Account Based Marketing (ABM): Lead Development--Quality, Not Quantity - Part 1

“Don’t count the people you reach; reach the people that count.” ~ David Ogilvy

PART ONE: What is Account Based Marketing(ABM)?

“ABM!” … “Account Based Marketing” is the most talked about thing right now in the B2B world. Yet, ABM has been around forever. “I was using basic ABM principles at Dell 25 years ago,” said John Ellett, CEO nFusion. So, what changed? What’s making the old ways the innovations of today?

Consider:

• 80% of marketers measuring ROI say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments.
  
• 84% of marketers said that ABM had significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships.
  
• When ABM has been in use for at least a year, 60% of users reported a revenue increase of at least 10%, and 19% of users reported a revenue impact of 30% or greater.
  {Source: Forbes}

ABM has been described as using a spear to catch fish as opposed to using a net. Or, as like being a sniper zeroing-in on the targeted contact in a crowded field. Or perhaps it’s best to look at the ABM system as a turnkey approach. When it works perfectly, each tooth and groove of the sales effort makes a connection with a sales lead at every level in the targeted company, thus unlocking the whole enterprise. ABM is the perfect system when, as is often the case, you have to work with multiple buyers in a given sale.

“ABM takes an individual prospect or customer account -- these are companies, not individual people -- and treats it like its very own market, or a market of one,” said Amanda Zantal-Wiener of HubSpot. But, ABM is not a solo task. It is a combination of actions from advertising, direct mail, calls, emails, and content, all working in unison. “It's not about how many leads you generate,” says Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio, “it’s about are you engaging and building relationships with the right people at the right accounts?”

But, why is it that the old methodology is all of sudden is achieving these high ROIs? The answer is advances in technology. And it’s companies such as ConnectLeader which are leading this ABM revolution. Tools such as the Click Dialer, Personal Dialer, Team Dialer and Adaptalytitics--prioritize prospective buyers using predictive intelligence and facilitate connecting with them. It’s a hard reality for sales reps knowing that less than 1 percent of their sales leads will turn into revenue-generating customers. This is why marketers want to find new ways to locate a greater number of high-quality leads.

Software tools can “manage the leads and relationships,” says Noah Elkin, research director of multichannel marketing at Gartner, “score the leads, provide predictive analysis, and deliver targeted content creation, coupled with programmatic advertising techniques that let marketers target identified accounts and individuals at whatever stage of the buying process they're in."

And it’s social media which is providing the richest channels for this new lead generation, as well as the best methods for reducing sales cycles and improving conversion rates. So, choose your channels wisely. The five major social media platforms are: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Author: Senraj Soundar, CEO, ConnectLeader

In PART TWO: PERSONALIZATION, MEASUREMENT, AND TEAMWORK we’ll look at how advances in technology have allowed sales and marketing to personalize accounts, measure real-time results, and work together in novel ways to produce high ROIs with classic ABM methodology.