Today’s evolving digital environment can have a major impact on corporate budgets-marketers are constantly expected to do more with minimal. Therefore, it is important to prove the return on investment and maximize efficiency.
Many CMOs use customer-based marketing (ABM) to get results. ABM focuses on revenue generation or customer loyalty, which can help improve the quality of potential customers, simplify sales, and build customer loyalty to achieve a higher return.
According to a report on the state of ABM in 2020, it is found that around 94% of more than 300 respondents have an ABM plan—compared to 77% a year ago.
Thus, ABM is a strategy for marketers to design and execute highly personalized marketing plans for specific companies or customers. With ABM, marketers treat individual accounts as the entire market and create tailored strategies and omnichannel marketing campaigns to meet the specific business needs of their customers.
Now, let’s understand some of the benefits of Account Based Marketing:
- Improvement in Revenue Generation-
By focusing on customers with the highest ROI potential, ABM has achieved a strategic shift from potential customer generation to revenue generation. You can effectively spend your marketing budget and resources on potential customers who match your target demographic, and are ideal customers for problems you can help them with. ABM can also help you generate revenue faster, because a targeted approach focuses on high-quality potential customers who are most likely to benefit from your product, so you are more likely to respond to your chats.
- Balance between Sales & Marketing-
One of the biggest challenges for marketers is to align sales with their target audience and content suitable. With ABM, sales and marketing teams will be in step. They jointly set common goals, identify target customers, understand customer needs and define key performance indicators. This collaboration also helps to establish consistent communication throughout the customer journey, leading to a better experience for potential and existing customers.
- Personalized Messaging-
ABM’s personalized approach helps you provide the highest quality potential customers with the most relevant information-which can help you achieve a higher return on investment. Before starting an ABM campaign, marketers should study target customers to identify key decision makers, and then examine them on a personal level. For example, what do they post on LinkedIn or Twitter? What content do they interact with? Use these customer insights to drive your own marketing strategy through personalized, value-driven messaging. Instead of emphasizing product features and price promotions, focus on specific weaknesses and how your solution can help that person perform their duties more proficiently.
Now, the ‘How’ part i.e., the ways:
- Account-Specific Insights-
Go one level deeper and get an in-depth understanding of your target potential customers. Identify internal customer influence factors and, if possible, understand how the company makes purchasing decisions-for example B. Is there a purchasing committee? Does every purchase decision have to be approved by C-suite? In addition, understand the specific challenges faced by these internal decision makers. How is the success of your team measured? Once you have this information, you can create a relevant narrative to convey your campaign message and resonate with your target audience.
- Go-Market Plan-
ABM needs to work continuously with sales staff. Review your marketing plan with the sales team so that they understand the entire shopping experience. Make sure which sales representatives accept which customers so that the marketing team can seamlessly hand them over to sales when they show interest and have a consistent experience.
- ABM Infrastructure-
Modern marketing technology tools facilitate mass hyper-personalization of content, range automation, tracking success indicators and contact with sales team. Define and configure all the tools and integrations needed to successfully manage your ABM strategy. Without the proper infrastructure, you won’t be able to fully reap the benefits or show a return on investment in ABM.
