Account-Based Marketing Is Not as Expensive as You Think

Treating every customer and prospect like a market of one—what we at ITSMA call Account-Based Marketing, or ABM—would seem to be a time- and resource-intensive proposition—the mother of one-off, nonscalable marketing programs.

Not necessarily, according to a recent ITSMA multiclient study. Interviews with leading practitioners found that ABM is indeed scalable.

But there are conditions. One is that you have some sort of central governance for the program, whether it be a program management office, a governing council, or both.

Why? Because the central authority can facilitate regular meetings and conference calls to share best practices and lessons learned, including tools and templates for process standardization, internal communications programs, and formal training programs. It can also act as the arbiter of metrics to determine what’s working across the various programs and what isn’t.

The central group can also help local field marketing organizations get the help and support they need to execute ABM. Local field marketers are the “last mile” of ABM. They are responsible for most of the direct customer interaction. Therefore, they can’t be reinventing the wheel for each account, because ABM is rarely their only responsibility—with other demands on their time, they need help.

Another condition for scaling ABM is reusing resources—in essence, a one-to-few approach rather than one-to-one. In one sense this is easy: ABM is an extension of the things you already do, with a special emphasis on market research and thought leadership. So some of the costs for ABM are already covered by existing programs.

But there’s more to it than this. Not all research and thought leadership will be applicable to every account, even if it is customized. There needs to be a strategy behind using resources across multiple accounts (here, too, it helps to have a central coordinating authority of some sort). You need to make smart choices about which customers and prospects will benefit from a one-to-few approach and which require a strict one-to-one relationship. And you also need to create tools and templates to minimize the effort involved in creating the materials for these programs—with the level of customization increasing with the degree of one-to-one treatment.

Across all companies participating in the study, we found that the foundation of ABM is demand generation rather than lead generation. In other words, this isn’t going at them and trying to find someone who has budget and already has an idea of what they want to buy. You re working with the customers to help them uncover their problems and business issues and collaborate with them to create the solutions.

Of course, while our research found that there are ways to be more efficient with ABM, it is still an investment. But we don’t recommend that companies try to sell it internally as yet another marketing program that needs to be justified in tough budget times. ABM is a business strategy, not a marketing program. If you ‘re talking about a strategy that ’s going to increase profits or increase revenue, it ’s hard to say, “Well, how do we justify that?”

But if you do need to justify it, here’s some evidence: Of all the companies we interviewed, none are cutting back on ABM. Some have had failed campaigns, but all believe that ABM has been an overall success, and have the case studies to prove it.

Clearly, there is no turning back on ABM now.

ITSMA members can download a tool with all the most important questions to ask in each of the five categories as well as a chart showing how to create a summary snapshot here.‘

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.