Account-based marketing (ABM) can be a real game-changer for B2B and SaaS companies when it’s executed properly. But all too often companies struggle with grasping the true meaning of ABM, instead focusing on a single marketing or sales tactic as a silver bullet.
It’s not their fault, traditional marketing has taught us that if we do X then we will get Y in return – but, as well all know, that’s simply not true (and if we’re being honest, never was).
ABM is not some new fad, but instead a holistic way of approaching sales & marketing in a way that ensures your team is working as one, not siloed by who you report to or the KPIs you need to meet. It is this mentality that makes ABM an ideal solution for growth-stage B2B and SaaS companies.
Account-based marketing, when done correctly, will ensure that your growing team is efficiently and effectively reaching a common goal.
ABM Challenges & How to Avoid Them
1. Truly aligning your sales & marketing teams.
As your team expands and KPIs are set, it’s easy for silos to develop across teams. This is especially common in growth-stage companies as the pressure to grow quickly creates tunnel-vision from leadership down. One of the biggest missed opportunities when it comes to making ABM work is allowing for the fast-paced environment to knock your team offline. Sales & marketing teams need to be aligned at every step of the customer journey, from messaging to targeting to measuring. Having regular huddles and a central project hub with messaging documentation, assets for your campaigns, and an established sales process is crucial when looking to expand your opportunities via ABM.
2. Selecting your best-fit target accounts based on data, not feelings.
Think of your ideal customer – now tell us why you chose them. If you’re still selecting the accounts you’re going after based on hunches, then getting ABM up and running will be more difficult than it needs to be. Data is at the backbone of everything we do for a reason. When successfully launching an ABM strategy you need to base your target accounts on the data you have (your current customers) and the current opportunities in the market (is there explicit demand for your service?). We want to determine the biggest fish in our cove, not the entire lake.
3. Getting the necessary processes in place.
We get it, you need to move fast but without the proper processes in place, the ability to hit go won’t mean much. From attribution to sales processes – ABM is reliant upon establishing a structure that supports both sales & marketing efforts so it can be easily measured, reported, and improved. If you move too fast because you’re anxious to get results, then you lose out on valuable insights and benchmarks that will allow you to learn and expand. Our goal as an agency is to get clients to better understand the impact of their efforts so that they can replicate what works at scale. It’s exactly this mentality that makes ABM and growth-stage SaaS companies such a good fit.
4. Slipping back into lead creation mode.
It’s easy to get sidetracked by the alluring vanity metrics like leads when some of the ABM tactics that you’ll use crossover with traditional tactics. But don’t let that get in the way of truly embracing an ABM strategy. While you may have measured success based on leads in the past – the goal of ABM isn’t to create as many leads as possible, it’s to create valuable opportunities based on marketing qualified accounts.
With account-based marketing, relevancy creates higher engagement which leads to increased output.
Account-Based Marketing Strategy
An ABM strategy is not much different than a typical go-to-market strategy except that it looks at the customer journey as a complete process rather than individual interactions with marketing and sales. That is why attribution and relevancy are such critical parts of any ABM playbook.
Regardless of where the customer is in the buying journey, they need to be serviced with consistent messaging and creative output to create a more cohesive understanding of your brand and service(s). By truly understanding your accounts and the personas that are relevant to your product or service, we can anticipate their needs at both ends of the sales & marketing cycle so that we’re always one step ahead. This deep understanding demonstrates to potential customers that you know what their greatest need is and how to solve it.
Our goal at RenderTribe is to help you not only understand which accounts are the best fit for your company but to set you up for success by helping you implement the right tools and procedures to create valuable, scalable results. If you’re interested in learning more about how ABM can transform the way you approach customers, we invite you to reach out to our team here.
Learn more about our ABM expertise by contacting us today!
