Account Based Marketing Fundamentals
Digvijay Motiani Dec 13, 2019
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What is ABM?
What is ABM?
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a framework for targeting specific accounts or account segments, usually by purchase history, firmographics, product need or strategic value. ABM uses demand generation techniques for account specific marketing. Traditionally, demand gen is thought of as a lead-based framework that’s focused on producing large quantities of leads. The basic assumption is that more leads is always better. However, ABM approach is more towards gaining higher quality leads and building long-term relationships over the traditional quantitative approach.
How to develop an ABM strategy?
How to develop an ABM strategy?
Today, there are multiple end to end ABM software services specifically for B2B companies that enables users to seamlessly execute successful ABM campaigns across the entire funnel. An effective ABM strategy consists of two parts:
1. Categorizing Accounts as per different ABM types:
1. Categorizing Accounts as per different ABM types:
ABM for Large Accounts (1:1)
Large accounts often require a unique solution for their complex needs. ABM strategies for large accounts personalize the contact strategy and campaigns for each account to guide dozens of stakeholders throughout a long purchase journey. Whether a stakeholder is researching on the web, talking to sales, attending an event, or viewing and ad, they see relevant and consistent messaging unique for every buying group wherever they are in the purchase journey.
Due to the complexity of 1:1 account marketing for large accounts, organizations should target no more than 100 accounts at a time.
ABM for Named Account (1:few)
Named accounts require semi-custom solutions for their needs. Accounts can be grouped by common needs, while each account can require slight modifications. At the beginning of the purchase journey, groups of target accounts receive similar account-based marketing campaigns. As target accounts show more purchase intent, each account receives specific ABM multichannel campaigns.
ABM for named accounts targets lists of 100-10,000 accounts.
Industry ABM (1:many)
Industry ABM groups accounts by a firmographic characteristic, most typically industry. Industry segmentation is a convenient way to group target accounts by unique needs. Each industry segment receives specific ABM campaigns throughout their entire purchase journey with personalization for each account completed by the sales person.
Industry ABM is used when targeting over 10,000 accounts.
2. 5 step approach to a successful ABM campaign
2. 5 step approach to a successful ABM campaign
1. Identify
The step includes creating a target account list of companies interested in what you sell with signals way beyond traditional firmographic data: product usage, business fit, culture, budget, interests, investments and business relationships.
2. Attract
Pinpointing internal stakeholders within target accounts across the Web. Drive interest with personalized messages and advertising speaking to their specific pain points and needs.
3. Engage
Delivering a truly personalized experience for each visitor on the website—including headlines and site content, visuals, call to actions and downloadable assets.
4. Convert
Help sales close deals with insights that personalize outreach and maximize the quality of conversations with customers.
5. Measure
Know exactly how your ABM efforts are contributing to the bottom line—so you can measure your ROI and adjust your strategy to further increase your impact.
Below screenshots from CITRIX's website shows how the company is leveraging ABM techniques to personalize their H1 tags, product messaging and the images for different industries (healthcare and education in this case)
Benefits of using ABM campaigns
Benefits of using ABM campaigns
- ROI is much clearer
It’s incredibly precise, targeted, personalized, and accurate compared to general inbound and outbound strategies, which also makes it easier to measure ROI.
- There’s less waste and less risk
Efficiently scaling the ABM strategies ensures that the company is not gaining low quality leads and wasting time and effort to nurture customers who have no intent to make a purchase. Also, stability and retention of high value accounts reduces the risk of hiring and firing account managers with the changes in the accounts.
- Clients like it because it is personal
75% of customers prefer personalized offers. ABM is implemented with the needs of a specific target prospect at a specific target account in mind. For the current/potential customer it means that they are important to the company.
- Goal setting and analytics is easier
While analyzing campaign effectiveness, it’s easier to draw conclusions. It is a smaller set of targeted accounts and there are well-drawn plans for each account that help easily compare end-of-quarter results to forecast goals.
- Sales alignment is much easier
ABM marketers have to work closely with sales people to accurately identify target accounts, map them out, and align on sales initiatives. This type of tag teaming between marketing and sales is what ultimately leads to the powerful, predictive marketing and turnkey targeted advertising that unlocks accounts.
Cons of using ABM campaigns
Cons of using ABM campaigns
- Requires more content depending on the number of accounts
Each category of account that needs to be targeted needs different piece of content, website copy, CTA, email content, etc.
- Excessive focus on the main accounts
Few companies end up focusing too much on some of the main accounts and completely ignoring the other potential opportunities resulting in complete ABM failure.
- Negative SEO effect
H1 tags, anchor texts, CTAs and content are among some of the factors that help search engines rank pages organically. When same URL contains multiple versions of headings and different body content, the search engine algorithm considers it as cheating the system and negatively affects the SEO ranking.
- Technology Limitation
There are some limitations with the ABM technology, especially when it comes to identifying accounts, using IP addresses and Cookie files. It requires a good balance of technical and marketing knowledge to run an efficient ABM campaign.
REFERENCES
REFERENCES
https://www.demandbase.com/solutions/
https://triblio.com/account-based-marketing/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/account-based-marketing-no-brainer/
https://www.pardot.com/blog/pros-cons-account-based-marketing/
https://www.ironpaper.com/webintel/articles/5-ways-to-fail-at-account-based-marketing/
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