How to Make Your Marketing Work Harder for You During Challenging Times Stuck in a rut with your targeting strategy? We get it — it's easy to stick with what you know. But if you don't adapt and evolve, you could lose out on budget, headcount, and your goals. We know that times are tough, but that doesn't mean you can't achieve efficient growth and boost your sales. In fact, in the face of a challenging economy, it's even more important to make your marketing work harder for you. To do so, you and your team need to be hyper-targeted and personalize your marketing efforts. Here, we'll explore five ways you can make your marketing work harder for you. How to Make Your Marketing Work Harder for You Your strategy should involve tailoring marketing and sales efforts to the specific needs and preferences of individual accounts. This can include creating customized content, developing personalized marketing campaigns, and tailoring sales pitches to the specific needs and interests of each target account. Throwing spaghetti at the wall won't cut it anymore. To run efficient campaigns, you need to analyze current lead quality, sources, and channels to find where they all overlap. That's where ABM comes in — it allows companies to operate ongoing and future campaigns with better precision and automation at scale, and achieve targeted results and maximized ROI at every stage of the funnel. Here’s how to get it done. 1. Fine-tune your lead scoring. Oldie but goodie, right? Many...

38 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2021 As marketers, we become experts in our target audiences. We know their typical demographic, what they like, the platforms they spend time on, and what they value in a product. But unlike sales reps — who talk to and learn from their biggest prospects each day — we don't always know tiny, but crucial, details about the brands or people we most want to sell to. So, how do we bridge the gap to better help our sales teams sell to high-priority clients? The answer to this question could be account-based marketing (or ABM). While inbound marketing is vital for pulling general audiences and demographics to your site, service, or store, account-based marketing can help you to reel in prospects or qualified leads that are most likely to buy your product. To show you just how beneficial account-based marketing can be, while also informing you of the challenges it comes with, here are 38 stats you should know in 2021. 37 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2021 General ABM Stats In 2021, 70% of marketers report using ABM, up 15% from 2020. 67% of brands leverage account-based marketing. "Researching Accounts" and "Identifying Target Contacts" are the top two tactics used by marketers within an ABM model. In 2019, the top five account-based tactics were sales development rep outreach, digital advertising, direct mail, marketing email, and events. Additionally, marketers strongly agree that personalized content...

Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: What's the Difference? Think about how much easier marketing is when you know exactly what companies to target and what marketing messages would best resonate with them. That's the dream, right? While we don't live in a perfect world, we do live in a world where inbound marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) exist. And, when these two strategies work together, this dream can become a reality. You may be pretty familiar with inbound marketing — creating content that attracts, converts, and delights customers. You may also know a thing or two about account-based marketing: aligning marketing and sales to deliver a consistent, personalized buying experience for prospects. But, because of their definitions, perhaps you think you have to choose between the two. Fortunately, you don't have to choose. In fact, instead of thinking "ABM versus inbound," you should be thinking "ABM and inbound." To clarify, let's define the two and offer some tactics around how to work these strategies into your existing marketing campaign. What is account-based marketing? Account-based marketing is a highly-targeted, focused growth strategy. It works by aligning marketing and sales functions to create a personalized experience for accounts, rather than an individual buyer. Instead of treating each of those buyers as an individual entity, ABM is a strategy that says, "Let's make sure we plan how to market and sell to all of those buyers as one account." This starts with aligning Sales and Marketing to mutually choose a select...

How to Succeed in Account-Based Advertising Right now, Account-based Marketing (ABM) is the hottest B2B ticket in town — with 87% of marketers stating that it delivers better ROI than other marketing activities. While for many people it may be a relatively new strategy, it has in fact been around for many years in different guises. In fact, you might've already heard the term as Key Account Management, Key Account Marketing, or Client-centric Marketing. The objective of ABM is, quite simply, to treat one account as a market of one, i.e. to focus all your energy (and resources) on engaging, winning, and maintaining one named account. Expanding on this, ABM has four underlying principles: Client centricity and insight Partnership between sales and marketing Focus on reputation, relationships and, ultimately, revenue Tailored programs and campaigns Simple right? Well, the reality is that to justify this level of effort and resources the prize must be sufficiently large enough to warrant this expenditure. ABM therefore is best suited to complex, high 'ticket price' solutions with longer life-cycle sales, and where typically multiple stakeholders are involved. Strategic ABM (one-to-one) and one-to-few (clusters of 15-20 accounts with shared commonality, i.e. vertical, industry, pain, challenge, etc.) have defined ABM for the last few years. But there is a new ABM kid on the block who is shaking things up: one-to-many ABM. The Rise of the ABM Tech Stack One of the key reasons why ABM has become so popular and now forms...

