Account-Based Marketing Technique and Lead Generation

A business requires an appropriate marketing strategy to influence the target audience. But what if the audience has specific requirements and is not easy to impress with generic sales pitches? Account-based marketing (ABM) helps identify the pain points of such high-value customers and pitch a specially tailored solution for them.

As an advanced version of content marketing, ABM is a strategic marketing technique implemented by companies to ease their journey of sales and ROI in the Business-to-Business (B2B) space. This marketing approach smartly combines sales and marketing data to find high-value accounts or target specific buying groups and approach them with the solutions they have been looking for. ABM approaches good-fit accounts with highly personalized content, like email marketing, LinkedIn outreach, direct call, or other similar outbound marketing strategies.

What Is Account-Based Marketing?

The research shows that 94% of B2B marketers use ABM as their marketing strategy. Accunt-based Marketing is popular as it doesn’t target audiences in the dark and rather follows a targetted problem-solving approach. As a focused growth strategy, ABM creates a personalized buying experience for a group of identified accounts. The targeted accounts are the organizations that can probably be customers for the products and services of your company. 

ABM starts from the bottom end of the sales funnel, begins with the targeted accounts, and works backward to create content and campaigns for the targeted accounts. ABM’s primary components are marketing-sales alignment, account qualification, and go-to-market plan.

Process Outline for ABM

The creation and implementation of ABM require an effective strategy. The process outline of ABM includes marketing-sales alignment, research for account qualification, building account plans, nurturing, and creating strong engagements with the decision-makers. 

Marketing-Sales Alignment

For implementing ABM, the sales and marketing team needs to align and work together so that the problems of the buyers can be effectively addressed. Businesses implementing ABM for the first time can experiment with a small task force of one marketer and one salesperson to identify and sell to the target account sufficiently and eventually scale their efforts. 

Account Qualification and Segmentation

After aligning sales and marketing, organizations need to approach the right target audience and segment them appropriately. Creating an ideal customer profile helps determine the exact solutions they seek at different price pointers. The factors to consider for an account’s qualification in ABM are –

• An account’s financial stability. i.e., the revenue model and spending patterns.
• The business maturity, size, and growth potential.
• The account’s competitive landscape helps identify competitors offering similar products to determine future account opportunities. 
• High-value accounts engaging with the company’s outbound approach.

Nurturing or Creating Account Plans

After determining the target accounts, the next big step is to do in-depth research on them. This is, however, research on behalf of them to find their problem areas and zero in on the solutions that you can propose. The factors to include before developing content are –

• Each plan should be customized or tailored to meet the needs of that particular account.
• Account plan should address the key decision makers/buying committee with direction to the solution as well as the overall process to implement it.

Personalized Content Creation

Creating personalized content for high-quality accounts helps attract the audience, maximize relevance among them, and elevate your brand awareness. Businesses can reach their qualified customers through various inbound and outbound strategies, such as –

• Social Media Marketing – Engaging accounts on social media and sharing relevant and useful content, joining groups, communicating through LinkedIn InMail outreach, etc.
• Email Marketing – Send direct mail through email or create an ad campaign to target different factors.
• Gated Content Development – Build custom landing pages tailored to the needs and concerns of accounts.
• Inbound Marketing and Targeted Distribution – Develop skyscraper blogs or process articles and distribute them across channels, such as social media, websites, and magazines.

Involvement of Buying Committee 

The sales and marketing team should get involved with the key accounts and decision-makers. A few metrics that help measure the health of ABM strategy are tracking interactions with buyers, data points like creation date, velocity and close rate, and revenue. It helps in redefining the ABM strategy if and when required for optimum results.

Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

While there are many different techniques of lead generation, ABM has ample chances of getting positive results as it targets specific decision-makers with gated content. According to Alterra Group, 97% of marketers achieved higher ROI due to ABM, and companies aligning their marketing and sales generate 208% more revenue. Here are a few key benefits –

• Continuous Engagement with the Target Audience – Direct emails or gated content distribution ensures more convincing engagement between the business and the target audience.
• Maximizes Business Relevance – The personalized approach of ABM maximizes business relevance among high-value accounts. Customized marketing campaign shows high-value accounts how your business products and services can solve their challenges. 84% of companies observed an improvement in their reputation after launching an ABM strategy. 
• Reduces Efforts on Both the Parts – 85% of marketers say ABM significantly benefited them in retaining and expanding their existing client relationships. ABM helps deliver value by practically helping the target audience with possible solutions.
• Scale Business Growth – ABM prefers quality over quantity and takes time to build a trusting relationship with the accounts. It helps expand business by retaining valuable customers for a long time.

When to Go for ABM

Traditional lead generation gives an effective result when targeting smaller businesses and lower-value sales. And by leveraging content, marketing automation, and several inbound marketing tactics, a large percentage of the sales pipeline can get populated.

But ABM strategy is helpful for companies focusing on other companies as their customer base. The more structured and strategic approach of ABM with data and predictive analytics determines valuable accounts and is also able to convince them to buy. ABM’s strategic campaign gives expected results when selling to large enterprises or a current customer base. In 2020, 76% of marketers who used ABM reported an increase in ROI compared to other marketing formats.

Pursue High Sales and Revenue with ABM and Lead Generation

Lead generation and ABM are two different marketing approach that has the potential to target audience, lead conversion and increase sales and revenue of a business. Content Inception (CI), a leading digital marketing agency, helps implement strategic inbound and outbound marketing campaigns through its comprehensive digital marketing services. The digital marketing experts, content creators, and analysts at CI use effective Search Engine Optimization and Account-based Marketing tactics to scale B2B business growth and ROI.