Marketing is a vast industry that is ever-expanding. Just when you think there’s no other way you can tackle a situation, two (or maybe more) new techniques will pop in the market. This is the reason why the marketing industry has been thriving for so long.
Now when it comes to a business using marketing techniques, there are so many ways for them to increase their returns. Most of the marketers run campaigns that target a wide range of audience. But this strategy is rarely successful, especially when it comes to B2Bs.
So, instead of throwing these campaigns at anyone and everyone, it’s better to chase only after the audience that is actually meant for businesses. This is where Account Based Marketing (ABM) comes into play.
Also read- What Is ABM – A Quick Handbook You Wouldn’t Wanna Miss
It is a strategic approach that helps you cater to your marketing message to specific accounts that you feel fall right under your target audience.
The list of advantages and benefits of Account Based Marketing (ABM) is endless, but here is an attempt through these 12 points.
1. Personalization Is What They Expect
…And personalization is one of the most upfront benefits of Account Based Marketing!
When you’re trying to reach out to your target account, personalized messages or campaigns are much more effective as opposed to a single message for everyone.
ABM has the capability to help target every stakeholder in a target account, and with a level of personalization.
For example, more than blast email marketing, things that would work better are one-to-one emails, direct messaging, direct mailing or account-targeted ads.
There’s a lot of personal research involved in ABM and this gives it an edge over traditional marketing methods.
2. No Junk Leads Are Processed
When it comes to traditional B2B marketing, multiple stakeholders are involved. This can slow down the typical process of sales and marketing.
But in the case of account based marketing, the multiple stakeholders in your target account are engaged in the process personally. You can leverage this since you only focus on specific accounts, not the rest of the junk who’d never buy.
And that gives you the opportunity to nurture only the important accounts you’ve chosen, further expediting the process of sales.
No wasting time processing the trash, right?
3. Apt Usage Of Your Marketing Budget
Did you know that 57% of the buyer’s journey takes place even before they get in touch with the business’s sales team? And so makes it easier to approach new accounts and turn them into customers.
What a sound ABM strategy would do is that it will help the ABM team to market to the target accounts on the various touchpoints that they might explore during their “57%” of the buying journey.
This way, not only do you increase the efficiency but also save a lot on your allotted marketing budget, that would have been wasted on the useless leads and routes, otherwise.
From a budget perspective, account based marketing is the best way to go for any B2B communication. Only useful accounts are targeted in ABM, coupled with the latest ABM tools and strategies that actually help target specific organizations or companies.
4. Gives A Boost To Your ROI
Apart from saving the marketing budget by not spending on useless leads, ABM helps you maximize your ROI too.
Here’s how- You target only a few select accounts, go all in to help the sales process, and finally close them. Obviously, the accounts “you” select will be high in overall LTV (life-time value).
Through personalized ABM strategies, it has been observed to produce more ROI for B2Bs than anything else.
Also read – Reason Why Account Based Marketing (ABM) Is Highly Rewarding For B2B
5. Opportunity To Be The Expert
Instead of having a broad understanding of the market, ABM challenges you to know the individual target accounts on a more personalized level. By doing this, there’s more research going into the process but this also means that you are gaining expertise in an area where most people just have a broad idea.
When you view each account as intensive research of a marketing approach, you automatically stand out from the crowd. Competitors can copy your style but the research you have done is something only you know it the best.
6. Better Reporting
In ABM, there’s more cost in implementation, but this makes it so easy to report because there is less metric to be taken care of. This further makes it easier to set goals and so analyzing the reports becomes an easy task, instead of pulling out large sets of data.
So, if you are sure of your target audience, then ABM is the way to go.
Any campaign’s effectiveness can be measured using metrics. And the more tangible these metrics are, the more clearly you can target your account. And, with ABM, finding these metrics is much easier.
When you target the accounts, you spend more time assessing each and every aspect of the efforts put in by you. And when you can identify these things, it gets easier to identify the other important metrics and analytics. This then further helps in documenting proper data for all the accounts and set better goals at the end of the quarter.
7. Improved Customer Relations
The term ABM can very well be replaced with the age-old practice of nurturing important customers. It also helps demarcate the good and bad clients and further makes it easier for the team to focus accordingly.
This strengthens the marketing teams and inside sales teams, and also helps in highlighting the process of customer acquisition.
8. Target Right, Get The Right Leads
ABM is considered to be a revolutionary method where instead of finding more leads, the idea is to find the right leads. So, with this concept in mind, ABM targets the accounts that fit well further creating more revenue than the revenue collected because of many bad clients.
This way ABM saves time and the energy of sales & marketing teams by spending it only on the right accounts instead of many wrong accounts.
9. Shorter Sales Cycle
When unqualified prospects are removed early on in the process, companies can enjoy the overall shorter sales process. This way the sales and marketing teams can focus only on the accounts that are likely to get converted, instead of the ones who will always be problematic accounts without generating much of an ROI.
However, in ABM, you actually need to communicate individually to every stakeholder in an account, and hence that would make the individual selling process longer, yet very effective.
10. Form Relationships Based On Trust
Companies are always looking for solutions to problems online. ABM, in this case, provides them the personalized solution through communication via blogs, videos, and social media. Naturally, they will get attracted to you if you offer to solve their problems, which further creates trust between the two. A relationship based on trust is a relationship that can lead to good sales, and future referrals, maybe.
11. Sales-Marketing Synchronization Achieved
ABM provides a more targeted marketing initiative that is directly aligned with sales. This makes both the sales and marketing teams to work together & keep a tab on their goals and efforts put in by them. This then ensures that both the time and money spent by the respective teams are used in an effective way.
Also, the modes of communication, the collaterals to be shared, the tone of messages and the ultimate content are in sync, yet different, between marketing and sales teams.
12. Marketing Resources Used Efficiently
Your marketing efforts on major accounts create the most revenue in ABM. And with this kind of focus, you are able to optimize the two most valuable resources, i.e. time and money.
So, what you can do is integrate your sales and marketing efforts by making the teams work together and then develop content for the important accounts. This further will help you build successful communication within the teams. No fluff talks.
Also read- 7 Ways To Make B2B Marketing Interesting
Ending Note…
There is no way that a B2B will be able to find better results with any marketing technique other than account based marketing.
ABM makes complete sense, especially for B2Bs.
So, if you are a business looking to market to other businesses, then you know that ABM has a lot to offer and you’ve got nothing to lose in the process.
You know the benefits of Account Based Marketing, now all you need is to implement ABM strategies and see its magic help your business grow better than ever.
Looking to get started with ABM? Learn More.