Imagine a world where you can start the sales process by selling directly to your best and most valuable accounts. No time is wasted working on marketing and selling to poor-quality leads that are not good for your business. This means you can go straight to the phase of engaging and exciting your target user accounts. With account-based marketing, it is possible to do these things. This process allows you to align your marketing and sales team from the ground up so they can ensure long-term business growth, delight customers, and ultimately increase revenue.
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What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing is a focused growth strategy in which marketing and sales work together to create personalized shopping experiences for accounts that are valuable to both groups. cooperate Account-based marketing allows you to eliminate bad companies from the very first steps and ensure that marketing and sales are moving in the same direction. As a result, your team can go about the all-important process of engaging and exciting those valuable accounts much more quickly.
Account-based marketing helps your business connect with valuable accounts and work with them as if they were each a separate market unto themselves. By doing this, along with personalizing the shopping journey and all communications, content, and campaigns related to those user accounts, you will see better ROI and greater customer loyalty.
Before we look at the other benefits of account-based marketing and the specialized tactics you can implement in your company, let’s examine the relationship of this strategy with another important strategy, inbound marketing. Usually, these two strategies are considered completely different from each other, while they may be very similar in many areas.
User account-based marketing and inbound marketing
Batman and Robin, LeBron James and D-Wade, Butter and Jam. This collaboration is considered one of the most powerful collaborations in history. This powerful couple can produce extraordinary results when they are placed next to each other. When account-based marketing and inbound marketing are paired together, they can create positive and good waves for your business. You may be wondering how these two can work together.
We defined account-based marketing a few moments ago, and as you can see, this is a highly targeted strategy. On the other hand, inbound marketing is more fundamental. A growth strategy that allows you to attract customers through valuable content, SEO, and great customer experience. Instead of disturbing your audience and customers, inbound marketing allows you to more organically provide them with the information your customers need. Inband provides the foundation for a powerful account-based marketing strategy by allowing the allocation of functional and targeted resources to valuable accounts.
If the above is still not enough for you, the list below gives you some more reasons to implement account-based and inbound marketing at the same time.
Inbound Marketing helps you acquire target accounts, and then Account Marketing accelerates this process so you can acquire and excite your target accounts with an unforgettable customer experience.
Inbound marketing is the foundation of an account-based marketing strategy. Account-based marketing derives from Inband by allowing the allocation of functional and targeted resources to high-value accounts.
With this combined strategy, you attract a wider group of potential customers than when you use only one of these two methods, and you get all the possible opportunities that the other strategy might miss.
Your content is worth two for one. You can create and use this content to meet the needs of both inbound and account-based marketing strategies.
Software options, such as HubSpot’s account-based marketing software, are available to help you combine these two strategies.
Now we want to talk about some great advantages of using account-based marketing.
6 advantages of using account-based marketing
1- Marketing and sales alignment
Cross-team collaboration and improved communication are beneficial for growth in all organizations. In the case of account-based marketing, this transparency and alignment ensures that the marketing and sales teams are focused on the same goals, are moving within agreed budgets, and know the specific roles of each internal stakeholder.
This alignment ensures that all communications, interactions, and content are consistent across the accounts you work with. That means no matter how long an account has been with your company, your team members can pick up where they left off with no questions asked. This creates a perfect and exciting user experience for customers.
The easiest way to maintain internal alignment of account-based marketing is with the help of software that makes communication between marketing and sales teams quick and easy.
2- Improving your business relationship among valuable accounts
Account-based marketing requires personalizing everything for each account you invest your resources into. Through this personalization, your connection among these accounts reaches its highest level.
Because your content and engagement have changed show them how your and your team’s unique products, services, and offerings are what they need to solve their challenges and grow. This means that account-based marketing allows you to place your business in a position that is considered the best and most ideal choice for your target accounts.
3- Providing a perfect customer experience continuously
As mentioned, account-based marketing requires consistent experiences for your accounts, which plays a huge role in your success. This is because account-based marketing is a long process that usually takes several months or years.
So for your account-based marketing activities to be flawless, you need to be able to create a long-lasting sense of excitement among your accounts. This is how you give your accounts the feeling that they are a separate market, and why should they ever want to stop doing business with you if they get that experience from you? Providing these experiences consistently over the long term can seem like a daunting task. While this is understandable, the good news is that account-based marketing is a process that naturally encourages you to do it yourself.
Look at it this way: We’ve already talked about how account-based marketing requires sales and marketing teams to be on the same page about everything related to each account. When there is a comprehensive understanding of these factors within your organization, marketing, and sales can effectively and naturally create this sense of consistency through everything you share and communicate with each account.
4- Evaluate the rate of return on your investment
With account-based marketing, you can easily measure the ROI for each account you dedicate your resources and time to. This is very useful because you can confirm whether the specific accounts you have invested in are ideal for your business or not.
