Does your business need a strategy shift? Let’s find out.
Determining whether account-based marketing & sales is right for your organisation.
With the sheer amount of content and campaigns taking up today’s marketing space, people are craving a more personalised, memorable approach that will stand out among the noise.
According to the 2017 State of Engagement Report by Marketo, “Sixty-six percent of B2B consumers surveyed said they want to advocate for the brands or vendors that demonstrate they care about them personally.”
Buyers are more likely to pay attention to content that’s geared specifically toward them, relevant to their business, and appropriate to the applicable stage of their buyer journey.
Account-based marketing and sales (ABM&S) is considered a key way of doing this, and is a strategy that focuses on customer experience over and above everything else, while requiring sales and marketing teams to work together towards identifying exactly who you’re looking for.
“Account-based marketing focuses on a few large and important accounts or those potential accounts that hold the greatest promise of adding to your bottom line,” says Elyse Flynn Meyer, President and founder of Prism Global Marketing Solutions.
But is it effective?
There’s no denying that ABM&S has proven success, with cloud-based data warehouse Snowflake growing by over 300% and increasing click-through rates by 150% – raising $500 million in just 15 months. And that’s just one of many examples.
More than 40 percent of companies currently utilising ABM&S plan to grow their future efforts in the coming years by further using the strategy, which provides thorough data surrounding engagement and resources.
93% of B2B marketers worldwide consider ABM&S extremely or very important to their overall marketing efforts, according to the Forrester SiriusDecisions 2018 Account-Based Marketing: The Complete Business Requirements Guide.
Traditional demand generation and ABM&S strategies both have their appeal, but by adopting elements of ABM&S to your revenue plan, you will begin to see faster rewards.
Should your business implement ABM&S?
Although organisations of all sizes can implement ABM&S, it’s important to determine whether it’s right for your business before you decide to move to an account-centred approach.
In order to determine whether or not ABM&S is best suited to you and your unique company goals, you need to answer the following questions:
- Does your sales cycle involve a research/evaluation phase due to the cost or level of commitment required from the buyer, often with multiple stakeholders?
- Do your sales and marketing teams want to make a bigger impact using a more strategic focus?
- Do your existing buyers (who generate the most revenue) have distinct characteristics?
- Have you identified certain accounts with the potential to generate more revenue with similar distinct characteristics?
- Have you identified organisations with needs that your solution clearly addresses?
- Do your unique company goals include expanding into a new segment, territory, or vertical, or alternatively going after your competitor’s customers?
- Does your company offer several products or services, and have set goals to grow buyer lifetime value through upsell and cross-selling?
If any of those questions piqued your interest or had you thinking “Yes!”, then you’ll want to hear what’s next.
Determining whether your business is ready.
ABM&S has been compared to learning a new strategic language, with both marketing and sales teams having to adopt new ways of thinking and a unique approach than what they may be used to.
By strategically pinpointing your efforts, you can spend fewer resources on buyers or market segments with less potential. And because ABM&S requires organisational buy-in from the beginning, sales and marketing must agree to work toward the same goals.
Although ABM&S is not a new way to market to target accounts, it’s now a scalable, achievable strategy. Organisations of all sizes can implement ABM&S to engage key accounts throughout the buyer journey. By understanding how key personas influence decisions in these accounts and speaking directly to them, you can accelerate close-win.
With this new strategy on the rise, it’s important to know exactly what changes need to be made within your company to get it right the first time, every time.
Marketers should make the following shifts:
- Lead-centred approach → Account-based approach
- Reactive engagement → Proactive engagement
- Random individuals → Specific personas and buying groups
Sales should make the following shifts:
- Manual processes → Technology and automation
- Sales-only data → Combined sales and marketing data
- Working independently → Collaborating with marketing teams
The long-term objective of B2B account-based marketing is to help teams with revenue growth at every stage of the funnel – awareness, building pipeline, pipeline acceleration, retention, and expansion.
The more success a marketing, sales, or CS team has with ABM&S, the more account-based marketing adoption they’ll see across the entire organisation. In fact, some companies today even hire an account-based marketing manager to ensure success and adoption.
Companies will need to find the right balance between both demand generation tactics and ABM&S strategy to make the most of their revenue potential.
Are you ready to take a giant leap forward with your marketing?
If you’re ready to build your dream marketing team, and take a giant leap forward in the way you market and scale your business, then please get in touch for an informal chat on how we can help you achieve your aspirations for your business.