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The future of account based marketing

Written by Markus Lehto | Aug 2019

Account-Based Marketing was what marketing departments were doing before technological development brought inbound marketing into the spotlight.

But what’s next?

What is account-based marketing?

In short, the main idea behind Account-Based Marketing (ABM) was, and still is, to reach well-targeted groups of people with well-targeted messages. This is not only the most effective way to use marketing resources but in a world full of noise it’s just the right thing to do.

The Next Step

As the technology evolved, ABM began to lose ground to inbound marketing. Of course, it makes more sense to talk to the people that search for your products and services in the first place. Very soon, it turned out that account-based marketing was seen as the old way of doing things and inbound was the new, better way.

So in the inbound world, can ABM still be relevant? Sure it can. And when the best parts of inbound are combined, it is more effective than ever. At its best, account-based marketing is a shared function of marketing and sales. ABM covers the whole buying process, all the way from the first contact to, and even beyond, the closing sales meeting. 

Sales and marketing misalignment costs businesses annually €1 trillion

Keeping it simple

In a complicated world, it is important to keep things simple. The most important thing is to have a clear vision of who your customers are and how you can reach them.

Next, you have to make sure that your sales process is solid. Never forget that account-based marketing, inbound marketing, and sales enablement exist to serve your sales process. ABM and inbound are used to generate high-quality leads and sales enablement helps your customers to buy. 

Checklist

  • Define whom you want to target (industry, geographical area, job title, etc.)
  • Create an account-based marketing list for the selected audience
  • Create a continuous process for finding and adding prospects to the list
  • Produce relevant sales and marketing content that is relevant to the selected audience
  • Send carefully crafted, well-targeted newsletters with good content (try not to spam!)
  • Directly reach out and contact prospects (e.g. on LinkedIn) to engage in a conversation
  • Use sales enablement tool to share relevant content with a prospect
  • Schedule a meeting with the prospect
  • Use sales enablement tool to present and share selected, relevant content in the sales meeting – online or face-to-face

Collect data

After your sales process is sorted out and lined up, you need to make sure that you are collecting the right data from different phases to support and optimize the whole process. For example, the data from your marketing automation can help you to develop your customer-facing meetings for the better. And vice versa.

Use Showell as your sales enablement tool

Showell is the perfect sales enablement tool. Think of it as the final link in a well-designed account-based marketing process. In Showell, you have all the necessary sales and marketing collateral for targeting your audiences and influencing all decision-makers. With Showell, you don’t just repeat the same general messages that people can find on your webpage.

Content that closes deals

Showell makes it easy and lightning-fast to find and share the right content for any conversation. And content that is presented and shared can be selected specifically to match the needs of each particular customer. In fact, sharing is crucial – shared content can make all the difference when your customer is trying to convince other decision-makers – the ones that you don’t get to meet – in his or her organization. Research shows that sales rep has to influence on average up to six people involved in the decision-making process. 

Boost sales and marketing with better data

On top of this, Showell captures valuable data from meetings. After a while, you will learn which sales materials are needed and which are not. In addition, you will start to see the differences between industries and business models. In time, the data from your customer-facing meetings will help you to create better account-based ads, newsletters, and messages. And better account-based marketing overall.