Before getting into Account-based Marketing (ABM), let’s see how sales personnel get business without it. Imagine that you want to make a sale for your company. You can either do cold calls or do direct walk-ins and hope the person you talk to is a decision maker in the company, which can end up as a disappointment if he’s not. Then you will have to ask for a call or a meeting with his manager, which may or may not get approved and if it’s approved you will have to wait for the scheduled time which may change again at the last moment.
The sales person will have to patiently go through the whole process until the final call to make the closing. Those who have worked in sales knows how time consuming the whole process is and I bet that sales people will do anything for solid leads which can make their work easier. And this is the sole reason that marketers all over the world are embracing ABM techniques for simplifying their work.
Sales made easy through Account-based Marketing
ABM can be referred to as a blend of a company’s sales and marketing functions, which is a strategic approach to B2B marketing based on goals for specific target accounts. In the current business world, Key-Account Marketing is considered as a more strategic way to do outbound. With the help of ABM, the sales team can directly approach the key-decision makers of targeted companies without going through the entire process of random cold-calling, unnecessary meetings etc. The key advantage is that the sales process which takes several months for closing can be accomplished in a much lesser time.
The Need for Account-Based Marketing
The phrase coined by ITSMA in 2004 has its roots in the 1990s when companies began to realize the importance of personalized marketing. However, it wasn’t until recent years that Key Account marketing has really begun to catch on in the B2B industry due to the increase in the importance of inbound marketing and in the rise of vendors who offer the ABM services. With the help of ABM, companies started to expand their knowledge of potential customers, which in turn, helped them in acquiring more sales and profit. This technique also applies the psychological factor that customers respond more when approached in a personal manner rather than being approached as just another sales lead. Moreover, if you are linking Account-Based Marketing with the CRM of your company there will be additional benefits of maintaining critical information like the client’s role in the company, the status of the account, company industry type, company size etc.
Account-Based marketing & it’s working
Presently, there are different Account-Based Marketing technologies in the market. Productive key account marketing involves a multichannel approach and requires close alignment between an organization’s sales, marketing, and customer success teams. To reach target accounts, digital targeting is used by Account-based advertising to fit an organization’s ideal customer profile. CRM or marketing automation tools are integrated with ABM platforms to run campaigns targeting the company’s target accounts. This provides an ability to run multichannel campaigns for ads across different channels like mobile, display, video and social media. By doing this you can understand which message resonates the most, through which medium and get the exact data to back it up – with A/B testing in near real-time.
One of the reasons that Account-based technologies have seen great success is that they engage customers on their terms using digital channels other than e-mail and phone calls. Key Account Marketing can be done on a larger scale rather than traditional methods because it engages the entire account as well as the targeted leads.
Benefits seen after using Account-Based Marketing
· Faster Deals
With the help of ABM, leads are funneled to the most targeted ones, the chances of getting rejected narrows down to a minimum and deals get closed much faster.
· Higher returns
Since sales people are targeting on the best accounts for business with the help of Key-Account Marketing rather than typical demand generation, the returns are higher.
· Reduced Time Consumption
With ABM, the sales team will focus only on the accounts that have high conversion rates. It means they don’t waste their time on leads that don’t matter or are unqualified.
· Alignment of marketing and sales
There are chances that the marketing and sales teams of the same organization are focusing on separate accounts. Key-Account Marketing requires cooperation between the two teams so that they work together to target key decision makers within the same accounts.
Account-Based Marketing – The Future
Above all, ABM is finally about the customer. A fact that business professionals should focus on is that buyers are not looking for a cold call or a random marketing email, rather they want to explore the solutions for their pain points on their own terms and only receive communications from vendors that are meaningful and relevant. ABM makes it easy to deliver on this need across the buyer’s journey.