Account-based marketing is a hot buzzword in marketing right now but what does it actually mean?
According to leadgenius.com, “Account-based marketing is an approach to B2B marketing and sales where highly-personalized messaging to multiple decision makers and key accounts, through multiple channels, at different stages of the buying journey, helps align revenue-generating departments to close qualified accounts quicker and increase customer lifetime value (CLV).”
Account-based marketing is getting a lot of attention right now. This is because a proper account-based strategy offers a more efficient use of internal resources, more cost-effective marketing campaigns, and longer-lasting customer accounts. Thanks to account-based marketing’s highly personalized, optimizable approach, this method is being practiced by all types of companies. While the definition of ABM might vary from person to person, there is a common denominator between each person; ABM offers many personalization benefits.
Let’s take a look at ten experts and how they define account-based marketing.
David Cain, GVP of Global Marketing at Marketo
“Instead of leveraging a set of broad-reaching programs designed to touch the largest possible number of prospective customers, an ABM strategy focuses marketing and sales resources on a defined set of targeted accounts and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each individual account. With ABM, your marketing message is based on the attributes and needs of the account you’re targeting.”
Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at InsightSquared
“An ABM strategy allows us to bridge the divide between the polar extremes of inbound and outbound by targeting campaigns specifically to the accounts that sales are working, and ‘right-sizing’ the investment depending on potential deal value and likelihood to close.”
Dorothea Gosling, ABM & Pursuit Marketing Center of Excellence Leader (CSC)
“ABM to me and to CSC is treating a single account as a market of one, and within that marketing of one we’re looking to customize our marketing activities and message in close collaboration with our sales team – and not just down to a buying center or persona but right down to the individual.”
David Karel, Head of B2B Marketing at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
“To break down walls between sales and marketing, ABM is pretty close to a silver bullet in that it aligns programs’ dollars and focus behind the accounts that the sales teams care about. So, there’s inherent buy-in. That said, ABM is only as good as your visibility into your highest potential accounts and best-fit customer segments, which gets clearer over time. So, it’s most effective when deployed as part of a comprehensive set of targeting strategies.”
Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder & CMO at Terminus
“Account-based marketing is focused B2B Smarketing. I say ‘Smarketing’ because ABM is all about focusing on the right accounts in collaboration with sales. ABM is not a solo activity. It’s the combination and range of activities from advertising, direct mail, calls, emails, content — all centered around the ideal set of accounts that you believe has the need for your solution. It’s quality over quantity in its most basic form.”
Vala Ashar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce
“Account-based marketing is a comprehensive approach for your marketing programs and activities. To successfully take an account-based approach, you start with deemphasizing the vanity metrics such as the number of new leads created, the number of clicks from an email campaign or the number of forms completed. There’s only one metric which account-based marketing teams truly care about, and that’s revenue.”
Prayag Narula, CEO at LeadGenius
“Attention to detail matters in Account-Based Marketing. ABM is a highly personalized approach to connecting with your ideal B2B accounts through a variety of marketing and sales channels. In an account-based strategy, every revenue-generating department — marketing, sales, and customer success — work together to close higher value accounts, faster. What differentiates Account-Based Marketing from age-old enterprise sales techniques is being able to automate and scale personalized communication at the right time. ABM starts with high-quality customer data.”
Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at MongoDB
“Account-based marketing is more targeted and personalized versus spray and pray, where you’re just trying to capture anyone in your net. You’re being very specific about who you want to talk with, and it’s a way for sales and marketing to align on the target.”
Matt Heinz, President at Heinz Marketing
“In its purest form, account-based marketing has been around forever. Account-based marketing is simply instead of fishing with nets, we’re fishing with spears. You identify exactly the prospects you want to do business with and then you market very precisely and narrowly to them directly.”
Joe Miller, CEO & CO-Founder of Engagio
“Account-Based Marketing is a strategic approach that coordinates personalized marketing and sales efforts to open doors and deepen engagement to specific accounts.”
So, while everyone might have a different definition of account-based marketing, they all agree that it is specialized marketing that combines marketing and sales teams to provide client specific engagement.
