligned marketing activity
In a traditional business setting, any type of business marketing is always organized by industry, product/solution or by direct, social, or PR channel. ABM uses all those together while focusing only on one individual client or account. This was a strategy created to help companies who are under pressure by the rising commoditization.
Where to Start?
Now that we’ve had a brief description as to how ABM works, the question right now is how and where to start. The first step to setting up and implementing your own account-based marketing strategy is to build up your target account list first. In simple terms, make a list of the companies that you’d want to end up as your customers. If your company has been using buyer personas for years as a marketing strategy, then consider this as a big leap for you and your company!
To be fair, using the buyer persona is a lot easier than guessing who your future customers are going to be. But for customers in B2B, there is a chance that you’ll know which account will close.
The list can be as small as 50 accounts and you can add more to the list as you develop your number of strategies depending on your level of ABM readiness. Once you have your list ready, you can start building marketing programs designed to target those accounts and then have the move through your business funnel.
Always remember that developing your marketing strategy is very important and should be a priority while building your ABM strategy.
