Top 10 Benefits of Account Based Marketing (ABM)
What are the benefits of account-based marketing?
If you aren't still convinced about account-based marketing, a marketing strategy that concentrates marketing resources on a set of handpicked target accounts using personalized marketing campaigns, here's a primer for you.
A 2023 survey by Sales Insights Lab found that 61% of sales reps believe selling is more difficult now than it was ten years ago. Sales teams now have to work doubly hard to close a deal.
The challenge? Well, according to HubSpot's 2024 State of Sales Report:
- Lack of high-quality leads
- Longer deal cycles
- Getting in direct contact with decision-makers, and more.
ABM solves these challenges and more for B2B revenue teams. Here are 10 reasons why you should jump on the account-based marketing trend today.
10 ABM Benefits that Drive Sustainable B2B Growth
Sustainable growth in B2B means prioritizing customer acquisition and retention. You can achieve this with the benefits you get from using the right type of ABM strategy. I’ve outlined ten of these benefits below:
ABM Benefit #1: Accelerates Your Sales Cycles
The B2B sales cycle can be quite lengthy. In typical scenarios, it can take at least four months to close a deal. This happens for a variety of reasons:
- The number of stakeholders involved.
- Company and product complexity.
- Key decision-makers revisit their decisions based on new information, triggering a reassessment of purchase decisions.
- Evolving buyer behaviors.
With ABM, sales cycles are 40% shorter. Here's how:
- Zeroing in on the most qualified leads, which in turn makes it easier to move them along the sales funnel quicker.
- Communicating product offers and benefits based on where customers are in the buyer’s journey. The better buyers understand product applications and benefits, the quicker they convert.
- Anticipating potential objections and effectively addressing those concerns enables those identified in your target account marketing approach to move through the sales funnel much more quickly.
- Focusing less on direct selling and more on building stronger relationships which inspires trust and quickens key stakeholders’ decision-making.
ABM Benefit #2: Improves Your Resource Utilization
With traditional marketing, B2B companies target a broad range of prospects. This spray-and-pray approach to marketing consumes significant resources, and companies have no way of recouping the resources spent on prospects who end up not converting.
The ABM approach ensures you only pursue prospects with a higher chance of converting and directs resources accordingly throughout the buyer journey.
ABM does this by:
- Using intent data and other insights gleaned through account-based marketing analytics to target only the most promising and qualified leads. This reduces the chances of committing resources to reach buyers whose needs don’t align with your company’s solution.
- Ensuring that your company puts resources into producing only content that is relevant to your target audience.
- Recognizing and utilizing available cross-sell/upsell opportunities. This reduces the need to put resources into awareness campaigns and advertising.
ABM Benefit #3: Personalizes Your Marketing Programs
ABM helps you personalize your marketing efforts. Prospects are more likely to convert when messaging and engagements are tailored to speak to their specific context, needs, and pain points.
On a webinar by Exclaimer, Justin Keller, Vice President of Revenue Marketing at Drift, said: “We put our humans out front and center as part of our ABM strategy.”
“For example, when people from target accounts arrive at a landing page, the platform recognizes them and delivers the content that’s been tailored for that account, including serving up a video featuring the salesperson who’s responsible for that account, speaking directly by name to the target customer.”
The result of this personalized approach? 50% conversion rate from target account to opportunity. But how does ABM drive personalization? By:
- Driving the development of the ideal customer profile through an in-depth understanding of a potential buyer’s needs, challenges, industry of operation, and potential opportunities.
- Determining the best approach to engage existing key accounts and create marketing campaigns through the analysis of customer data.
- Use personalized ABM landing pages to align messaging and content to customer needs and pain points.
Combined, these built-in ABM protocols make your prospects feel your company deeply understands them and their needs.
ABM Benefit #4: Focuses Your Approach to Customer Targeting
ABM emphasizes customer targeting and empowers businesses to target the right high-value accounts in the right way, at the right time, and in the right place.
For this, ABM employs effective tactics such as:
- Using data to identify the most qualified leads.
- Segmenting existing accounts to identify patterns and shared characteristics. This is then used to create parallel audiences to target and acquire.
- Identifying decision-makers associated with target accounts by considering specific details such as job title, tenure, level of influence, and experience with the seller’s category.
- Using specialized ABM software to implement a scoring system that considers intent, ICP, engagement readiness, and engagement history to prioritize target accounts.
All these help refine targeting, increasing the chances of acquiring new customers.
Take Treasure Data, for example. The company wanted to target thousands of qualified accounts with highly personalized ads. With an ABM strategy, they were able to monitor these accounts for certain sales triggers, automate sales alerts, and execute aligned sales and marketing activities to win them. This led to Treasure Data’s ads performing 4X better than the industry average.
