Account-based Marketing: the Arrow for Every Marketer’s Quiver

Why another arrow? 

Every modern Marketing organization is familiar with the challenges of traditional “blast email” and broad placement digital advertising campaigns.  Even when using a marketing automation engine, there are myriad challenges.  These include: delivering personalized messaging (to a person or to an organization); reaching high-value prospects not in your Customer Relationship Management solution (CRM); and capturing and serving up high-value leads to Sales.  As a result, most traditional campaigns result in a middling impact on awareness or “top of the funnel” metrics, but fail to deliver full-funnel/later stage impact which is so critical to achieving positive ROI.  The result?  Sales engagement is lagging and Marketing finds itself increasing outreach through email and other programs but netting disappointing results.

A better arrow. – Account-based Marketing. 

But this doesn’t have to be the case.  Account-based Marketing (ABM for short) enables hyper personalization (at role/title level, firm level or geography) to reach Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) – and is the single best way to reach contacts NOT in your CRM.  You don’t need to have someone’s email address or social media handle to reach them.  Better yet, when mapped and executed effectively, marketers can easily re-target and nurture contacts into high quality leads with relevant, targeted messaging, calls-to-action (CTA) and offers – delivering positive ROI and serving as true partners to Sales.

What is Account-based Marketing? 

Broadly, ABM is a strategy and program in B2B marketing where an entire entity, company or account (hence Account-based) - and all the constituent potential end customers, both known and unknown – can be the target of marketing efforts.  Rather than a broad effort to reach all advisors, for example, ABM starts with a firm-specific marketing plan – one tailored to the needs and insights you have about the target firm.  ABM is delivered through a combination of email (for contacts that are known) and any of a variety of SaaS solutions available on the market for those contacts you don’t know.  These martech solutions include: DemandBase, 6sense, Hubspot, Terminus, Adobe and others. 

ABM is an intentional, multi-faceted marketing program that is predicated on knowing the needs of a specific targeted firm and building well-honed customized journeys for high-value prospects, executed in tight partnership with Sales.  What does that mean?  It means that every targeted contact or ICP is served up customized creative with messaging, a CTA and an offer that propels them to move easily from awareness to consideration to engagement and ultimately a sale.

How do ABM solutions work? 

Most marketers have traditionally been limited and only able to market to “known” contacts using email addresses, social media handles, physical addresses and third-party lists.  While segmentation and personalization is possible with direct mail and email, it is nearly impossible with display advertisements, CTV, paid social media ads, and paid social links. Every Marketer knows that email servers are blocking “spam” – making outreach even harder.  And, If the Marketer doesn’t have the contact record, they can’t market to them. 

ABM solutions ”find targets where they are at” by mapping target firm names with Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of anyone associated with the firm.  This way, display advertisements, paid social media posts, CTV advertisements, etc. can be served up to the target when the target user is online.  No matter what content the target user is consuming (e.g. weather or sports content), - the marketer can present an advertisement where paid advertising is served up.  And, marketers can place relevant ads with hyper targeted messaging and CTAs ensuring that paid advertising reaches the right audience at the right time and gets traction.

So what impact can ABM have on Marketing?

1. More effective use of advertising dollars.  Because you are targeting a specific firm and all individuals associated with that firm, you can truly target and segment your messaging, call-to-action, offer, and creative.  Several studies have shown ROI improvement of as much as 97%.

2. Faster pipeline development/build a contact pipeline faster.  Reach target individuals or ICPs with whom you could not otherwise connect easily - and build a sales pipeline for sales with actionable journeys to conduct follow-up outreach quickly.

3. Personalize by firm and role/title – and even geography.  Many ABM tools not only allow targeting of specific firms or regions but also enable targeting by job role/title. This feature provides for hyper-targeting, ensuring that content, offers, and the overall creative are relevant to both the company and the individual decision-maker, increasing engagement and effectiveness.

4. Deeper partnership with Sales.  ABM can help marketers identify prospects who have traditionally been difficult to reach because of gatekeepers or other logistical barriers.  Leveraging ABM to identify these prospects allows marketers to bypass these obstacles, better align with sales and reach decision-makers more effectively. 

But what about Financial Services? 

Do you mean Compliance?  ABM workflow can easily allow for whatever review and approval process is necessary.  Creative is only served up if approved.  Opt-in measures can be required.  Personally identifiable information (PII) can be restricted.  While additional care is required, ABM can seamlessly be incorporated in any highly regulated business, and in fact can ensure that content and offers are ONLY served to approved audiences (think firm-specific offers).  ABM workflow is adaptable and can allow for whatever review and approval process is necessary.  

How does ABM impact workflow and Marketing processes?  

ABM can materially impact your workflow given how it can reach unaddressed audiences with highly targeted messaging.  While marketers can leverage existing processes to review and approve creative, any Marketing organization using ABM needs to map the best workflow using whatever SaaS solution is selected to make ABM work for them.   ABM solutions cannot simply be “bolted on” with no workflow impact.  Timely lead disposition is an example: reaching heretofore unreachable contacts requires quick handoff to the next best action, and leads should not be left to ”pile up” with no scoring or handoff.

Conclusion

Account-based Marketing is an ideal practice for reaching specific, high-value firms and their financial advisors, agents or account managers.  A key benefit is reaching individuals who are hard to identify and reach.  ABM works best when focusing on an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and in close partnership with Sales and it is less intrusive than email “spam”.  However, like any marketing program, followup is key to success, as ignored leads will become stale and may ultimately hurt your brand.

ABOUT AUGMENT MARKETING L.L.C.

Providing Marketing Solutions to Help You Succeed

At Augment Marketing, we bring decades of marketing leadership experience in the financial services industry to help you achieve your goals—no matter the size or nature of the project. We provide an “extra set of hands” – ones that understand the unique challenges you face because we have been there. As your trusted partner, we offer practical, tailored solutions that fill gaps, solve problems, and drive results. It is all about you, our client. With our flexible, hands-on approach, we provide the expertise you need, exactly when you need it, ensuring your marketing initiatives succeed.

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