What is ABM and how can it help your business to succeed?

What is ABM?

As changing customer behaviour becomes more and more influential in the marketing process, account-based marketing’s (ABM) prominence grows, too. A HubSpot study found that 67% of companies use account-based marketing, and 64% of these began their new methodology within the last five years.

By using a personalised approach that treats each individual business as its own market, marketing providers are able to offer a more unique end product than ever. A recent example is GumGum’s successful campaign in pursuit of T-Mobile partnership. The AI content analysis firm learned that the service provider’s CEO was a Batman fan, and created a comic strip featuring the two businesses ‘fighting’ bad reception. Find out more here.

Although an ABM campaign requires more time than other approaches, account-based marketing offers better results, too. 60% of companies report a minimum of 10% revenue growth in their first year of integration, and 58% of B2B marketers experience larger deal sizes through the irresistible USP of personalisation.

How does ABM work?

Every business is unique, so it makes sense to integrate account-based marketing and handle each accordingly. Through ABM, the marketer delivers a holistic approach that aims for more than just lead generation. Because it has a focus on meeting the unique needs of the customer, ABM requires a greater understanding of their audience - and this is achieved via cross-department communication between Sales and Marketing. By receiving shared data, marketers are able to work closely with their client to create a campaign that offers more than alternative methods. It’s a similar philosophy to inbound marketing, where quality, not quantity, is the focus. This leads to a more efficient, smaller market of better leads - allowing a higher number of profitable pursuits for your business.

ABM offers a marketing campaign shaped around each individual client’s needs. And, by doing so, you qualify better leads and pursue a more effective long-term customer base, with 80% of marketers claiming it improves customer lifetime value.

There’s four primary areas for you to facilitate:

Demographics

Your company specifications, e.g. number of employees, location and industry.

Psychographics

What are you trying to achieve, and how can your established identity (TOV etc) be applied to your new marketing strategy?

Technographics

What resources does your company use - do you have a cutting-edge CRM that can be integrated into the account-based marketing campaign?

Life cycle

What are your company’s long-term goals?

When properly considered, these offer absolute clarity in the pursuit of company growth - apply these to an account-based marketing strategy for a more effective campaign than ever. It’s also essential to consider what determines a high-value lead. Financial value and scalability and the competitive landscape are three factors for you to consider - take a closer look with HubSpot, here.

How can ABM help you?

ABM offers a wealth of benefits that greatly help your business, leading to huge growth like a 171% increase in contract value, according to the ABM Leadership Alliance. Additional perks include the long-term alignment of Marketing and Sales, which draws information like sales figures, search engine analytics, and customer goals. The more in-depth your data, the more targeted and effective the campaign can be. Its benefits include:

Alignment of Sales and Marketing

The earliest stages of ABM include the alignment of Sales and Marketing. Through a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) there’s consistency across your wider operation, making a more efficient customer experience than ever. With this in practice, different departments are able to use information from other aspects of your work to improve their own strategy and deliver a consistent customer experience to those who’ve requested your expertise.

With a better understanding of what sells, Marketers are able to tailor their efforts to attract stronger leads, creating and targeting better personas. B2B businesses with strict alignment between these two arms of their company were found to have a 24% faster three-year revenue growth.

Maximising business relevance where required

Relevance lies in value - to increase your worth, offer better products to more fitting customers. The ABM approach requires personalisation for every account you work with. And as the information is exclusive to their practice, it has a much higher value than generalised work or that created via templates. 

Delivery of consistent customer experiences

Customers want to feel valued - and there’s no better way to do so than treating them like an individual. This is the very essence of account-based marketing. By offering a consistent experience, your customer feels truly valued, and doesn’t have to experience time-wasting in their journey. Comprehensive alignment of sales and marketing is essential here, as it offers better in-house communication, and a customer experience grounded in data from previous interactions. Storing data and using it as a reference point, with accessibility to all relevant departments, will transform your business’s practice, helping to delight customers and increase success via word-of-mouth.

Measurable ROI

There’s a variety of ways you can track the value of your ABM strategy. These can include analytics, like measurable interaction across social media platforms, and customer loyalty. The longer a customer stays with you, the better the product suits their requirements.

It’s not unheard of to request surveys from customers, both present and past, to see which areas of your business they like. This information can be applied to the customer persona, adapting it to increase relevancy and changes.

Streamlining of the sales cycle

ABM concerns streamlining every aspect of your business - and the sales process is no different. With this approach, you save both resources and money in the process, as there’s a higher chance of conversion with the leads you choose. You use information to ensure the accounts you target are worthwhile… and the relationship between their requirements and your services is beneficial to all.

Better relationships, allowing your business to develop

With solutions like ABM and inbound marketing, there’s no reason for you to waste time on low-value leads that won’t materialise into relationships and sales. Instead, you focus solely on carefully-selected accounts who are more likely to require your expertise.

For more information on its benefits and how it can be integrated into your business, visit the Axon Garside blog.

Best for B2B

Because B2B businesses typically have longer sales cycles, they tend to benefit the most from an account-based marketing strategy that targets individual prospects. A CEB study found that 40% of stakeholders were more likely to buy from companies that used account-based marketing compared to alternative methods.

Account-based marketing has been proven to help B2B organisations increase the long-term value of their most important customers while helping attract more of the same. However, many businesses are still unsure of how best to use ABM in their existing marketing efforts.