ABM Benefit #5: Improves Your Customer and Target Account Relationships
In the world of B2B selling, relationships are everything. And ABM helps businesses nurture and build relationships with existing customers and target accounts. But how? By:
- Demonstrating a deep level of understanding of customer context, needs, and challenges in sales and marketing outreach.
- Delivering hyper-personalized engagement and customized experiences throughout the buyer journey.
- Building trust and connections with account decision-makers based on shared understanding, benefits, values, and expectations.
- Providing account support through trusted and competent key account managers. These account managers act as direct contacts and trusted advisors, making customers feel more like valued partners instead of random buyers or leads.
- Using CRM to collect data and carry out relationship mapping to identify openings, address unmet needs, and enhance the value proposition.
- Prioritizing longevity and incentives to sustain it. Incentives can range from meaningful rewards and thank-you notes to workshops and marketing webinars to help solve specific customer problems.
Keep in mind, 86% of B2B purchasing decisions are based on word-of-mouth from peers. And referrals close faster and have a higher lifetime value, with 37% more likely to stay than other customers.
ABM Benefit #6: Aligns Your Marketing and Sales Teams
Marketing and sales alignment is one of the most compelling arguments for the implementation of an ABM program. When this happens, both teams are able to work toward common goals.
In the words of Danilo Nikolich, Vice President of Sales at RollWorks, your marketing team provides air cover and targeted programs as you (the sales team) are going outbound to target accounts.
ABM aligns sales and marketing by:
- Establishing shared goals and KPIs that allow sales and marketing to unify their ABM efforts in identifying, engaging, and converting specific accounts.
- Encouraging the sharing of valuable information that helps both teams qualify and prioritize prospects.
- Facilitating a collaborative approach to creating a content strategy so that the right content reaches the right customers at the right place.
- Ensuring a holistic view of performance for shared accountability.
Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment are 67% better at closing deals and achieve 20% annual revenue growth on average.
ABM Benefit #7: Improves Chances of Hitting ROI Targets
Revenue is the lifeblood of any business. With ABM, you are able to run a campaign that targets high-value accounts with personalized and persuasive messaging. Your buying committee and decision makers feel understood and are more likely to convert and refer their peers.
With ABM, 79% of active adopters have been successfully generating ROI. 87% of companies also say that it delivers higher ROI than all other types of marketing.
Moreover, ABM affords companies a great deal of visibility. They get to see exactly what they’re getting back from their investment on each account. This gives them the flexibility to adjust their budgets and determine which accounts deserve more resources and effort.
ABM Benefit #8: Improves Your Understanding of Your Target Market
Precise targeting and personalization are core aspects of any ABM program. And for that to be effective, ABM requires companies to research and analyze their target market, collecting data such as:
- Industry and market trends
- Pain points, needs, and challenges.
- Goals, aspirations, preferences, and motivations.
- Buyer behaviors.
- Company size, structure, and revenue.
The more insights companies have into their target market, the better their understanding of it is.
This understanding enables them to create content and curate personalized experiences to address their target market's pain points and needs. ABM personalization can lead to a 20% increase in user engagement and a 1.4x revenue growth.
ABM Benefit #9: Improves Your Decision Making
Across most buying committees, the decision-making process can be a lengthy one due to the amount of cooks stirring the pot. ABM enables you speed it up.
By establishing and nurturing relationships with the key decision-makers you've identified within a target company, you create a direct line of communication that speeds up the decision-making process.
The key to making this happen lies in precise targeting and personalization – the core aspects of any effective ABM program. These tactics help you guide your prospect through the buyer's journey and keep them engaged every step of the way.
ABM Benefit #10: Improves Your Cost Efficiency Ratio
By focusing your efforts on the accounts that matter most to your business, ABM enables you to achieve a level of cost efficiency that traditional marketing strategies simply can't match.
Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, you can zero in on the specific companies or organizations that are most likely to become valuable customers. This not only saves you time and resources but also ensures that your marketing dollars are being spent where they'll have the greatest impact.
You end up with a improved cost efficiency ratio and a better return on your marketing budget. Your CFO will love you.
Ignite Sustainable Business Growth with ABM
There aren’t many B2B organizations without an ABM program. Many without one are either thinking about it or planning to implement it. As I’ve highlighted above, ABM is effective in many areas of B2B marketing and selling and capable of driving sustainable growth for B2B companies.
Looking to implement an ABM program? Check out these 5 ABM common mistakes and how to avoid them. You can also subscribe to The CMO newsletter to receive more in-depth marketing tips and resources.
