But is it ABM?

by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

"I'm doing ABM."

"Great. To how many accounts?"

"20,000!"

"How is that ABM?"

"Well, you see, I'm MARKETING to ACCOUNTS…"

That's an actual conversation I had a few years ago with a marketer. To that person, any type of B2B marketing had to be ABM because, Accounts + Marketing = ABM. Right?

Not long after that, I was asked to judge a marketing competition and was assigned the ABM category. I received a long list of high quality entries, only some of which were what I'd describe as ABM. Some were account-based sales admin (custom presentation building). Others were really good segment based marketing. But only a few fit the definition of ABM I'd learned and practiced over the years.

Now, if someone says "we should do ABM" I always stop and ask what they mean by that. What is the overall strategy? What outcome are you hoping to achieve? What content and tactics are you going to use to build a constructive conversation with the target audience?

Each time I get a different answer.

What is ABM?

Some people still talk today about ABM being a new concept, but the term has been around since the early 2000s (there are a few people and organisations credited with its first use) but the concept has been around a lot longer. I remember engaging with the team at Peppers and Rogers not long after their book The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time came out in 1996.

They weren't using the term ABM but a lot of the concepts will be familiar to ABM practitioners: close targeting of customers and prospects, deep research to understand their needs, a custom approach for engaging with each business that's tuned to their preferences.

So what does great ABM look like? I always think that an example is better than theory and here's one of my favourites (names redacted) from the ABM category of that marketing competition.

This is great ABM

The company in question had an offer they wanted to bring to the market. It was a very specific offer that would appeal to large manufacturing organisations who had very strong green credentials and an aspiration to be even better in this space.

First, they did research. They started with a long list of companies that fit the overall firmographics of location and size, identifying about 100 businesses they could potentially approach. From there they did proper research, looking at each company's website to understand their statements, aspirations, and commitments to sustainability messages.

This research allowed them to next do some really narrow targeting. They considered all the data they'd gathered and picked the 20 businesses that demonstrated the strongest green commitment. This allowed them to identify the most likely contacts in those accounts who would be part of the buying group for the offer.

They built some great marketing materials about the offer that were generic but very specific to this target audience's needs. But the content had room for personalisation by company and by role, allowing the team to incorporate highly custom content that reflected back the aspirations each company had made publicly and address the specific needs of the individual.

It's not too surprising that with this sort of high quality custom approach, they were incredibly successful, engaging directly with 15 of the 20 companies and successfully winning deals with 10 of them. While successful, this wasn't cheap. The cost was more than £10k per approached business (in today's equivalent spend) because of the time and effort required to do the research and personalisation. But it made sense because the cost of sale was so high. They invested heavily and got a great return.

What next for ABM?

Since I encountered that example, the industry and technology has moved on dramatically:

• Intent data can now help you identify prospective targets as they come into market and tell you who to talk to

• Generative AI can be fed information about an offer and a prospect to create personalised content

• Social media and programmatic ad targeting can provide air cover directly into targeted accounts

• Predictive tools and help you to deliver the right message at the right time

But none of these on their own deliver ABM, though they could be a valuable addition to an ABM strategy. But if you want to be successful at ABM you need to remember to do the basics:

1. Deep research to enhance your data and understand your audience

2. Highly focused targeting to select accounts where you can be successful

3. Personalised content that reflects who the company and people are to break through

Then you can say, "I'm doing ABM."