How to overcome your ABM barriers and get the ball rolling
When Account Based Marketing (ABM) last came up in your strategy discussions, what was the reason you never got around to giving it a try? Maybe your marketing team were too busy, or you thought it would be too expensive, or you couldn’t get internal buy-in…
There are plenty of perceived barriers to getting started with ABM, but it’s easier to break through them than you might think. And the rewards are big: 87% of B2B marketers said that the ROI of ABM initiatives outperforms other marketing investments.[1]
Working around resource constraints
We get it: you’ve got enough on your plate without adding another strand of activity into your marketing mix. You’re busy (we bet you wish you could skip that next budget meeting…) and your team is under a lot of pressure to deliver. But ABM can support those targets: 93% of B2B tech marketers said that their ABM efforts have been extremely or very successful[1].
There are two ways to work around your internal resource constraints. 1) Give a small pilot a try. This is particularly useful if you need to obtain buy-in from your senior internal stakeholders. Target a select group of high potential accounts and test the effectiveness before scaling up. As an example, for one of our global logistics clients, we recommended beginning with a pilot of just 6 key target accounts in one geography. And one successfully converted almost right away!
And 2)… consider partnering with an external agency who can tackle the ABM legwork for you. Yes, as an ABM-specialist-agency we are bound to say that – but an expert partnership can really drive additional ROI.
Your resource concerns might not just be time-related – you might think your tech stack isn’t quite up to scratch for ABM. But even if your CRM isn’t perfect, and marketing automation still sits on your we’ll-get-round-to-it shopping list, that doesn’t mean you can’t start your journey. A small pilot is more easily handled manually without the need for automation – particularly if you’ve engaged your sales team…
Overcoming silos
ABM requires collaboration between marketing and sales in order to really succeed, which can seem challenging if your business works in silos or you aren’t in the same directorate. But ABM is actually an opportunity to build these relationships: 66% of surveyed professionals say ABM is significantly improving marketing and sales alignment.
Perhaps that’s because good ABM involves engaging the sales team right at the beginning to agree the strategy and ways of working; and help marketing establish the target accounts, the best time to approach and what kind of messaging will resonate with the audience. And marketing can support sales by letting them know when activity is going out, so sales can follow up in a timely fashion – striking while the iron’s hot. They’ll love the doors it opens!
And as the programme rolls out, by combining the quantitative engagement metrics from marketing with the qualitative sentiment that sales hear, both teams are able to test, adjust and improve their approaches.
Be BOLD!
It’s an oldie but a goodie… if you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Being bold and unafraid to add new ideas or formats into your marketing mix can inject success into a programme that has gone a little stale.
This is particularly critical if you’re targeting C-Suite, who are not only super selective with how they spend their time, but are gatekept by PAs.
But unfortunately if you’ve realised that ABM might be the golden ticket, so have lots of other marketers. Last year Forbes reported that 71% of companies were planning to increase ABM spending.[2] So you’ve not only got to introduce ABM, you’ve got to make it stand out!
The key to that is creativity – and 77% of C-suite leaders believe that creativity is a crucial growth driver.[3] Your ABM needs to tell a story, and that’ll require some out-of-the-box thinking. (Or occasional inside-the-box thinking in our case… in which a single ABM project generated a sales pipeline worth 420x ROI.)
And though you might have plenty of big and bold creative ideas, you may think you don’t have the capacity or prior experience in-house to execute them. But partnering with an ABM specialist can help your vision come to life!
Get a little… personal
A personal touch goes a long way… and so do personalised communications. A survey by McKinsey showed that personalised marketing helped lift revenues by 5% to 15% and increased marketing ROI by 10% to 30%[4].
But personalisation in ABM can seem a challenging feat: if you’re doing it manually, it takes time to make each piece appropriate to each recipient. And it’s important to get the data right too: knowing your audience is key to avoiding sharing irrelevant content and making sure the right person gets the right message!
But you can work around this by weighing up the balance of personalisation vs time investment vs reward.
Have lots of time but not a lot of data? 1:1 ABM involves total personalisation: you can do plenty of manual desk research to gather the necessary information and adjust your piece to suit the recipient brand perfectly. And in our experience, this route serves up the highest ROI.
1:few ABM is a good middle-ground: you’ll be able to target groups with similar characteristics and pain points, maybe in the same sector or with the same job title, to create a campaign that suits them all. Saving you some time when it comes to acquiring data and producing creative, but still reaping results.
1:many ABM is the least time intensive, but a sound option for businesses that want to reach a large audience on a limited budget because it requires fewer resources. Sending messages broadly is a solution to data and time constraints, but it will have a lower level of personalisation and therefore lead to a lower level of ROI. Unsure which one to choose? We’re happy to advise. The Creative Consultancy is a creative-led B2B agency, with a specialism for bringing the human touch into ABM.
Get in touch to see how we could help you overcome your barriers and generate return.
[1] ABM & Intent Benchmarking Study 2023, Foundry
[2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/04/06/what-to-expect-for-account-based-marketing-in-2023/?sh=7c84f3ed5b19
[3] From recovery to growth, McKinsey
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-personalization