3 Secrets Of Successful ABM
Account-based marketing, or ABM, allows you to identify and prioritize high-value companies.
Every day, the digital landscape becomes more saturated — making it harder for sales and marketing teams to communicate with high-quality prospects.
Because of all this noise, it’s crucial to get impactful messaging in front of prospects it will resonate with. Businesses that use account-first marketing and sales techniques to target highly-segmented audiences use resources more effectively and increase revenue won.
Marketers report that 87% of their ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments.
With ABM you can engage with businesses individually. This allows you to target specialized segments and craft individual content, communication, and campaigns for your accounts. You can interact with them on a more personal level. Speaking to their specific needs, pain points, and growth goals. This makes your customers feel heard and happy, which brings confidence and loyalty. It shows you’re listening, and it works.
Here are just a few examples of why you need to master ABM:
- 94.2% of marketers have an active ABM program
- Mature ABM programs account for 79% of all sales opportunities
- 91% of marketers that use ABM have indicated landing larger deal sizes
If ABM increases revenue, what drives ABM?
Data!
For ten years I’ve been analyzing data and using it to power ABM. I’ve learned some of the secrets to creating successful ABM campaigns, and I want to share them with you.
Secret #1: ABM isn’t for everyone
Many businesses feel the need to implement an ABM program because of its well-documented success. It’s become an industry buzzword that crops up in books, ads, and countless website impressions each day. But to get this much-sought-after ROI increase, you need to take the time to decide if ABM is truly the best fit for your organization.
How do you know?
There are different approaches to ABM, but, on a general level, it is an individual campaign for each of your target accounts. As such, ABM is an ideal fit for enterprise accounts with complex, longer sales cycles due to the expenses, time, and resources that go into executing these campaigns. For example, high-value accounts may need a lot of 1:1 conversations and require input from multiple decision-makers along the way — an average of seven decision-makers — especially on larger deals.
The amount of time, effort, and resources simply makes some types of ABM unfeasible for smaller firms.
Secret #3: ABM is both a marketing and sales initiative
For all intents and purposes, think of ABM as ABSM, account-based sales and marketing, because the best results come from a synergy between sales and marketing teams.
From targeting through execution, both teams need to collaborate to succeed. This can look like conferring on priority accounts, identifying and sharing metrics, and establishing what a successful campaign yields. If marketing makes content that’s relevant to a very targeted audience, it’s important that sales teams follow up and base conversations around that specified content. This is why sales and marketing alignment is so necessary.
Many organizations struggle with aligning sales and marketing teams to collaborate on joint initiatives. We’ve seen how hard it can be to implement. Though developing this relationship with employees is an opportunity for growth, it leads to both future success and immediate gains! ABM gives your sales team more valuable inbound leads and increases the chance of a demo or 1:1 conversation with the target audience. All of which leads to an increased ROI.
Secret #4: ABM never sleeps
To keep your communications, content, and campaigns highly personal and relevant, ABM requires consistent refining. This means you have to methodically reach out to your target accounts on a regular basis with desirable, personal messaging. ABM only increases conversion rates if you’re able to grab your accounts’ attention and keep it.
ABM provides your prospect with highly relevant content, and whether that’s thought leadership, articles, or addressing their specific needs or pain points. Intelligence on your accounts ensures your ABM program is fuelled with the right message, at the right time, to the right target.
And with ABM, you’re always one step ahead of your customer’s needs.
And the competition.
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