Why Account-Based Marketing Is A Must For B2B Companies

If you work for a B2B company, the chances are high that you are already familiar with account-based marketing!

With a highly personalized approach and precise attention to detail, account-based marketing goes beyond mere lead generation. It is a holistic approach that allows you to align sales and marketing teams’ endeavors with leading to business growth, delight customers, and enhance efficiency.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, account-based marketing is a reality now and an opportunity that you need to tap into at the earliest.

If we caught your interest, read on to know more about this emerging concept and why it is the best strategy for B2B marketers.

What Is Account-Based Marketing?

Marketo defines account-based marketing as “an alternative B2B approach that focuses on sales and marketing efforts on a clearly defined set of target customer accounts of high-value and creates personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each account.”

The best part about account-based marketing is that you can quickly weed out less-valuables clients right at the beginning.  You keep your sales and marketing teams in complete alignment to manage high-value accounts that will pay out big dividends in the future.

Account-based marketing is a foolproof gameplan!

You are not only personalizing the customer experience but also walking the extra mile to tailor business communication and curate content to manage their accounts successfully.

Before we get to the crux of the issue and learn about the various advantages of account-based marketing, let us examine its relationship with another important strategy – inbound marketing. This will help us gain a clear picture and differentiate between the two concepts.

Account-Based Marketing And Inbound Marketing

Arguably one of the most robust business partnerships, account-based marketing and inbound marketing can create waves for your business. 

But what’s the connection between the two? 

Read on to find out how you can use inbound marketing and account-based marketing strategies to complement your business goals!

As you just learned, account-based marketing is a highly-targeted way of capturing valuable business clients. On the other hand, inbound marketing is more of a foundational concept. It is a primary marketing strategy that aims at attracting and delighting customers through customized campaigns, content, and search engine optimization.

With inbound marketing, you do not need to get aggressive and approach customers like you would with outbound techniques. It is all about organically providing customers with the information they need and driving traffic towards your brand.

Inbound marketing serves as a foundation pillar for account-based marketing. It enables you to focus on resource allocation for high-value customer accounts. Here is how inbound marketing and account-based marketing complement each other and lead to better results:

• Inbound marketing serves as the base that attracts customers at the first stage. Account-based marketing takes things one step further by enabling you to win targeted accounts by providing customized customer experiences.
• Having a strong inbound marketing strategy helps organizations enhance resource allocation to target high-value accounts through account-based marketing.
• Utilizing a combination of inbound marketing tactics and focused account-based management can empower companies to attract a broader audience base and capture market opportunities that any other strategies may have missed.
• Harness the power of both inbound and outbound marketing strategies to create all-in-one content personalized and make a substantial impact on customer engagement.

Why Account-Based Marketing Is The Need Of The Hour

Marketing is an ever-expanding field. Account-based marketing is a relatively new concept that has gained tremendous popularity in the last few decades. A survey conducted by the 2020 State of ABM Report shows that 94.2% of respondents have an active ABM program instead of 77% in 2019.

Compelling figures, right?

There are many benefits that your organization can accrue by adopting account-based marketing. Here is a compiled list of positive results that impacted businesses that implement account-based marketing programs.

• Measures Return On Investment

Account-based marketing is precise, targeted, and measurable. It makes it easy for you to measure your return on investment for all the accounts that your sales and marketing teams have been working upon. This is necessary as it confirms that your account-based marketing strategy focused on ideal accounts that were the right fit for your business. 

With account-based marketing, organizations witness an increase in deal size and ultimate business revenues. 86% of marketers report improved win-rates with account-based marketing due to its structured approach. With increased return on investment, you get to know that your account-based marketing tactics are working and can plan effectively for the future.

• Keeps Marketing And Sales In Alignment

Account-based marketing enables you to design more purposeful marketing campaigns that are aligned with your sales efforts. Increased transparency and cross-team collaboration ensure that both sales and marketing teams concentrate on the same long-term goals. It ensures that both functional domains stick to the pre-decided budget and understand the role of various internal organizational stakeholders.

Another great benefit of a sales-marketing alignment is that your organization can provide consistent content, interactions, and communication pitches for all high-value accounts. It encourages team members to collaborate and work together on managing target accounts, crafting specialized content, and delivering a consistent customer experience.

• Delivers Enhanced Customer Experiences

Customer experience is a top priority for businesses. 

Do you feel you are doing enough to keep your customers happy?

Research has shown that organizations that focus on customer experience can drive 4-8% more revenues than others. Account-based marketing can help organizations nurture long-term associations with customers with a personalized marketing approach.

The best aspect of account-based marketing is that the aim is not finding more leads, instead, finding the right leads. This makes it possible for your employees to develop long-term relationships with customers by focusing on the ‘R’s:

• Reputation: Build internal credibility and create a strong reputation in the market.

• Relationships: Develop relationships with clients through innovation and insights into their preferences.

• Revenues: Accelerate growth and profitability by increasing the size of deals and win rates.

• Develops Tailor-Made Content For Customer Interaction

If you are not working on churning out personalized content, the chances are high that you are losing out on precious customers. Account-based marketing can solve all your content worries!

                           Content builds relationships.                                                                Relationships are built on trust.                                                    Trust drives revenues. – Andrew Davis, Author

With account-based marketing, you can tailor-make content for your high-value customers to let them know about your products, services, pricing, and offerings. You can easily provide customized campaigns for targeted accounts and deliver them relevant information through blogs, business papers, videos, and social media.

The power of personalization is real!

The numbers speak for themselves – 86% of marketers have witnessed a measurable lift in business results by implementing personalized campaigns.

Organizations need to adopt account-based marketing to provide every stakeholder of a target account with a high level of personalization. It helps in developing mutual trust, retaining precious high-value clients, and increases sales conversions.

Is your organization tight on its marketing and sales budgeting?

If yes, you need to take steps not to waste resources such as employee time, effort, and money!

Account-based marketing is a holistic tool that is ideal from a budgetary perspective for B2B organizations. It empowers your sales and marketing teams to integrate efforts to work harmoniously on capturing high-value accounts.

As we know, there is a high degree of risk involved with marketing campaigns. Account-based marketing minimizes risks and reduces unnecessary waste by optimal utilization of resources.

Not only that, having a robust account-based management strategy in place, you can enjoy shorter sales cycles and ultimately generate a higher return on investment.

The Final Word

If you are a B2B marketer, implementing account-based marketing is a no-brainer!

Don’t get stumped! Account-based marketing is not rocket science. Many specialized account-based marketing software solutions can help you streamline processes and get started.

Account-based marketing is the best way to future-proof your B2B organization and gain a strong competitive advantage. It can help you compete with rivals and surge ahead by developing a credible reputation and expanding your customer base.

Enough said, time to act! 

If you are a B2B organization, there is nothing beyond account-based marketing to help you transform your business processes and increase your bottom-line! Go right ahead, implement account-based marketing strategies and witness the magic!