How to Use Account Mapping to Build an Effective ABM Campaign Account-based marketing (ABM) is transforming the B2B marketing and sales world because of its effectiveness in reaching high-value target accounts — but it's a difficult strategy to manage. ABM has a lot of moving parts that need to move as a synchronized whole to bring success to your organization. Fortunately, like any aspect of marketing, ABM is made easier with strategic planning. Starting with your goals and mapping out a targeted plan is key to building an effective ABM campaign. Here, we'll break down the steps of how to put ABM mapping into practice within your organization and implement the right process to make it happen. What is Account Mapping? Account mapping involves selecting and organizing the accounts targeted within an ABM program. After establishing goals, the next and arguably most critical step to ensuring a successful ABM campaign is selecting and mapping the accounts. Once accounts have been selected and mapped, the sales and marketing team can build their engagement strategy and ensure both sides maximize their alignment. How to Get Started With Account Mapping Account mapping is an exercise in account research and documenting details that will be useful as you target an account on your journey to a successful close. Here are the four main steps you'll need to take when account mapping: 1. Identify Key Decision Makers and Influencers After identifying what accounts to target through account planning, the next step is digging...

Wasn't ABM Supposed to Fix B2B Buying? Before my kids woke up this morning, I had ordered groceries for the week, subscribed to a digital news channel I've been meaning to read more, and signed up for an online workout class (that I'm likely to skip). All from my phone, and all with just a few clicks. The purchase process for each was personal, quick, and easy — something I've come to expect from all my service providers. It's 2020 after all, and delivering an exceptional customer experience is the key to success. In recent years we've seen consumers flock to the companies that offer the best customer experience. These 'experience disruptors' have driven customer expectations to new heights, and in doing so, have raised the customer experience bar for business across all industries. But if the importance of customer experience seems obvious to us as consumers, it begs the question: why is the buying experience for B2B companies still so bad? According to a CEB poll, the words B2B decision-makers associate with their buying experience include "hard, awful, painful, and minefield." It's a process that's years behind the seamless B2C experiences we now expect. And when we look at high-value B2B deals — with longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, and stiffer competition — the experience seems decades behind the times. How do we explain this? Aren't B2B marketers aware of the importance of customer experience? Don't salespeople have unbridled access to a supply of software tools that are supposed...

How to Automate Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy In today's day and age, marketing is all about personalization. It's about reaching the right people in the right place at the right time. Account-based marketing (ABM) is no different and has been growing in popularity in recent years. In fact, 87% of account-based marketers say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments. Plus, one in five accounts targeted through ABM becomes considered a qualified sales opportunity. That's why ABM is an important tactic to implement if you sell high value B2B products or services to a finite number of companies who have a multi-person buying committee and require personalized content and engagement. As a marketer, that might seem like a daunting task, because you've probably felt the pain of tools that were hard to use, didn't integrate with your systems, or made collaboration among teams hard. That's why using marketing automation and ABM software to make the process seamless is a good idea. Below, let's review how to automate your account-based marketing strategy. 1. Create your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Before you can get started with ABM, you'll need to define your ideal customer profile. This is similar to a buyer persona, except it's built around targeting entire organizations, rather than individuals. You'll want to know what types of companies you want to target. For example, your ICP should include information on company size, revenue, industry, and location. With software, like HubSpot's ABM software, you can use ICP workflow templates...

15 of the Best Account-based Marketing Software for 2020 Are you in the market for your new account-based marketing software solution? If so, then you've come to the right place. Recall that account-based marketing is a marketing strategy that targets companies, rather than individual customers. Account-based marketing means catering your message to the top decision makers for target accounts with a blend of marketing of sales tactics. In this day and age, having software to help you do that is imperative. As HubSpot's Senior Manager of Accelerated Leadership Programs, Ryan Batter states, "The one common thread for all ABM strategies is a CRM in which teams can track company interactions, ideally across marketing and sales teams." So, when you're looking for software, make sure you choose one that is full-service and has ample tools to support the functions of marketing and sales. "Beyond that," Batter states, "The beauty of using an ABM strategy is that it’s customizable to a team’s readiness and budget. Look for a CRM that enables strong integrations to ABM-specific tools to customize your strategy." With that in mind, let's go over some account-based marketing software choices that are scalable, functional, and fit for your campaigns. Account-based Marketing Software We've talked about what to look for in the perfect software choice. Marketing and sales capabilities, the support of teams and organizations, and measurable data tools. These should be at the frontlines of what you choose. Further, your software should complement your main campaign functions. Are...

The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Imagine a world where you could start the sales process by selling directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts. No wasted time working to market and sell to unqualified leads who aren’t the right fit for your business. Meaning, you could move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts. Talk about efficiency, right? With account-based marketing, all of this is made possible. The process allows you to align your marketing and sales teams from the get-go to promote long-term business growth, delight customers, and boost revenue. This guide is here to help you make it happen. Let’s dive in. Account-based marketing allows you to weed out less-valuable companies early on and ensure Marketing and Sales are in complete alignment — in return, your team can leap into the critical processes of engaging and delighting those accounts much faster. ABM helps your business work and communicate with high-value accounts as if they’re individual markets. By doing this — along with personalizing the buyer’s journey and tailoring all communications, content, and campaigns to those specific accounts — you'll see greater ROI and a boost in customer loyalty. Before we take a look at additional benefits of account-based marketing and specific tactics you can implement at your company, let’s review its relationship with another important strategy: inbound marketing. Often, these strategies are thought of as entirely different entities. However, they can be quite complementary. Account-Based Marketing And Inbound Marketing...