What Is Account-Based Marketing—And Where Is It Headed In 2023 & Beyond?
Are you tired of casting a wide net in your marketing efforts only to catch irrelevant leads? If you’re nodding your head in agreement, it could be time to shift your approach to account-based marketing.
But what exactly is account-based marketing (ABM), and how can you use it effectively in 2023?
In this article, I’ll explain what ABM is, the benefits of using it, and the three different types of ABM. I’ll also look at what’s in store for ABM in 2023, and offer some advice and best practices based on my own experience.
Table of Contents
- What Is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
- What Is The ABM Framework?
- Why Is ABM Important?
- What Are The Types Of Account-Based Marketing?
- What’s In Store For ABM In 2023?
- How Do You Succeed At ABM In 2023?
- Did I Answer All Your ABM Questions?
What Is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing tactic. It involves targeting specific businesses that match your ideal customer base rather than trying to attract a broader market (like you would with traditional marketing).
The goal is to build stronger, more personalized relationships with higher-value customers. You won’t target as many people, but you’ll generate more quality leads. This means you’re more likely to boost engagement, improve your customer loyalty, and (hopefully) achieve more sales. For an in-depth look at ABM in action, check out this list of account-based marketing examples.
What Is The ABM Framework?
The ABM framework typically involves the following steps:
- Account selection: First, you identify your high-value prospects to create a target account list. To do this, your sales and marketing teams work together to define what your ideal customer looks like and how you’ll select the high-value customers. For example, your ideal customers might be small businesses in the marketing industry, but the high-value customers are companies that have seen at least 50% growth in the last six months. These are the companies that you’ll target with ABM.
- Account research: After figuring out your selection criteria, you’ll gather insights and data about your target accounts. This includes researching things like their business goals, their pain points, and their decision-making processes. All of this information will help you deliver a personalized and targeted approach to your marketing activity. For example, if you understand the challenges your target audience faces, you can create marketing communications that position your product or service as the solution.
- Account planning: Now that you know who you’re trying to target and what they want, you can create a customized marketing plan for each account. This involves outlining all your messaging, content, and channels based on the specific needs of each prospect. You’ll also define your measures for success so you can review progress and track results.
- Execution: At this stage, you’re ready to roll out your marketing plan and start communicating with your high-value prospects. Exactly how you do this will vary depending on the account-based marketing tactics in your plan, and the process might look different for every account. You might send a personalized email to one of your prospects, or you might reach out to them directly on the phone. Ultimately, you’ll decide which methods of communication are right for each high-value account.
- Measurement and optimization: Next, you’ll measure the effectiveness of your ABM activities. You set your metrics during the planning stage (which often includes measurements such as engagement, pipeline acceleration, and revenue growth). You’ll review these metrics in line with performance to identify what went well and what can be improved in the future.
Why Is ABM Important?
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons ABM can be a beneficial way to approach your marketing efforts.
Offer A Personalized Approach
Did you know that 71% of consumers expect personalization and 76% get frustrated when they don’t get it?
This means that if you’re not personalizing your marketing activity, you risk damaging the customer experience.
Fortunately, ABM puts personalization front and center of your marketing activity.
Unlike traditional marketing, ABM involves creating highly-targeted campaigns for specific prospects. In other words, all of your communication and activity is tailored to the specific needs and interests of individual customers.
As a result, you can create a more personalized experience for your prospects—which also means they’re more likely to make a purchase and spend more money. It’s a win-win.
Boost Customer Engagement
By focusing on individual accounts and delivering tailored messaging and content, ABM can increase your engagement rates.
Think of it like this—you’re targeting customers that are more likely to fit your ideal customer profile, and you’re using personalized messaging to reach them. Combine these two elements together, and you’re far more likely to encourage potential customers to engage and convert.
Put yourself in their shoes for a second. Imagine that you’re searching for a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. After searching for a while, you don’t find anything that suits your needs.
