B2B companies are continually boosting their investment in account-based marketing (ABM), but many are realising getting the best results from this relatively new strategic approach isn’t as easy as it may seem. Here are some common misconceptions marketers have about ABM along with a step-by-step guide on how to make it work for your brand.
1. Don’t confuse ABM with personalisation
The default ABM strategy centers on buying a platform that will execute campaigns to accounts (as opposed to individual contacts and leads) – but initiatives like ABM aren’t strategic if they’re led by the capabilities of a tool. ABM isn’t just about personalising what you’re already doing for your customers, it’s about fundamentally changing the way you think about your customers and how you market to them. This entails listening to customers, undertaking an in-depth analysis of their needs and using these insights to inform all aspects of your marketing.
2. Targeting goes all the way to the individual
Marketers must profile the entire group of people involved in the purchase decision, also known as the decision-making unit (DMU). You really need to understand everything about everyone in that group, right down to who is influencing them, who they report to, what publications they read and what they are talking about on social media. Some people like to be engaged with visual content, others want to be inspired by a big idea. You should also learn as much as possible about the dynamics of the group and how they interact with other teams in the organisation.
It’s not just about the individual, it’s about your depth of understanding of how the group works together at those different levels that will ensure sure your communications are as engaging as possible. The goal is to give your sales people the confidence to walk into a room and deliver the right information in a way that is engaging and entirely relevant to that particular audience.
3. You can scale, but not in the way you might think
Most people take the wrong approach to scaling ABM. Buying an ABM tool and then rolling it out without strategy is a common mistake. Technology might be able to help you target vast numbers of employees, but you’ll really only get under the skin of a business by building your relationship in a human way.
The key to scaling lies in knowing and understanding your customers. For example, if your proposition is about selling AI, then what matters to your sales people is not what sector the company is in, but the level of maturity it has reached. If you are talking to someone like Unilever, which is a digitally mature company very much focused on sustainability, alongside another mature company with the same values and needs, then that’s more so an opportunity to scale an ABM programme.
Likewise, if you segment companies with a key challenge that you help them solve, say a notoriously inefficient supply chain. The next step is to research that supply chain issue. Once you’ve done that, you can craft your value proposition to meet that issue directly. Then you’ve got a collection of companies who share the same challenge and a perfectly aligned value proposition and messaging to meet that challenge.
4. Get marketing and sales teams on the same side
Historically, sales and marketing have had quite a difficult relationship. Sales people often don’t want marketing people to ‘meddle’ in their accounts or appear to take credit for their wins. This can stem from a lack of understanding about the ABM proposition and too much of a focus on the short term. Marketers using ABM are about 40% more likely to report alignment with their sales team, because you simply have to work together to make it work. This collaboration fosters empathy and alignment.
5. ABM can impact the broader business
ABM keeps you right on the pulse of the customer and gives you a good insight into what they are thinking, doing and feeling. The world’s most successful companies, such as Amazon, Apple and Zappos, all operate by responding to what customers need. Before ABM, marketing teams often simply didn’t have the level of research and insight required to represent the customer within their organisations. And that’s one of the reasons that ABM is so powerful. It gives you the power to teach people across your organisation what they need to know about their customers, in order for the business to serve them better.
