What you need to do Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

There are many buzzwords in marketing. I’m not going to make friends by saying that, but too many B2B marketers use them without really understanding their true implications, potential, cost, and opportunities.

ABM - or account-based marketing - is one of them.

In this article, we'll cover what you need to know about account-based marketing, including its benefits, how it works, best practices for getting started, and a few harsh truths.

Table of contents:

• What is account-based marketing

• 9 crucial steps to get started with ABM

• Benefits of implementing ABM (and important warnings)

• Is ABM really for you?

So, what is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

ABM operates on the principle that not all leads are created equal.

Account-based marketing is a powerful and strategic approach that uses hyper-targeted advertising and content touchpoints to reach specific accounts (or accounts sharing similar criteria). It focuses on targeting specific accounts rather than casting a wide net and hoping for the best.

This targeted marketing strategy allows B2B marketers to deliver highly personalized and relevant marketing campaigns to carefully selected accounts, thus significantly improving their chances of success.

“Ok, but what’s new under the sun here?

Account-Based Marketing vs. “Traditional Marketing”

Unlike traditional marketing, which typically focuses on generating as many leads as possible based on specific criteria, ABM focuses on putting your company on the radar of a selected number of valuable accounts that are likely to bring the most value to your organization.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why ABM isn’t more widespread, right? Well, it’s not that easy to get going, it’s a costly investment, and it’s not relevant for all, either.

How to get started with ABM?

If you want ABM to work for your organization, you must get all your ducks in a row. This means ensuring that your sales, customer success, product, marketing (specifically your advertising and content efforts), and martech ecosystem are in complete sync.

It’s a complex journey we tried to break down into 9 steps.

1. Define what makes a key account and build a list of ICP companies to target

This step is crucial as it will be the foundation of your overall ABM strategy.

When trying to identify target accounts, consider the following:

• Company size: Large enterprises with bigger budgets may be more valuable, but smaller companies with niche needs can also be key targets, depending on what you sell, of course.

• Industry: Focus on sectors where your product or service has proven success.

• Revenue potential: Prioritize accounts that have the potential to generate high revenue or offer long-term business.

• Fit with your solution: Ensure the accounts you're targeting are a good fit for your product or service. You're more likely to succeed if your offering addresses their specific pain points.

Of course, companies in your list should ONLY be potential ideal customers.

What does that mean?

To put it in short, your ideal customers are those that…

• understand the benefits and value of your product/service

• are easier to sell to than other prospects

• don't negotiate too much on the price

• churn less than other customers

• are profitable for your company

• recommend your product/service to their peers

How long should your list be?

It depends. A solid ABM list can range anywhere from 50 to 500 accounts (know that the more accounts, the more work for you down the road, as you’ll need to build and maintain a wider range of personalized experiences).

— Don’t have an ideal customer profile yet? Read our guide.

2. Check whether or not your martech ecosystem allows for ABM

ABM requires data. Better even, it requires clean data you know you can rely on and use to personalize the experience of contacts from selected accounts.

One of the most important tools is your CRM.

There is a wide range of CRMs available, and they aren’t all equal when it comes to ABM.

HubSpot, for one, is great for this (yes, we are a HubSpot partner agency, so you’d figure we’d say that) as it can not only act as your CRM but also as your marketing automation, ad management platform, social media management platform, content and web personalization tool.

What’s more, HubSpot allows you to target a visitor from the very first interaction based on pre-defined segmentation criteria.

Aching to hear more about this? Check this webinar:

https://www.advanceb2b.com/webinars/how-to-choose-the-right-tech-for-marketing

3. Pick the right type of ABM for your organization

There are essentially three types of ABM strategies you can choose from:

Strategic ABM (One-to-One ABM)

This is the most personalized type of ABM.

The idea is to create highly tailored experiences for individual accounts. With one-to-one ABM, you target each account with messaging and campaigns developed specifically for that account's unique needs and buying journey. Of course, such precision also requires more time and resources.

ABM Lite (One-to-Few ABM)

With ABM Lite, you widen your net and target small clusters of high-value accounts with similar characteristics, such as industry sectors or similar business challenges. This method allows you to target more accounts with somewhat personalized experiences without spreading yourself too thin.

Programmatic ABM (One-to-Many ABM)

Finally, Programmatic ABM is a much wider account-based marketing strategy, as it aims to target larger groups of accounts that fall into broader criteria. Of course, a much wider net means less personalization and, therefore, potentially weaker convincing experiences.

