You get what you ask for
Have you ever received a disappointing gift? I remember one Christmas my grandmother got me Strawberry Shortcake pillowcases (that was a cartoon in the 80s). I loathed Strawberry Shortcake and her stupid friend Blueberry Muffin; not to mention, what kid wants pillowcases for Christmas?
Nowadays, when a gift giving occasion approaches, I leave nothing to chance. For my birthday, I not only told my husband that I wanted a super zoom camera, I sent him a link to the one I wanted and found him a sale price. Sure, some may say this takes the surprise out of gift giving, but the results are indisputable: I get what I want.
What if marketing was like this?
Marketing is kind of a crapshoot. We spend lots of time and money trying to get our message out to as wide of an audience as possible, and hope that we give them something they like.
Then we guide and nurture these random strangers through the sales funnel to filter down to the precious few who eventually become sales. And these new clients? They may not be ideal, but we take them, because what choice do we have?
What if we skipped all that? What if we just marketed directly to our dream clients? What if, instead of a funnel, marketing was a straight line?
That’s the idea behind Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and if you’re a B2B marketer seeking customers in specific verticals or a few large, enterprise-level customers, this might be the winning approach that finally gets you the praise and recognition you so richly deserve.
Makin’ a list, checkin’ it twice
To start, you need to meet with your stakeholders, executive team, sales and marketing folks and compile a wish list – a small one, that’s the point – of the accounts you’d kill for. Maybe they’re the accounts with big money, big brand names, accounts in specific territories or the accounts you want to steal from your competitors.
Whoever they are--go get ‘em!
Doesn’t that sound nice?
With ABM, you know exactly who you are marketing to – not just the organizations but specific people within those organizations. So you know what they are interested in. You can provide them with very personalized content which drives engagement.
Because of this super targeted approach, the ROI on ABM is huge. A recent survey reported that “ABM delivers the highest return on investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic.”
ABM also:
- Reduces wasteful spending marketing to people who are not ideal customers
- Provides crystal clear analytics since you’re tracking a smaller dataset
- Aligns your sales and marketing teams with a single strategic goal
- Makes employees happier and more successful since they are working to get and keep the clients they want
If you want it, come and get it
So you may be wondering how to build an ABM strategy and implement it? How does ABM play out in real life? What does an ABM campaign actually look like? How can I lose weight, get rich and learn to play the electric guitar?
These are excellent questions, my friends, but that would be a very long blog post. Fortunately, Marketo has done some of the work for me by creating this helpful guide called “A Recipe for Lean Account-Based Marketing.”
That’ll help you with the ABM questions anyway.
And if you need help with anything else, we’re here for you, bro. Whether you are interested in implementing an ABM approach, or want to ramp up your current demand generation strategy, we’d love to help fill your sales funnel with some sweet leads. Let’s talk.
Diane Callihan
With more than 20 years of experience writing for some of the country’s top brands, Diane helped to shape Roger West’s content strategy, lead generation, and PR efforts as Director of Marketing. She currently serves as President of Callihan Content Creation.