ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING – WHY BUSINESSES SHOULD CONSIDER IT
Account-based marketing or ABM has been around for a very long time, but it is only now that people are really paying attention to it and implementing it closely and more consciously as part of their marketing campaign. It involves taking your resources and placing them all on a set of targeted accounts within the market. The business strategy uses campaigns that have been personalized to engage each account individually. These campaigns are developed by looking at the specific needs and wants of an account.
Many people across the industry consider account-based marketing revolutionary and cutting edge. This is because the strategy looks at marketing holistically, as a whole, whereas older techniques focus too heavily on lead generation. A key attribute within account-based marketing looks at wagering and taking advantage of larger accounts. This means that you’re looking at trying to up-sell and cross-sell your larger accounts to get more value out of them, rather than spending time in the seemingly endless and tiresome loop of lead generation.
Account based marketing offers benefits both for the business and its customers. This is also one of the reasons why people are drawn to it.
1. Personalized and customized marketing experience.
Understanding your customers better gives you a leg up on the competition and allows you to strengthen your business relationship with that customer. The personalized marketing campaign could lead to better and more sales. A large part of account-based marketing is the personalization of marketing techniques to larger accounts. By figuring out the customer’s expectations, wants, and needs, you can tailor the marketing campaign specifically to and for them.
2. More realistic ROI expectations
Account-based marketing is known for giving higher returns than any other marketing strategy. It offers the highest return on investment (ROI) than any other B2B marketing strategy. The new strategy gives more precise measurements of the ROI that a company can expect. In turn, it allows companies to get a better grip on how their customers are responding to certain advertising techniques. This means that they have more control over what tactics are working as well as those that aren’t working.
3. Strategic use of available, fewer or limited resources
The account-based marketing approach focuses on a smaller number of accounts at a given time. Because they’re working with fewer accounts, they are more likely to bring those accounts to the final sales process. You’re actually going to be bringing more with fewer resources. This also frees up resources that used to be spent on funneling numerous companies. So, companies who use account-based marketing tactics can use these now free resources to complete and focus on other tasks.
4. Shorten sales timeline significantly
With your sales and marketing teams are working together to align and move accounts through the sales pipeline, you’ll find that the sales cycle shortens significantly. Your teams don’t have to juggle multiple moving parts separately. Rather, you’re streamlining the process and making it easier for everyone to keep up with the leads and customers that your business currently has. This also makes it easier to cater to these specific customers, making sure their concerns are addressed appropriately and in a timely manner. They don’t get lost in the noise.
5. Better, more effective and efficient marketing and sales alignment
Marketing teams and sales teams are more likely to and should work together to accomplish goals and sales together. By bringing these entities together, they can work on important tasks as a team rather than individually:
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Identify accounts that you want to target
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Create customized/personalized marketing campaigns for those targeted accounts.
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Aligning accounts and moving them along the sales cycle as a team
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Having an account-based marketing approach will take your lead conversion method to a new level. If your marketing and sales teams are still separated, you likely run into a lot of issues when it comes to successfully converting leads into sales.
