ABM. It’s a B2B modern marketer’s imperative.

The role of the modern marketer has undergone a dramatic shift. The broad stroke, mass-market, ‘spammy’ B2B marketing campaign is, thankfully, a thing of the past.

Now more than ever, the modern marketer is judged on his/her ability to deliver a qualified sales pipeline, with conversion reporting and funnel analytics at every stage to gauge effectiveness – there is nowhere to hide.

We know the merits of inbound, and how it plays an important role in raising awareness and driving top of funnel engagement. But, let’s be real – are your inbound campaigns really driving qualified leads to your sales team? Can you really justify your marketing spend when the CFO & Sales Director come calling?

The solution? Supplement your existing activity with a robust Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy.

Here are 5 reasons why you should be using ABM:

Marketing teams are constantly pulled in different directions – from tactical campaigns to short-term unstructured activity which does little to drive the bottom line. ABM helps to structure your marketing efforts and resources on your key accounts to drive the most revenue. With such a narrow focus, ABM campaigns optimise your most valuable resources: time and money.

By integrating your sales and marketing efforts, you can focus your marketing team to work directly with sales to target and develop content for these key accounts. That will not only maximise the efficiency of your B2B marketing resources, but it will also help build the communication channel with sales to having an aligned organisation.

A marketing strategy must be measurable. This is no different with ABM. Measuring the ROI of any marketing initiative is critical and is possible with the many automation and software tools now readily available.

Through ABM, you can see both the return on investment for the ABM initiative and immediate areas for improvement based on how contacts are responding to your content.

Hyper-targeted, personalised marketing campaigns are proven to engage prospects and customers, and ABM takes personalised marketing to a new level. By developing relevant content specific to the needs and pain points of select key decision-makers in targeted accounts, marketing comms are sure to resonate and be more impactful.

The net result: moving prospects through the buyer journey – quicker. Such finely-tuned content requires research and collaboration between marketing and sales.

A constant source of frustration and friction, siloed sales and marketing teams are the bugbear of companies the world over. Marketing teams delivering their quota of MQLs, only to be rejected by their sales team as not relevant – it’s a common story.

Through an effective ABM approach, sales and marketing teams work closely together to identify target accounts, develop a communications strategy and, ultimately, ensure that leads delivered are relevant and valuable. ABM serves to unite teams, not divide them.

Through constant alignment, it keeps these teams working together instead of working independently.

We’ve discussed the importance of ROI, but it’s also critical to be able to report on the tactics that either contribute or don’t contribute, to that ROI. By knowing the effectiveness of each individual component of your ABM strategy, be it an email campaign, event or webinar, you will be able to build more effective campaigns to drive the sales pipeline.

With the proliferation of marketing software, tracking is almost real-time – meaning you can optimise your marketing campaigns on an ongoing basis. Tracking these metrics daily will save you time and money.