ABM (Account Based Marketing) is a marketing and sales strategy adopted by companies that sell to a restricted group of potential customers. Unlike the traditional sales model, which is based on large volumes of customers, the ABM strategy involves long and complex sales cycles, many interlocutors and high values in negotiation.
The most common B2B marketing and sales practices involve mass customer acquisition strategies designed to generate demand at scale. Resources and investments are directed toward attracting and converting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of new leads and customers.
The marketing mix for acquisition at scale is well known, generally organized by Inbound Marketing actions, paid media (performance) , content production , SEO, social media, email marketing, events , webinars, campaigns and active prospecting (Outbound).
In this model, the acquisition cost needs to be france companies email list and the LTV (lifetime value) high, otherwise the strategy will not be sustainable and will make the business unviable.
On the other hand, these actions are not very efficient for companies that sell to a few large customers, with complex and long negotiation cycles and well-defined target markets.
The marketing and sales strategy that works best for these businesses is: ABM - Account Based Marketing .
What is Account Based Marketing?
In short, ABM is a growth strategy in which marketing and sales work together to create personalized relationships and experiences for a set of high-value target accounts.
The main challenges of Account Based Marketing
Adopting ABM is not a simple task. The research below, carried out by Engagio in 2019, lists the main challenges faced by companies with Account Based Marketing.
ABM statistics
In summary, we have five major difficulties in the process of adopting and implementing ABM tactics:
Scale the sales approach to all stakeholders in target accounts;
Customize or personalize the delivery of content and experiences to different contacts within an account;
Manage and coordinate strategies between marketing, sales and business development areas;
Adoption of Account Based metrics;
Qualified and highly reliable list of target accounts.
The model requires strategic alignment between the areas of marketing, sales and solutions/products, detailed account planning and mapping, technology and a multi-channel strategy supported by branded content.
That’s right, high-value content focused on buyers’ pain points and needs is a success accelerator.
A strategic framework for Account Based
The implementation of the ABM concept can be carried out through a strategic framework that includes a very detailed step-by-step process, which includes everything from defining target accounts and possible clusters to validating success metrics.