To provide you with the background, account-based marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating personalized communications targeted at high-value accounts. For instance, you are a B2B cloud-service provider seeking to sell your services with an established firm that has not switched to the cloud yet. You would want to use an ABM strategy to pitch to them. Your first step would be to narrow down the top decision-makers within the firm. The next step would be to initiate personalized communication with them.  

While account-based marketing is not something new, it has come back to the limelight in recent times. One of the key reasons for this is the personalized approach that current-day customers seek. The strategy uses data and automation to make sure that the communication is highly relevant to the target audience.

From optimizing the marketing and sales to making the marketing funnel more efficient, account-based marketing brings in a lot of benefits, especially for B2B companies. In this article, we will be discussing the top 15 benefits of account-based marketing for B2B companies.

1. Team alignment

Account-based marketing mandates the Marketing and Sales teams to come together and work in collaboration to select the right set of target accounts. This collaboration between the teams plays a decisive role in determining the competitive advantage that the company derives from ABM. With this strategy, the teams become the focal point for identifying the most important accounts and who takes care of them. On the other hand, the marketing team works to engage with them in relevant, timely ways. This way, the teams become more efficient and productive.

2. Cost-effective

You have to invest more in drafting content for different sources and platforms with traditional marketing strategies. It is an expensive affair. On the other hand, ABM involves directing your marketing efforts to targeted accounts. Thus, you don’t have to invest in other accounts, and thus, the costs come significantly down. In addition to this, you can take the expenditure further down by using newer social media tools.

3. Decreased wastage

Another advantage here is that you don’t have to spend your time and resources on creating additional content. In ABM, you know you have a list of high-value accounts to target and their relevant information. With this, you can stop investing your resources in creating a basic sales pitch. Instead, you can go ahead and design targeted campaigns without any wastage or any deviation.

4. Data-driven

ABM is a highly data-driven strategy. This quality in itself comes with several benefits. The insights derived from data make the communication more reliable and relevant. The data also makes it possible to keep the communication personalized. Another benefit of being data-driven is that you can make more informed decisions about the client you are targeting.

5. Better customer acquisition

Personalized content is one of the most reliable ways to nurture key business prospects and leads. This is what ABM does. Additionally, it eliminates poor leads that don’t work for you. Thus, your focus is more on the prospects and putting them on the pedestal. Therefore, it improves customer acquisition.

6. Maximum use of marketing automation tools

ABM uses data and marketing automation tools to dish out the marketing content to the targeted audience. Current-day marketing automation tools such as HubSpot and Marketo are packed with a lot of efficiencies. They enable maximum personalization with minimal effort. They can integrate better visuals and dynamic functionalities, and efficient CTAs within the content. Thus, there is maximum use of marketing automation tools, leading to relevant messaging.

7. Faster way to close deals

If you consider the traditional sales processes, multiple people are involved in the closing rounds. This often slows down the process. However, with ABM, you already have some influence on the final decision-makers. This is because of the personalized content and lead nurturing efforts. Thus, it accelerates sales processes.

8. Higher ROI

ABM stresses targeted campaigns, and this cuts down a scattergun approach. Further, because the focus is on specific accounts, there is less wastage of resources. ABM leads to high-value opportunities and low investment, and higher returns. At the same time, because of the increased collaboration between Marketing and Sales teams, tracking ROI becomes easier.

9. Better reporting

The laser-focused approach of ABM means that the task of setting goals is narrow, and this further means that tracking KPIs is also narrow. Setting goals and analyzing what’s working and what is not is easier, and so is documenting the results.

10. Helps get closer to customers

Traditional marketing strategies usually use mass messaging for all their targets. This generalized communication is not welcome anymore. ABM focuses on using personalized messaging to interact with the target customers. Thus, marketers have the ability to understand and approach the target accounts better. This helps them get closer to the customers and interact in the way they prefer. This brings you closer to the customers and paves the path to customer loyalty.

11. Better customer engagement and retention

If you know anything about marketing, you would be familiar with the adage ‘Acquiring new customers costs more than retaining existing ones. We have also stated this in our previous writeups. One way to engage and retain customers is by using personalized content, and ABM stresses just that. With personalized content, you can earn the trust of your customers and build meaningful relationships with them.

12. Boosts conversion rates

Account-based marketing involves reaching out to high-value accounts (decision-makers) and pitching your product/ service to them. For this, both the marketing and sales teams come together to research the client, their wants and tastes, and the best times to get in touch with them. The research also involves the details on the platforms appropriate for them and the frequency with which you should extend your communication. Reaching out to prospects with such a well-planned strategy creates higher chances of conversions.

13. Increases contract value

Using ABM marketing methods increases deal sizes by emphasizing consumers who are most likely to succeed with your product or service. All the efforts are targeted towards people who are more likely to stay with you. Considering this, the contract value for ABM-targeted accounts improves by 40% for mid-market accounts. The contract value improves by 35% for corporate clients. Those figures can easily lead to massive growth for your company without spending extra money on acquisition.

14. Improves consistency

Interacting with the customers is very important for businesses to thrive, especially for B2Bs. On average, most businesses have different ways of interactions planned for different platforms. For instance, the communication drafted for Instagram is different from the message on LinkedIn. This creates inconsistency in the messaging.

ABM gives a consistent experience across all contact channels for each individual in a targeted account. You profit from account-based marketing because it keeps everyone’s goals aligned and moving forward.

15. Opportunity to become a marketing expert

Rather than gaining a broad grasp of the market, ABM requires you to get to know each of your target accounts on a more personal level. This means more study goes into the process, but you also gain competence in an area where most people only have a vague understanding. You naturally stand out when you approach each account as an in-depth study for a marketing strategy.

Wrapping up

Our final take is that account-based marketing (ABM) is just good marketing. Here, the target is a niche, the messaging is specific, and the goal is clear. So, there’s no reason it would fail unless you aren’t motivated enough. And for that, we have listed the top 15 benefits of account-based marketing. Taking these benefits into account, we would recommend you adopt them ASAP and reap the benefits. 

---