Account-Based Marketing: How a Strong ABM Strategy Can Overhaul Your Lead Generation Results

What Is Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Strategy?

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategy for gaining new potential clients for B2B organizations. Instead of traditionally focusing on wide target audiences, such as a specific industry or certain geography, marketers and salespeople collaborate to select a list of key potential clients with perfectly fit characteristics for client conversion. Each of these potential names is then assigned to a specific account. The goal is to personalize the marketing/sales experience based on the account, or sometimes the individual specifically.

As decision-making in the B2B marketplace is done by multiple functions in the organization, this ABM approach focuses on a maximum conversion rate through hyper-personalization.Why Is There a Need for ABM Strategy?

In the past few years, B2B marketing strategies were mostly reliant on the concept of inbound marketing, which is like casting a wide fishing net, spreading various types of content like, social posts, videos, podcasts, and whitepapers across the media and hoping a potential client will “bite” the bait, therefore contacting you to receive more information. It is a process similar to fishing, but what if you are interested in catching only yellowfin tuna? 

Unfortunately, this widespread strategy may yield various types of fish without guaranteeing that you will catch a single yellowfin tuna. Thus, when you are going after specific potential clients, meaning specific companies or individuals, an inbound strategy is inefficient. For such cases, Account-Based Marketing is recommended. 

Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute coined the 5:95 rule, which suggests that at any given time, only 5% of your audience is actively in the market for a purchase of your solution/service, while the other 95% may convert over the next few years. ABM strategy targets the 5% or a portion of the 5%. Rather than casting a wide net, each contact is approached in a customized manner, based on the available data on the contact. Still, all the contacts that belong to the same organization, or Account as we call it, are bundled together. This allows marketing and sales teams to better understand the evolution of the account in the buying journey, not only the individual buying journey.

In summary, ABM is meant to offer a very focused approach that would yield faster results with higher conversion rates.

What Are the Steps to Implement Account-Based Marketing?

Step 1: Determine High-Value Potential Clients

This is a critical phase where you identify a small group of organizations that would yield the best financial results for your business/organization. Selecting this initial account list will define the type of ABM strategy to implement, such as one-on-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many.

Step 2: Map Contacts/Functions per ABM Account

As a group of 7-19 people performs B2B decision-making, this phase will identify these key individuals for every account before gathering individual information and further characterizing them for the customization of future campaigns.

Step 3: Identify the Active Channels

For every contact, you will conduct thorough research to understand which channel is the most effective way to approach them. ABM marketing is all about customization:

• • Understand their set of beliefs and concerns

  • Know their habits

  • Learn where they acquire their knowledge

  Step 4: Develop an Account-Based Marketing Action Plan

  Build a modular plan that lists your positioning message, the campaigns per contact within each account, the integration between campaigns, and the split of responsibilities between the marketing function and the sales functions of your organization. The goal is to deliver a unique value proposition and relevant content for each decision-maker throughout the buying process.

  Step 5: Establish Relationships

  While using a personalized approach that matches each and every contact in the account, you are likely to develop a relationship with each and every one of these contacts. You will increase their level of interest, engage them, and pique their curiosity. Nurture this relationship and evolve it into a mature relationship with a high level of trust in your solution.

  Step 6: Measure and Optimize ABM Strategy Results

  This measurement is a combined effort between the marketers and salespeople. The goal is to lead the account towards a purchase. For larger accounts, however, there may be multiple contacts to convince. In this case, you must measure your specific progress with each contact in order to measure your overall progress with the account. With united efforts, you can optimize the accumulated results from the various contacts in order to gain advancement in the overall purchase process.

  What Are the Benefits of Using ABM?
  

  • • Master Niche Markets Fast

      Instead of a broad understanding of a large market, Account-Based Marketing leads you to develop a thorough understanding of a selected niche audience. Consequently, you will develop valuable expertise in markets that you never would have considered without ABM.
      
      

    • Increase Prospective Client Engagement
      

      ABM enables customized campaigns that resonate deeply with decision-makers. This strategic personalization leads to higher engagement rates, stronger relationships, and ultimately, better conversion rates
      
      

  • • Have Shorter Sales Cycles
      

      ABM only targets the most promising accounts based on thorough research, better equipping the sales team to close the deal. Fewer prospective clients are approached, but much more focused and intensive methods are applied, thus shortening the sales cycle overall.
      
      

  • • Realize Bigger Deals
      

      Instead of trying to convert “All-You-Can-Get” prospective clients, ABM allows organizations to efficiently focus on targeting prospective clients with the highest profit potential.
      
      

  • • Gain Improved ROI 
      

      The personalized implementation of ABM will be completely tailored to the contact profiles in the account. Such a personalized offer will set you apart in a noticeable way, leading to more efficiency and better ROI. 
      
      

  • • Operate Simpler Tracking
      

      While implementing an ABM strategy is usually complex and more costly, ABM uses fewer metrics than inbound marketing. This makes it much easier and less time-consuming to analyze campaign reports.

  How Successful Is ABM?

  The marketing community enthusiasm surrounding ABM may lead some people to be skeptical about its benefits. However, the statistics all point to the same conclusion: adopting ABM leads to enhanced growth for businesses. 

  According to Forrester’s Demand, ABM, And Customer Marketing Survey, 2023, 99% of those with an ABM team said that their ABM programs delivered higher ROI versus their traditional marketing programs. To explore this further, consider the SiriusDecisions (now Forrester) 2019 State of Account-Based Marketing Study (requires registration), which measured ABM’s impact.  Organizations measuring ROI indicated the following metrics:
  
  

  

  
  When asked about how long it takes to see progress, the FlipMyFunnel’s 2018 State of ABM report indicated that over 50% of the respondents saw results within 6 months of implementation (see the diagram below).
  
  

  

   

  These facts demonstrate why ABM has become the new industry standard for B2B marketers. 

  But is it enough to only conduct ABM campaigns? In recent years, we have seen the need to power the ABM strategy with a go-to-market strategy. If you invest only in ABM marketing, the forecasted results will be steady, but flat. In order to continuously grow, it is not enough to invest in selling to the 5% of your target market. Adding efforts to build your brand on top of the ABM, enables you to constantly address the next 5% that starts having interest in your type of solution. 

  How Can Direct Objective Assist You with Account-Based Marketing?

  Defining and implementing ABM presents many challenges, and Direct Objective is the perfect partner to work with in order to overcome them. Here are a few ABM domains that we can assist you with:

  
  
  • • • Define the strategy of ABM
      • Research and compile a list of ABM accounts while collecting and mapping contact data within those accounts
      • Personalize and tailor marketing content aimed at the key contacts of each account
      • Develop campaigns that can be transferable across accounts with minimal changes
      • Implement marketing automation tools to automate the ABM process
      • Extract data, analytics, and ROI reports