Account-based Marketing (ABM): A Comprehensive Guide

Marketing in the modern world has transformed drastically. It no longer relies solely on mass targeting, promotions, automated communication, and waiting for conversions. Modern-day marketers need to now identify their highest-value accounts and communicate with them as individual markets. They need to identify their customers’ pain points and offer specific solutions to them. Account-based marketing, or ABM, is the best way to achieve all this and more.

ABM enables marketers to eliminate their unqualified leads so they can focus on engaging their target accounts more effectively. It helps them seamlessly align their marketing and sales teams, personalise the buyer’s journey, and boost engagement, ROI and revenue.

Fact check: 67% of brands have leveraged account-based marketing in 2021.

In this blog post, we’ll dive deeper into what ABM exactly is and all the aspects related to it. Let’s get started!

Traditional marketing vs ABM

Traditional marketing involves segmenting your target audience, developing general communications that can fit them all, and generating leads through site visits and lead forms.

ABM, on the other hand, follows an inverted approach. It firstly helps identify your best-fit accounts, accelerate the conversion process by targeting key decision makers, engage them with customised communications, and create lasting relationships with them with effective nurturing.

The figure below illustrates the difference between traditional marketing and ABM:

Basics of ABM and its key features:

The concept of identifying and nurturing high-value accounts isn’t new. We have seen agencies and salespeople luring their top clients with special events and expensive wine and dine for ages. But with technological evolution, ABM has made this exclusive practice accessible to every brand owner. Take a look at some key features of ABM listed below.

Key features of ABM:

• ABM treats every account as a unique account
• It helps you build channel-specific experiences
• It unites sales and marketing
• Identifies key target accounts
• Creates an objective account profile
• Helps target the decision-makers of that account

Fact check: 87% of marketers that measure ROI say that ABM outperforms every other marketing investment.

The ABM process

Unlike traditional marketing, ABM helps you identify the biggest opportunities and high-value clients in the initial stages and seek and nurture them proactively in the later stages.

The major factor that distinguishes the ABM process from other marketing techniques is that it identifies diverse accounts and their specific viewpoints and requirements in the initial stage. It helps you get an edge in the competitive market by implementing a three-pronged approach:

• Initial Setup: Enhance your initial campaign setup by integrating analytics and best-suited tools for better marketing and sales insights.
• Content and asset creation: ABM helps you achieve quality outreach and relationship-building. With ABM, you can curate content that caters to individual accounts and implement specific content marketing strategies to boost the engagement rate.
• Marketing activities: Design growth-driven promotional activities and have a stronger brand presence on the best-performing platforms with ABM.

Fact check: 91% of companies using ABM were able to increase their average deal size, with 25% of respondents stating the increase being over 50% or more.

You Might Like:

10 Things to Keep in mind before setting an ABM framework

Benefits of ABM

Here are some key benefits of implementing Account-based Marketing strategies:

• Sales & marketing alignment: ABM ensures that your marketing and sales teams focus on the same goals. It helps them mutually streamline BANT (budget, authority, needs, and timeline) lead qualification and ensures an improvement in the conversion rate.
• Boost your market relevance: With ABM, every effort of yours, be it content, product descriptions, communication, and campaigns, are highly personalised to cater to individual accounts. This increases your relevance among your high-value accounts.
• Deliver consistent user experiences: ABM helps provide consistent user experiences where each of your accounts feel like they are your top priority.
• Streamline the sales cycle: ABM boosts your efficiency by streamlining your sales cycle. It helps you eliminate your least qualified leads and direct your efforts to target your best-fit accounts.
• Higher ROI: With targeted efforts and data-driven insights, ABM ensures a higher ROI as compared to other marketing techniques.

Fact check: In 2021, 70% of marketers report using ABM, up 15% from 2020.

Final thoughts

To gain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving market, leveraging ABM is inevitable. And if you wish to take your digital marketing to the next level, you can collaborate with a team of experts who understand the ins and outs of account-based marketing.

Amura Marketing Technologies is a leading digital marketing agency with over 15 years of experience, an on-time delivery record, extensive market understanding, agile processes, and a team of 150+ digital experts. Through our effective growth marketing strategies, data-driven MarTech solutions and specialised ABM solutions, you can boost your ROI and earn profits like never before! Ready to experiment with your marketing approach for better results? Get in touch with us today!