Account-Based Marketing: Targeting High-Value Accounts for Business Success

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a powerful tool used by 94% of b2b marketers worldwide. More than 97% of marketers agree that ABM brings a higher investment rate than other marketing strategies. Developing an effective ABM plan is a challenging task. To assist marketing teams, we have compiled a list of ten good account-based marketing tactics and several examples that can guide you in devising the best ABM strategy for your company. So, let’s dive in.

What Is Account-Based Marketing?

Let’s put first things first and begin with the definition of account-based marketing. 

Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a business-to-business marketing strategy focusing on a select target account group. Instead of generic marketing campaigns, ABM tailors its approach to each account’s needs. The goal is to create personalized campaigns that engage each target account and build strong, long-lasting relationships. ABM goes beyond traditional marketing methods to provide a more personal and effective approach to engaging with target accounts.

Account-Based Marketing Benefits 

As a marketing strategy, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has gained significant popularity in recent years due to its effectiveness in targeting key accounts and building long-term customer relationships. Here are the top six benefits of implementing account-based marketing strategies:

Personalization is a crucial element of ABM as it enables your team to tailor marketing touchpoints directly to key contacts in your target accounts. This approach makes prospects feel valued and understood, allowing you to deliver relevant and valuable content to them. This personalized marketing helps you empathize with your prospects, showcase your understanding of their problems, and provide solutions catering to their needs.

ABM is not just for prospects. It is also helpful for building and nurturing ongoing relationships with your customers. Establishing good relationships with contacts at key accounts builds trust and increases the likelihood that they will view you as an expert in your industry. Personalized marketing through ABM also gives you better insight into your customer’s behavior and needs, helping you build a more profound and lasting relationship.

One of the most significant benefits of ABM is that it aligns your marketing and sales teams. They can work together to develop targeting strategies based on the technologies used by the company and how much they are spending in your industry. This collaboration enables messaging consistency and a shared understanding of why targets were selected and how to engage with them.

ABM can start influencing decision-makers before they even talk to sales for the first time. By involving marketing in the sales funnel, prioritizing resources based on account scoring, and personalizing marketing through ABM, sales cycles can be significantly shortened. 

With specific goals set for each account, ABM makes it much easier to determine whether your initiatives paid off. This results in more straightforward and clearer results than traditional marketing campaigns. After identifying the results of your ABM campaign, you can easily calculate the ROI.

When done correctly, ABM enables a highly targeted marketing approach, leading to many positive ROI effects, including increased conversions, lower customer acquisition costs, faster sales growth, and more. 

Account-Based Marketing Tactics 

When implementing an account-based marketing strategy, there are various tactics that you can utilize to enhance your chances of success. Let’s discuss the most effective account-based marketing tactics that you can implement in your company’s digital marketing strategy.

