Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing strategy that focuses on a targeted set of desired accounts using highly personalised campaigns. ABM involves marketing to all the target decision makers within a target company, at once, using custom messaging.
Put another way, an ABM strategy contains a plan for targeting specific individuals, within specific accounts, with specific messaging, with the goal to expand footprint within existing accounts or to win new accounts.
It sounds resource intensive but ABM is actually a more efficient use of marketing resources that can lead to a faster sales process and better ROI. Companies using an ABM approach see 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts1.
Unsurprisingly, a common excuse of companies for not following an ABM approach is not having the resources to develop and execute the plan or not having the money for ABM software.
However, it is the process of developing your ABM strategy and plan which is the most important exercise of all. For example, the practice of identifying your key strategic accounts, forces you to review things like who your sweet spot customers are and why, as well as who are the different buyers within the sales cycle. These are key details to know and focus on otherwise they will trip you up at a later date, either as you find out you don’t have the right content for a particular buyer or your solution doesn’t quite fit the quirks of a certain prospect.
Other merits to adopting an ABM approach include:
- Understanding the context of buyers in order to develop the right content based on pain points, needs, attitudes, wants and roles etc.
- Aligning sales and marketing teams, in particular moving marketing goals to focus on target accounts rather than leads.
- In the long run, using an ABM approach will improve your customer retention as you onboard customers who best fit your solution.
Having ABM software to support your ABM approach and execution will obviously help. However, if you don’t have the budget, you can still execute an ABM approach it might just have to be scaled down to a smaller number of accounts. This can potentially act as a proof of concept to help you justify the ROI on buying ABM software to help you longer term.
B2B organisations can see huge benefits by employing an ABM approach. If you need help and advice on getting started with Account Based Marketing within your organisation, contact me today.
Harriet Fletcher 
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