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When is Account Based Marketing Needed?

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Jon Russo is a three-time global Chief Marketing Officer in successful public and private SaaS companies in Silicon Valley, New York City, and Luxembourg.

Today, he leads B2B Fusion to optimize marketing technologies and business process to drive revenue growth, with an expertise in revenue conversion optimization and Account Based strategies. Jon also currently serves on the Board of Directors of MOCCA, Marketing Operations Cross Company Alliance, the industry best practice association that drives operational excellence in Marketing, with fellow board members from Intel, SAP, Adobe, and others. 

A former active duty U.S. Army officer, Jon earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley and his Bachelors of Science in Finance from the University of Connecticut. In addition, Jon is a certified master in Eloqua, a Marketo Certified Expert, and Salesforce Certified Expert.

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Jon Russo, Founder, B2B Fusion, in his four-part series will give us all the insights of ABM

We have all heard the buzz; Account-Based Marketing, Account Based Selling, Account Based Revenue, Account Based Everything…the acronyms are plentiful. I’ll add one more to the mix.

An account based approach (ABA) represents an omni-channel coordinated sales and marketing approach, one that reinforces B2B sales and marketing fundamentals, but more hyper-targeted than in times past. It includes very personalized and customized experiences across ANY automation tool for sales AND marketing. Analysts are catching onto this trend:

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When should a company take an Account-Based Approach?

Whatever the name or acronym used, what’s important is that a company agrees that it’s an initiative that’s strategic enough to drive revenue for the organization as a whole where ‘pipeline is the only metric that matters’. When that accountability mindset happens, there must then be a supporting focus of resources, time, and energy from a variety of different places in the company.

There is no ‘one size fits all.’  ABA has a variety of benefits and the reasons for embarking on this journey are entirely dependent on your situation.

  • Acquiring net-new accounts. Our experiences indicate that several SaaS companies are seeking enterprise growth vehicles, making ABA a popular tactic to do so for growth. Personalization is critical for all sales and marketing touchpoints as accounts as well as contacts are typically ice cold.
  • Improving the odds of conversion with digital channel tests. When one considers the standard 15% open rate and 2% click-through-rate that prospecting emails can average, many companies look to increase conversion through ABA with a refined message, new omni-channel tactics, and aggressive segmentation approach.
  • Increasing wallet share. For larger companies, or in certain industries such as financial services, ABA affords an opportunity for cross-sell, up-sell, or deeper penetration within customer accounts in a more methodical, customized approach. These activities lead to higher retention rates, critical for recurring models like SaaS companies have.

Not every situation needs account-based marketing. If you’re dealing with a complex purchase with multiple buyers and long deals, this very well may be relevant for your particular company. If you’ve got a small ASP or a transactional B2B sale, this is not the best approach for you.

We’re in the early days of ABA/ABM as it relates to the modern-day technologies being marketed and sold to help companies leverage some of these tactics. We see across the 100+ ABM deployments my team and I have participated in is that an Account-Based Approach is an investment being made in addition to and in parallel with other marketing efforts and tools, such as inbound and marketing automation. The plane still needs to be flown while the engine is getting upgraded. This makes it a bit challenging for marketers with limited resources or budget to pull ABA off effectively.

In our recent webinar on ABM success, you’ll see more ways to think about ABM/ABA as an overall strategy. In our next part of our ABA blog series, we’ll describe how to convince stakeholders ABA is worth embarking on.

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