Introduction
According to Business Wire, Account-based Marketing –Global Market Trajectory & Analytics, the global account-based marketing (ABM) market will reach $1.6 billion by 2027. The 2022 report by ABM Leadership Alliance surveyed more than 300 B2B professionals and revealed that 93% of participants said they have an active ABM program. So what’s ABM all about? Why this strategy has become popular among businesses? Which are the popular ABM strategies that can help you optimize your nurturing process and increase revenue?
In this blog, we’ll discuss the ABM strategy, its benefits, and the top 5 tactics you must follow to grow sales in 2024. Also, learn how an account-based marketing agency can provide customized ABM solutions for our business and boost your conversion rate.
What is Account-based Marketing?
Account-based marketing is a powerful B2B marketing strategy that allows businesses to target high-value accounts and treats each account as a market of one person. Companies integrate a customized approach and tailored communication for each account. It results in increased responses and ensures a high conversion rate. In ABM, marketers lay emphasis on the quality of accounts rather than the quantity of leads. They identify the target companies, understand their wants and preferences, and curate customized engagement strategies.
Top Benefits of an Account-based Marketing Strategy
ABM targets specific accounts and does not include marketing for everyone. It uses a customized marketing approach for each account. In ABM, personalization is the key to forming a connection with the prospects and building a lasting relationship with them. An account-based marketing strategy helps B2B businesses get a higher ROI than traditional marketing initiatives. Let’s discuss the top benefits of an ABM strategy.
Shortens the Sales Cycle: ABM activities enable the business to fast-track the conversion process and increase sales. The sales team focuses on high-value accounts by identifying the ideal customers. They customize the engagement process to the specific accounts and offer the best solution. Businesses might want the prospects to subscribe on social media or get on their calendar to discuss a potential collaboration. There can be different reasons. Such targeted customer engagement that includes personalized customer experiences leads to a successful nurturing process and more conversions.
Business Expansion: As mentioned earlier, the ABM strategy targets high-value accounts with customized and tailored experiences. The sales team gets an opportunity for up-selling and cross-selling, letting the business maximize revenue. ABM lets your business choose high-value accounts that match your ideal buyer persona and build long-term and trusting relationships with them. A company can convert these leads into paying customers and encourage them to explore upgraded versions of the existing product or buy complementary products. The ABM strategy increases the customer lifetime value, leading to expansion opportunities.
High ROI: ABM allows businesses to get a high ROI from their marketing initiatives. ABM enables them to adopt a highly targeted marketing approach while ensuring optimum utilization of the resources. Teams work closely and meticulously allocate resources to achieve a high ROI from the marketing and sales activities rolled out under ABM. Better allocation of resources, higher conversion rates, and lower acquisition costs with a short sales cycle combine to provide the business with a high ROI and increased profitability.
Top 5 Account-based Marketing Strategies
If you are looking forward to implementing an account-based marketing strategy or revamping your current one, you must follow the below-mentioned tactics. They will help you improve your conversion rate, strengthen customer relationships, increase customer lifetime value, and improve profitability.
Find the perfect balance between sales and marketing: Unifying sales and marketing activities can bring the desired results for a company. According to Gartner, there’s a 28% increase in overall account engagement and a 25% rise in marketing qualified leads to sales-accepted lead (SAL) conversion rates with ABM. It aligns both activities together and helps in maximizing conversions. When the sales and marketing departments work together on an account, they are aware of the customer journey. They create customized customer experiences and ensure the engagement process aligns with the prospects’ wants and requirements. They can deliver personalized customer experiences, build and implement successful campaigns, and offer customized pricing to fast-track the lead generation and conversion process.
Data–driven engagement: Businesses can leverage intent data to get an in-depth understanding of the users’ behavior and requirements. It will help identify the best-fit companies having a high probability of becoming customers. With ABM, companies can track user activity/intent data across all their digital platforms and understand what products they seek, even before they reach out to them. It may be website visits, downloading marketing content, accessing whitepapers, etc. Companies can track how the prospects engage with them by using AI for advanced analytics and predictive lead scoring to get real-time insights into user behavior.
Personalized approach: An ABM strategy integrates personalization to attract the attention of the high-value or specific accounts your business wants to reach. ABM experts design customized landing pages with unique content, visuals, and images to connect with the target audience. They focus on integrating hyper-personalization by using data at different touch points such as email campaigns, customer support interactions, search ads, or social media ads. Targeted personalized engagement is more likely to convert the prospects into paying customers. Seminars and webinars build relationships with prospects and evoke faith in the brand. A tailored approach helps address the unique challenges of a particular account and provides them with the best solution.
Incentives: Make your prospects feel valued over others by offering them access to gated content, such as whitepapers, research papers, case studies, etc., which is not accessible to all. Invitations to free webinars or attractive deals can help companies attract the attention of prospects. It will make them feel prioritized, and companies can elicit a response from them. They can nurture these leads and eventually build a relationship with them.
Measure Results: Companies should analyze and review their ABM strategy periodically to gauge the progress and make improvements. Some of the common measuring ABM metrics are account engagement rate and conversion rate. Businesses can track the ROI, compare the ABM strategy with the traditional marketing strategy, and understand its effectiveness. They can measure the results, and make appropriate improvements.
Conclusion
Identifying and implementing the right ABM tactics can help you grow your business. ABM strategy has a high potential to increase sales and revenue. According to eMarketer, 92% of marketers said ABM was ‘extremely important’ for their entire marketing efforts. Is your business one of them? Have you used the ABM strategy to increase the conversion rate and boost sales? Businesses often complement their traditional marketing efforts with ABM. It requires personalization, building long-term customer relationships, and creating brand awareness. Hiring an account-based marketing agency can help you identify and engage with high-value accounts and increase profitability.
About Markable Solutions
Markable Solutions is a leading B2B marketing company that has helped many businesses craft and implement a result-oriented ABM strategy. We can help you identify and engage with high-value accounts and close more deals. Our experts keep track of the ABM metrics and continuously evolve the strategy to improve the results. Schedule a call to learn how Markable Solutions can help you by implementing the best account-based marketing tactics to grow your business. For more information, feel free to visit https://www.markablesolutions.com/.