More Secrets to Successful Account-Based Marketing

As account-based marketing (ABM) gains more and more traction in B2B Marketing, marketers are still trying to learn and improve ways to put ABM to use in the most effective fashion.
At its core, ABM relies on the premise that focusing the bulk of your resources and efforts to a target set of accounts and the likeliest prospects will result in higher sales and marketing performance. Not coincidental to that is the fact that when both marketing and sales work off a common set of accounts to achieve higher alignment between sales and marketing teams thereby delivering higher revenue performance.
ABM has seen great results because it establishes familiarity with your brand and offerings through personalized communications before a sales representative ever picks up the phone. But that only works when your sales and marketing teams are working in sync.
But creating an account list and messaging to them – is that all there is to Account-Based Marketing?
Some recommend a “flip the funnel” approach, which means starting by zeroing in on a list of target accounts and then using hyper-targeted messaging to engage them across channels. However, this is dependent on the assumption “Build a List and they will come”, which is a faulty premise.
For ABM to be effective, marketers need to establish engagement with their prospects at the beginning of the consideration stage, when the account is starting to enter the market for their solutions. Long before a hand raise happens. Also, in recent years, the number of people involved in large technology purchases has increased; on an average from five to seven, according to an IDC Survey. That means that it is necessary to engage a lot more people per company than just the decision maker.
Marketers therefore need to engage with the right people at the right accounts at the right time. They need to focus their efforts on accounts that show Intent – clear signals that indeed show that there is interest in the topics related to your product. Without that, you are still working with a cold list of accounts (remember the days of cold calling?). Easier said than done, right? We’ll talk about specific strategies to achieving this objective in future blog posts.
For more secrets to success with ABM or to get started, please visit https://madisonlogic.tillerstaging.com/account-based-marketing/.