Next thing you know, you receive an email from a company that offers this product. They show you how their product can solve your challenges, and show you that they’re invested in providing you with the best possible solution.
Chances are, you’ll engage with that company—even if it’s just to find out more about what they do.
Align Marketing And Sales Teams
ABM involves sales and marketing teams working together to identify and attract high-value prospects.
But what exactly is the benefit of aligning your sales and marketing teams?
Well, there are quite a few. When done well, aligning these teams can shorten your sales cycle, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase your conversions.
Consider this—when the two teams work together, they’re working towards the same goal. This means that they align their activities and processes to reach that goal, which helps them work more efficiently.
Improve Resource Allocation
When it comes to resource allocation, ABM gives you perspective. It helps you prioritize prospects that are more likely to generate revenue, and allocate your resources accordingly.
For example, instead of spreading your resources across a wide pool of prospects, you can focus on a smaller, high-quality group of prospects. As a result, you can spend more time and money focusing on the customers that are more likely to convert.
This means you’ll optimize your marketing spend, reduce waste, and dedicate more time to key accounts.
Increase Your Return-On-Investment (ROI)
When done well, ABM can help you boost your ROI.
Think about it. ABM relies on data-driven intelligence to identify the most promising accounts. Then, you tailor your messaging and approach to their specific needs and preferences.
You might spend more time and money on those prospects, but you’re targeting customers you know are right for your business. This means that your targeting efforts become much more refined and your chances of conversion are much higher.
In fact, this study from Bombero shows how a higher ABM budget can improve your targeting efforts.
ABM also means you’re targeting high-value accounts. Most businesses will even have a minimum deal-size before qualifying a prospect for an account-based marketing strategy.
By targeting prospects that are more likely to make a bigger purchase, your chance of getting a better ROI is undoubtedly higher.
Of course, this only applies if your ABM tactics are successful and you’re targeting the right prospects. I’ll talk you through my best practices for successful ABM later, so stick around.
What Are The Types Of Account-Based Marketing?
There are three types of ABM:
- Strategic ABM (one-to-one)
- ABM lite (one-to-few)
- Programmatic ABM (one-to-many)
Let’s look at these in more detail.
Strategic Account-Based Marketing
Strategic ABM is what I’ve been describing so far. It’s the most detailed and personalized version of ABM and involves targeting a limited number of high-value accounts (often no more than 10 at a single time).
You’ll create a marketing plan for each prospect, tailoring your marketing activity to their specific needs, interests, and preferences. The goal is to establish long-term relationships which encourages them to make a purchase.
Because of the hyper-targeted approach, strategic ABM is typically used by companies that have the time and money to invest in these relationships. Often, they will also put effort into ABX (account-based experience).
If you’re short on time and limited with finances, strategic ABM may not be the best option—but there are other options available, which leads us nicely to ABM lite.
Account-Based Marketing Lite Activities
ABM lite is a simplified and scaled-down version of strategic ABM, making it an ideal choice if you don’t have the time to invest in a one-to-one approach. It targets a slightly broader group of key accounts (usually somewhere between 10 and 500), but still focuses on creating customized marketing campaigns.
Instead of customizing campaigns based on the needs of each prospect, ABM lite personalizes activity based on attributes that apply to multiple prospects.
For example, you group certain prospects based on their industry, company size, and business needs. Then, you use these attributes to personalize their experience.
In other words, it’s a little more generic than strategic ABM, but it still personalizes the customer experience.
Programmatic Account-Based Marketing
Programmatic ABM is known as the one-to-many approach. It uses data and technology to target a larger group of accounts (often in the thousands).
To target these accounts, you’ll use CRM software or marketing automation tools (more on this later) to categorize prospects with similar characteristics.
These characteristics could be their industry, demographics, area of expertise, or size. Then, you’ll create personalized, relevant content to target them based on these similarities.
Programmatic ABM is the most scalable and automated form of account-based marketing. It uses personalization, but doesn’t require as much time and financial investment as other types of ABM. For this reason, it’s a useful tactic for smaller companies with a limited budget.
