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Account based marketing looks poised to take 2016 by storm. A huge resurgence across 2015 shows no signs of stopping, and many are racing to adopt the right tactics across their ABM endeavors.

Knowing when and how to use account based marketing effectively across the sales process means understanding why it works, and how it differs from other digital sales content strategies.

Today’s article explores the need-to-know reasons why account based marketing is worth using across the sales process.

Click Here to learn about the recent resurgence of account based marketing (ABM), and why it spiked in 2015.

Recap - What is Account Based Marketing?

In our last post we offered this definition for ABM:

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is an approach to B2B sales and marketing communications that personalize messaging to the needs of one particular account/prospect. 

Why Use Account Based Marketing?

There are five key reasons to adopt an ABM approach for your digital sales content.

1) Its Integrated

ABM activities focus on the mixed needs of one account, and integrate the communications across all channels to meet these needs.

One of the biggest challenges with digital content marketing today is effectively delivering an integrated marketing communications strategy across all client facing personnel.

ABM content has one focus – the account. There is zero-waste from the digital content being created, and everyone on the team shares a common set of objectives.

Craig Rosenberg, editor for Funnelholic.com explains,

“In account-based marketing, sales and marketing work together to create an always-on series of touches and relationship building aimed at these accounts. One meeting with an account is just the beginning – not the end – of an account-based marketing program” (Source: Engagio, 2015).

 2) Its Aligned

Shared objectives (as explained in #1) are just one way to tightly align a sales and marketing team. Sales and marketing alignment has become the elusive buzz-word, practiced by few but preached by many.  

Alignment challenges are a top reason why sales reps avoid the digital content created by marketing, and the lack of effective content is leading many sales reps to create their own digital sales content.

ABM demands collaboration with marketing efforts that specifically address the communication needs of the account in question.

Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer at DemandBase explains,

"ABM is fast becoming the B2B strategy of choice because it truly aligns sales and marketing while focusing their teams on the highest value accounts” (Source: PR Newswire, 2015).

Among companies practicing ABM, ALL indicated some degree of sales and marketing alignment, and 34% indicated strong alignment (Source: PR Newswire, 2015).

While fewer than 1 in 7 content marketing teams include sales in the creation of customer facing content. 74% of ABM marketers worked with sales to define account goals and plans, and 67% received help from sales for account insights (Source: PR Newswire, 2015).

3) Its Personalized

Marketing teams are applying buyer personas and decision journeys to try and tailor digital content creation for unique value. The average B2B decision making group consists of 5.4 buyers, pushing two thirds of B2B marketers to state that ‘engaging the key decision maker’ is a top challenge (Source: Integrate,2015).

ABM ensures that communications are always relevant and never suffer from “random acts of content marketing” often cited by sales reps.

Peter Isaacson explains “B2B marketers are realizing that marketing to large quantities of individuals doesn't result in quality sales opportunities" (Source: PR Newswire, 2015).

Personalization works, even when its outbound, as 75% of executives will read unsolicited marketing materials that contain ideas that might be relevant to their business (Source: Marketo, 2016). 88% of prospects have stated they value content targeted to their specific organization (Source: MomentumABM, 2015). Lastly, 94% of senior executives believe that delivering personalization is critical or important to reaching customers (Source: Forbes, 2016).

4) Its Full Funnel Focused

Content marketers are often focused on lead generation (filling the funnel) meanwhile sales reps assume the role of lead nurturing and closing. This kind of thinking perpetuates silos and disjointed objectives.

ABM pushes marketing teams to think about the entire funnel, and all the content needed to help nurture the account to close.

ABM also acknowledges that the sale doesn’t signal the end of the relationship. ABM enables deeper levels of communication beyond the end of the traditional-sales-funnel limit.

Jon Miller, Founder of Marketo explains,

“At its core, account based marketing encompasses everything that B2B marketers do to support sales at target accounts. This includes selecting and prioritizing account lists, generating new contacts, gathering account intelligence, building account plans, running field-marketing events, prospecting into new relationships, and engaging accounts online” (Source: Engagio, 2015).

 5) Its Agile

Actionable data is what enables digital content sales to improve over time, but making these decisions requires analysis and planning for each buyer persona that in question. ABM increases the focus to just one account, enabling faster decisions and more agile marketing.

A fully developed account-based marketing strategy enables marketers to engage and monitor key personas at their target companies, which is why more than 80% say that ABM outperforms other marketing initiatives (Source: Integrate, 2015). 

(5-Points Sourced from: Engagio, 2015)

 (Image Source: Sociable360, 2014)

The Difference between Account Based Marketing and Inbound Content Marketing

At first glance there are several similarities, but inbound content marketing is focused on demand generation, where ABM is an outbound strategy that focuses sales and marketing efforts without being intrusive.

This great breakdown from Engagio.com highlights the key differences across similar actions.

Engagio offers explanations for each of the seven similarities on their article.

Account based marketing works by leveraging sales engagement much earlier in the sales cycle with a consultative approach targeted to the account.

Lead generation shifts away from being a marketing-focused responsibility.

Closing shifts away from being a sales-focused responsibility.

Instead ABM makes funnel success a shared responsibility between both teams.

Are you looking to enable an account based marketing approach? Sales content management is crucial for ensuring the right communications reach the right people at the right time. Request a demo and let our sales professionals show you how easy ABM can be.

How to use Account Based Marketing

ABM proposes a radical shift to the service level agreements traditionally found among sales and marketing teams. Instead of a hand-off, sales and marketing teams continue to nurture a lead and plan long-term strategies for value added discussions that includes post-sale interactions.

In our next article we’ll explore the strategies and best practices for effective ABM. Subscribe to our mailing list for an instant notification.