87% of marketers say Account-Based Marketing (ABM) delivers a higher ROI than other marketing strategies. Moreover, 86% of B2B companies say that, when executed precisely by vendors, Account-Based Marketing services improved their win rates, while 58% of B2B marketers report larger deal sizes.
These are no ordinary stats.
However, not all companies seem to fully grasp the real value and benefits of optimally leveraging Account-Based Marketing services. So, here’s an attempt from me to not just simplify the concept of ABM for B2B leaders, but also show you the real benefits of account-based marketing when sales cycles are long. To start with, we need to get a hang of what Account-Based Marketing is all about.
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
The short answer
It is essentially a Business-to-business marketing strategy. It is used by businesses, both big and small, to identify a specific set of high-value target accounts (prospects). Once done, the company’s marketing team creates personalized marketing and sales campaigns to reach and engage key decision-makers within those accounts.
Flipping the Funnel
While the traditional approach has been to reach out to thousands of prospects at once and hope some convert, ABM takes a different route. While it still uses the funnel-based approach to evaluate the best-fit target accounts, it starts by identifying the accounts you want to win. These accounts could be the ones that have always been with your competitors. So, the work is cut out for you.
How ABM works in B2B Marketing?
Let’s say you are a fintech company selling finance-tech solutions to banks. As such, your target audience top 100 banks in a specific region. Once you have identified those hundred banks, your research team’s task is to start with the initial step.
Step 1: Identify the target accounts
You need to understand each bank’s priorities, challenges, revenue potential, size, technology stack, buying intent, and strategic fit.
Step 2: Map out the stakeholders
As your product is related to fintech, the key decision-makers or stakeholders would be the people involved in the buying committee, such as decision-makers, influencers, and end users, including CIOs, CISOs, IT Directors, and Procurement Managers. These are the people who’re going to make or influence the decision to purchase your solutions.
Step 3: Research the account
Once you have understood the business goals, challenges, recent initiatives, competitors, and existing technologies, you can create personalized emails, LinkedIn campaigns, custom landing pages, industry reports, and more to engage and influence key stakeholders.
Step 4: Coordinate and Track
While your marketing generates engagement, your sales team can build relationships and advance opportunities by tracking that engagement through meetings booked, pipeline created, deal velocity, and revenue from a specific account.
What are the Different Types of ABM?
While ABM is itself a nice marketing approach, there are different types of ABM that you can choose from.
Strategic ABM
This is recommended when each enterprise deal is worth millions, as it involves highly personalized campaigns for one account
ABM Lite
Ideal for Mid-market companies, this involves Personalized campaigns for small groups of similar accounts
Programmatic ABM
This is recommended when you’ve got a template in place after initial success with a few accounts of the same type. You can then use technology-driven personalization to scale your ABM efficiently.
What type of companies should go for ABM?
ABM is well-suited for companies offering complex B2B offerings, with long sales cycles and high-value deals. It is also reasonably good for buying committees with multiple decision-makers
Enterprise or mid-market customers across common industries include:
- SaaS
- Technology
- Cybersecurity
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- Financial services
- Professional services
- Telecommunications
Not sure your target account list is deep enough to run ABM? Tell us your ICP, industry, and territory, and our team will come back with the account and contact counts we can cover.
Explore ABM ServicesThe Real Benefits of ABM (When Sales Cycles Are Long)
ABM is particularly effective in industries where sales cycles can last 6-12 months. However, when deals involve multiple stakeholders, significant budgets, and extensive evaluation, the sales cycle can reach as long as 24 months. Here is when ABM helps maintain momentum and build consensus throughout the buying journey. Some of the practical benefits include:
Keeping Accounts Engaged Throughout the Buying Journey
With long sales cycles, little visible activity, prospects often pause while securing budgets, evaluating vendors, or aligning internal stakeholders. As such, ABM ensures your product/solution and brand remain relevant through various levels of engagement, such as industry-specific content, Personalized email nurturing, Executive webinars, Retargeting ads, and Sales follow-ups. Instead of disappearing between meetings, you continue delivering value until the account is ready to move forward. With this, you can reduce the number of opportunities lost due to inactivity.
Building Relationships with the Entire Buying Committee
An enterprise purchase is typically carried out by a buying committee that includes executives, technical evaluators, finance, procurement, legal, and end users. With the ABM approach, you can tailor messaging for each stakeholder. Some examples of persona-based messaging could be Security, integration, and scalability-related content for CIOs. Cost savings and ROI for CFOs. Pricing and contract terms optimization for Procurement managers and Ease of adoption and usability for End users. The key benefit would be stronger internal alignment and reduced risk friction if one them leaves the organization.
Accelerating the Trust-building mechanism
When enterprises make large purchases in the millions, they are required to ensure they are confident in the vendor. ABM is the mechanism that helps build the required confidence and trust through customer success stories relevant to the prospect’s pain points, as well as personalized business cases delivered through executive briefings, Technical documentation, and educational resources over time. As such, you can develop trust through repeated, relevant interactions with the account, rather than a single campaign. As such, it gives them a perception of minimizing the risk and greater confidence in moving forward.
Identifying the Buying Signals
By using intent data and account engagement analytics to surface buying activity, modern ABM can often predict when an account is entering an active buying phase. Some of these activities could include increased research on relevant topics, Webinar attendance, Content downloads, etc. The key benefit of pursuing ABM here is that your Sales teams can prioritize outreach when interest is strongest.
Want the tactical layer that sits under these benefits? Read 10 account-based marketing tactics for high-value accounts and our guide to account-based marketing for enterprise sales.
How LakeB2B can be your ideal ABM Service partner
The right ABM capabilities can enable organizations to execute account-focused campaigns from target account selection through engagement and conversion. However, most organizations do not often possess the capabilities that make a strategy successful, as it requires careful deliberation across data, technology, campaign delivery, personalization, and measurement.
As ABM relies on accurate, comprehensive data, with LakeB2B, you can have expert data services that include:
- Buying committee identification
- Verified business contacts
- Email verification
- Phone number validation
- Data enrichment
- CRM data cleansing
- Company intelligence
- Organizational charts
Next, LakeB2B can help you identify which companies are most likely to become high-value customers.
- Defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Building a Target Account List (TAL)
- Account segmentation
- Firmographic analysis (industry, size, revenue)
- Technographic analysis (technology stack)
- Intent signal analysis
- Account prioritization
With LakeB2B, you not only have access to the best ABM data intelligence for your target industry, but you can also get expert help on ABM services to help identify accounts actively researching relevant topics through keyword search, interest tracking, and identifying the right purchase intent.
Conclusion
With the right Account-Based Marketing Services, you can equip your sales team with account insights and tailored messaging. A right ABM partner like LakeB2B can help you maximize your account engagement and pipeline impact, optimizing future campaigns.
Build the account and contact layer your ABM program runs on
Share your ideal customer profile and target territory. Our team will map the buying committees inside your target accounts and come back with verified contact counts, so you can see the coverage before you commit.
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