How Martech can Enhance Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy

It’s easy to feel buried by the flood of tips, tools, and techniques claiming to solve marketing challenges. But most only scratch the surface. They address symptoms without fixing the source.

A considered account-based marketing strategy – one aligned with business goals, enabled by organisational efficiency, and supported by the right martech – goes deeper. With the right combination of process, data, people, and tech, Marketing can work in concert with Sales to reach key accounts and drive meaningful value. 

What is Account-Based Marketing, Really?

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B customer experience management strategy where Marketing and Sales teams nurture specific accounts to create meaningful engagement with ideal customers.

ABM treats a set of high-value accounts as unique “markets of one”. Instead of following a traditional marketing funnel, account-based marketing strategies are built around the needs of individual accounts. This makes every interaction intentional and valuable. By zeroing in on specific accounts, you can strengthen relationships, improve efficiency, and boost ROI by up to 97%.

Why Effective Teams are (Re)Turning to ABM

ABM isn’t new. Its legacy stretches to the early 1990s when personalised marketing emerged. Unfortunately, it got a bad rap. You might still have the battle scars from trying to roll out an ABM strategy that was too expensive, time-consuming, or ineffective.

But times have changed. Several factors have contributed to ABM’s recent revival:

• • More powerful B2B marketing software.
  • Better data tracking and analysis capabilities.
  • Focus on data-driven business decisions.
  • Growing customers’ demands for personalisation.
  • Rising competition in every industry.

Customers are more responsive to personalised marketing. Executives are more invested in data-driven approaches. And modern martech is better tooled for collaboration.

This is all making account-based marketing more accessible. Still, the question remains…

Is ABM Worth It?

Account-based marketing isn’t easy to get right. For most organisations, it requires a fundamental shift in the way marketing and sales align internally and communicate externally. 

But the benefits are compelling:

• • Targeted communication for your highest potential accounts.
  • Efficient resource allocation.
  • Relevant, valuable content.
  • Higher engagements rates.
  • Richer CRM data.
  • Unified sales and marketing approach.

A recent ABM Leadership Alliance survey of 420 B2B marketers highlighted ABM’s benefits:

• 71% improvement in relationships.
• 55% improvement in revenue.
• 34% improvement in reputation.

Sources: ABMLA and Hubspot

Three-quarters (76%) of marketers reported that ABM delivers “somewhat” or “significantly” higher ROI than traditional marketing efforts. Despite these advantages, only 13% of companies have an embedded ABM program (HubSpot puts the figure closer to 25%).

It’s never too late to transform your marketing. These six steps can help you build an ABM strategy that delivers value in every interaction.

How to Build a High-Impact Account-Based Marketing Program

Start With Strategy

ABM helps you filter out the noise in your market and focus on high-value prospects. But you need a strategy to know which accounts are worth focusing on, and which are distractions.

Before launching an ABM initiative, align your teams with a clear and targeted strategy:

• Establish shared targets to encourage collaboration.
• Analyse current processes to find bottlenecks and improvement opportunities.
• Detail roles and responsbilities across the customer journey.
• Develop and document workflows, from first contact to nurturing to lead hand-off.

This might be easier said than done, depending on your company’s appetite to change, but buy-in from the broader organisation is essential.

Read more: Account-Based Marketing Strategy: Where to Start.

Identify High-Value Accounts

Use your data sources to find the accounts that match your ideal criteria. Consider firmographic and behavioural factors like:

• Industry.
• Revenue.
• Operating market.
• Likelihood to purchase (or repurchase).
• Potential profit margin.
• Influence within their market.

There’s no overstating the importance of good quality data. Size doesn’t always equal value. Test your ABM program with a select group of high-potential accounts to refine your approach.

Increasingly, ABM tech vendors are offering readymade databases to help you pinpoint accounts worth targeting. You can also use tech to predict which accounts (new or existing) could be quick wins, upsells, cross-sells or high-effort.

Align Sales and Marketing

Effective ABM relies on Sales and Marketing alignment. The teams must align on shared goals, then work together to create a smoother experience for both clients and prospects. In practice, this looks like:

• Defining shared goals.
• Agreeing on lead criteria.
• Automating lead tracking and scoring.
• Streamlining handling and hand-off processes.
• Interdepartmental alerts for high-value prospects.

Sales and marketing alignment is a ground-up process. Trying to align tactics without a shared strategy is usually ineffective. Instead, find shared language in customer-centric goals that contribute to business growth.

Develop Tailored Content

Content is at the core of an ABM strategy. Technology makes it easy to segment audiences. But it’s what you do with those segments that unlocks value.

• Build narrow audience segments.
• Leverage smart list features to automate targeting.
• Use dynamic content to personalise messages at scale.
• Think critically about calls-to-action.
• A/B test content optimisations to learn what your audience engages with.

The goal is to deliver highly targeted, valuable content without needing to individually craft every message. And it works. According to McKinsey, 71% of customers want brands to personalise interactions.

Choose the Most Effective Communication Channels

Moving from mass marketing to targeted messaging means identifying the channels that have the largest impact.

Develop lead scoring models specific to your ABM strategy and use them to guide your content toward high-value channels. For example, your business might decide that webinar attendance is a stronger indication of buying readiness than LinkedIn engagement.

Activating campaigns where you know there is most value makes for better customer experiences and greater ROI.

Measure, Evaluate, and Optimise

Stay agile and data-informed. Use technology to track interest and conversion, helping Sales and Marketing to measure effectiveness and optimise for interactions that drive the most value or fix underperforming strategies. Marry your insights to the shared goals you agreed at the start to keep you focused.

Tactics like A/B testing content, aggregating account data, and accessing predictive insights can all help to reach shared goals established in step 2. Use the data and insights surfaced by your ABM software to determine which activities are valuable before testing new approaches.

Technology can provide helpful shortcuts. It can automatically flag behaviour that indicates interest, and provide sales teams with actionable insights they can use to close more deals. However, collaboration between Marketing and Sales teams remains mission-critical. That’s true at the pointy (tactical) end, just as it is in developing an account-based marketing strategy and deciding which accounts to target.

Remember: it all comes back to delivering customer value. With a solid strategy, internal alignment, a focus on exceptional B2B customer experiences, and the right software, you can deliver an effective ABM program that grows revenue and builds the business.