The Case for Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing is undoubtedly the single best marketing approach available for Go-to-Market organizations for a narrow set of market opportunities, when designed and executed properly, and optimally aligned to prospect personas and their buyer journeys.

Program success is ultimately dependent on following a reliable, step-by-step process that considers all factors -- and forces important discussions -- including asking if the investment is worth the effort. Under the right circumstances, rewards can be significant in terms of meeting rates, win rates, and positive reputation gained through customer satisfaction. The ABM Process

Account-Based Marketing, when properly orchestrated, aligns Marketing with the Sales Development function (SDRs) and with Account Management. Each person on the account team knows their role across the entire customer buyer journey, and can see every engagement across all relevant contacts in the CRM. 

In the past 15 years, marketing technology (MarTech) has evolved and specialized in ways that delivers real-time intent signals within your target accounts, and allows for scoring across individual prospects and then aggregated across buying teams to provide valuable insights about where your accounts are in their buying cycles. Effective ABM programs utilize out-of-the-box features of these systems, but tailor them to the specific characteristics of market segments and buyer journeys. Software technology and the ability to develop specific scoring systems and algorithms is a key enabler to ABM implementation.

Account-Based Marketing is orders of magnitude more complex to execute than broad-based marketing programs better suited to small, quick, transactional deals. The availability of orchestration and visualization tools, either native to the CRM or tightly integrated with it, allows all players to know exactly where each account is on its journey, and if they are proceeding on a success path.