Account-based marketing strategies are profitable, especially in B2B, because they allow you to maximize your sales efficiency with hyper-focused marketing to key decision-makers. If you want to make sales in the B2B space, account-based marketing makes sense.
Why?
You’ll use strategic steps to identify your ideal customer, who makes purchasing decisions inside the business, and then you’ll be able to market to these key stakeholders. If you’re used to casting a “wide net” in hopes of attracting as many buyers as possible, account-based marketing tactics make more sense.
And these account-based marketing strategies will often lead to higher sales conversions.
Account-based marketing, also known as ABM marketing, is a form of marketing that stops cold calling and instead does the following:
As part of your ABM strategy, you’ll work with your marketing team to narrow down these decision-makers so that you can use laser-focused marketing to attract and, hopefully, close these accounts.
In comparison, ABM strategies don’t try to attract everyone with a broad marketing strategy.
What is ABM marketing? Think of it this way. You’re a small restaurant that sells vegan food. You can run a marketing campaign in town for every customer, or you can market specifically to vegans.
If you just started offering vegan food, marketing to these ‘high-value accounts” will provide better returns and higher conversion rates, because they will likely buy from you.
ABM marketing helps businesses in many ways, and the stats don’t lie:
Devising and implementing an account-based marketing strategy is an important part of sales in 2024 – and in the future.
Account-based marketing offers a new focus on marketing, augmenting what you already have in place to increase sales with strategic client identification and research. B2B companies that know and can identify their potential buyers can then use this information to market to them directly.
There’s power in marketing to a buyer’s pain points.
With ABM marketing, you also benefit from:
Cold calling to generate interest in your product or service should be a thing of the past. Successful sales are possible without cold calling because you’ve already identified target accounts, identified the buyer, and marketed directly to these individuals.
When your sales rep reaches out to these potential accounts, they’ll be familiar with your product or service and may want to buy already. It’s much easier to sell when you create interest in your marketing and have already explained how you can solve their pain points before picking up the phone.
Plus, cold calling is time-consuming and may not offer the high conversion rates that your business demands.
Your ABM marketing strategy creates a better customer experience. Why? You’ve spent time identifying the ideal customer, know exactly who you plan on marketing to, and have tried closing the deal.
ABM helps marketers:
If you know your customers well, thanks to ABM marketing, it empowers your business to offer an experience that exceeds expectations.
Account-based marketing can grow revenue 20% faster because your marketing and sales teams align. Both teams work closely from the start to identify the accounts you’ll target.
When your sales and marketing team’s objectives are aligned, it will help you generate more sales.
Marketing budgets are limited, so you must use them as efficiently as possible. Your account-based marketing strategies will allow you to target the right buyers who already need your product or service at the right time.
Since you’re eliminating the potential accounts that are of low value or have a low chance of conversion, it will help your business generate more sales for less.
If you know that a certain buyer is on social media, you can target them on this marketing channel or at an event rather than a marketing medium that may not reach them effectively.
Account-based marketing keeps customers engaged. Your marketing strategies are based on the customer pain point, allowing you to craft marketing messages that attract more leads and sales.
Account relationships, where your marketing team shows commitment and learns the customer’s unique needs, will help your business expand. Expansion takes place organically as you find new, exciting ways to help foster relationships with these accounts.
Long-term relationships with these accounts will provide consistent returns on investment.
ABM marketing, as mentioned previously, is a personalized approach to marketing. When you personalize your marketing at this level, it helps you transform sales with messages that resonate with these high-value accounts.
Personalized marketing, when both marketing and sales teams align, increases closing rates by as much as 67%.
Account-based marketing promotes sales enablement by supplying your sales team with the key information necessary to increase sales. For example, you might do research on an account and find that they’re unhappy with their current supplier because delivery is slow and they lack a certain feature that you provide.
Armed with this information, your sales team will have the information necessary to close sales at a higher rate.
Sales and marketing may have the same goals “on the surface,” and while they work to convert more customers, they are intrinsically different. Key differences between the two are:
Aligning your marketing and sales funnel helps most teams close sales faster and more efficiently.
Your ABM also works with inbound marketing to provide a synergistic approach that empowers business leaders to accelerate sales.
Account-based marketing works together with inbound marketing to increase sales. Your inbound marketing will attract leads to your business, while ABM will serve as an outbound strategy. Marketers and sales teams have identified their “dream” clients with ABM, and they market directly to them.
Inbound marketing doesn’t provide the same refined approach as ABM, but it will help you:
Your ABM does the hard work of identifying the ideal customer profile that has a high chance of making a purchase. Inbound marketing attracts a vast amount of leads, many of which don’t meet your “dream client” definition.
To address this problem, sales teams can use lead scoring as they work through every lead to make a sale.
Inbound data can also drive your ABM because you can use the data collected to understand your ideal customer profile better and target it.
