Account Based Marketing or ABM has become quite the buzzword as of late. Though, it’s been around for quite some time. We’re here to give you the low-down about it and some insight on how it can be implemented into your business.

So, what exactly is Account Based Marketing? ABM is a “focused growth strategy in which Marketing and Sales collaborate to create personalized buying experiences for a mutually-identified set of high-value accounts.” *

ABM is a customer experience-centric approach that requires both Marketing and Sales to team up on best-fit account opportunities and engages specific buying groups inside target accounts with relevant experiences to generate revenue faster, easier, and more efficiently. Rather than marketing broadly to many potential buyers, by employing an ABM strategy and focusing your resources on a shared set of specific accounts that you know are a good fit for the products/services you offer, you can implement a coordinated and personalized account-based experience for each account.

How do we start an ABM strategy?

Create your Marketing and Sales collaboration team

Marketing has always known that they need to lean on their Sales teams to help them develop quality and relevant content to be able to promote products/services. But it wasn’t until 2020 and a pandemic that Sales really had to lean on Marketing to help funnel leads to them. Thus, creating all of the buzz around ABM and the need to keep building relationships in a time where seeing someone face to face isn’t an option! Also, with the rise of digital media, marketing has become indispensable to companies that want to grow. The Marketing and Sales Managers should be at the forefront of this leading the way for the others on the team. At a minimum, you’ll need to have at least one marketer and one salesperson who are working together effectively.

Choose your Key Accounts & create a plan for execution

Now that you have your team in place, you need to work together to identify who your target accounts are and how you’re going to provide them with the right type of support throughout each stage of the strategy and sales process. This is where your CRM system will make a huge impact on keeping everyone informed and organized. Utilizing both inbound and outbound tactics, you’ll be able to keep all of that data in your CRM system so that you can continue to work them through the sales funnel.

Build strong relationships with Key Accounts

Now that you know who you want, you need to make sure they also know who you are. You need to nurture these accounts and really understand who they are, not just as a company but as people. This part can take a long time to build those relationships up, but it’s important to have these strong connections. People want to work with people they know and like. If you have a good relationship with them and they trust you, they’re much more likely to buy from you. And this needs to be authentic!

Monitor Success

This is where your CRM system comes in again and really shines. You have to be able to monitor what you’re doing and if it’s working because if it’s not, you need to change something. Regularly checking in on your Key Accounts and seeing if they’ve progressed at all through the deal stage, or even as simple as you finally found the right point of contact for that account, it’s positive progress and shows that it’s working. If things aren’t progressing, that’s when you need to re-evaluate and see if there are any gaps or parts of your strategy that need to be changed.

In a changing world and the need for businesses to keep growing, ABM is a strategy that you can really benefit from. When there are SO many fish in the sea, implementing a tactic to just look for the tuna and swordfish, you’re going to be much more successful at actually catching those fish than if you’re spending all of your time looking at all of the fish. And yes, I did just make a fishing analogy!

Pro Tip: Personalization matters! Any time (whether you’re in Marketing or Sales) you’re trying to get someone to engage with you, you have to make it personal to them. If you’re sending out messages to people that don’t resonate with them, you’re wasting your time and money. If you have a potential client who is interested in digital advertising and wants to start spending less on print, are you going to pitch them print? No. You’re going to talk to them about what they are wanting and how you can help. It’s the same concept with marketing, you have to make sure that you’re sending out relevant content to the right people at the right time. And that’s where we shine as digital marketers!

Have questions about ABM or needing help with our marketing strategy? We’re here to help!

* Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/account-based-marketing-guide