In recent years, we have seen a growing number of B2B marketers embrace account-based marketing (ABM) as one of the leading B2B lead generation strategies. A big part of its growth is that ABM is the perfect strategy for wading into slowly over time.
It doesn’t require a full commitment initially, but most companies that dedicate themselves to it over a period of time find that their results far surpass traditional B2B lead generation strategies. ABM is the perfect complement to traditional systems, allowing you to build a long-term lead generation platform that helps you to land bigger B2B deals more reliably using data-driven strategies to further relationships.
What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing is a strategy that focuses on engaging with a specific set of target accounts. Those accounts should be ideal clients — meaning that they have a direct and obvious need for your product and can benefit from its use.
In ABM, your accounts are companies, not people. The strategy allows you to align both your sales and marketing teams and focus your resources on engaging those accounts and landing deals.
Put simply — account-based marketing allows you to streamline your lead generation and marketing efforts and treat companies as accounts, instead of the individuals that work within them. When you engage an account through ABM practices, you are likely engaging several different people within the company, instead of only engaging with one individual.
This strategy allows you to secure deals more quickly, and at higher revenues that traditional B2B marketing and sales strategies. In ABM, your teams work together to identify key prospect accounts that would be a good fit for your product(s), and then you custom tailor your approach toward winning their business. It’s a much more intentional approach than typical “spray-and-pray” lead generation strategies that have become so common.
Source: Drift
Why ABM Stands Above Other B2B Lead Generation Strategies
There are many reasons why B2B companies are embracing ABM as one of the premier B2B lead generation strategies. The practice’s ability to let you hone in on your best possible clients and engage with them effectively leads to shorter sales cycles, larger deals, and better relationships with your customers once the agreement is in place.
A few of the reasons why ABM has picked up so much steam among B2B companies in recent years include:
Engage Buying Teams in Full
Source: Sales Manager Now
With buying teams growing (today the average buying team is made up of five different people in B2B sales deals), it is more important than ever that you engage with several people inside of the companies that you are selling to. Each person within that company has their own concerns, needs, and opinions that must be catered to throughout the selling process. An HR leader won’t have the same concerns as a marketing executive, and both would share opinions that may be radically different from a CTO.
Focus On the Best Opportunities
Account-based marketing allows you to hone in on the best opportunities. With more marketing and sales teams feeling pressure to deliver revenue growth to their companies, ABM gives them the tools that they need to engage with buyers that provide the highest opportunity and highest-value accounts. By defining the accounts that you will pursue early in the process, you can focus on the accounts that provide you with the best possible opportunities. You can filter your efforts by focusing on the accounts that have the most discernible need and required budgets for your product.
A Personalized Approach
Because ABM asks that marketing teams define the different targets that they will be pursuing, it allows them to create an approach that is custom-tailored to that account’s specific needs. By going into new engagements with materials that are personalized to their businesses’ needs, you can position yourself as a true solution to the biggest problems that they are experiencing. The insights gleaned from an ABM approach allow you to create content and messages that resonate with your target audience and speak to their biggest concerns.
This personalized approach doesn’t just mean a higher ROI for your sales and marketing teams, it also means a better experience for your customers. Buyers prefer to engage with companies that understand their needs and take previous conversations into account when interacting with them. By serving your leads with targeted content and messages, customers will develop deeper relationships with sales reps when they begin to engage with them, and have a higher level of appreciation for the process as a whole. Happy customers make for happy sales and marketing teams.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
For decades companies have placed a lot of focus on how they can get their marketing and sales teams to work as a cohesive unit. You’d think it would be easy — ultimately both teams have the same goal (driving more revenue) — but traditional methods mean that their goals often do not align and in some cases even compete with each other.
ABM is the perfect complement to sales teams. Because many sales teams have been using an account-based approach for years, using the same approach in your marketing can help to create a more consistent journey for your buyers and keep both marketing and sales teams on the same page. This is a huge benefit to both teams because they become allies in each other’s missions. 84% of businesses using ABM say it delivers a higher ROI than other strategies.
How TriggerBee Can Supplement Account-Based Marketing Efforts
TriggerBee is an excellent tool for account-based marketing teams and sales professionals. Gaining a deeper understanding of the actions that your target accounts take on your website and the content they interact with.
TriggerBee allows you to make data-driven decisions and identify companies that are already visiting your website. Not only does this help you to generate B2B leads, but it gives you more insight into the accounts that you are already targeting. It’s the perfect complement to B2B lead generation strategies for account-based marketing, helping both sales and marketing teams to strengthen their messaging and speak to the biggest concerns of their target accounts.
In recent years, we have seen a growing number of B2B marketers embrace account-based marketing (ABM) as one of the leading B2B lead generation strategies. A big part of its growth is that ABM is the perfect strategy for wading into slowly over time.