For companies trying to sell into larger accounts, with longer sales cycles, and larger deal sizes ABM offers many benefits over other go-to-market strategies. These benefits include:
Clear ROI
Marketing's biggest challenge has been justifying the budget. Tracking ROI has been extremely hard with broad marketing campaigns. Using ABM makes it easier for companies to track ROI. ABM has marketing begin their process with clear targets and a much deeper understanding of the companys overall target audience; marketing can then create more effective marketing campaigns and experience more effective marketing re-engagement, which can open up additional upsell and cross-sell opportunities. The results can then be clearly measured and tracked. Companies who have deployed ABM have found that ABM delivers the highest ROI of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic. Companies who want convincing can start running their pilot program and immediately start measuring results.
Less Resource Wasted
ABM is very targeted and allows marketing to focus their resources efficiently and run marketing programs that are specifically optimized for individual accounts that are most likely to close sales. Account Based Marketings focused strategy frees up resources that would previously have been wasted on broad marketing campaigns with limited results.
More Personalized and Optimized Messaging
Using ABM tactics allows marketers to slow down and take the time to create personalized messages for different people in the buying committee. Customers will recognize your upfront investment in creating personalized messaging and the fact that you are not wasting their time; ultimately leading to better customer experiences, higher retention rates, and higher ROI. #Flipmyfunnel published a study on the state of Account Based Marketing and 27% of ABM marketers reported a 50% increase in customer engagement from using more personalized and optimized messaging.
Shorter Sales Cycles
Major purchase decisions involve a buying committee with multiple stakeholders. The typical sales process is slow and usually starts with a lower-level person in the organization and moves slowly towards the decision-makers. ABM shortens the sales cycle since you are targeting everyone in the buying committee at the same time with personalized messages. Results from a Bizibles AMB Metrics Survey discovered that ABM shortens the sales cycle on average by 25%(15).
Easier To Track Goals And Measure
It is a lot easier to track the effectiveness of a campaign, whether email, ads, web, or events, and draw a clear conclusion when you are looking at a list of targeted accounts versus a broad set of accounts and metrics. According to Altera Group, 97% of companies who have implemented ABM have achieved a higher ROI from their marketing campaigns.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Easier
In traditional marketing approaches, marketing would give sales leads for sales to chase and competition and discord would arise around the number of leads and lead quality. Account Based Marketing encourages market and sales to work together in identifying target accounts, crafting customized campaigns, and align and move individual accounts through the pipeline, before and after lead conversion. ABM is perhaps one of the most effective ways to align sales and marketing. Forrester Research found that organizations who have strong sales and marketing alignment see an average of 32% annual revenue growth, while less aligned see a 7% decline in growth.
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