What is Account Based Marketing?

We explain what account based marketing (ABM) is and why you should consider using it to draw in clients

There was a time when companies would only use what is known as traditional marketing methods to promote their products and services. They would target a wide array of potential customers in the hopes of getting leads to convert to sales. This is still a common method used today and it does still work.

However, what if you wanted to take a more directed, focussed approach to marketing? Perhaps you have a certain company or companies you want to market to? Account based marketing is a great method for this type of campaign. Read on to find out the answers to questions such as, what is account based marketing? And how to run a successful campaign.

What is Account Based Marketing?

Account based marketing is a more focussed approach to campaigns. Rather than aiming your messaging at a wide network of potential customers, you are targeting a select number of companies. In Account Based Marketing you may even solely focus on select individuals in a company and target them directly. In this type of marketing we are focussing on quality over quantity.

What are the benefits of Account based marketing?

There are plenty of benefits of account based marketing for both you and your target market. As you are focussing the campaign on a select few individuals, the content can be much more personalised and who doesn’t like receiving more personalised communications? By personalising the marketing you are likely to find a higher rate of interaction from the target client, plus this will help you with the relationship building stage of the campaign.

In general, this type of marketing also provides higher quality opportunities. This is because you will have already carried out research into who best to focus your marketing on. Higher quality opportunities mean a higher success rate and an increased ROI.

Account based marketing also gives you the full flexibility to decide who you are aiming your messages at. This gives you total control over who and what is “best fit” for your company. By aiming at the companies, you feel would benefit best from your product or services. You are also improving your chances of this potential customer becoming recurring business and a long-term business opportunity.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of an account based marketing campaign is that on average you are likely to see a more successful conversion rate. According to TOPO’s 2019 survey, for every 5 accounts targeted through account based marketing, one opportunity was created. This is a significantly higher conversion rate than traditional marketing methods.

Who is account based marketing suitable for?

The simple answer is that any company who wants to increase their client base through focussed targeting can use account based marketing to help increase awareness and sales.  Did you know that according to HubSpot’s recent report, 67% of brands already use account based marketing.

However, this type of marketing is most successful for larger B2B companies. If you are a smaller B2B business, you may want to look at your business model and decide if it is feasible and realistic for your company before you use this marketing method.

How to choose which accounts to target?

There are several steps to consider in order to decide which accounts to focus on. Firstly, you need to have already clearly outlined your goals for this campaign. Is it, for example; to increase sales? Increase brand awareness? Once you have done this you can then think about the accounts to target.

Now you clearly have your overall goals in your head you can start looking at companies to focus on.

There are several questions you should be asking yourself when deciding who to aim the account based marketing at. These are:

  • What businesses will bring credibility to my company?
  • Are there any particular target markets we want to expand/explore?

You also want to look at companies which meet your ideal customer profiles. Look at your buyer persona, if you have one, and consider companies who meet those as these are the accounts you want to target. In your individual customer profile, you should have ideal business size/industry/location etc. This will help narrow down the companies to research.

How to run a successful Account Based Marketing campaign?

This method of marketing is not for everyone but for those wanting to aim their messaging at select companies, it can be a useful tool. Rather than waiting for the leads to come in and then building up relationships you are skipping a few steps and going straight to the relationship building stage.

In order to run a successful account based marketing campaign there are several things to consider:

Sales and marketing need to work together as one

Usually, these two departments are often separate but in account based marketing your sales and marketing need to run in sync, with everything from their messaging to their follow ups. They need to ensure they are acting like one machine for this to work

Know your target

Before you delve into anything else, think about who exactly you want to market to. Ask yourself, why them in particular? Where are they located? What benefit will they bring to your company? Are they your idea of a perfect customer?

Once you have established your target the key to a successful account based marketing campaign is research. Find out all there is to know about your target audience. Every little bit of detail will help to build a profile and create more specific, targeted messaging. From where they studied at university to their interests and what content they are interacting with right now. Every little bit of information is valuable to your campaign and can be used to give them a more personalised approach. If you have marketed to them before then see how and if they interacted with you, this will give you a good idea of what approaches work and which don’t for those targets.

All of this will help you understand which strategies will be more effective and successful based on both previous experience and your research.

Build an Account Based Marketing team

These types of campaigns can be time consuming but the benefits often outweighs the time spent so if you want this to be a successful campaign you need to create a team. In this group make sure there is a variety of different employees involved from other departments. The team can include; marketing managers, digital and field marketers, sales team and business development. It may seem like a lot of people for one marketing method but this is a specialised type of campaign, therefore you need to invest a bit more time and effort into it than your standard inbound marketing campaigns

What if I don’t have enough time/resources to create and run an Account Based Marketing campaign?

If you are interested in running an Account Based Marketing campaign but you don’t have the resources or time to commit to this you could look at hiring a marketing agency to help you. They will sit down with you, discuss your requirements and find out what your overall sales and marketing goals are.

Why should I choose Generate UK for my Account Based Marketing campaign?

 We have been successfully creating and running marketing campaigns for over 12 years and we are experts in our field.

Generate UK provides a full, personalised service and as a well-established company we strive to provide the know-how, creativity and professionalism required to launch and run successful campaigns. From setting up campaigns to building landing pages and assets we can create and set everything up for, freeing up precious time to focus on other things. We are also experts in SEO, B2B ecommerce and B2C amongst many other fields.

Interested in learning more about account based marketing and how it can help your company?

Contact Generate UK today to find out more, our team here will be happy to answer any questions you have.