As a business owner, developing the right targeting strategies is crucial to help you grow and scale your business. Account-based marketing (ABM) is one of the top marketing techniques modern marketers are leveraging today to reach customers who are a good fit for their business. In fact, 67% of brands are believed to use an account-based digital marketing strategy, with 81% agreeing that it delivers a higher ROI than any other type of marketing.
So, what exactly is account-based marketing, and what could be the benefits of your business implementing it into your overall strategy? Read on to learn everything you need to know about ABM and the best strategies to help you boost your business revenue in 2024 and beyond.
Table of Contents
What is account-based marketing?
What are the benefits of account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing tactics to boost your sales
Conclusion
What is account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing is a B2B marketing approach in which businesses focus their marketing efforts on business accounts that they have identified as potentially being the most beneficial for their business.
Sometimes known as key account marketing, ABM requires sales and marketing alignment to tailor messages to clients whose descriptions match the ideal customer profile. This allows business owners to create personalized experiences that lead to better customer acquisition, retention, and business growth.
What are the benefits of account-based marketing?
Leveraging account-based marketing can have numerous advantages for your business, including:
1. Maximizing your business relevance among high-value accounts
With account-based marketing, you personalize things such as campaigns, communications, product information, and content for each account you are investing resources into.
Customizing and creating individualized experiences maximize your relevance because the content shows recipients that the products and services you provide are what they need to solve their problems.
2. Streamlining sales cycles
Depending on the industry, business, and resources, the usual sales cycle follows these general steps:
- Step 1: Prospect
- Step 2: Connect
- Step 3: Research
- Step 4: Present
- Step 5: Close
- Step 6: Delight
With ABM programs, the sale cycle is streamlined, focusing on highest-value accounts, saving you time and resources. This allows you to focus your efforts on parts of the sales cycle that are more likely to affect your bottom line, for example:
- Step 1: Identify target accounts
- Step 2: Present to target accounts
- Step 3: Close target accounts
- Step 4: Delight accounts
Instead of experimenting with different techniques to attract prospects and qualify a large number of leads, ABM helps to ensure that the accounts you are targeting are most suitable for your business, boosting business efficiency.
Moreover, your sales cycle is streamlined by your sales and marketing alignment as well as the consistent and personalized customer experiences you offer.
3. Measuring your ROI
Account-based marketing also enables you to measure the return on investment (ROI) on each account for which you have dedicated time and resources. This is advantageous because it enables you to gauge whether the accounts you worked with were suitable for your business.
Then, you can nurture and “delight” those accounts to keep them longer, as well as recognize and target similar accounts in the future. If your return on investment proves the ABM tactics you used worked, utilize the data to move forward with your strategy.
4. Greater customer engagement
ABM can be a great tool for your business because of its high engagement rate. These strategies enable close management of prospect and customer relationships, targeting of the right clients, and personalization of customer experiences, aiding the creation of tailored campaigns and real-time performance measurements.
And, by targeting accounts with highly personalized messages through emails and ads, your business boosts interaction and engagement. According to one study, brands with high engagement levels are 41% more likely to report higher conversion rates.
5. Improved sales productivity
Sales productivity is enhanced when businesses make use of account-based marketing techniques. This is because ABM campaigns enable sales teams to focus solely on targeted accounts.
Sales teams are able to identify potential clients, create marketing messages, and make use of the right tools to engage with them. This fosters meaningful interactions with the target audience instead of wasting time interacting with lower prospects of converting.
Moreover, sales teams have an easier time tracking results and measuring success, allowing them to fine tune their strategy and continuously improve their sales processes.
Account-based marketing tactics to boost your sales
Now, let’s look at the best practices for creating marketing campaigns for specific accounts rather than specific customer segments.
1. Define your ideal customer profile
With at least 72% of businesses that use an ABM strategy saying that their goal is to generate new business, the first step you need to undertake is knowing what constitutes your “ideal customer.”
Consider defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) based on factors such as location, size, industry, and budget. By creating an ICP, you will be able to create a list of clients that match your criteria.
2. Research your target accounts
After crafting your ICP and finding the accounts that best fit your business, it’s time to do some market research. Discover everything you can about your customers’ specific needs as well as pain points that need to be addressed. This way, you will be able to create targeted content and messages that are highly relevant to each individual account.
3. Personalize content and campaigns
After choosing which customers you intend to target and learn more about, you need to personalize your content and create campaigns that resonate with them.
Studies reveal that 90% of marketers who use personalization in their campaigns are able to achieve a positive ROI. Additionally, 60% of consumers say that they became repeat customers because they received a personalized shopping experience.
Finally, go the extra mile and create tailored email messages and personalized landing pages relevant to each account you have selected.
4. Use targeted online advertising
In addition to creating personalized messages, businesses can formulate highly personalized ad campaigns for specific target accounts, enabling their teams to design effective and engaging campaigns.
With the right online advertising strategy, your marketing team will be able to track the results of each campaign, allowing them to make adjustments and optimize their campaigns for optimal results to stay ahead of the competition.
5. Nurture your relationships
Engage with your customers regularly with updates about your business and services and questionnaires to better understand their spending preferences. By developing good relationships with high-target accounts, you can further build trust and loyalty.
This, in turn, should help to increase sales and revenue. By investing in building customer relationships, your business is able to create an improved customer experience, which is crucial for company success in the long term.
Conclusion
To summarize, an account-business marketing strategy is vital for companies that want to make the most out of their best-fit customers. Implementing such strategies brings a wide range of benefits, including increased engagement, relevance, and sales.
Use the account-based marketing strategies discussed above to grow and scale your business. And if you’d like more insights into the best ways to take your ecommerce business to new heights, make sure to subscribe to Alibaba.com Reads.