Then you can nurture these accounts and keep them happy in the long run while targeting similar accounts in the future. If your ROI proves that your account-based marketing tactics are working, use those results as motivation to move your strategy forward, and consider it a strategy you can trust. do it
5- Simplify your sales cycle
Depending on your business, industry, and resources, the sales cycle generally looks something like the following:
Prospect → 2) Connect → 3) Research → 4) Present → 5) Close → 6) Delight
With account-based marketing, this cycle is simplified; By focusing your activities on high-value target accounts, you save resources and time and spend more time on the stages of the cycle that have the most positive impact on your target.
Identify Target Accounts → 2) Present to Target Accounts → 3) Close Target Accounts → 4) Delight Accounts
Account-based marketing simplifies your sales cycle by helping you be more productive. Instead of testing different tactics for potential customers and approving a very large group of leads, account-based marketing ensures that your target accounts are ideal for your business so you can quickly move toward generating leads. Move relationships with them.
The close stage of the sales cycle is also simplified by account-based marketing. That’s because your chances of converting and recovering accounts increase over the long term thanks to marketing and sales alignment, consistent customer experience, and personalization.
6- Expand the business through the relationship between accounts
The adage of quality over quantity also applies to account-based marketing. This process requires you to spend a significant amount of your time and resources engaging and delighting a carefully selected group of quality accounts, rather than quickly closing deals with lower quality leads. Close that may not be beneficial to your company in the long run.
By taking the time to build trust with accounts, you grow your business by winning back those valuable customers over time. Considering that acquiring new customers costs more than keeping existing customers, this will positively affect your bottom line.
In addition, as a result of a continuous, thoughtful, and personalized user experience, accounts will become more loyal to your business over time, and loyal customers will be your best marketers, advertisers, and brand representatives. In other words, your accounts help you spread your business among your networks through referrals, word of mouth, testimonials, and more.
Creating a target list for marketing based on user accounts
Account-based marketing starts with a clear picture of who you should target. It sounds simple enough so far, but since Account-Based Marketing is new to many marketers, building the right master list is usually easier than it seems at first. is not
We have noticed that many clients, to answer the question “Who should we target?” They are in trouble. When you hear a query back and forth, you know that an educational article is needed, so we are here to provide you with this educational piece.
At this point, it should be noted that this guide has been compiled from best practices by participating in several account-based marketing implementations. There are no hard and fast rules in this area, so don’t be afraid to make small and large changes to suit your business conditions.
Choosing the best listing tactics in account-based marketing
Account-based marketing is fundamentally a marketing strategy based on advertising results. Sales and marketing are aligned on KPIs, meaning the only thing that matters is how many accounts you’ve onboarded and how profitable you’ve been.
With this in mind, you should target accounts that have the highest chance of converting. How can you identify which accounts have the highest conversion chances? Let’s take a look at the set of methods tried in this field.
Proximity research
Proximity can be an interesting element to research. When you think about proximity, it can provide you with tactical opportunities such as the following situations:
Proximity with current customers
Proximity to engineering/resource warehouses
Adjacent to the central building
These are just a few of the methods we’ve seen implemented, there are probably many more you can think of right now. Proximity research was a very difficult and painful process in the past years, but now, fortunately, the advancement of technology is on our side to give us the necessary answers.
If your business is lucky enough to have a data warehouse that implements BI and visualization, you can skip this step and save around €200. For other businesses that don’t have this chance, there is a utility called BatchGeo. This tool seems to have been around since the invention of computers! This tool has a very simple user interface while the results and information it gives you are unmatched.
In this section, we’re going to walk you through a step-by-step guide to working with BatchGeo to create an account-based marketing list using proximity to existing customers.
Export a CSV spreadsheet from your CRM/ERP system that includes current and prospective customers. Try to create the export format as similar as possible to the order and structure of the BatchGeo template file.
Put the data in the right structure in BatchGeo.
In one of the group’s columns, make sure that each row has either current or potential customers in the desired field.
Copy and paste the data into BatchGeo, click on Map Now, and then activate it.
Now you have a Google map with various markers for your current and potential customers. You can try different formats to find the look you like. The process mentioned in the steps above is stated in the simplest possible way so that you can easily implement any model of proximity research discussed above. This makes proximity analysis better for those with less experience and makes exploring the different areas where your customers are present a more enjoyable experience.
User account-based marketing round table solution
Having the right ABM team is critical to getting it right. Who should be part of your ABM dream team? In this section, we’re going to look at the key roles to consider when building an ABM team.
Project leader
This person is ultimately responsible for putting all the pieces together. These people are usually marketing leaders. These people should be eager to move forward and deliver results, should be able to inspire and influence colleagues in all ABM activities, and have a strong enough personality to face challenges, obstacles, and difficulties.
Project manager
Coordinator and contributor. The project manager maintains the project and holds himself and others on the project accountable. These people make sure that goals are met, schedules are on time, and the project is on track. This person must be someone who pays close attention to detail, has proven themselves as a manager, and loves to look at things from a positive perspective.
Marketing sponsor manager
For an ABM project to be successful and reach the point where large profits can be made, it is critical to ensure that there is support from the initial stages of the project. So having a great marketing sponsor is critical.