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The type of ABM you end up choosing will heavily depend on the number of companies in your target list as well as how many hands you can have on deck to create meaningful and personalized experiences.

4. Align with sales, review your target accounts, and prioritize them

Traditionally, marketing requires a minimum alignment between sales and marketing teams. ABM requires perfect synchronization between the two organizations. For this to work, you need to sit down with your sales team and:

• Explain what ABM is and ensure sales and marketing go after the same accounts.

• Ask them to review your ABM list and list dream (but relevant) companies you may have missed.*

* Of course, some companies listed by your sales team will not match your ICP and, therefore, shouldn’t be part of the plan. This step ensures you add as many relevant companies as possible to your target list.

This dream list can get very long and messy very quickly. And so, it’s essential to categorize those companies in relation to your ideal customer profile.

— Here’s a ready-to-use sheet you can use to build and prioritize your dream customer list into tiers:

• Tier 1: Most wanted companies

• Tier 2: Important accounts

• Tier 3: Nice-to-haves

5. Sync your advertising and content efforts

Powerful advertising is a combination of good targeting and content. If one of those fails to deliver, your campaigns won’t lead anywhere (pun intended).

In practice, this means aligning your ad copy, website copy, potential on-page personalization, or even your nurturing program with the pain points of the accounts or segments you are targeting.

You need to go beyond the traditional creation of personalized content for each stage of the buyer’s journey and add a layer of complexity to it, including your target companies’ specific pain points and potential use cases.

6. Build account profiles

Once you've identified your target accounts, the next step is to create detailed account profiles.

These profiles provide valuable insights into the organization's goals, challenges, and key decision-makers. The more information you have about an account, the better you can tailor your marketing and sales approach.

Consider gathering the following data:

• Company information: This includes details like size, industry, and revenue.

• Buying committee: Identify the decision-makers and influencers within the organization.

• Pain points: Understand the challenges the account faces and how your product or service can help solve them.

• Current solutions they use (and how your offer is better or complementary): research what products or services the account uses to address their needs.

7. Develop personalized campaigns

As previously mentioned, personalization is the core of ABM. Once you have a deep understanding of each account, you need to create personalized marketing campaigns to address their unique needs and challenges.

These campaigns should be highly targeted and relevant, incorporating messaging that speaks directly to the account’s pain points.

Consider the following personalization tactics:

• Customized content: Develop content tailored to each target account's specific needs and goals. This could include blog posts, case studies, white papers, or personalized videos.

• Account-specific messaging: Craft messaging that speaks directly to the account’s challenges and demonstrates how your solution can help.

• Targeted advertising: Use targeted ads on platforms like Linkedin, Microsoft Ads, or ABM ad platforms to reach key decision-makers within the account.

8. Engage with the buying committee

When doing ABM, you must engage with key decision-makers and decision-influencers within each target account.

Note that you may need to display different messaging and address various pain points in your ads (meaning you may need different campaigns for this).

Again, this step requires collaboration between marketing and sales to build relationships and move the account through the sales funnel.

• Multi-channel engagement: To engage stakeholders across multiple channels, combine email, social media, phone calls, and in-person meetings.

• Sales involvement: Sales teams should actively engage with key stakeholders, provide personalized follow-up, and address specific concerns.

• Lead nurturing: Implement lead nurturing strategies, such as personalized email sequences, to keep the accounts engaged over time.

9. Measure and optimize

Like with any other marketing strategy, you need to set up comprehensive reporting to understand the effects of your actions and optimize them over time.

Track key metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and revenue generated from target accounts. This data will help you identify what’s working and where improvements can be made.

Keep track of:

• Lead generated from key accounts: the more leads you generate from key accounts, the more your messages appear relevant. If you struggle to get those in, review your messaging.

• Engagement metrics: track how your target accounts interact with your content and messaging. This can include visits to key pages, specific content downloads, or engagement with your nurturing emails, to name a few. The best way to proceed is to list specific actions that show interest and keep track of them to establish your contacts’ maturity.

• Intent data per account: if you use a platform that provides you such information, it can be a goldmine both for sales and marketing to see what the buying committee members read on your website or what questions they need answered.

• Pipeline metrics: measure how many target accounts are progressing through the sales funnel (we recommend following the AAARRR - or pirate - funnel to visualize your funnel and identify potential bottlenecks).

