Account Based Marketing (ABM) - An effective B2B marketing strategy

Even in a digitized era where marketing breadth plays a significant role, Account Based Marketing (ABM) remains a value-driven approach to B2B marketing. ABM allows companies to focus resources and efforts on target accounts with the aim of building deep and personalized relationships that lead to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

What is Account Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategy primarily used by B2B companies aiming to target their marketing messages towards selected businesses. Instead of casting a wide net, as is the case with inbound marketing, a focused strategy is created, targeting a carefully specified audience.
The intention is not to generate a large number of leads, but to speak directly to a few pre-selected, right-fit potential customers.

This approach empowers you with the ability to determine who sees your messages and allocates your marketing budget directly towards the companies you wish to collaborate with.

ABM is, therefore, a focused and powerful approach aiming to convert specific, valuable leads into customers. It involves the use of personalized campaigns that take into account the unique characteristics and needs of each target account, often involving tailored messages, perhaps even for each individual company.

For B2B companies, converting valuable leads into customers can be challenging. Hence, creating personalized customer experiences that not only boost conversion rates among decision-makers but also generate a higher return on investment (ROI) becomes essential.

ABM delves deeper than standard audience segmentation. It essentially extends the approach commonly employed by a sales team and emphasizes the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing.

Who should use Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not for everyone.

First and foremost, it is a strategy primarily tailored to the B2B segment. For large B2B companies, it is essential that each customer can generate sufficient value to justify targeting them specifically. An ABM journey is often long and complex.

Companies with complex products or services, large organizations with many target accounts, businesses dealing with lengthy sales cycles, niche industries, and startups or growth companies are also ideal candidates for ABM. ABM is also useful in situations where purchase decisions are intricate, involve multiple decision-makers, or require long-term relationship building.

The strategy is valuable for companies aiming to optimize value creation for existing customers by offering additional services or products through upselling and cross-selling. ABM prioritizes quality over quantity and focuses on building lasting relationships with key customers. It requires careful planning, personalization, and collaboration between sales and marketing.

How to develop an Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy

The cornerstone of ABM is the identification of target accounts. Therefore, you should initiate your strategic work with analyses of your current customer base, potential high-value customers, and strategic partners that align with the goals and values you offer.

Subsequently, you should build an understanding of the needs and challenges of your target accounts. This may require extensive research, often involving the discovery of decision-makers, budgets, and purchasing processes. With that knowledge, you can develop tailored messages and content that directly appeal to your target accounts.

However, adapting your communication is one thing, using the right channels is another. It may be most rewarding to send emails, display web content, schedule meetings, or engage on social media.
We particularly have good experience with ABM on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn can play a crucial role. The platform not only provides access to an extensive network of B2B decision-makers, but its advanced search filters also help identify the right contacts for your targeting. Through personal communication, sharing relevant content, and using LinkedIn advertising, you can engage directly with your target accounts. With LinkedIn's analytics tools, you can monitor activity, measure effectiveness, and build strong relationships over time.

It's something our partner, CeramicSpeed, has experienced.

CeramicSpeed and MCB launched an ABM-focused strategy on LinkedIn in late summer 2023. The list of target accounts includes companies that would typically require months and years of effort to gain visibility through outbound sales activities. However, the results were evident within a few days of advertising. With CTR (click-through rates) of up to 2.89% (on LinkedIn, CTR is typically between 0.5-0.8%) and an impressive CPM (click rate) with a cost of only 68 DKK, the result is well above average.
All of this is closely monitored, of course, with remarketing and other efforts aimed at ensuring retention. ABM is, therefore, a supporting effort within a larger and comprehensive sales and marketing strategy.

And that's often the case with ABM. The strategy should not stand alone but support the overall and physical sales strategy.

To ensure a cohesive approach, you should foster close collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. It is ongoing communication, result monitoring, and the definition of clear KPIs that ensure the proper adjustment of your ABM strategy. Like all other marketing strategies, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and you engage in continuous work when you implement ABM. ABM is, therefore, a process. Even after converting a target account into a customer, you must continue to engage and deliver value to build long-term relationships.

When sales and marketing work together

Sales and marketing represent two teams deeply reliant on each other. Therefore, collaboration is essential for the success of ABM as a strategy. Together, clear goals and a shared vision must be established. This includes defining when a lead is ready for sales follow-up after thorough nurturing by the marketing team, evaluating the strategy's results, and defining common KPIs and measurements.

Marketing can provide the sales team with information about decision-makers and their interaction with content and campaigns, which helps the sales team experience more appointment bookings and prepare for conversations with target accounts. Marketing can also develop content that is relevant to different target accounts, while the sales team can contribute insights into customer needs and challenges.

This ongoing collaboration and coordination between sales and marketing are key to maximizing the effectiveness of ABM initiatives and increasing the likelihood of converting target accounts into long-term customers.

How to automate the Account Based Marketing (ABM) process?"

Automation plays a central role in Account Based Marketing (ABM) when you want to streamline and achieve scalable initiatives. AI can be used for data analysis and providing content suggestions, among other things. However, it's essential to remember that automation should support a strategic approach and a deep understanding of your target accounts to achieve the best results.

The first step is data collection and segmentation. By using CRM software such as HubSpot and other data tools, you can automate the process of identifying and categorizing your target accounts based on criteria such as industry type, size, location, and other relevant parameters for your strategy.

Next comes the personalization of content using marketing automation platforms, allowing you to create and deliver individually tailored content to each target account. This includes automated email marketing, dynamic web content, and personalized ads. Automation also enables you to implement lead scoring, so you can assess when a contact is ready to be transferred to sales. This is achieved by monitoring behavior and interactions with your ABM campaigns.

Email flows through tools like ActiveCampaign are also part of automation, allowing you to maintain continuous communication. The same applies to social media automation, where platforms like Business Manager make it easy to automate posts and ads targeted at your target accounts.