What’s In Store For ABM In 2023?
I’ve been following industry trends and insights for the past few years while using ABM. Here’s my take on what to look out for in 2023 and beyond.
An Increased Adoption Of ABM
The global ABM market is predicted to reach $2.1 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 13%.
It’s safe to say that ABM is growing in popularity.
Coupled with the fact that businesses are focusing more on improving the customer experience, chances are we’ll see an increased adoption of ABM over the next few years.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, it means that more of your competitors may start using ABM to attract and acquire large customers. This can influence the marketplace, which can have a knock-on effect on your business.
Let’s say that a new competitor enters your marketplace. Before long, they become the market leader by converting lots of high-value clients.
This means that your position in the marketplace changes. As a result, you might have to rethink your strategy to gain more of the market share and reposition yourself in the marketplace.
More Integration Of Technology
There’s a constant development of tools for ABM activities. Platforms are helping you with account identification, customer targeting, segmentation, and personalization, so it’s likely that we’ll see more businesses using this technology to manage their ABM activity.
Plus, a study from Stirista found that 70% of B2B digital marketing leaders plan to invest in ABM technology in 2023.
But what sort of technology am I talking about here?
The answer is mostly AI and machine learning tools.
AI is developing quickly (more on this later), so it’s hard to see a future for ABM where AI tools don’t play a part. Depending on the account-based marketing software you use, current AI platforms can help you gather marketing account intelligence, analyze customer data, streamline the sales process, and even deliver personalized content at scale.
As the developments keep on coming, I’m sure we’ll see more marketers adopting AI technology to improve their ABM activities.
More Focus On The Customer Experience
ABM already puts a pretty big focus on improving the customer experience. You identify exactly what your high-value prospects want, and make sure that your marketing efforts reflect their needs. Because of this, you’re constantly thinking about their experience and how to improve it.
But studies are showing that 2023 and beyond will place even more focus on enhancing the customer experience.
According to Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2022, B2B marketing decision-makers said that “addressing changing buying behaviors” and “understanding buyer preferences” are their top areas of focus in 2023.
When it comes to ABM, this likely means that there’ll be a greater emphasis on delivering a seamless and personalized experience at every stage of the customer journey.
As a result, marketers will need to work even closer with sales and customer success teams to ensure that their ABM efforts achieve the best possible results.
Emphasis On Data Privacy And Security
There have been new privacy and data protection laws coming into force over the last few years, including the American Data and Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA).
Consumers are also showing that they care more about data privacy, too. More research from Forrester found people want to regulate the information they share with companies to protect their data.
With increased scrutiny on data privacy and security, you’ll need to ensure that their ABM efforts comply with relevant regulations and ethical standards. This means understanding which regulations apply to your business, and how to comply with them.
This means using more rigorous data governance policies, providing greater transparency around data usage, and increasing your cybersecurity measures.
How Do You Succeed At ABM In 2023?
Now that we have a better idea of what’s in store for 2023, I’m going to run you through some best practices for using ABM in your own business.
Use The Right Tools For The ABM Process
To make the most out of your ABM efforts, you need the right marketing tools in place.
When I say ‘the right marketing tools,’ I mean platforms that have all the features you need to effectively manage the ABM process.
But advances in technology and AI mean that there are endless amounts of tools out there to choose from. So how do you know which platforms to use?
Think about MarTech stack examples with an ABM focus. To help you narrow down your search, here are the features I suggest looking out for in your ABM tools:
- Automation: Automation is a key feature of an effective ABM tool. Why? Because it helps you personalize the customer experience, keeps you in regular contact with prospects, and saves you time. Let’s use email marketing as an example. You have an email list of high-value clients that you want to reach out to. With automation, you can send a series of ready-made, personalized emails to clients. This includes follow-up emails after the initial contact, which can help you boost engagement and nurture leads through the buying journey. Take a look at this roundup of the 10 Best Marketing Automation Software in 2023 to see what automation platforms are out there, or find out more about marketing automation in this article: Where And How To Use Digital Marketing Automation Effectively.
