Fostering greater collaboration in the workplace is now firmly on the agenda for many businesses. In recent years, the language used by many boards and directors has evolved to include terms like ‘collaborative websites’, ‘collaborative learning’ and even ‘the collaborative economy’, all of which have a vital role to play in how a company presents itself to customers.
One example of this is ‘Account Based Marketing’ (ABM), a term coined in 2004 by ITSMA, a US-based research and consulting company, to describe a “collaborative approach that engages sales, marketing, delivery and key executives to achieve the client’s business goals”. Before this, businesses traditionally encouraged only limited cooperation between departments and sought to spread the net as widely as possible in order to try to generate new business opportunities. However, in recent years, ABM has represented a disruptive and more efficient approach to marketing strategies.
So how does it work?
ABM treats each account as an individual market and thus involves the development of highly personalised communications and highly customised products or services. By bringing multiple functions together to focus on a specific target and, most importantly, by aligning the sales and marketing teams, ABM allows companies to better attract and retain the highest value clients. According to data released by the Alterra Group, 97% of marketers say that ABM delivers a higher ROI than other marketing methods.
Disrupting existing methods and mind-sets is not always easy, however. Firms must be willing to go the extra mile to make the changes that are necessary to achieve their clients’ business goals. As such, businesses will need to have a number of key strategies in place to ensure the success of ABM.
The targeted approach
In order to implement a successful ABM strategy, businesses must ensure they are able to target their prospective accounts with greater accuracy. This is essential, as targeting the right accounts will greatly increase the chances of making a sale and generating maximum revenue.
Hyper-personalised marketing generates higher revenues by focusing on high-yield prospects and ensuring account retention by building stronger relationships with key decision-makers. Conducting effective research to analyse your potential client’s history in terms of revenue, margins and profitability will allow you to make up-to-date decisions based on current information, so that you can nurture and guide these targeted accounts. In addition, gathering intelligence to support your business development plans can be the key to helping you win new clients and enter new markets.
Ultimately, firms need to align their sales and marketing activity to enable greater collaboration and efficiency. ABM can help to achieve this goal by bringing sales and marketing closer together, which can increase productivity and creativity, leading to higher levels of motivation and better results within your workforce.
Know your accounts
Conducting extensive preliminary research in order to gain business insight is vital for the successful implementation of ABM. Understanding your accounts, establishing their true value, and knowing where the greatest sales opportunities lie will allow you to target those that will generate the highest ROI. Research is an unparalleled enabler when it comes to understanding your accounts, as it provides objective and accurate insights. As the economy expands and more business opportunities emerge, having a productive and efficient business research model will therefore be an essential tool in gaining a competitive advantage.
Of course, keeping track of what has worked – and what has not – is also vital. By carefully measuring your marketing activities and examining the results, you will begin to gain a much better understanding of where to focus your subsequent actions.
Furthermore, in order for the content to be relevant, you will need to develop a marketing plan that is specific to the client. Knowing the best moment to post a blog, an e-book, or video and understanding the most effective way to distribute them to your target market is key. After all, getting the right content to the right place is essential for marketers. Social media platforms, for example, can often allow you to share content, reach greater audiences and therefore engage with prospects more easily.
Deploying your ABM strategy
There is no right or wrong way to implement an ABM strategy. However, your strategy needs to reflect the way in which your business and clients operate. ABM is based on ‘knowing your client’, so firms that fail react to changes in the business environment and allow their marketing content to stagnate will miss the mark and could lose potential clients.
The sales pitch needs to be as unique as possible and based on current best practice to enhance your chances of getting a meeting with your prospective client. Obtaining high-quality insights on customers and prospects through research is therefore vital for firms in order to tailor their pitch. In addition, obtaining a face-to-face meeting is essential when implementing ABM, as it will allow you to sell your highly personalised content and pitch to your prospect in a more effective way than through webinars and white papers.
Utilising your network of connections and fostering new business relationships could arguably be one of the most important aspects of ABM. Pitching becomes a lot easier if an employee has a connection to someone within one of the key accounts. Using these relationships and making sure that the company’s decision makers remain continually updated and engaged will also be very helpful.
Many organisations are currently re-thinking the way that they are doing business and looking to adopt more collaborative approaches. The exponential growth of ABM is already helping many firms to change tack and approach their marketing strategies in a completely different manner. If you have not yet investigated this model for your business, you may be missing out on significant benefits for your business.
By Manoj Madhusudanan, Managing Director of InsightBee.
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