Marketing leaders say that Account-based marketing has been misunderstood, with the idea that it’s built on obsolete concepts and thinking
Account-based marketing has been around for nearly two decades but many marketers think that it is based on old and non-relevant concepts.
ABM is for C-suite leaders and not only just demand gen marketers
CIOs say that ABM is meant to be useful only for Demand Generation Marketers. But this is a clear misconception. In reality, the strategy is meant for C-suite leaders to ensure that Sales and Marketing budgets are aligned and progressing in the same direction.
ABM encourages the Sales and Marketing departments to streamline based on the functionalities of the discipline that can convert clients and focus marketing strategies within the client accounts. Marketing leaders believe that heads of marketing and sales department should collaborate to ensure organizational success. Loss of doing so indicates inefficiencies and monetary wastage in the budgets of marketing and sales.
ABM is for all B2B organizations and not just the enterprise
CMOs say that since the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) coined the term ABM, marketers often mistake it as a strategy meant for the enterprise industry and Field Marketing alone. However, ABM is meant for all B2B organizations as the modern version is fast, digital, and affordable as compared to in-person marketing which is slow and expensive.
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As a result, CMOs of organization regardless of scale or sophistication prefer ABM.
ABM is for all the accounts that are critical to the business and not just 50 top strategic accounts
CMOs point out that organizations misunderstand ABM as an in-person Field Marketing which is meant for few accounts and not a broad strategy. It is not a niche strategy but a digital strategy that applies to thousands of accounts that are relevant to the organization’s business.
Organizations open compare ABM to be “Fishing with Spears”, however, a more apt analogy would be “Fishing with Harpoons”. This strategy is relevant to all accounts and even to accounts not yet detected. Lead-based Marketing is similar to “Fishing with Net”. CMOs point out implementing a strategy for only 5% of the accounts and inefficient approach towards 95% of the accounts is wasteful as compared to a targeted strategy for 100% of the accounts.
It’s possible to scale up to high-quality machine learning and account data
CMOs say that it is possible to scale up with ABM strategy due to the high-quality machine learning and account data. It helps to reduce downtime and better ROI.
Marketing leaders point out that ABM is a revolution and extension in B2B go-to-market execution and thinking. They say that organizations need to start with the question about the accounts best suited for a particular business, and then create a data-driven strategy that is acceptable to both sales and marketing teams.
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