Drive Revenue with Account-Based Marketing

As per an online survey by ITSMA (Information Technology Services Marketing Association), 96% of the marketers see Account Based Marketing (ABM) growing in importance within their organization, with 72% planning to increase spending on ABM in the next year.

ABM has been around for years, but it is just now that it is becoming popular. B2B companies like EMC, Adobe, Panaya, BearingPoint, HP, Xerox, Ariba, CSC, Oracle and Siemens PLM Software are adopting this approach to drive revenue and achieve sales productivity.

What is Account-Based Marketing?

In B2B companies, at least seven executives are involved in the decision making process. ABM considers this and targets the most valuable accounts and all the people in that account who are involved in decision-making process, ultimately accelerating the journey towards becoming a customer.

Lead based marketing follows the simple principle of generating more leads. More leads mean more sales! This marketing strategy has loopholes as it focuses on the quantity not the quality; ultimately it becomes a waste of resources and cost per sales increases.

ABM is the game-changer. It aims to transform how marketing happens by targeting the accounts in taking into account what is truly relevant to the accounts, ideas and products that will solve their business challenges and result in growth of the organization.

In simpler terms, ABM is a holistic marketing approach that provides the complete picture of all the individuals involved in the decision making process.

The questions that now arise are – What are the benefits? How to implement ABM to drive maximum benefit from it? Here are the answers to these questions:

Benefits of Account-Based Marketing:

• Lead nurturing: ABM delivers relevant content that nurture and guides valuable accounts during the decision process.
• Key-account marketing: ABM targets key accounts that dramatically raise the likelihood of sales being closed.
• Highly targeted and real time marketing: ABM lets marketers target accounts in a highly targeted and personalized way, with the right content at the right time.
• Collective-decision making: As, ABM approach is based on collective decision making process, it takes into account all the individuals in a company to take a collective action that can help close the deal faster.
• Scale up your Revenue: ABM focuses on high yield prospects thereby improving the marketing impact and driving more revenue with the use of minimum resources by marketers.
• Alignment: Buyers spend more time researching than they do with the sales people. ABM works on a collaborative approach promoting the alignment between marketing and sales that can enable better collaboration and drive revenue.

While ABM offers you the aforementioned benefits, you cannot just start with its implementation without proper planning, evaluation and coordination. Follow these steps to successfully implement ABM as your marketing approach to drive revenue with minimum resources:

Five steps to Account-Based Marketing Implementation

Image Credits: Marketo

Conclusion

If you are looking for a marketing approach that can drive revenue in lesser time, you should consider ABM. It enables you to build stronger relationships with all the decision makers within a company. It is safe to say, future B2B marketing will revolve around ABM and will be the biggest revenue drivers for B2B businesses.

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References:

ITSMA ©2013 ITSMA Online Survey: Account Based Marketing and ROI: Building the Case for Investment, Julie Schwartz