Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a marketing strategy that has been growing in popularity in recent years. If you aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t familiar with it, we recently wrote about why you should care about this approach. When done properly, an account-based strategy can result in a powerhouse alignment of sales and marketing to which other marketing strategies can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t compare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Account Based Marketing is not made for every company, and it is certainly not a one-size-fits all approach. Here are four key criteria we look for when determining if an ABM strategy is the right one for your business.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Accounts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n in Account Based Marketing are businesses or government agencies. This \nis definitely not a consumer focused strategy. If you are familiar with \ntraditional strategies that focus on an entire market or industry, with \nABM you treat accounts as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153market of one\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Meaning, every company you \ntarget has highly personalized collateral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may have a landing page that provides insight into how they can \nimprove (and of course how your company can make that happen). If you \nrun digital ads, they will target that account. If you are using \nLinkedIn as a social platform, you will be identifying decision makers \nwithin that company and creating marketing collateral that answers their\n individual questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most companies are focused on B2B, take note that this strategy also works for government agencies, though the actual execution of an ABM strategy is different in the government space. However, the principle is the same: identify target accounts, and build a marketing campaign that is specifically catered to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Account Based Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a significant amount of time and money to be invested into a single account, which you may not close in the end. So for every few account that you close, it should cover the costs of all of your lost deals. You need to take into consideration the costs of a highly targeted campaign toward a single account:<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Researching the account<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Developing insights and knowledge that applies to the account<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Production of personalized collateral (design, development, copywriting, print, etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Time your sales reps spend cold\/warm calling<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Including the account in a targeted marketing campaign<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Building presence and awareness around the target company<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Management of the account campaign<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the effort involved in building multiple campaigns around \nindividual companies, if your product or service is four figures or \nlower, ABM is probably not the best approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of my favorite examples of Account Based Marketing is how Northrop Grumman won a $2 billion deal<\/a> (yes B<\/strong>illion) with the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA). It shows how extensively they marketed around <\/em>VITA, building their position as the perfect match for partnering with the agency, and ultimately closed the deal. Even with an extensive marketing campaign that surely cost them 7-figures, the ROI<\/a> on that campaign was exponential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite being called Account Based Marketing<\/strong>,\n this approach highly aligns your marketing and sales teams. In fact it \nmerges them so tightly that it is typically managed as a single \nfunctional unit. Whereas marketing is traditionally seen as an inbound \nactivity (attracting outside people to your company), Account Based \nMarketing leans much more on outbound activities like email marketing, \ntargeted advertising, sponsored events, and grassroots activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to have a successful ABM strategy, you need to have the \nresources that can perform outbound activities. This involves a wide \nrange of efforts from cold calls, attending events, sending packages via\n snail mail, and a host of other tasks that someone with a sales \nskillset is better qualified for than a marketing background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean your team is spamming your target accounts. Like \nany strategic marketing campaign you need to be providing high value \ncontent to your target accounts. But unlike a campaign that focuses on \nan industry as a whole and uses broad statements that apply to everyone \nwithin that industry, with ABM you are speaking directly to single \ncompanies. This makes it imperative that you have a complete \nunderstanding of their goals, challenges, how they fit in the market, \nand what value you bring to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We love introducing ABM campaigns to organizations that have a strong existing sales team but haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet refined their marketing strategy. Having that strong sales team makes it much easier to introduce an Account Based Marketing strategy as sales reps are on the front lines of the organization and already know exactly what resonates most with customers. Additionally, sales teams are typically quite excited to hear that they<\/em> are going to be directing much of the marketing efforts as historically it has been a split effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n more niche your product or service, the better results you will have \nwith an account-based approach. If your sales team is set up to sell to a\n range of markets, perhaps an entire horizontal, it can be challenging \nto shift to focus on individual accounts. Selecting accounts from a pool\n of thousands is difficult, especially if you are competing against \nhundreds of similar companies that are also targeting those accounts. \nWhereas if you are focused on 50-100 accounts due to your highly \nspecialized focus, it puts you in a much more valuable market position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Say you are a cybersecurity firm. If you are targeting all law firms, that is a very broad market (400,000+ firms). You can narrow down and focus on law firms in a specific location, perhaps Maryland (7,000+ firms). Further, you can narrow down and focus on law firms with a staff over 100 people, that handle legal work for large institutional clients. Now you are down to a couple dozen firms, which makes your target account list small enough to be manageable. Then it is about building your campaigns for each of those firms, and executing on the individual account strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n1. You are targeting businesses (B2B) or government agencies (B2G).<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. You have a high-value product or service.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. You have a sales-driven organization.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. You have a smaller target market. <\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is Account Based Marketing the right fit for you?<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n