The room silenced, signaling the start of our meeting. A group of marketers had just welcomed their new colleague, who previously worked at a consumer retail brand and was hired into a new position for the company: head of marketing technology.
As the client’s strategy consultant, I was asked to attend the meeting where their new colleague would present her vision for a new technology stack so that my firm could help support this digital transformation. I listened and was excited about the successful implementation of technology into yet another industry. She shared how the retailer had leveraged a combination of search advertising, programmatic advertising and marketing automation to significantly increase sales.
Sophisticated as the technology was in the hands of a clear expert, I was doubtful it would work for this business to business (B2B) client. Most marketing technologies are designed for high-volume transactions with broad audiences. This is why they are successful in business to consumer (B2C) markets. Bump traffic to a B2C or retailer’s site by 1%? You can generate additional sales. Bump traffic to a B2B site by 10%? It will most likely go unnoticed.
Unlike most B2C industries, which enjoy high-volume, low-depth transactions, the majority of B2B companies’ markets are limited in the number of audiences, relying instead on high-quality interactions.
Few technologies exist to support low-volume, high-quality marketing, and, from my perspective, too many B2B companies spend millions on technology that rarely yields substantial returns. In my experience, however, ABM is a different story.
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a way of thinking and organizing activities that align sales and marketing to systematically identify, penetrate and grow accounts. It requires a blend of strategy, technology, tactics and process.
Below, I’ve listed three reasons why your B2B should at least consider embracing ABM (pros) and two reasons why it can sometimes be a little overhyped (cons):
Pro: ABM requires true sales and marketing collaboration.
Before you entertain the idea of implementing an ABM program, first ask yourself if your sales and marketing teams operate on two different planets. If yes, ABM will be your solution to aligning these two teams that can sometimes be at heads with one another, arguing over quality of leads and fluffiness of content.
The first few steps of ABM require these two teams to work together to define goals, analyze past sales and understand the worth of each account. From there, a budget can be set based on the cost of acquiring a new account. (In our surveys, companies typically spend between 2% and 5% of the average account’s revenue on acquiring that account.)
Con: ABM is not a replacement for good strategy or good marketing.
Perform a web search for ABM, and you will receive pages of results that offer technology. While ABM is far more effective with the right tech stack, no software replaces strategy or marketing. In fact, ABM works best when it is supported by strong positioning, a robust brand and new types of content.
Do not implement technology ahead of a solid strategy, for you will find yourself enslaved to yet another tool that produces mediocre results.
Pro: ABM cuts significant waste out of the funnel.
Once you have aligned on strategy, you will identify the best-fit accounts. The best way to do this is to find your ideal customers. Which accounts bring the most revenue, the most profits and are easiest to serve? These are your ideal customers.
By leveraging artificial intelligence with services through technology, you can supplement your list to discover very similar accounts. (A few common technology options among ABM programs include Demandbase, Bombora and Salesforce.) Use these technologies to identify which accounts fit the profile of your current customer list, which ones have searched for keywords that match your offerings, and which job titles you’d like to target.
You can then develop content, personalized to your target accounts, and deliver them through multiple channels such as advertising and email to the right audience within each account. Be careful with personalization, as too much of it can invoke skepticism. Don’t be creepy.
Finally, by generating interest in the right audience with known and desired target accounts only, sales teams are far more likely to follow through and close the sale.
Con: ABM is not a cheap, quick solution.
Some of the most beneficial aspects of ABM come from the technology and services that serve your strategy. Some parts of ABM are impossible without technology, and they don’t come cheap.
ABM is also not quick. If you’re looking for a strategy that will flood your pipeline quickly and at a low budget, ABM won’t be a good fit.
You won’t see sales from ABM until months after you have launched the program. However, with a strong value proposition and valuable content, you should see far more efficiency and faster sales cycles. This is why many companies favor cost of account acquisition as a percentage of revenue and sales timeline as key metrics for ABM programs over counting clicks and leads.
Pro: ABM requires new types of content.
The vast majority of B2B companies have embraced content marketing, generating lots of content. It is critical that you deploy each piece of content within an ABM strategy to advance audiences along their buying journey.
By understanding how technical professionals make decisions, you can develop content that matches each stage of customers’ buying journey. Many of our clients choose to abandon the typical click-bait content, so often used for raw lead generation, lessening their content burden.
Although the benefits of ABM go beyond what I have mentioned, I’m hopeful that I’ve provided you with a balanced approach to considering whether and how ABM might fit your company.
