Nearly 95% of brands use ABM marketing , and one of their main challenges is delivering a personalized experience. Data helps overcome this difficulty.
ABM strategy
When companies want to buy products and services, they focus on aspects such as return on investment, efficiency and experience. In this case, purchases are not driven by emotion, like personal purchases, but by logic and the business case. For this reason, B2B marketing uses different strategies and relies on effective tools such as content marketing or ABM ( Account-based marketing ). ABM, or account-based marketing , is a strategy that consists of treating an account or group of accounts (customer) as if it were a single market.
With this approach, companies can focus on each customer's needs individually instead of devoting their efforts to a general attraction model for all prospects. With this type of marketing , it is the company that chooses the accounts it wants to convert. Once you have a list of your potential customers, you will create specific marketing actions for each prospect or group of prospects that have the same ICP ( Ideal Customer Profile ).
By focusing on an account or group of accounts, ABM requires sales and marketing to be aligned to achieve the same objectives. This way, they can create joint actions that capture the interest of the target account or accounts.
This strategy is widely used today. According to The 2020 State of ABM Report , published by Terminus, an advertising and marketing company focused on ABM, in which they interviewed 300 representatives vp purchasing officer email lists of companies from various industries, 94.2% of respondents have an active ABM program; in 2019 the figure was 77%. In addition, ABM is a profitable strategy, since 60% of businesses that use this type of marketing saw an increase in revenue of at least 10% in 12 months, according to data from Cepymenews . They also point out that 1 in 5 companies with an ABM strategy experienced an increase in revenue of 30% or more.
Evolution of B2B marketing : from linear purchasing process to ABM strategy
Over the past 15 years, the way companies buy B2B products has changed a lot. As a result, B2B marketing teams have radically transformed their way of working; they have gone from being a department that organised meetings and printed brochures to becoming a key element in channelling and boosting business revenue. Until a few years ago, B2B marketing focused almost exclusively on the top of the funnel.
They were responsible for attracting and nurturing prospects and then passing them on to sales, who were responsible for closing the deal and post-sale growth. This business model no longer works because the current B2B purchasing process does not follow a linear process. Prospects do not progress step by step to become customers, but rather move indiscriminately through the different stages of the customer journey, according to Gartner research .
This means that the customer's purchasing journey is more like a maze than a linear path. Today's purchasing process is more complex, making the traditional handover between marketing and sales ineffective. This is why B2B marketing now plays a more important role in the middle and bottom of the funnel, which was previously handled only by sales. In B2B purchases, the decision-maker is not one person, but several.
Purchasing committees are usually made up of approximately 5 or 6 people, so it is practically impossible for sales representatives to speak to everyone. In this case, the marketing department can do a more efficient job, since it has the ability to reach the right people with the appropriate message through strategies such as content creation , for example.
In fact, 83% of customers access digital channels (website, social media, search engines, etc.) even in the later stages of purchase, according to Gartner research. Due to changing buyer behavior, some of the responsibilities that once fell to sales now fall to marketing . Although lead generation has always been the job of marketing, leads are now handed over to the sales team at a later stage.
