Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key

account marketing, is a strategic approach to business
marketing in which an organisation considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts
as markets of one. Account based marketing is typically
employed in enterprise level sales organizations.[1]

where the initial sale has taken several months, it is reported that account-based marketing delivers a dramatic
increase in the long-term value of the customer.[1] ABM
can also be applied to key prospect accounts in support of
the rst sale. For example, Northrop Grumman, in which
it contributed to the completion of a successful $2 billion
deal.[4] Account Based Marketing has been used at Shell
to drive $13m deal [5]

Overview

Research demonstrates that buyers are looking for their

existing suppliers to keep them updated with relevant
propositions, but are often disappointed with this. In UK
research, existing suppliers came top of all the dierent information channels that IT buyers use to look for
new solutions but more than 50% felt that marketing
by their suppliers was poor.[6] The research also demonstrates how much easier it is for organisations to generate
more sales from existing customers than from new customers - 77 per cent of decision-makers say that marketing from new suppliers is poorly targeted and makes
it easy to justify staying with their current supplier. By
treating each account individually, account-based marketing activity can be targeted more accurately to address
the audience and is more likely to be considered relevant
than untargeted direct marketing activity.

Account-based marketing has grown since the mid-1990s

as a demonstration of the trend away from mass marketing towards more targeted approaches. It parallels the
movement in business-to-consumer marketing away from
mass marketing where organisations try to sell individual
products to as many new prospects as possible to 1:1 marketing where they concentrate on selling as many products as possible to one customer at a time.[2]
Account based marketing can help companies to:
Increase account relevance
Engage earlier and higher with deals
Align marketing activity with account strategies
Get the best value out of marketing

2.1 The roles of sales and marketing teams

Inspire customers with compelling content

ABM is an example of the alignment of sales and marketing teams.[7] In the aligned model, organizations able to
unite tactical marketing eorts with dened sales goals
and use feedback from sales to identify new potential
markets. For ABM to succeed, joint working relationship
with sales is essential and marketing needs to be measuring and optimizing based on accounts.[8]

While business marketing is typically organised by industry, product/solution or channel (direct/social/PR),

account-based marketing brings all of these together to
focus on individual accounts. As markets become increasingly commoditised, customers see little or no difference between suppliers and their competitors, with
price as the only obvious dierentiators. ABM is increasingly adopted by companies in markets under pressure
from commoditisation [3]

Marketing will also take an increased role in developing

intelligence on key accounts as proposed by Peppers and
Rogers (1993): When two marketers are competing for
the same customers business, all other things being equal,
the marketer with the greatest scope of information about
that particular customer [] will be the more ecient
competitor.[9]

Background and dierences with

traditional business marketing

2.2 Account-based marketing and the IT

In the marketing of complex business propositions,
industry
account-based marketing plays a key role in expanding
business within existing customer accounts (where, for Organizations which are seeing the greatest current benexample, wider industry marketing would not be targeted et from account-based marketing are IT, Services and
enough to appeal to an existing customer). In scenarios Consulting companies. With complex propositions, long
1

sales cycles and large customers, these organizations are

ideal candidates for the approach. It is, though, spreading into other sectors and a benet can be seen to be an
increased return on time (ROT).[10] Many suppliers have
woken up to the fact that the revenues of some of their
customers exceed the GDP of some nation states. They
are changing the amount of their resourcing accordingly.
Organizations supporting sales and marketing eorts in
the IT industry including the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA),[11][12] The
Marketing Practice[13] and VAZT Global, Inc.(VAZT)
[14]
have developed a great deal of the intellectual capital and practical tools shaping the direction of ABM.
The rst to codify the trend was Bev Burgess when she
was European MD of ITSMA. She co-created the approach with organisations like Fujitsu, BT, HP, and Accenture. Others have adapted it and modied it since.

2.3

Choosing the key account

Key accounts are accounts that are identied within organisations as being a focus for account-based marketing. Not all accounts meet the requirements to be designated as a strategic or key account and organisations need
to be careful about which accounts to focus on for their
account-based marketing eorts or risk losing a valuable
client. When choosing, organisations should look at revenue history, account history, margins and protability
as well as the viability that the client in question would
be interested in a long-term relationship. Lastly, asking
what the client and the company have in common helps
in soliding the approach that the client cannot nd this
kind of service anywhere else.

ABM PROGRAMMES

Create the strategic framework: methodology for

selecting the accounts that will be focused on and
framework of objectives and measures for the ABM
programme
Planning workshop: joint marketing and sales session around each account to agree goals and explore
understanding of the account and relevant propositions
Required research: marketing activity to build a
more complete picture of the structure of the target
organisation and its requirements
Create plan: bringing together existing corporate
marketing activities with new account-specic communications to achieve account-specic goals
Execute: build a joint sales and marketing team to
deliver on the plan
Review: apply measures such as the value of
sales, amount of potential revenue in the sales
pipeline, coverage of communications in the account, perception-shifts or appointments made
ABM framework Example Account selection: Opportunity sizing & Propensity Modelling Planning and insight:
Account research and proling Messaging and propositions: Account vision and Propositions Content and communication: Content, Digital Media and marcomms Execution and engagement: Campaigns, events and seminars
[16]

3.2 Strategies

In terms of specic marketing activities that form part

There are also some red ags that help recognize that a of account-based marketing programmes, the following
relationship with a key account is about to change:.[15]
provides a basis for selecting the appropriate tactics for
any specic account
business that regularly would have come to your
Intelligence marketings role in proling the target
company goes elsewhere
account and contacts within it to identify relevant
propositions and communication preferences
a re-organisation within the company forces a
change in relationship
Awareness in target accounts where awareness of
both involved companies arent seeing ROI from the
relationship
mutual goals are not achieved

3
3.1

ABM programmes
Programme frameworks

There are a number of dierent frameworks for accountbased marketing campaigns but, in general, the following
approach is used:

the supplier is low, regular communications have a

role to play in creating a more favourable perception
Campaigning in large target accounts, lead generation campaigns can be run to uncover opportunities
and appoint meetings. This can also be combined
with a digital pipeline marketing campaign targeted
to the chosen companies.
Sales marketing has a role to play in supporting
sales bids to improve conversion rates and shorten
the sales cycle
Advocacy the cycle is completed when customers
become advocates and are used to drive further incremental business

References

[1] Account-based marketing: How it can help your company

improve demand, awareness and protability
[2] Peppers and Rogers; The One-to-One Future (1993);
Page 23
[3] Account Based Marketing Blog
[4] How Northrop Grumman Used Account-Based Marketing to Win a $2B Deal
[5] Momentum ABMs case study
[6] The Marketing Practices Decision-Maker Index research
into account-based marketing perceptions
[7] Kotler, Rackham and Krishnaswamy; Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing (2006) Harvard Business Review
[8] Why Your Demand Team Can't Ignore Account Based
Attribution. www.bizible.com. Retrieved 2016-01-12.
[9] Peppers and Rogers; The One-to-One Future (1993);
Page 140
[10] Demand Generation, Increased Return on Time, video.
Published 15 July 2014, Retrieved 13 October 2014
[11] IT Sales and Marketing Association
[12] Momentum ABM
[13] Account-based marketing campaign template
[14] Building relationships with key accounts
[15] Fast Forward: Choosing and Working With Strategic Accounts (PDF). Retrieved 2009-02-11.
[16] Reference ABM Framework from Momentum ABM

5 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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