What is account based marketing strategy?

Account based marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach to business-to-business (B2B) marketing that focuses sales and marketing resources on targeted accounts within a market. The goal is to create tailored messaging and personalized engagement for high-value accounts rather than taking a broad, inbound marketing approach.

What are the key elements of an ABM strategy?

There are a few key elements that make up an effective ABM strategy:

• Account selection – Identifying and selecting strategic target accounts that offer the greatest potential value.
• Account-based research – Researching target accounts to gain insight into challenges, initiatives, and key stakeholders.
• Personalized messaging – Crafting customized campaigns and messaging that align to each target account’s needs.
• Orchestrated outreach – Coordinating cross-channel outreach to engage multiple stakeholders within an account.
• Account-based metrics – Tracking engagement, pipeline, and revenue metrics by account to measure ABM program performance.

What are the benefits of an account-based approach?

There are several important benefits that account-based marketing provides over traditional inbound tactics:

• More personalized – ABM allows you to tailor messaging, offers, and content specifically for key accounts rather than casting a wide net to the general market.
• Increased relevance – When you understand an account’s specific needs, pain points, and goals, you can deliver more relevant content that resonates.
• Expanded reach – ABM gives you an opportunity to engage multiple stakeholders within an account to expand your reach and influence.
• Greater engagement – The personalized outreach of ABM converts high-value accounts into engaged accounts that drive more sales opportunities.
• Higher win rates – With ABM, you’re only focusing on those accounts likely to buy from you, increasing your odds of winning them.

How do you get started with ABM?

Follow these steps to launch your ABM program:

1. Identify target accounts – Define your total addressable market and ideal customer profile to narrow down the accounts with the most potential.
2. Research accounts – Gather information on your target accounts to understand their pain points, initiatives, stakeholders, and buying process.
3. Define your ABM strategy – Outline goals, teams, tactics, timeline, and metrics to track based on your research.
4. Create personalized campaigns – Craft customized messaging and content tailored to resonate with each target account.
5. Execute orchestrated outreach – Engage your accounts across multiple channels such as email, phone, social media, events, etc.
6. Analyze performance – Review account metrics and engagement to optimize as you go to ensure ABM success.

How do you select the right target accounts?

Choosing the right accounts to focus your ABM efforts on is critical. Here are some tips for selecting target accounts:

• Look at current customers – Identify common attributes of your best customers to find similar accounts.
• Review historic deal data – Analyze past deal information to find profiles of highly engaged accounts.
• Leverage intent data – Use intent signals like website visits to see accounts researching solutions.
• Evaluate firmographic data – Assess company size, industry, revenue, and other attributes that correlate to your best customers.
• Consider growth potential – Seek out accounts likely to grow in revenue or employees in the future.
• Talk to customer-facing teams – Sales can share accounts with potential they want to develop.

You typically want to select between 10-50 target accounts to start when launching your first ABM program. You can adjust this target list over time based on performance.

What marketing tactics work well with ABM?

Some of the most impactful marketing tactics to use in an ABM strategy include:

• Targeted ads – Serving relevant display, social, and search ads to your target accounts.
• Direct mail – Sending personalized packages or postcards to accounts.
• Email nurture campaigns – Developing customized nurture tracks for each account.
• Thought leadership – Positioning executives as experts on topics that resonate with accounts.
• Retargeting – Following up when you see accounts visiting your site or content.
• Website personalization – Tailoring website experience to be more relevant for target accounts.
• Events – Sponsoring or attending events to engage with your accounts.

The specific tactics you deploy should align with your accounts’ preferred channels and buying process.

What role does sales play in an ABM strategy?

Sales has a crucial role within an effective account-based marketing strategy:

• Providing input on key target accounts to pursue based on existing relationships and knowledge of customer needs.
• Conducting additional research on accounts to identify specific pain points and opportunities.
• Helping craft tailored messaging and campaigns based on their experience engaging each account.
• Leveraging marketing content and messaging in their account conversations and pitches.
• Following up on marketing leads and campaigns to advance opportunities.
• Giving feedback on account engagement and marketing ROI to optimize ABM.

