Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a new, secretive abbreviation, which cannot be missed in any corporate marketing strategy as everyone is talking about it. The big technological vendors are proactively trying to push the understanding that this is a completely new approach in the B2B marketing, when, in fact, any experienced sales person or marketing specialist will firmly state that this is not actually true.
Post by Ivan Arnaudov SALESmanago Diamond Partner
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is the newest strategy, which the “big players” from the enterprise sector are trying to sell us by basing in on the already well established and market proven marketing automation. Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not a new idea, but rather a new way to combine already working and proven market principles and strategies, which help the people who deal with complex corporate sales to find and engage the right person, with the right message at the right time
What is actually hidden behind the Account Based Marketing (ABM) definition?
World experts, who are busy with defining the added value of specific technological solutions that offer Account Based Marketing (ABM), focus mostly on interpreting how the different marketing activities and tactics and strategies will affect the management if the key, target accounts whenever the decision for the purchase of a B2B environment is made.
There are many definitions that could be found on the Internet, which focus specifically on the functionalities of the offered by them software products and their logical connections; however, my personal opinion is that one of the most objective explanation and definition can be read here. Jon Miller is one of the pioneers in the development of technologies for marketing automation and he is a renowned world expert, who is developing the Account Based Marketing (ABM) with the help of his solution – Engagio
The latest analysis made in companies, which have integrated in their business Account Based Marketing (ABM), help outline the following benefits of using ABM:
- ABM helps companies to focus predominantly on key accounts. It is them who have the biggest potential to generate more turnover and profit.
- ABM helps the marketing and sales teams to communicate in person with the right people during the process of making the most significant and biggest deals.
- ABM helps the marketing sales teams to collaborate and to transform potential clients into actual ones much faster and more successfully.
- ABM helps the company to build a much stronger partnership with clients (key accounts) and to develop the potential for long-lasting business engagement.
Why ABM?
The answer to this question would be made clear if we took under consideration the statistics that the Forrester Research offers – namely that fewer than 1% of the leads are transformed into clients who generate a real and significant turnover.
The trend observed in most salespeople – to use the same tactics and tools for the same target clients – leads to poor results especially when it comes to the complex corporate sales. Email marketing, which has nowadays become quite common practice, only work unless the spam filters are applied. Marketing, which concerns the distribution of content (content marketing), works great until everyone starts using it. Inbound marketing is still quite useful, however, for the greater part of the B2B business, it is insufficient and not as successful as it used to be.
The feedback obtained from the market provides the following information:
- 71% of the companies in the B2B business are interested in the integration or testing or have already tested and use ABM – Demand Metric.
- 84% of the B2B marking specialists share the opinion that the ABM use carries greater ROI than any other tactics or strategies – ITSMA.
At its core, Account Based Marketing (ABM) and the strategies for integration of programs and technologies connected to it, aim to support the complex corporate sales and the various people and departments involved in this process.
ABM is not some magical tool. It is a complex strategy, which helps with the creating of strong partnerships, better and long-lasting client engagement, all of which increased the added value of the client throughout the lifecycle.
ABM is a new word for a new approach to already well-known strategies and concepts in the complex B2B sales. Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not about single, one-time communication with key target clients. ABM is a strategy for building a proactive dialogue with everyone who is concerned with taking the decision for the purchase of a specific product or service.
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