Have you ever run a paid social media campaign with a decent budget and large audience, and while you got plenty of clicks to drain your funds, no one converted to a paying customer? It leaves you with many questions: Did we have the wrong audience? Is our messaging missing the mark? Do our potential customers not like our new logo? 

There's no worse feeling in marketing than telling your boss the money is gone with no return. Sure, there was some brand awareness and it was a learning exercise, but you have no new leads to show for it. Perhaps someone a few years ago in this predicament had the brilliantly simple and old-fashioned idea - why don't we market to our ideal customers directly? 

Minds were blown, and an old way of selling came back into fashion.

While mass marketing is pretty effective for B2C companies who target a vast audience, have a short sales cycle and a small conversion rate, B2B marketers can sometimes struggle to show ROI using this formula due to the nature of B2B deals - a smaller pond, high cost-per-click, longer sales cycles, and far more hand holding required. 

While mass advertising does have its place in creating top-of-funnel awareness and consideration, marketing and sales teams usually know exactly who their ideal customers are, and taking a more targeted approach can be an effective way to engage and convert potential customers (rather than waiting for them to notice your ads). Say hello to Account-Based Marketing. 

What is Account-Based Marketing? 

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an approach to B2B marketing that targets specific companies (or 'accounts') within a market with tailored messaging – rather than trying to reach and convert a mass audience. 

It's a bit like spearfishing. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping to attract as many leads as possible, ABM focuses on the big fish - a few high-value accounts that are most likely to convert into customers (or feed the Whānau).

Why is Account-Based valuable marketing for B2B businesses? 

1. Increased efficiency: Account-Based marketing brings focus to your marketing and sales functions, and with that comes a range of efficiencies and cost savings as teams focus on activities that will make the most impact.
2. Enhanced Marketing and Sales alignment: In some organisations, the marketing and sales teams live in two different worlds. They could target different types of customers with different messaging, confusing the market altogether. Through the ABM planning process, your marketing and sales teams will sit down and get on the same page - including agreeing on Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), target personas, unique selling propositions, systems, processes, lead handover, marketing and sales messaging, assets, channels, and more.
3. A better sales journey for your customer: With your marketing and sales teams aligned and focused, they can offer superior service to your target accounts. When a lead responds to a campaign or wants to know more about your products and services, the handover to sales will be smoother. The response time will be quicker, and sales will have fit-for-purpose assets and a game plan to offer the best service and maximise the chances of conversion.
4. Real-world feedback: Many keyboards have been smashed by frustrated marketers who can't determine why the market won't respond to their brilliant mass marketing campaign. Finding product-market fit and continuously improving your messaging takes marketing from good to great. ABM provides more opportunities for sales to engage with target customers one-on-one to hear their thoughts about your marketing and sales assets and processes.
5. Streamlined sales: When utilising mass marketing channels, reaching real decision-makers can often be challenging. Hypothetically, only 10% of your click-throughs could come from your target internal influencers. This can result in a longer sales cycle as the information slowly moves up the corporate ladder. With ABM, your marketing and sales team will utilise tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify and target the key decision-makers early on and run a more efficient campaign.
6. Effectively measure ROI: In an increasingly privacy-conscious environment, tracking return on investment on your marketing channels is becoming more complex. With Account-Based Marketing, it can be easier to track ROI as you are more likely to know what activity affected the marketing and sales conversion.
7. Higher average contract value (ACV): By identifying high-value accounts and building a solid ABM plan, your team will be more likely to catch the big fish and spend less time on lower-value contracts. 

To sum up, ABM is a powerful B2B marketing strategy that allows companies to personalise their message and align their efforts with sales to target specific high-value accounts. ABM can offer several benefits over mass digital marketing. 

This five part blog series will look at how to implement a best-practice Account-Based Marketing campaign, align your sales and marketing functions, and use HubSpot to help your ABM work more efficiently and effectively. In addition, we’ll showcase some of our favourite ABM campaigns. Stay tuned!

If you need help getting your Account-Based Marketing off the ground, we can help. Aamplify specialises in helping B2B businesses build successful ABM strategies with best-practice people, processes, and HubSpot tools. Book a call to get started.