You’ve probably heard of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). But do you actually know how to use this marketing and sales strategy to attract, convert and retain customers?
If you’re looking to maximize your results, this content is for you! Stay with me to understand everything about ABM and how it can increase your sales — even the most complex ones.
Let’s go?
What is Account-Based Marketing?
ABM is a B2B Marketing strategy that focuses not on a broad audience, but on specific accounts, directing efforts to create personalized campaigns for a few companies.
In practice, ABM places the power of choosing potential customers in the hands of the Marketing team. This selection is then followed by work to attract the attention of these accounts.
In other words: due to the investments required, this approach is ideal for complex sales, with a high average ticket, with long cycles and which generally involve several decision-makers.
Therefore, by opting for ABM, your company abandons the traditional approach of attracting as many people as possible to adopt a tactic focused on attracting the right people — those customers who are truly strategic to the success of the business!
And the essence of this reasoning applies to other strategies besides ABM, you see?
But in this way, this strategy redefines the target and the relationship between the company and the potential customer. Each campaign, message and interaction is personalized in a way that ensures that they are not only attractive, but also highly relevant to each account.
For this reason, Account-Based Marketing meets the growing need for personalization in Marketing to make the connection with the target audience stronger.
And, furthermore, as I will show you throughout this content, understanding and implementing ABM can be the difference you are looking for in your company to stand out from the competition!
Customized ABM Strategies
After understanding the concept, I will now show you how important it is to understand the different ABM approaches, so that you can choose the one that best aligns with your business needs.
They are based on the degree of particularity in the customer’s purchasing journey. Check them out below:
One-to-one
The “one-to-one” strategy (in plain Portuguese), also called strategic ABM, is the format in which Marketing and Sales teams join forces to find detailed information about a specific account.
Thus, we work on building a complete map that encompasses everything from the preferences to the individual needs of each potential client.
I need to remind you that this approach is recommended for a limited number of accounts, with full dedication to their particularities and objectives!
In other words: there is hyper-personalization, from the creation of personas to research, content creation and sales approaches, to generate messages capable of attracting and converting this account.
In other words, this approach is a long-term process that seeks to build a relationship with the key account and, therefore, can take years to be successfully implemented.
One-to-few
One-to-few, on the other hand, expands personalization to groups of similar accounts .
This allows for a slightly broader use of Marketing actions — this approach continues to focus on personalization, but on a slightly more generic and less targeted scale compared to one-to-one.
For example: it is possible to group companies from the same segment or those that share similar customers.
The main idea is to focus efforts on grouped leads with the greatest potential to move forward in the same sales process, while also ensuring the personalization of contact points and a better experience!
One-to-many
The one-to-many strategy, or programmatic ABM, is ideal for handling a more significant volume of accounts.
Just like the one-to-few technique, groups are created, but now to serve a larger number of potential customers.
To achieve this, personalization is maintained at the group level, enabling separation based on similarities such as location, stage in the sales cycle, among other relevant aspects.
In other words: content creation can be aimed at all or a large part of the account base, but is still highly relevant to the desired target account.
You can, for example, create customized video content for the segment the account is related to (advertising agencies, startups, etc.).
What I mean is: this approach offers considerable scale without compromising relevance and specificity!
Why choose ABM for your Marketing strategy?
Now, let’s understand whether ABM is for your company or not.
As you have seen, it is very relevant for companies that have a focus on high-ticket accounts and seek to maximize the value of specific customers.
The logic behind choosing ABM as a strategy lies in your business’s ability to offer considerable strategic advantages to those it wants to reach.
Furthermore, their personalized approach creates and strengthens relationships with customers. And I can speak about this with great confidence because it is Enjoy Minder’s specialty!
This personalization helps with countless issues, but I think it’s worth highlighting that it makes it easier to retain good customers and opens the door to more upsell and cross-sell opportunities!
Benefits of Account-Based Marketing
Therefore, it is a fact that ABM presents direct benefits, such as optimizing the use of time and resources, in addition to improvements in the customer experience.
But, in addition to those I’ve already mentioned, I saw that Forbes Agency highlighted 14 other benefits. Take a look:
- Optimization of the customer acquisition process;
- Possibility to connect with customers;
- Sales process occurs faster;
- Significant increase in ROI;
- More efficient cost management;
- Efficient use of Marketing resources;
- Reduction of the sales cycle;
- Interrelationship between Marketing and Sales teams;
- Building relationships based on trust;
- Increased possibility of becoming a specialist;
- Opportunity to stand out from the competition;
- Improved reporting and results monitoring;
- Data-driven decisions to align Marketing and Sales teams;
- Generation of more qualified leads.
Where to start joining ABM?
Now you must be thinking: “Ok, but where do I start?!”.
To answer this, I will show you some important steps that should integrate ABM strategies with digital strategies:
Identify key accounts
The ABM membership process begins with identifying the accounts that the company wishes to have as customers.
To do this, it is necessary to define the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and customize strategies for key accounts that fit what was defined.
This makes the approach more targeted and allows you to understand which leads are most likely to become business opportunities!
Unify Marketing and Sales Teams
After identification, it is recommended to develop an integrated Marketing and sales plan so that your ABM strategy is successful.
After all, a lack of unification between the two teams can result in separate plans for these areas and quickly lead to failure!
Produce relevant content
As I said before, personalization is the key to Account-Based Marketing. And it makes all the difference in producing valuable content for key accounts.
Therefore, by adapting the message to the specific needs of each potential customer, companies increase their chances of reaching them, generating engagement and being successful in their approach.
In practice, this means that you need to think about the pain points of each of these customers and how your message will help to resolve them.
This can be achieved through targeted Email Marketing campaigns or the creation of personalized landing pages, for example.
The fact is that, without relevant content, it is difficult to move your ABM strategy forward!
Use ABM tools
Investing in specialized tools for managing and monitoring business actions and results is what can facilitate the implementation and optimization of the strategy, in addition to ensuring greater control over it.
Therefore, Account-Based Marketing software is designed to help companies in this process. In other words, it includes resources to identify and select target accounts, create personalized Marketing campaigns and measure results.
Therefore, it is essential to select a good tool so that your dedication in the other stages is not in vain!
Measure the results
First, I need to say that there is no one KPI that works for all ABM strategies. This will depend on the company’s business model, objectives with the actions and which accounts are in question.
To define the right KPI, first understand where your target account is in the buying journey, because you can use different KPIs at different stages.
See the main KPIs most used in Account-Based Marketing:
- Reach and engagement;
- Marketing Qualified Leads ( MQLs );
- Number of visitors;
- Churn Rate;
- Return on investment (ROI);
- Average ticket;
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC);
- Customer lifetime value (CLV).
Count on experts
Enjoy Minder can be your partner for implementing any Marketing strategy, including ABM!
Our team applies the best and most innovative technology on the market to understand where customers want to go and create strategies focused on achieving better results .
As proof of this, EnjoyMinder’s success stories highlight our team’s expertise in successfully running campaigns and applying personalized Marketing strategies for each company!
It’s important not to ignore the details!
Now that you understand how ABM works and its importance in the purchasing journey, don’t ignore the details when adopting it!
For good personalization, it is necessary to pay attention to the particularities of the target accounts to attract and retain with quality and consistency.
If you are looking to maximize results with Account-Based Marketing, talk to our experts and transform your strategies with those who really understand the subject!