Sales sponsor manager
ABM is about marketing; But this strategy is one of the few marketing strategies that sees true shared value between marketing and sales. Therefore, if sales are to benefit from this solution, they need support and sponsorship.
Usually, this is a simple sell. Nothing excites a sales leader like the opportunity to capture big strategic potential wins, and that’s usually the primary goal of running an ABM campaign. When you get people involved like this, they can ask great questions of the group to generate new ideas. They also, as the nature of their role demands, know where the big deals in the market are going to happen in the foreseeable future.
Marketing representatives
The driving force behind an ABM activation is the marketing campaign that moves people along the sales funnel. Whether it’s a modified traditional funnel or using the Land and Expand method, marketing is the key driver of this forward flow toward KPIs.
How many iterations are done depends on the size of the business and the budget. If you have a big ABM campaign, you need more people to activate. An important rule of thumb is that if you suspect that a marketing person or group is going to play a central role in delivering this flow, they should be present at the roundtable activities.
Don’t forget that marketing is at the forefront of generational leadership. They provide vital information on potential accounts to target, whether it’s someone they met at a show or trade show or a historical lead that a salesperson followed a few months ago.
Sales representatives
Including the right vendors and doing the right thing can make the difference between the success and failure of an ABM campaign. This is where a thorough understanding of different personalities and mindsets becomes important. Only fill your desk with salespeople who have an understanding of the shared value between sales and marketing that they can share with others.
Start with a simple question; Who are the thought leaders in sales? Not only do they have valuable information about their accounts, but they also have a lot of information from their colleagues’ accounts, accounts they are unhappy with their manager, and accounts they’ve met at trade shows and events. As long as these people have pure intentions and are broad-minded enough to consider the company’s performance in addition to their commission amounts, everything will go well.
Remember to always be on the lookout for sales spoilers! Sometimes some sellers play tricks to show the value of accounts in their account too high. While it’s good to get people excited, having accounts that drive a person isn’t very useful in an ABM campaign.
Inspection of information
Completing an information audit is an important step in building an ABM list. Some companies consider this stage as a starting point. We use this further down the line, either to grow lists that have been developed using the tactics mentioned in this white paper or to filter some offers.
It is important to think laterally about your information sources. There are always mines of relevant data both externally and internally that will be valuable to you in this area.
CRM/ERP
Whether this is a good place to consider as part of your data audit depends on your business. You’ll know if it’s a good idea or not by your reaction to knowing you can extract so much information from your system, whether it’s raised eyebrows or bursts of laughter.
If your data is valid, well maintained by the sales team, and searchable to any useful degree, then consider the following to check:
Lost customers
Early-stage deals with memorable names
Names of accounts that are consistent with other features introduced.
Late-stage deals that have a lot of zeros at the end of the income line.
Historically large opportunities have been closed with a high probability of failure. If you re-engage a year or less before their contract expires, ABM can warm you up nicely for a second try.
Account Based Marketing Automation System (MAS)
As marketers who understand the importance of quality data and considering that the majority of this quality data is recorded by the customers themselves, we envision this data in the marketing automation system based on your user account.
How are you going to use this data to get quality names to populate your ABM list?
Lead Scoring – Check leads that have already interacted with your content. Have a scan through some of the account names to see if they fall into the section you want. If you have several contacts from the same company who interact with content in the same funnel, this can be a strong signal to include them in your ABM campaign.
IP Visitors – See which organizations visit your site the most. If a lot of your traffic is coming from one IP or company, but they’re not currently converting, that’s a good reason to try a different strategy. Engagement from your ABM campaign may be the ticket you need to start selling.
The more people you talk to about ABM, the more value you unlock from people and departments you never thought you’d interact with. People’s friends at the gym or leisure venues can be surprisingly interesting, but it’s also best to talk to front-line staff like customer service, engineering, and the larger sales teams.
If you engage them and seek their help, you will find them, they will provide you with information that can lead you to the golden ticket, the opportunity to achieve your revenue goal for your ABM campaign. does
Social networks
Social media can be a very interesting tool as part of the ABM list-building process if used effectively. In this section, we would like to share with you some solutions that we think are useful in different situations.
Twitter: Use social media listing lines based on keywords related to either the products or services you are selling or signs of a problem that is commonly seen in the early stages of the buying journey. It is unlikely that you will make a decision based on this alone, but it can be a deciding factor. Also, running a backlog of accounts that have been isolated using other methods can be an interesting way to shorten a list. A small amount of C-Suite observations on Twitter over a short period can provide insight into the account, its challenges, and future direction.
LinkedIn: Most people struggle to connect on LinkedIn. Keep in mind that you can follow someone without accepting your intro. This gives you the ability to engage with them in their conversations without having to constantly ask to connect and get an empty response. Following someone on LinkedIn can give you great information about their inspirations, their trends, and their history. Checking the profiles of some people who you think could be in the decision-making unit inside the account can allow you to avoid time wasters. A classic case in the tech space, where I have a lot of experience, is people going from vendor to client. Now, if you happen to work for that vendor, this could make for an ideal target account. If you were working for a competitor, this may or may not be a good idea, and you can usually do a bit more.