A Strategy for Optimized Performance
Account based marketing (ABM) is attracting a lot of attention these days as an effective strategy for targeting, personalizing, and optimizing sales and marketing performance. But, it isn't a completely new idea. As early as 1993, Peppers and Rogers noted that marketing will take an increased role in developing intelligence on key accounts: "When two marketers are competing for the same customer's business, all other things being equal, the marketer with the greatest scope of information about that particular customer – the marketer with the most extensive and intimate relationship with that customer – will be the more efficient competitor."1
B2B marketing has typically been organized by industry, product/solution, or channel. ABM brings all of these together with enhanced data that allows marketing to focus on individual accounts – and to personalize content to individual recipients.
It's important to remember that ABM is a strategy; it’s not a campaign. And there is no one single platform for ABM. In fact, for the best results, multiple platforms must be stacked together depending on the different channels utilized in the omnichannel mix. The biggest challenge marketers may face is how to execute a single ABM campaign across all these channels, leveraging multiple individual systems. There needs to be a core B2B data platform that can bring account, contact, and engagement (1st and 3rd party) data together, segment the audience, and activate data across different channel-specific platforms to execute campaigns. This is exactly why a customer data platform (CDP) is fast becoming such an important piece of the puzzle.
An effective ABM strategy involves people, process, technology, data and alignment to reach its full potential. The elements of a successful ABM strategy may hinge on these elements working in tandem to support the core pillars of ABM. Here are our five basics to launching a successful ABM strategy.
For a more comprehensive view of ABM optimization, download our eBook “A B2B Marketer's Guide to Account-Based Marketing: Win with ABM.
1Peppers and Rogers; The One-to-One Future (1993); Page 140