Why Account-based Demand Generation Makes Sense for Your Business

Account based marketing (ABM) has been headlining B2B marketing events for the past year and there are no signs of this slowing down. If you’re a super busy demand gen marketer (and ALL demand gen marketers fit that description), what do you make of all this attention given to ABM?

More importantly, why should you pause what you’re doing and possibly divert some attention to an account based strategy? Let’s be honest – few B2B marketers are willing to eschew a leads-based demand gen model and switch completely to an ABM approach….and that’s a good thing!

However, almost every B2B business could benefit by augmenting their existing leads-based marketing model with an Account-based Demand Gen model. Here are three compelling reasons to make space (and budget) in your demand gen strategy to include an account-based approach.

1. Different Account Segments Require Different Buying Experiences. As marketers, we know this intuitively and that’s why most companies treat large enterprises very differently from the rest of the leads and accounts. Qualifying a lead capture from an enterprise isn’t as helpful as getting insights into the interests of a given buying center and engaging those stakeholders. That’s not only true for enterprise accounts but really any known set of accounts with a distinct buying journey. For example – existing customers have a different buying journey for cross-sell or up-sell. Think expansively about how to carve out known account sets that have a different buying experience and craft an account-based demand gen program just for them.‍

2. Deliver Opportunities, Not MQLs. The future of B2B marketing responsibility is not about delivering MQLs but about direct dollar contribution to the Opportunity pipeline. I’m noticing a trend where forward thinking marketers are no longer content to simply crank out more MQLs with each passing year while the business still struggles to convert those to revenue. In some of these cases, marketers are confidently stepping up to assume more responsibility for the revenue pipeline by delivering qualified opportunities. They want more influence on the revenue pipeline and are willing to be measured for it.‍

3. True Sales & Marketing Alignment = Working Together. One benefit of ABM is that sales and marketing are working together from day one. Instead of marketing being accountable for an MQL deliverable to sales, an account-based demand strategy requires sales and marketing syncing up from the start – coordinating outbound and inbound campaign efforts together. Sales and marketing alignment in ABM feels less like a running a relay race and more like a orchestrating a band.

B2B marketers, if you want to make an impact to your business, consider carving out time and budget for an account-based approach to demand generation. If you’d like to learn more, sign up for our upcoming session on Getting Started with Account based Demand Generation with Andrew Mahr, our VP, Customer Success.

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