As account-based marketing gets more widely known, the numerous benefits of ABM are also getting noticed. Hardly a surprise, considering how fiercely competitive B2B marketing is becoming.Â
In this post we look at the various advantages of using the ABM approach. But first a few words about ABM.
What is ABM and why is it important?
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a marketing approach that requires you to leverage data and insights in order to shortlist and engage prospects that would find your product most valuable.Â
Targeted marketing forms the core of ABM. Benefits, therefore, center around personalization and a very high efficiency. It aims at near-zero wastage of resources, because you proceed only if you have enough understanding of the prospect account.
The importance of ABM is only growing. As a B2B marketer, if you have something that can potentially attract high-value prospects, ABM can help you win some of the most coveted (read most competed-for) accounts.
On the other hand, there are certain challenges in ABM that you need to know and learn how to overcome them efficiently. Click to learn more about them before diving into the following benefits.
Benefits of account-based marketing
Here are the 7 key benefits of account-based marketing (ABM).
1. Efficient use of people and tools
In all forms of business promotion activities, a key concern for the higher-ups is whether resources are being used efficiently. Account-based marketing works with a sharp focus and thus ensures efficient usage of automation tools and marketing teams.
The reason why efficiency is one of the most outstanding benefits of ABM is that your teams can scale swiftly without having to sacrifice time or outcomes. Your teams break down data and use established processes to identify decision-makers. Marketing tools will fill the blanks by matching how your target accounts behave and guiding for the best way to engage them.
Next, you use these tools to create hyper-targeted, dynamic content for each account. Right from identifying and scoring to messaging and converting, all ABM activities are geared towards efficiency and results.
Statista estimates B2B digital ad spend in the US alone will likely cross US$16.4 billion for the year 2023 – and that includes your ad spend too. With a super-efficient ABM approach, you can make every dollar count.
2. A bigger ticket size
A sound marketing approach will go beyond mere conversion. Your goal shouldn’t be winning more accounts; your goal should be winning bigger accounts and retaining them.
To those who wish to understand why is ABM important in modern B2B marketing, contract value is a good place to start: ABM gets you bigger deals.Â
But what explains this? Is it because ABM lets you focus on best-fit customers only?Â
Sure, this focus hugely empowers your sales and marketing teams, because it raises conversion rates. But what about ticket size?
Here’s the entire answer. When you focus on customers that are most likely to derive the full value of your product, you’re going to win them over not for just one deal. They’d be with you for a long time, because in your product they’ve found a great solution.Â
Which is exactly why you will be able to retain those customers for years and realize their life-time value. Here’s some evidence: One study found that the value increase in annual contracts rose by 170% after implementing ABM.
3. Sharper, meaningful reporting
C-level executives aren’t keen to read reports that cover every dime and every human-hour spent. Such reports would only paralyze them. Senior executives want reports that tell the full story with key analytics – in brief.
Even a quick look at ABM basics will tell you one thing: You’re going to measure fewer KPIs anyway. ABM is built around very specific goals. So your teams know what exactly they should be measuring. There are virtually no vanity metrics or vague data to wade through before your VP Marketing finds what they’re looking for.Â
Does it mean you aren’t looking at the finer points? On the contrary.Â
Under the ABM strategy, you’ve already sifted through mounds of data before zeroing down on the target accounts and deciding whether an account is worth pursuing. You’ve used marketing tools to make sense of every signal.Â
It’s only after all this detailed study that you come to the decision of deploying your teams to begin engaging the account. Which is why your reports are crisper and shorter; you measure fewer things. And yes, your C-level executives will appreciate that!
4. High ROI with minimum wastage
Research says 76% marketers saw higher ROI with ABM. How come?
In the over-communicated world that we live and do business in, nearly all messages are lost – except those that are tailor-made. If anything, ABM hinges on taking lots of pains to define your target audience, so any wastage on incorrect targeting is ruled out at the start itself.Â
That’s why high ROI is one of the key ABM benefits. As noted earlier, because you are targeting only best-fit accounts, they will remain your customers for a long time. Which hugely brings down the average costs.
Then there’s the efficiency that is brought in by consistency and targeted messaging. Owing to this consistency, neither your account nor your teams waste time – everything’s aligned.
5. Shorter sales cycles
If there’s one thing that can take the steam out of even the most seasoned marketers (and the most warm prospects), it’s probably unduly long sales cycles. Add to it periodical entries of new stakeholders, and you have the perfect recipe of a lost sale.
Focus is the operative word in ABM. In marketing, when you don’t know who all your decision-makers are, the sale can prolong and drain away a considerable part of your energy, resources, and even profits.
With ABM, that’s never the case. Firstly, you begin by dropping prospects that aren’t worth chasing. This results in huge savings of your resources – akin to saving your breath for the long marathon ahead.Â
ABM empowers your teams to begin engaging with key decision-makers in the account’s teams from the early stage itself. It improves your sales velocity by having your teams concentrate on building relationships with people who have a big say in the decision-making process.
6. Synchronization of sales and marketing teams
If you were to ask marketers what’s one benefit of account-based marketing they really admire, you’ll probably hear the phrase ‘synchronization of sales and marketing’ more often than anything else. But what exactly does it mean?Â
Synchronization of sales and marketing teams is about keeping the marketing teams involved during all stages of the funnel. In other words, both sales and marketing teams work with the clear understanding that their goals must align in order to convert the leads that they really want.
This means jointly carrying out activities that ultimately climax in revenue-driving outcomes. They will share accountability, avoid duplicating initiatives, jointly keep a tab on the dollar outgo, and keep the other in the loop. Experienced B2B professionals know how critical it is.
For instance, sales teams will share precise and updated information on what kind of prospects tend to convert better. Marketing teams, on their part, will let the sales teams know what kind of content is being delivered to a prospect so that sales teams know where exactly to pick up.
All this results in a clear agreement on everything from lead scoring to deciding the best way to engage prospects. This, in essence, is the solution behind creating consistent, desirable experience, something vital for big-ticket prospects.
7. Strong improvement in data-driven decisions
Partly as a positive trickle-down effect of the alignment of sales and marketing teams and partly due to the strong focus on tailoring the entire engagement, ABM scores very high on data-driven decisions.Â
This brings in several benefits. For instance, communication is objective and swift; there isn’t much to argue when numbers are in front of you, right? Or consider this – when you’re tailoring content, you don’t need to waste time deciding what fits and what doesn’t. After all, there’s data available for that as well, and you save a lot of valuable time (and possibly avoid those endless meetings that never seem to get anything done).
Data is like a weathercock – it will point in the direction the wind is blowing. So it will have virtually no room for subjective decision-making or even cognitive bias. Everything from ABM basics to strategic-level thinking is guided by data.
- Build a professional and responsive website
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- Utilize social media to connect with customers
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- Engage with customers through online reviews and ratings
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- Use email marketing to stay top-of-mind with customers
So how do you reap all the ABM benefits?
The above discussion doesn’t mean to say there are no challenges in ABM. No, that’s not true. Everything valuable will have some challenges and ABM is no exception.Â
To make the most of ABM, you want to design and execute the right strategy. First, assess if ABM is the right strategy for your business. If your teams aren’t equipped to do that or aren’t available for the assessment, bringing in an outside expert is always a good idea. An expert, with their experience, will be in a good position to tell you.
Or perhaps you’ve already implemented ABM but aren’t getting the promised benefits. You want to review the technology tools you’ve been using, the way you’re leveraging data, and the processes you’re following. Again, an expert can help.
Rest assured, you can derive every single benefit that ABM has to offer. All you need is the right technology, the right processes, and the expertise to put the two to use.
