Many B2B companies have always aimed their sales activities primarily at large and revenue-generating customers. It has always been a central task for sales to address these key accounts in a targeted manner in order to conclude a deal quickly. However, until a few years ago there was no clear role for marketing. Instead, marketing focused on mass marketing initiatives that often resulted in enormous wastage and poor lead quality.
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How did Account Based Marketing establish itself?
Due to various changes, B2B marketers were forced to redefine their marketing organizations. Generating demand came more and more into focus. In addition to b2b lead generation and inbound marketing, the account-based marketing approach has emerged in recent years. The ever-growing market for software products provides technical support for marketing and sales when it comes to automating and optimizing their processes.
The most important drivers for this development:
- Competitive pressure: With the advent of digitization, competition in the market has become tougher.
- Information pressure: End customers are using more and more opportunities to independently and comprehensively obtain information about products or services.
- Transparency pressure: People can exchange their buying experiences on social networks at any time. This has a significant impact on purchasing decisions.
- Decision-making pressure: Decision-making processes in companies are becoming more and more complex and ultimately depend on the opinions of stakeholders.
According to ITSMA, ABM’s approach is one of the biggest marketing trends in the B2B sector – and has been since 2014. This trend has since spread continuously in the European B2B landscape and is well on its way to becoming one of the most important standards in To become B2B marketing.
Account Based Marketing: What Does This Mean?
Account Based Marketing is a strategic approach in which personalized sales and marketing activities are coordinated in order to treat customers individually and in a target-oriented manner like an independent market segment. The close interaction between marketing and sales means that more suitable “opportunities” are won and “deals” are concluded more quickly. Common goals and strategies are essential in order to be able to focus much more on the sales success of individual accounts.
While a large number of people are addressed in traditional B2B marketing in order to generate as many leads as possible, ABM treats individual customers as individual markets. To visualize the difference, traditional B2B marketing can be compared to a network that marketers throw into the blue in hopes of the big catch. ABM, on the other hand, is a spear marketers use to target and hunt. In this sense, the classic marketing funnel, as shown in the figure, is upside down.
What Exactly Makes Account Based Marketing So Effective?
The most important reason account-based marketing is so effective has to do with corporate decision-making. These processes have become even more complex and time-consuming than before, especially with large accounts. This is mainly due to the fact that a committee (the so-called buying center) has to coordinate a decision with several participants (preparatory persons, influencing persons, as well as decision-making persons). The participants have different motivations and professional backgrounds.
A study by the consulting firm CEB on the subject of “The Challenger Customer” showed that a decision-making body consists of an average of 5.4 people. In more recent publications, the authors even assume 6.8 people.
As a result, the word of the decision-makers within a committee gains weight compared to the technical specialists. Some experts assume that the responsible IT budget of a manager in marketing is now higher than that of a manager in the IT area.
How exactly does ABM work in practice?
The process of Account Based Marketing is complex and requires a more detailed discussion. At this point, however, I would like to give a brief overview of the most important steps. The success of campaigns depends on the one hand on the existing processes (a high-performance CRM, for example, is an important prerequisite). On the other hand, ABM depends on the precise definition of the respective target group.
Especially in the first phase of the ABM, it is about drawing attention to yourself. It is important to inform, help, listen and identify problems with the target clientele. At this point, sales must not be in the foreground, because most people with a decision-making function are overwhelmed with sales offers. The more personal the address and the more targeted the needs of the individual personas are, the better they stand out from the crowd.
Here are 7 steps to a successful ABM strategy:
1. Is it ensured that marketing and sales work together? A common goal setting and strategy development are essential for ABM.
2. Have criteria been defined for the target group? Which companies do you want to address specifically? Identify key people in the selected companies who are involved in decision-making processes.
3. Find out which challenges, needs, and goals exist in the respective accounts. This helps to create the content precisely, to answer questions from the target persons in a helpful way, and thus to offer real added value.
4. Use channels such as social media and display advertising, but also take direct measures such as phone calls or direct mails into account. Personal email is also an important medium in this context.
5. Choose the right technology to successfully implement the ABM program.
6. Once accounts, personas, content, and channels have been defined, the planned campaigns can be implemented. Pay attention to a uniform address and message across all channels and measures and consciously choose a suitable frequency of address.
7. Reporting and a continuous, repetitive analysis on an individual level for each customer provide information about which measures are working particularly well.
For which companies are account based marketing suitable?
Account Based Marketing is particularly suitable for those B2B companies that are faced with the challenge of bringing customers closer to complex offers and that often go through very long sales cycles. This is especially true for the IT and software industry or for companies that offer company-related services.
The approach is also obvious for all organizations that, due to their business model, can only serve a very specific customer group or a niche market.
The same applies to providers for whom a larger number of target customers in a certain market segment is relevant. For example, management consultancies offer several similar services for companies in one branch or in one field of application. This is about recognizing up-selling potential.
Companies, where Account Based Marketing is particularly effective, are usually large and are among the market leaders in an industry. Your application volume is so high for an offer that individual or at least segment-oriented processing makes sense.
Conclusion:
Classic inbound marketing has been hyped for many years and certainly has a right to exist. However, the one-to-many approach often resembles mass marketing, in which high wastage is to be expected. Account Based Marketing, on the other hand, has the potential to become an important standard in B2B marketing. Because: No other marketing approach takes into account the customer experience of individual business customers in close cooperation with sales as much as Account Based Marketing. Since good sales teams have been working with key account lists for years and rely on a very personal, tailor-made approach, this marketing strategy perfectly supports the approach that has already been learned. In short: no successful company in B2B can avoid a good ABM strategy in the coming years.