ABM only works well if you identify the right accounts to target. You can do this in a few ways:
Books have been written on ICPs, and while personas are similar, they don’t include the following characteristics that make up an ICP: company size, budget, revenue, geography, industry, service limitations and products.
Sales and marketing teams can work together to create an ICP.
You can eliminate accounts based on the data and insights that you gather, such as business size, revenue, and budget. Marketing teams must conduct extensive research to gather this data.
Account-based marketing strategies require a multi-faceted approach, starting with a thorough analysis of your audience and accounts database.
The first step to creating a successful account-based marketing strategy is to analyze your audience and accounts database.
Analysis will help you understand who you’re targeting and allow you to identify high-value accounts within your database.
Once you’ve analyzed your audience and accounts, you can further improve your success rate by implementing lead scoring.
Lead scoring ranks leads based on engagement behavior.
Scoring leads will allow your sales and marketing teams to focus on prospects that are most likely to convert. Both departments will need to work together to identify what defines a good lead.
With a better understanding of your audience and a lead scoring system in place, it’s time to focus on personalization.
To personalize your marketing approach:
Customer segmentation allows you to send hyper-personalized messages that appeal to each group.
Customers can be grouped based on common characteristics, such as industry, size, revenue, location, behavior, or technology.
Segmentation is one step. Once you have grouped customers together, you can develop personalized outreach strategies that resonate with your audience.
Outreach includes:
Each of these channels can have customized content based on your customer pain points and needs.
You’ve developed a personalized marketing approach. The next step in your account-based marketing strategy is to identify the right channels to target.
These are the channels where your target accounts are most active and spending most of their time.
If most of your target accounts are spending their time on LinkedIn and Facebook, for example, then you’ll want to focus your marketing efforts on these two channels.
One of the most overlooked aspects of marketing is the follow-up. To make your ABM strategy a success, work with sales to develop follow-ups. Identify when you’ll follow up and develop personalized messages to keep your brand at the forefront of the lead’s mind.
To maximize the benefits of ABM, it’s important to follow successful practices and account-based marketing tactics, which include:
In-person or virtual events have always been a highly effective way to close deals in the B2B sector. The aim is to provide a highly tailored and personalized experience for your key prospects.
For high-value accounts, intimate events work best.
For other accounts, events can include things like live vendor or supplier shows, workshops, virtual networking events, award nights, product launches, or VIP dinners. In many cases, companies collaborate with an event agency to handle logistics, planning, and execution—especially when aiming for a polished, seamless experience that aligns with brand goals.
In many ways, webinars are similar to events in account-based marketing. They provide highly personalized and targeted experiences for specific target accounts.
Webinars are focused on one specific topic, and in most cases, are followed up with personalized communications.
Email finder tools make it easier than ever to find the contact information for key decision-makers. When done properly, cold emails can be highly effective.
To succeed, you need to ensure that:
Once you’ve made contact, you can direct the conversation toward scheduling a call, booking a demo, or something similar.
Emails can also help you nurture your prospects by sending them valuable content.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google Ads can also be an effective way to kickstart your ABM campaign.
You can use ads to build awareness, drive more traffic to your site, and ultimately, close more deals. When people click on your ad and visit your site, you can then retarget them on other platforms.
Like with other AMB strategies, personalization is important. Your ads should be tailored to specific decision-makers or companies. This means conducting keyword research that’s more company-specific.
Offline marketing tactics like direct mail are still a highly effective way to reach prospects. In a world where email inboxes are cluttered with messages, direct mail stands out and will help you make an impression.
Use your target account data to create highly personalized direct mail campaigns. Sending high-quality or branded merchandise can also help you create a memorable experience.
In AMB, personalization is everything, and you can use website personalization technology to create account-specific and tailored experiences for your target prospects. The more personalized the experience, the higher the chances of engaging and converting your target accounts.
At this point, you know what ABM is and how it works, but what does it look like in the real world? Let’s look at some examples of ABM campaigns.
The right tools can streamline your ABM strategy and maximize your results. There are several marketing automation solutions that you can integrate into your ABM strategy.
Account-based marketing is all about researching and identifying the accounts that come to your website. That’s where tools like FormStory shine.
With FormStory and form tracking, you can:
Personalization plays a key role in the success of an ABM strategy. Capturing lead data from form submissions will give you decision-maker insights that will make sure your marketing messages resonate with your target accounts.
Twilio offers a suite of communication APIs that you can use to engage your target accounts wherever they are – SMS, email, chat apps, or voice.
Integration with CRM and marketing automation tools makes it easy to incorporate Twilio into your tech stack.
HubSpot offers a suite of marketing automation tools that can bring your ABM strategy to life, including:
Form tracking, communication APIs, and marketing automation tools can work together to help you manage and optimize your ABM strategies quickly and easily.
Account-based marketing helps you cut through the noise to focus on high-value accounts and key decision-makers. The key to success with ABM is knowing your prospects and personalizing their marketing experiences to appeal to them individually.
Use this guide and the strategies within it to create and optimize your ABM strategies.