• First and foremost, it’s important to align your sales and marketing teams. In traditional marketing, the marketing team focuses solely on generating leads, which are then handed off to the sales team to close the deal. However, with ABM, the marketing and sales teams work together throughout the entire process to identify, engage, and convert targeted customers. Therefore, for ABM success, your marketing and sales team must be in total alignment.
• Next, you need to analyze your customer data to identify high-potential targets through various characteristics, such as industry, activity, size, maturity level, and location. ABM is all about establishing a personal relationship with targeted customers, so you need to thoroughly analyze your customer data and data available from other sources to understand what specific customers need and expect. The only way to deliver a personalized experience is if you truly understand your customers.
• Personalization is key in ABM, so you need to tailor your content marketing to match each customer’s ideal profile. Whether you’re using emails, blogs, webinars, eBooks, white papers, or any other medium, you must personalize each customer’s content. Generalized content only works in account-based marketing; you need to drill down to the specific information your customers need.
• Providing valuable information is the most effective strategy to keep your potential accounts engaged in your sales pipeline. Often, people want to avoid hearing about how great your product is or why they should buy it. They simply need relevant information to help them make informed decisions. One effective strategy, borrowed from Calendly, is hosting virtual events for potential accounts. These events are designed to educate them about scheduling and appointments, helping to build brand awareness and establish Calendly as a thought leader in the industry. Calendly also sends email invitations to potential accounts, providing them with free access to their software. This helps to create one-on-one interactions during the event, converting free accounts into paid ones. This simple yet effective marketing strategy enables businesses to establish personal relationships with their potential accounts and foster trust and loyalty.
• In addition to personalizing your content, you need to tailor the offers you provide to your targeted customers. This may include special pricing, personalized deals and packages, and even personalized products or services. You can even personalize website landing pages with content specific to each customer’s interests, displaying custom copy, offers, and other information that addresses their specific needs.
• Targeted online advertising is also beneficial in ABM, as it allows you to create ads specific to targeted groups or even individual businesses. For example, LinkedIn makes it easy for any ABM campaign to reach key personas in your target audience.
• When it comes to generating leads, gated lead magnets are an effective strategy to consider. However, the content offered should provide more value than your free content. This ensures that potential accounts are incentivized to provide their email address in exchange for access to exclusive content. It’s important to ensure that the lead generation content covers bottom-of-the-funnel topics, addressing customer pain points and increasing purchase intent to improve conversion rates. Backlinko is a prime example of a company that utilizes this strategy. They publish gated blogs on their website, which unlock when a user enters their email address. This approach has two key benefits. Firstly, it enables them to gather information about potential accounts who are interested in their content. Secondly, they can build their email list, which can be leveraged for future marketing efforts.
• Retargeting is another effective way to keep your brand in front of interested customers. By using cookies to serve your ads on other sites to customers who’ve previously visited your site, you can efficiently and effectively stay in mind with potential customers.
• Testimonials and case studies from existing customers are also powerful tools in ABM. Targeted customers like to hear from others like them, so using these to sing your praises to similar target customers will prove your legitimacy.
• Finally, gifts can be a simple yet effective way to get the attention of targeted customers and shorten the sales cycle. Personalized gifts, such as a buyer’s favorite wine or a windbreaker with your company’s logo, go a long way in establishing a strong relationship.

Account-Based Marketing Examples

To help you get the most out of implementing the aforementioned account-based marketing tactics, let’s consider several account-based marketing examples implemented by world-known companies. 

• Snowflake is a renowned data warehousing company that operates in the cloud. Snowflake utilized personalized and customized content to engage with its target accounts effectively. They developed a library of high-quality content to provide a tailored content experience for each account. Snowflake provided relevant educational content to the target audience by analyzing the account lifecycle stage. Snowflake’s focus was not only on driving conversion but also on creating credibility and reliability. 
• LinkedIn provides an excellent platform for connecting with key decision-makers of target companies and quickly converting leads into clients. The founder of “Emails that Sell” highly recommends using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as an effective way to connect with potential clients, particularly for B2B businesses. The key is to personalize your message just as you would with email marketing. 
• O2, a British telecommunications provider, faced tough competition in its industry and implemented a unique ABM strategy to increase its credibility in the market. The company identified its target organizations and over 2000 key employees. O2 created personalized reports for each target company, providing detailed information on how much the organization could save and how much more revenue they could generate by using O2’s services. The reports were then shared with the clients and sales executives at O2 followed up with individual clients for face-to-face meetings. 

Wrapping up

Implementing an account-based marketing campaign strategy can be incredibly effective for companies, as evidenced by numerous success stories. This approach focuses on a select group of targeted accounts rather than attempting to sell to everyone, resulting in a higher chance of success. The first step is to define the target customer precisely to ensure that this targeted approach is successful. Without a clear understanding of your target audience, creating an effective account-based marketing strategy is not possible. The account-based marketing tactics mentioned above provide useful insights into how this approach can be leveraged to maximize its benefits.