Marion Barnham • January 31, 2025
When you hear the word account you think of sales, right?
Well, in account-based marketing you combine your Marketing and Sales forces to target the best-fitted accounts and create a unique and customised buying journey for them.That is actually one of the benefits of this strategy, having your sales and marketing aligned. However, only 28% of salespeople say that their best leads come from marketing.
So where do things go wrong?
In order to bridge this gap, we need to examine what other strategies marketers use and their effectiveness.
Many marketing professionals tend to implement inbound marketing tactics.
But what is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a technique for attracting clients to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding.
The biggest difference between the two strategies stands in the audience.
ABM is targeted to existing clientele or prospects from the sales team and that means that it is very narrow. In inbound marketing, you create content for your buyer persona, that you have initially built when creating your marketing plan, therefore your audience is wide.
How inbound marketing works step by step:
- Initially, you want the brand you represent to be perceived as a thought leader in the industry and as an advisor. The tools used in this step to help you reach your goal are ads, video, blogging and social media.
- The second step is to engage them with your insights and unique selling proposition. Your allies to get the winning result are email marketing and marketing automation.
- After you track how they react to your campaigns, you can finally segment and identify your audience. Now you can continue your efforts with smart and highly targeted content.
Let’s look at some statistics that indicate that inbound is a very effective way of creating more leads.
62% of respondents would consult a search engine to find out more about a product compared to 29% that would be willing to talk to a sales representative from the start.
43% of B2B Buyers read at least 3 to 5 pieces of content to form their own opinion before deciding to speak with a sales rep. This shows that people trust more thought leaders and cross-referencing than people that solely represent one brand.
On the other hand with account-based marketing the process seem to go backward:
- You start by building a segmented database. To do that you need to collaborate with the sales team. Sales professionals may provide you with details that will finally make them convert.
- Secondly, you create tailored messaging based on each account.
- Ultimately, you build lasting relationships that allow upselling and cross-selling and the much-desired increase in revenue.
A Forrester study showed that marketers strongly agree that personalized content (56%) and advanced data management (43%) are keys to ABM’s success.
ABM is on the rise as we can see based on data from different surveys. It is indicated that marketing budgets that are solely used for ABM saw a 41% increase in 2019 and 55% of marketers rated their ABM strategy as “established” in the same year compared to just 43% in 2018.
But what do marketers say about impact?
62% have estimated having a positive impact since adopting ABM. (Forrester)
Even more impressive is the fact that 80% of marketers said ABM improves customer lifetime values, while 86% say it improves win rates. (TOPO)
Disadvantages:
- ABM is time-consuming and a very detailed process.
- If you are a start-up, you don’t have all the necessary data for a successful ABM strategy.
- Inbound has a lower conversion and engagement rate because of the wide audience.
A combination of both strategies is probably the best way forward.
Inbound is great for attracting new clients and account-based marketing is very effective for cultivating relationships and increasing the lifetime value of a customer.
If you liked our content, please share on social media, and if you need our advice just send us an email, we are always happy to help you.