Account Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a much more focused strategy of B2B marketing which essentially involves a clear focus on specific accounts that are the potential growth houses in the understanding of the firm. If inbound marketing is a shotgun approach with generic messaging, ABM is a sniper approach that identifies your key accounts and even needs and pain points in that organization, tailoring your approach to engage decision-makers and influencers in that account.

The primary purpose of ABM is to streamline a more efficient and effective sales process by aligning marketing and sales efforts around high-value accounts. ABM allows firms to turn their resources and attention to the lesser number of accounts, towards building deeper relationships, shortening the sales cycle, and increasing deal size.The typical steps a business would follow to carry out ABM implementation are:

1. Identify target accounts: Use the data and insights available in the system to most accurately point out which accounts offer the best potential to grow revenues.
2. Research and segmentation by account: Gather information on the account needs, challenges, and decision-making process of each individual account. Segment accounts depending on similar characteristics.
3. Create personalized content and campaigns: Develop targeted content and campaigns that speak directly to the needs and interests of each account.
4. Engage key stakeholders in your diverse range of accounts through many communication channels, such as email, social media, direct mail, events, and one-to-one interaction.
5. Measure and optimize: Measure ABM campaigns in terms of engagement and revenue metrics to see how much they impact success and continuously optimize targeting and messaging.

ABM has truly come to the fore in recent years as B2B marketers look for a way to cut through the noise and build far more meaningful relationships with their most valuable customers. Marketing technology and data analytics have advanced so much that they make ABM more scalable and measurable than ever before.