The 4 big reasons you need an ABM strategy right now

There are four significant trends making account-based marketing (ABM) a major focus for B2B marketers:

1. Rising customer expectations are the most disruptive trend in business today. Customers no longer make categorical distinctions between their personal and professional brand relationships. They expect all companies to provide highly valuable personalized experiences all the time. Companies that differentiate their customer relationships on the basis of account-specific insights and responsiveness raise customer expectations and create competitive advantage. Expectations are set very early in the buyer's journey long before they interact with Sales, so marketing plays a crucial role in demonstrating value add from the very first touch.
2. Customer acquisition costs have changed dramatically. Saturation is a problem for many technology product categories, especially second platform solutions in the enterprise arena. As segments near or reach saturation, new customer acquisition costs soar and it becomes imperative to more efficiently find new customers, get the most out of existing customer relationships, and defend them from competitors. The scale efficiencies of marketing vs. sales are critical to accomplishing these objectives cost-effectively.
3. Subscription revenue models dramatically extend the time it takes to recoup cost of sales. Ideally, revenue and profit increase over time, but that is dependent on retention and expansion of the relationship which require constant care and nurturing. As a result, marketing must play a central role in optimizing the ongoing customer relationship.
4. Technology has enabled an increasing number of account based marketing program components to be scaled beyond a small group of select customers. Online communities, micro sites, personalized content, crowd sourced product features, and other digital elements are easier to offer at scale. As a result, they enable companies to gain additional margin and raise expectations in segments beyond their largest customers. These are the tools the digital marketer must leverage for delivering value to the account.

Despite its name Account Based Marketing is not an exclusively marketing function, far from it. At its most mature it is part of a larger program that coordinates all customer facing resources (from marketing, sales, finance, fulfillment, product development, service, support and partner organizations.) Prior to getting there, it can take a number of different forms depending on resource commitment from content curation, to verticalization, to sales enablement. Regardless of the stage of your ABM activities, the ultimate goal remains the same: to deliver a highly differentiated, deeply customized, supremely successful experience for every account. When executed well, ABM is a vital tool for increasing customer lifetime value and raising the bar for competitors.

Contact me to request more information on IDC's Account Based Marketing Maturity Model - gmurray(at)idc(dot)com. 

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The Personalization Paradox: To get more personal, B2B marketers need to think in terms of accounts

Personalization is fast becoming a de facto customer expectation. In the old days of B2B marketing (i.e. today) people go to your web home page, scan for links, click around and hopefully find their way to the most relevant information. That model is quickly being replaced by the social-mobile model in which information finds you based on your interests. Not only should it be delivered to you, but wherever you go on the Internet content should be designed around you. In effect, digital engagement is transitioning to a Google Adwords model where everything is specifically targeted and customized for every single visitor.

This is a very challenging transition for B2B marketers. It means you have to identify as much as you can about a web visitor and serve content to them dynamically in the amount of time it takes for your web page to load in their browser. The implications for web infrastructure, content development and management, and data structures are significant.

A key to making visitor data more useful to the marketing and sales process is the ability to instantly identify visitors and associate them with specific accounts. Many B2B companies construct their go to market models around industries, segments, and increasingly, named accounts. This is also how they set up their CRM systems and revenue reporting. However, most marketing automation systems work at the contact level and use emails as unique record locators, neither of which are ideal for an account based model. Marketing needs to embed the account perspective into everything they do. Fortunately it is as relevant to the personalization process as it is to the alignment issue.

Key account level questions for personalization:

• Is this an existing customer?
• Is this person's company in the same corporate family as an existing customer?
• Is this a targeted segment, vertical, or named account?
• Who are their direct competitors?
• What role are they likely to play in the education, evaluation, and purchase processes?

Understanding someone's professional profile opens the door to the real power in B2B marketing - being able to connect the relationships of contacts within accounts and the relationships between accounts (who owns who). The result is more targeted engagement, faster lead identification and qualification, higher conversion rates, and a customer experience that is really designed around the customer.

IDC recommends:

Focus on specific targets to facilitate the process of content development and provisioning. Prioritize by segment, vertical, or named accounts and work through the content development punch list.

• Deploy an IP identification capability that can be easily integrated with your customer databases, web, marketing and CRM systems.
• Adopt an account level attribution model so contacts can be readily assigned to accounts in the CRM, and marketing influence can be tracked through the sales pipeline.
• Push the engagement envelop as far as possible because the more immediate it is the more influential, e.g. integrate chat with key targets and offer them chat sessions with subject matter experts not just sales people.
• Connect contacts within accounts carefully. Regional proximity, departmental similarities, and what search terms/links they used to reach your site should be factored in to increase the likelihood of finding familiar people or priorities.

IDC believes that personalization is a critical function for all digital marketing infrastructures. Reaching your audience sooner and grooming them through a completely personalized experience will be key to gaining market share. This is no small task and those that get started early will find market advantages that late comers will be hard pressed to displace.

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