Close alignment between sales and marketing is vital for ABM success. Weekly or monthly planning sessions can help coordinate efforts.

What technologies enable an ABM strategy?

ABM technologies provide critical capabilities to identify, target, engage, and measure accounts. Here are some of the key tech stacks to consider:

• CRM/MAP – CRM houses target account data. Marketing automation platforms (MAP) enable customized nurture campaigns.
• ABM platforms – Dedicated account-based platforms like Terminus offer account selection tools and orchestration.
• Intent data – Solutions like Bombora and Demandbase capture intent signals to identify in-market accounts.
• Marketing analytics – Platforms like Bizible and LeanData provide account-based attribution and reporting.
• Ad platforms – Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more allow you to target display ads to accounts.
• Website personalization – Tools like Marketo and Evergage enable custom on-site messaging for accounts.

The martech you choose depends on your budget, existing tech stack, and specific ABM use cases.

What metrics are important for an ABM program?

Key performance indicators for account-based marketing include:

• Account engagement – Open/click rates, site visits, event attendance, etc.
• Marketing-sourced pipeline – Value of pipeline generated from ABM campaigns.
• Account-based deal velocity – How quickly deals progress through the funnel for target accounts.
• Win rates – The percentage of target accounts won vs. lost.
• Marketing influenced revenue – Revenue from target accounts attributed to marketing.
• Account retention/expansion – Measuring ongoing and expanded business from accounts.

Tools like Salesforce, Terminus, LeanData, and Demandbase can help track ABM metrics by account.

Sample Account-Based Marketing Metrics Dashboard

What are some common ABM challenges?

Some frequent challenges faced with account-based marketing include:

• Difficulty obtaining quality data and insights on target accounts.
• Limited content and creative assets customized for individual accounts.
• Inability to deliver highly personalized messaging at scale.
• Lack of full coordination between sales and marketing teams.
• No defined process for tracking and optimizing on account-specific metrics.
• Unclear attribution and measuring marketing influence on account revenue.

ABM technology, documented processes for sales and marketing alignment, and executive buy-in on the program can help overcome these challenges.

How is ABM different from traditional inbound marketing?

Here are some of the key differences between account-based marketing vs. inbound marketing:

While inbound marketing casts a wide net, ABM focuses efforts on the accounts with the greatest potential business impact.

Is ABM right for your business?

ABM is best suited for B2B companies when:

• You have a defined total addressable market and ideal customer profile.
• Your average deal sizes are higher value.
• You sell to multiple stakeholders within an account.
• Your sales cycle is longer and requires extensive education.
• You have complex, highly-considered purchase decisions.
• You have a product offering flexible to different customer needs.
• Your sales and marketing teams are willing to align.

For companies that better fit a transactional, ecommerce model with smaller deal sizes, broad inbound marketing may be more appropriate.

How can you expand ABM across your organization?

After seeing success with a pilot group of target accounts, you can scale ABM further by:

• Expanding to more target accounts – Increase count while maintaining personalization.
• Adding more business units – Bring on product marketing, customer success, etc.
• Improving data and integrations – Connect more data sources for fuller account views.
• Automating repetitive tasks – Identify manual processes to automate for efficiency.
• Creating an account-based culture – Drive account focus top down through the organization.
• Embedding into departments – Integrate ABM workflows and KPIs into roles.
• Investing in expanded resources – Hire roles dedicated to account-based programs.

A phased, metrics-driven approach helps ensure successful expansion of ABM across the business.

Conclusion

In summary, account-based marketing targets strategic, high-value accounts with personalized campaigns across multiple channels. It requires tight alignment between sales and marketing. ABM provides a more focused approach over broad inbound marketing to generate greater engagement, conversion rates, and revenue from your key accounts.

With the right expectations, strategies, tactics, and technologies in place, ABM can significantly impact marketing performance and pipeline generation for B2B companies selling higher priced offerings.