- Collaboration: With ABM, sales and marketing teams need to work together to identify and nurture high-value prospects. For this reason, it’s helpful to use tools that enable collaboration. That way, everyone can stay up to date with the latest updates and work together to build relationships with potential customers. Examples of collaborative features include being able to share updates, adding comments to tasks, and having a central location for all team members to see how relationships are progressing with each lead.
- Data reporting and insights: To continually improve your ABM efforts, you need access to data. This is where features like reporting and insights can help. With easy access to this data, you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and inform your future decisions. So keep an eye out for tools that allow you to track key metrics and performance. It could be with dashboards, email marketing reports, marketing account intelligence, or live customer-engagement data. With these features, you’ll be in a much better position to continually improve your ABM.
Keep Up To Date With AI Developments In Marketing
To make sure you’re using the most efficient tools and practices in your ABM strategy, be sure to keep up to date with the latest developments in marketing technology—particularly AI.
AI technology is improving rapidly (take a look at ChatGPT as an example), and you don’t want to miss any developments that could impact the success of your marketing activity.
Simply put, by keeping on top of developments and trends with AI technology, you’ll make sure you’re using the best possible tools for the job.
Here are some of the ways I keep up to date with AI developments in marketing:
- Subscribe to industry publications: Subscribing to industry publications are a great way to keep yourself up to date with new advancements without spending hours trawling through articles and reports. Instead, you can simply sign up to a newsletter (such as the CMO newsletter) and read the key information when it hits your inbox. It saves you time and provides you with instant access to the latest trends and developments.
- Follow industry experts on social media: Thought leaders and experts in the marketing industry will often have something to say about new technologies and updates in the sector. To stay up to date with what they’re talking about, follow them on social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Medium. And not only will following them notify you of any new software, but you also might get some insight into their thoughts on its usability, key features, and when to use it.
- Experiment and learn about new platforms: There’s only so much you can learn from reading and digesting information about AI technology. In my experience, it also helps to experiment with different AI tools and technologies and gain firsthand experience. By doing this, you’ll learn more about the tools and how they can benefit your marketing efforts.
Elevate Your Personalization
I’ve already talked about personalization and ABM in 2023. Now, I’m going to show how to elevate your personalization to provide high-value prospects with the best possible experience.
Take a look at some of my tips for personalizing your ABM activity:
- Research your high-value prospects in as much detail as possible. To provide prospects with a good experience, you need to know as much about them as possible. That way, you can create a unique and personalized marketing campaign that speaks to them directly. There are a lot of different ways you can research your prospects, and it helps to use different methods to get a well-rounded picture. You can use online resources (such as social media and company websites) to learn more about the companies. You can also research trends in their industry, updates to their products or services, and find any mentions of them in recent news.
- Create content that speaks to every need. If you really want your prospects to feel understood, you need to know what they’re looking for and what challenges they face. This means understanding all their pain points in detail, and creating content that addresses those pain points. For example, let’s say that you’re running a marketing agency. One of your high-value prospects is struggling to attract the right customers. By knowing this information, you can create content that shows your prospect how your services can help them overcome this challenge. As a result, they’re more likely to engage with you and potentially use your services.
- Be willing to change and adapt. Over time, customers need change. They want different things, and they expect you to keep up. This means that your personalization efforts require constant monitoring and updating. Exactly how you do this will vary depending on what type of content you’re personalizing and who you’re trying to target. However, some common ways to see if your personalization is effective involve tracking engagement rates, analyzing conversion rates, and gathering feedback from previous customers.
Did I Answer All Your ABM Questions?
I’ve summed up the ins and outs of ABM and outlined my best practices for performing ABM in your own business. But the truth is, the process is unique for every business.
If you want more insights into ABM and other marketing tactics and strategies, head over to the CMO email newsletter. It’s free to sign up and you’ll get the latest insights from marketing’s top thought leaders directly into your inbox.