• Revenue metrics: in the end, it all comes down to revenue. Build reports to track the revenue generated from target accounts to assess the overall success of your ABM efforts.

3 key benefits for implementing ABM (and a couple of warnings!)

After what you just read, I’m aware that the prospect of getting started with ABM can sound daunting. It’s a hell of a lot of work and requires a lot of effort from multiple sources. But it can be worth it. Stick with me.

ABM isn’t just a pain to set up; it’s also rewarding - though there are three significant drawbacks I’ll now address:

You will generate fewer leads

The thing is, ABM isn’t about generating more leads. It’s about targeting selected accounts to bring them to your website and offering personalized touchpoints to stand out and start a conversation. In other words, if you target 100 companies, you can’t expect to generate thousands of leads.

This means you need to ensure that everyone (C-level, sales, marketing, etc.) is on board with this and understands the real implications of ABM. It's a whole new way of looking at marketing, from generating many leads for sales to pick up, to attracting the right people to your website.

It’s a long-term game*

* On average, this means you’ll need about 6 months to get initial positive signals and 18 to 24 months to see actual results.

When executed correctly, ABM is about personalizing each touch point for selected accounts and contacts. In many cases, these contacts have never heard of your company before, and it can be a while before they notice your ads and decide to engage with you.

And this is only the beginning. Once they enter your CRM, you’ll still need to convince them you’re the right solution or service.

ABM is a significant investment

ABM platforms are expensive (ranging from €5K to €20K+ a year). It would be pointless to list and recommend ABM tools here, as selecting the right platform depends on what you need from it, how much personalization you want, and how much you can spare for the yearly subscription (+ your media budget).

The above warnings aren’t probably exactly what you wanted to read here, but it’s the truth. We know a thing or two about this and can help you navigate and implement the right ABM solution for your needs. Just reach out!

Now that the bandaid is ripped, here are 3 benefits you can expect from a well-oiled ABM machine.

1. Improved trust in marketing from sales

If you’ve done marketing long enough, you know how fragile the collaboration between sales and marketing can be.

Simply put, your lead generation tactics may perform well, but if only a fraction of those turn out to be relevant from a sales perspective, your colleagues from sales will eventually drop the ball and focus on outbound tactics.

Your job is to ensure that everyone who comes to your sales team’s table is interested in what you sell.

By delivering target contacts from selected companies to your sales colleagues on a silver platter, you’ll quickly become best friends.

2. A potential for high ROI

The whole idea of ABM is to achieve better results with fewer but targeted resources.

By targeting relevant and promising accounts and creating tailored experiences for them, the revenue you generate from your ABM efforts should easily surpass the investment.

Of course, you need to think long-term. If your average sales cycle is 6 months, experimenting with ABM for only a couple of quarters would be pointless (and a costly mistake). Think trial and error until you get it right.

3. Shorter Sales Cycles

Of course, the duration of your sales cycle highly depends on your industry and the nature of your products or services. However, it’s not uncommon for B2B tech companies to struggle with long sales cycles due to multiple factors (competition, stickiness of existing solutions and difficulty of implementation, cost, legal concerns, etc.).

This is where the relevance coming out of ABM can help.

Focusing on high-priority accounts and creating content that speaks to them directly should help you move prospects through your funnel more quickly, reducing the overall length of your sales cycle.

Now, is ABM really for you?

Eeeeh … it depends.

Though the prospect of ABM is interesting, it may not be a fit for your organization.

Simply put:

ABM could prove costly or even unnecessary if

• Your average deal is fairly low

• Your target market is large

• Your product is very easy to buy and implement

• You have low/no-touch sales

ABM could be interesting to explore if:

• Your average deal size is important (10K+)

• Your sales cycle is long

• Your product is difficult to implement

• Your Ideal customer profile pool is a niche

• You are targeting enterprise companies

Of course, things aren’t always that simple (and we’ll gladly help you figure it out if you’ll let us).

Remember: sometimes, less is more

At the risk of repeating myself, it’s not about targeting everyone and their grandma. It’s about targeting selected accounts and reaching them with a specific angle.

It is a lot of work, and there’s a lot of trial and error to be made as you get started. But if and when you get it right, ABM has the potential to be one of the most rewarding marketing strategies you can implement in your marketing mix.

I hope this article provided you with more guidance on ABM, what it requires, and the risks and opportunities involved.

If you need some strategic guidance to embark on this journey, give us a call (or, better yet, book a call with us; we don’t have a company phone).