/ Old-school marketing powered by digital innovation

In a world of social media and cookies, digital marketers have spent far too much time reaching a vast, but wrong audience. The marketing pendulum had begun to swing in the opposite direction, back towards account-based marketing.

Account-based marketing is primarily focussed on high-value B2B audiences. It’s a highly targeted marketing approach that emphasises efficiency and strategy over casting a wide net and hoping for the best.

“There’s nothing new about Account Based Marketing,” says Stephanie Walters, Senior Digital Strategist at Somebody Digital. “For a long time, ABM has been the preferred method for getting high-value contacts in your pipeline, it just used to be called by a different name. But more recently, it’s become talked about because of its enablement through technology.”

Platforms power ABM

The rise of digital ABM platforms and tools has allowed more businesses to meet their target audiences where they are, instead of casting the marketing net wide. It’s about using data to give your organisation a competitive edge, with B2B tactics that cut through the digital white noise.

Besides cutting through the noise, these tools allow you to only target your message to the people who need to hear it when they need to hear it inside of the buying cycle. This is in large part due to the segmentation of large data sets based on a company's pre-defined TAM (total addressable market) parameters that ABM tools enable.

“The insights into your audiences that ABM platforms can provide is impressive,” says Stephanie. “They indicate where you should be putting in your marketing effort, so you don’t waste marketing budget talking to proverbial dead ends.” But, she adds, you can’t leave everything to the AI.

Picking the right players for your ABM team

Many businesses investigate ABM marketing, but partnering with an experienced ABM agency can make all the difference between success and failure.

Many ABM platforms integrate with existing marketing software, such as Salesforce and HubSpot. However, having a team that can filter, sort, and leverage this big data to provide targeted marketing insights and solutions is crucial.

“You could train someone up internally,” admits Stephanie, “But they won’t have the depth of knowledge or experience that an agency like Somebody Digital can bring to the table. Not only do we offer extensive experience across all digital platforms, but we’ve got a professional team that can quickly adapt and enables your ABM efforts through daily monitoring and interpretation. Plus we have most likely already got the required ABM expertise in place, meaning we can kick off far faster”

An agency can offer guidance, interpretation, and optimisation to make your ABM campaigns successful. Somebody Digital’s ABM team offers clients customised ABM setup solutions, providing guidance on which platform and tech stack would best suit their a needs solution when it comes to tackling this type of marketing.

“We offer a complete evaluation for clients when it comes to deciding on the tools they want to use. We shortlist these based on capabilities and cost, as well as integration. We’re able to look at their goals, based on their audience and sales pipeline, and advise on factors that may influence or increase sales. Plus, we know the tech stack inside out,” says Stephanie.

High-risk high reward

The drawback to account-based marketing is that it can require a significant investment, but promises significant returns when it’s done correctly and intentionally. “Like most tools, ABM platforms can just become expensive reports that no one ever looks at,” says Stephanie, “A business has to consider what kind of accounts they need to get in to offset the cost and make a profit, but in the long run, targeting high-net-worth organisations is worth it.”

Of course, in order to drive this success there needs to be collaboration between the sales and marketing teams within a business. “Feedback loops are critical and organisational buy in is required to make the shift from targeting leads versus targeting accounts,” says Stephanie. “As we all know sales and marketing struggle to get along so this can sometimes be the biggest hurdle.”

While ABM marketing might not suit every B2B organisation’s needs, for those willing to put in the time, money, and effort, the dividends of targeting high-net-worth audiences can be very worthwhile. “Why catch lots of sardines with a very big net, when what you really want to catch is that one shark?” adds Stephanie.

To find out more about Somebody Digital’s ABM offering, get in touch.