What is account based marketing?
Besides my family and where to find the best slopes in Vermont, there is always one thing on my mind, and that is “How can I be a better marketing and rev ops leader today than I was yesterday?” I get inspiration from everywhere. A commercial I see. A conversation I have with a team member. How I picked the ingredients for my daily lunch salad.
And one of the things that has been on my mind lately is the struggle marketing and rev ops leaders seem to be having with account based marketing, or ABM, as it’s more widely known. There are several schools of thought on what ABM is, or how it should be done, and it’s becoming a hot potato.
“We must do ABM!”
“What is our ABM strategy?”
“Do we have enough money to do ABM?”
“Are we right for ABM?”
Let’s get down to it … first of all, what is ABM?
Hubspot (and many others) define ABM as:
A strategic approach that focuses on high-value accounts in a market or business. ABM strategies focus on creating personalized buying experiences for better customer acquisition, relationship-building, and business growth.
At its core, ABM seems like a no-brainer. Invest your resources and budget into the accounts that will ultimately deliver the most ROI for your business. That’s what we all want in the end, is more business, from the companies we can help most. The need for ABM has truly arrived, with:
- 76% of B2B marketers saying ABM-based approaches deliver a higher ROI than other marketing efforts. (BrightTALK)
- Out of 400 respondents, 78% reported their organizations employ an account-centric go-to-market strategy (6Sense)
- 58% of B2B marketers experienced larger deal sizes with ABM. (Forrester and RollWorks)
- 80% surveyed noting a higher win rate for ABM accounts (Forrester)
But despite the “aha” moment of ABM getting its time in the spotlight, marketing leaders are still struggling to crack the code of how to deliver ABM in the most impactful way. They boil the ocean and forget about the critical steps in between to create a rock-solid ABM strategy — incredible content experiences and top-down ICP alignment.
Because if you stop and take a look around, your audience has inevitably changed.
Consumers are more informed, with more content — noise — at their fingertips than ever before.
It’s no longer a B2B world, it’s a B2HUMAN world, with the most impactful content speaking directly to the buyer, and audiences remembering (and embracing) WOW moments from brands that compel them to think and act differently.
A recent report from McKinsey says 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. What’s more, 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
So it’s time for brands to step up to the occasion. It’s time for marketers to publish value-driven content that attracts and helps buying teams question the status quo, and to make them believe that your brand, and no one else, can help them solve the challenges they face every day.
How we define ABM at New Breed
At New Breed, we see ABM as a type of go-to-market strategy that combines people, process, data and technology to surround humans at the accounts that are specifically in the market for your solution and that you know you can help most with timely, relevant and personalized content that enables those people to make the best purchasing decision, which, hopefully, is you.
When done at the most strategic level, ABM connects marketing, sales, customer success and product.
Deployed correctly, ABM expands on traditional inbound marketing tactics to nurture and educate different members of your buying committee further on in the sales process, past where marketing is “typically” responsible.
Consider your inbound methodologies focused on SEO and umbrella demand generation as the 'ticket to the dance,' whereas your ABM tactics are reserved for companies that are most likely to benefit from your services and partner with you.
ABM can be intimidating. How can companies shift their mindset to create amazing experiences for the one or the few, versus the masses? We believe it starts with the customer, and with tight alignment among your sales, marketing, and product teams.
Our 2023 State of HubSpot report showed 97% of revenue leaders believe that better alignment between sales and marketing departments can bring tangible benefits, such as increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
Introducing the New Breed ABM Blueprint, designed to take you from ABM readiness to ROI
If you’ve started an ABM tactic before and it hasn’t worked, we can help you uncover why. If you’re just getting the ball rolling, we can help maximize your resources and time to make sure you’re deploying your strategy the right way. No more missteps, no more wasted hours.
Through our ABM Readiness Blueprint research, we’ve uncovered the core steps businesses need to follow to understand if ABM is right for them, and what they need to get started on a successful path to ABM-generated revenue.
I’m proud of the work our team has done to redefine and repackage ABM into what matters most for our fast-paced consumer landscape. If you’re interested in learning more about our Blueprint, get in touch with us today.
