Marketing in the security industry is hard. The buyer's journey is beset by a range of shiny objects, competing offers, fear, uncertainty, doubt, budget shifts and cuts, priority shifts, urgent and important fires to extinguish, as well as various other threats to goals and timelines that disrupt the process.
In an ideal world, you start the sales process bypassing all this “stuff” with the best fit and highest-value leads who are already attentive to you, your security company and your offerings.
It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? But that’s the reality of account-based marketing (ABM).
Account-based marketing takes a focused approach to B2B marketing in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers.
Traditional marketing casts a net to catch a few ideal candidates by marketing to a wide base of contacts.
According to a recent study by MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert to sales. That means that less than a quarter of your hard-earned leads actually create sales opportunity and a vast amount of time goes into qualifying leads, rather than nurturing prospects.
ABM doesn’t replace broad-based marketing; it works strategically in conjunction with it to target top accounts and enhance and streamline the process. Traditional forms of marketing are foundational tools that help you attract targeted accounts, and ABM accelerates the flywheel so you can close the deal.
ABM works by focusing your marketing team and resources on a select number of high-value target accounts identified via traditional marketing.
An ABM campaign will begin with selecting target company accounts (or industry verticals), then work to expand relationships and buy-in with key stakeholders and decision-makers within that account or industry.
Does it work? According to Salesforce, 77 percent of ABM users achieve 10 percent or greater ROI.
Why is it successful? Since the leads are already identified, qualified, and differentiated, the sales team can concentrate on forming genuine relationships that understand the customer’s deeper needs. ABM fast-tracks the sales process directly to engage and delight those highly-targeted accounts, creating stickier and more satisfied customers.
