4 Mega Benefits of Account-Based Marketing (and How to Do It)

In this video, Nicole from the WebFX Strategy team dives into the basics and benefits of account-based marketing.

Transcript: 

Personalized digital marketing has become even more personal. Account-based marketing (ABM) gives you the opportunity to reach your ideal customers with marketing content tailored to their needs.

This video will cover the basics of account-based marketing, including what it is, why it’s a great tactic, and how you can get started. You can skip to different sections of the video using the timestamps in the description.

I’ll start by answering the first question you may have.

What is account-based marketing?

Account-based marketing is a strategy in which your business creates hyper-targeted campaigns aimed at specific companies you’d like to work with. So, instead of promoting your products or services to a more generalized audience with similar goals or problems, you’re targeting an actual business or stakeholders at that company.

It’s a great strategy for business-to-business (B2B) companies because it enables you to directly address pain points and offer relevant solutions, some of which may be unique to the account you’re targeting. I’ll cover more ABM marketing benefits in just a bit.

Tools that gather customer data — such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system or a customer data platform (CDP) — can help you compile a list of the best companies and people to target.

Learn more about those tools on our website!

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How to create an ABM strategy

The first step in launching an ABM campaign is to know the businesses you want to target. You’ll evaluate different factors — like a company’s size, industry, geography, budget, or revenue — to determine if that specific business fits your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Questions you may want to ask at this stage are:

• What types of customers do we want?
• How much do we expect this customer to spend with our business?
• What characteristics do the marketing decision-makers at this business have?

Once you know who you want to reach with your ABM marketing, you’ll analyze the competitive landscape and start to develop a strategy for engaging your target accounts.

Questions you might ask when creating your strategy include:

• What challenges or pain points can we address in our marketing?
• How much budget can we allocate for each marketing tactic?
• Where are these accounts in the buying process?
• Which marketing channels can we use to reach these accounts?

A few channels in which you’ll experience the advantages of account-based marketing are:

• LinkedIn
• Google Ads
• Microsoft Advertising
• Your email marketing

From there, you’ll develop your creative, launch your strategy, and track its performance. You might have to adjust things if you aren’t getting any response from your target accounts.

Whether you use website personalization, digital advertising, email marketing, or another tactic for your ABM strategy, implementing it properly will lead to some great results for your business.

4 benefits of account-based marketing

1. ABM provides better audience experiences

The extra-specific personalization that comes with ABM marketing helps streamline the buying process and move consumers to action.

People actually want their buying experiences to be personal. In fact, 80% of people said personalization makes them more likely to partner with a business.

Nearly 70% of those surveyed by Salesforce have even gone so far to share that they expect businesses to know what they need.

When you target someone using ABM, you give them the personalized experience they’re expecting from you, making it more likely they’ll engage with and purchase from your business.

2. ABM increases your ROI

A study of 50 businesses showed that after implementing account-based marketing, they saw an over 170% average yearly increase in contract values.

The sample size of that study may be small, but it’s not the only research that shows the impact ABM has on businesses.

Salesforce reports that over 75% of businesses that use ABM marketing see an ROI of 10% or more. That same Salesforce case study concludes that ABM provides at least double the ROI of other marketing channels for 45% of users.  Double!

If you’re looking to drive more revenue for your business, ABM is a great way to go.

3. ABM aligns your marketing efforts with your sales goals

Data from LinkedIn shows that more than 80% of B2B businesses using ABM saw better alignment between marketing and sales. This alignment has a major benefit: it improves customer retention and sales wins.

According to MarketingProfs, businesses that closely link their sales and marketing efforts see customer retention rates that are over 35% higher and sales win rates that are nearly 40% higher.

Again, a big part of account-based marketing is reaching specific accounts that fit your ideal customer profile. Your sales team should know who fits that profile based on their experiences and any information they’ve collected through their customer interactions.

ABM requires sales insights to figure out who would be a good candidate for this form of marketing and what the typical candidate would like to see from a business, thus informing your marketing content. This connection makes it imperative that marketing and sales work together to figure out the right messaging.

4. ABM maximizes your budget

Because you engage the most qualified leads through an ABM strategy, you cut down on wasted spend.

Instead of paying to reach people who maybe someday might consider possibly converting, you’re paying to reach people who you’ve deemed very likely to become a high-value customer.

High-value customers typically spend more than the average person and continue investing in your products or services over time. If everything goes according to plan, you’ll spend a little to earn a lot.

If you want to keep learning about the advantages of account-based marketing or any other digital marketing topics, take a minute to sign up for Revenue Weekly, our email newsletter.

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We hope your journey to account-based marketing is a success!