Most brands which use either of these strategies don’t go for the other, and this is a solid mistake they make. Account based marketing has become one of the highest rated marketing strategies of recent, and ever more so for B2B brands. But the catch is that this changes the entire structure of your B2B marketing, and replaces the funnel system with a much more customer personalized agenda. But there are ways in which this form of marketing can be used with the usual demand generation model. Read on.
Flexibility
Not all your customers are the same and therefore you cannot treat all of them the same way. Think of it like this, you are throwing a party and a celebrity walks in, you would obviously treat them better than the rest of your guests. Your marketing plan needs to be the same. While on one end you have your funnel system ready for all prospect leads, as soon as you hit a lead which is more promising than usual, you shift it to the ABM side of things.
How to know who is meant for ABM?
A B2B brand which has chosen to take up ABM first creates a target account list, and thereafter goes on to establish the various techniques to be performed on these targets. You do the same here, and if you see one of your targets end up in the funnel, separate them and provide them the ABM treatment. Alongside this you can also use predictive scoring modules and analyze the data provided by the sales team.
Working with multiple funnels
Even within account based marketing, not all leads are the same and therefore you can’t treat them the same. You need to set up layers of customer treatment strategies, the basic of which being the typical demand gen module, and the rest being various levels of ABM. This is necessary because you might hit a huge account which has multiple leads but not all of them belonging to the same class. In such a case you can distribute the leads as per their importance to the required segment of the funnel.
The question young Padawan, is never whether one should use ABM, but rather how much ABM one should use. And therefore use of ABM is a must, but use of it all the time can be a waste. Follow these tips and set up your own Demand Gen+ABM strategy.
