Complex propositions, long sales cycles and big customers make the tech sector a prime practitioner of Account Based Marketing (ABM).
If you believe the old maxim that 80% of business comes from 20% of customers then the case for ABM grows even stronger. Whatever the actual percentages, it’s true to say that focussing on key account customers (and prospects) can deliver significant returns.
Whether it’s time, effort or money, your level of investment in ABM determines the precision of any programme. By recognising that fact you can set realistic success metrics. From ‘lite’ account profiling to ‘up close and personal’, ABM can fall into one of four execution strategies. Each can work successfully but needs the right mix of content, communication, and collaboration.
Let’s consider those three things in reverse order. True collaboration, between sales and marketing, not only increases the potency of an ABM programme but also the critical ability to move an influencing and decision making group through the sales funnel and into the business pipeline. An effective communication strategy for Key Account Based Marketing will put as much emphasis on internal onboarding as customer marcomms. It will also include media and channels that can generate and sustain engagement at every point in the sales funnel.
While collaboration and internal communication rely on in-house time and effort, the creation and development of your marketing content will no doubt depend on an external agency. While that comes with an associated cost, the good news is that content can create the biggest impact in ABM.
Like ABM programmes, not all ABM content is created equal. With the perfect opportunity to convey the right proposition or information to the right person at the right time, ABM content should cut through anything else that competes for your customers’ business or attention. To do that, requires a combination of content that’s curated, created and above all – compelling.
Peppers and Rogers asserted ‘when two marketers are competing for the same customer’s business, all other things being equal, the marketer with the greatest scope of information about that particular customer will be the more efficient competitor’. When you may not have access to that information it pays to create content that can generate the kind of customer confidence that says you know what’s challenging them (and their decision-making peers) in their professional role, sector or market.
Whichever category your Account Based Marketing falls into, it can drive far more business than generic marketing when content, communication and collaboration are correctly geared to create maximum momentum.
To explore which ABM model is appropriate for your organisation, contact The Rubicon Agency.
