The 20-80 rule applies to most businesses. That is, 80% of their revenue flows from the top 20% of their customer accounts. Understanding this helps companies to focus their marketing efforts on the revenue generating accounts.
This trend began at the beginning of this century and took the corporate world by storm. It was a sure-shot way to ensure regular revenue flow and keep the most critical customers happy.
So, what is an account based marketing strategy, or ABM? Let’s take a look.
What is an account based marketing strategy
Account based marketing refers to a way of operations wherein the supplier or a company directs its sales and marketing efforts and resources towards buyers who show the most promising growth opportunities.
Sales and marketing teams use this dedicated approach to create a customized experience and grow an organization’s high-value customers. Briefly, it applies account-based marketing tactics in handling top clients.
And here’s why it’s needed.
Significance of account-based marketing strategy
1. Helps in weeding out unfit buyers
An account-based marketing program aims at weeding out the buyers that don’t fit your ICP. Basically, the accounts that offer lesser growth opportunities aren’t included in the target list. Thus, offering a more focused approach to customer retention.
2. Promotes engagement personalization
It aims to curate a customized service plan for the top accounts that can generate the highest revenue for the company. Everything from messaging to engagement channel are well-optimized.
3. Optimizes marketing resources
Account based marketing promotes business productivity. So, an ABM strategy ensures your sales and marketing efforts and resources are employed where they can bring the highest returns.
Besides, with an account-based marketing campaign, your sales and marketing teams are clear about their roles and responsibilities. Therefore, it leaves less scope for straying from the business goal.
4. Enhances customer engagement
Since account-based marketing campaigns are dedicated to a few customers, the strategy facilitates enhanced customer engagement. With personalized marketing resources targeting them, clients feel better looked after and engage more deeply with the brand.
Next, let’s see how you can plan an executable ABM.
Planning an account based marketing strategy
Planning it heavily depends on collecting and correctly analyzing account-based marketing data. This is how the process flows.
1. Identify the accounts
Your aim is to select some valuable accounts that promise to give the maximum returns. To identify these customers, you analyze their past and current performance and future prospecting. You rely on business intelligence to qualify and prioritize the accounts worth focusing on.
There are two ways to qualify the customers: lead scoring and account scoring. While lead scoring focuses on classifying leads based on intelligence, account scoring ranks organizations based on their conversion potential.
2. Select and align internal teams
The next step is to bring the sales and marketing teams together. You can do this by setting up shared KPIs for sales, marketing and SDRs. For this, you need to assess the performance of the leaders connected to your target accounts based on the pipeline (quantity plus quality) they generate. These are the people who can drive personalized account-based marketing campaigns for your buyers.
3. Outline the content strategy
This is a critical step in planning your account based marketing strategy. Here, you must decide the content you will use to engage your clients and the channels to drive them through. The content should carry the message across the buyer group’s preferred channel. Ultimately, your strategy needs to be data-driven to understand the buyer journey to curate engaging content.
Executing an Account Based Marketing strategy
1. Aligning sales and marketing teams
Both teams need to be on the same page to ensure the smooth execution of the account-based marketing ideas. While sales work on closing deals in the clients, the marketing team should create the opportunity and openings.
Here’s what you can do to enforce alignment.
– Define common terms of engagement
– Outline goals and strategies together based on data and SLAs
– Draft combined KPIs
– Streamline workflows as well as internal and external communication
2. Execute, review and optimize
Many ABM tech solutions offer seamless execution of your account based marketing program. These techniques provide a focused approach to employing your ideas. They operate similarly to software tools that facilitate targeted selling.
The executed programs need to be reviewed and optimized for better performance. Therefore, you must regularly review these attributes.
– Team and client interactions
– The pace of discussions and closure probability
– Revenue expected from each account
You need to deliver personalized experiences at every step of the customer journey to onboard and retain customers. Because one size never fits all. Account-based marketing strategy ensures a higher success rate by combining sales and marketing efforts to do just that. When marketing ideas meet sales hustle, businesses grow.
