What is B2B Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
How does your sales team really feel about your marketing? Whenever B2B marketers are asked that question, the responses are universal. Marketers feel like they’re bending over backward to deliver a large volume of leads, and Sales just plain isn’t feeling the love. The exchange goes something like this.
Marketing: We delivered 1,238 Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) this quarter, 27% above our goal!
Sales: We’re just not getting the support we need.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
So why are two teams both dedicated to boosting conversions and closing sales struggling to work together across the great B2B divide? While marketers are focused on volume, the sales team wants to reach a few influencers at target companies. B2B marketers often rely on spray-and-pray campaigns that waste company resources, or persona marketing that engages individuals rather than companies.
Unfortunately, Sales knows that the leads Marketing delivers aren’t likely to end up as closed business. As a result, they don’t bother following up with those leads… and the finger-pointing begins.
The key to solving this problem is getting both teams on the same page from the get-go. That’s the promise of utilizing a solution like the Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud. It’s an end-to-end solution connecting marketing technology across the funnel and optimizing it for B2B.
Through account-based analytics, personalization, and conversation solutions, the platform gives B2B marketers the ability to drive results and actually see how their efforts are impacting revenue. It connects marketing, advertising, and CRM, enabling both Sales and Marketing to set and track goals throughout the customer lifecycle.
B2B Demands a Different Game Plan – Account-Based Marketing
With Account-Based Marketing (ABM), you start by working with Sales to identify the companies most likely to buy. Then, you market to those accounts with personalized content and measure your success on the account level. When you do, top prospects get the attention they need to move through the funnel and each segment of target accounts receive relevant messages at the appropriate time. These campaigns function more efficiently than campaigns focused on quantity, and they deliver on Sales’ target accounts. That means more new business closed and more growth for the company overall.
Account-Based Marketing isn’t rocket science, but it is a recipe for higher marketing performance, happier customers, and exponentially increased conversions. It’s also likely to lead to a Sales/Marketing love fest. Who wouldn’t want that?
