rule of thumb in marketing says: If something is successful in the USA, sooner or later it spills over across the Atlantic and becomes a trend in Germany. Of course, that also applies to account-based marketing—the big thing in B2B marketing in the States right now!
So: Before all your competitors jump on the ABM bandwagon and speed past you, find out here how to choose the right ABM software and finally make your B2B marketing more effective than ever before—because, naturally, there are once again some excellent MarTech solutions for this area.
The special thing about account-based marketing is that the target group of your marketing activities is viewed quite differently. You’re not addressing a more or less diffuse “market”; instead, you treat individual accounts as a market of their own. ABM is therefore a B2B marketing approach in which personalized marketing activities are specifically tailored to suitable customers within certain important companies (accounts). Which people within your target group is a specific product best suited for?
In ABM, individual content is created and suitable channels and strategies are selected in order to identify and reach exactly the right people within a target group and a company. While traditional marketing focuses on generating as many leads as possible—and is therefore primarily characterized by quantity—ABM focuses on quality. Marketing and sales work closely together and concentrate on the selected key accounts. This makes your marketing much, much more individualized and effective.
Are you slowly losing your appetite for wasted reach? The antidote is called ABM! Because we’re all producing more and more content, posts, emails, etc. – but are campaigns really effective if they’re aimed at a large target group according to the “watering can” principle? As a result, account-based marketing has gained increasing importance in German-speaking countries in recent years, not least due to growing awareness of needs-based marketing.
ABM expands the inbound marketing approach and, thanks to its targeted focus on specific, large customers, is very promising. This strategic orientation enables more effective design of marketing activities, avoids wasted reach, and increases the chances of closing a deal.
Without the right sales technology, it is almost impossible for you to run account-based marketing successfully. For a successful account-based marketing strategy, you need to collect a lot of information and continuously maintain communication between sales and marketing. In addition, it requires cross-departmental knowledge of the target customers and the ongoing sales cycles.
With the help of ABM software, you can document this information and communicate it within the company with other teams. ABM tools also enable you to create scalable, personalized marketing campaigns, measure their results, and demonstrate their contribution to revenue.
Benefits of ABM software include:
Automated transfer of important account information between contacts and the accounts linked to them
Sharing account-level details between sales and marketing
Managing marketing funnels at the account level
Account-based marketing is particularly worthwhile for B2B companies that, due to their business model, already serve a niche market or a selected target group. Companies with a complex offering and long sales cycles, such as the IT industry, should also consider an ABM strategy.
ABM is also relevant for companies whose customers are limited to a specific market segment. This is the case, for example, with management consultancies, as they often offer comparable services to multiple customers within an industry.
ABM software automates many processes and makes work easier for your marketing and sales team. At the same time, it increases data quality and reduces potential sources of error. Are you (co-)responsible for marketing in a large company and do you have extensive ABM goals? Then you should definitely do more than just brainstorm about suitable software.
Software for account-based marketing should provide all the features you need to implement your ABM strategy.
These include the following key functions, for example:
Identifying key accounts
Monitoring and categorizing content views by potential target customers
Access to real-time insights
Personalization of content
Designing multi-channel strategies
Analyzing the performance of campaigns and ads for individual accounts
Interfaces to other B2B marketing tools
Efficient software tools combine most, or ideally all, of these functions. Nevertheless, different providers focus on different areas. Which software is right for your company therefore depends on your specific ABM goals and your internal structures.
To make sure you choose the right ABM software for your use cases, you should answer a few questions beforehand:
How many employees does your company have, how large is your target group, and what is your order volume? Accordingly, how high is the need for ABM software?
Are you already doing Account Based Marketing? If so, define the individual areas of work that should be covered by an ABM software in the future.
What range of functions should the software tool have so that your Account Based Marketing goals can be implemented successfully? Which features must not be missing under any circumstances?
Which interfaces to other programs you already use does an ABM software need to have? (For example CRM, chatbots for website personalization, email automation, DAM and MRM software, etc.)
Since the individual tools also differ in price: What is your budget for an ABM software solution?
The topic of GDPR naturally plays a very important role in the decision-making process. In our research, we attach great importance to this and research GDPR-compliant providers even more meticulously. According to our analysis, there are around 20 relevant players for the German market, eight of which are headquartered in Europe.
ABM is, quite rightly, very popular in B2B marketing and won’t lose its relevance any time soon – quite the opposite! It’s therefore not surprising that there is a broad and steadily growing range of ABM software solutions. Whether you should align your marketing activities with selected key accounts and which software you can use to support you depends on the individual circumstances in your company. Before making a decision, be clear about what your specific ABM goals are and which functions an ABM tool should fulfill in order to achieve them – then nothing will stand in the way of your account-based marketing!
Are you convinced that ABM can improve your marketing? And are you therefore looking for suitable ABM software? Use the know-how from our in-depth market research on account-based marketing solutions and start the matching process—non-binding and free of charge—with the most relevant providers for you on our platform!
Based on your specifications, we select the three best possible providers that fit you and thus save you the lengthy research work that we have already done for many other B2B customers.
Till Zier is CPO at Matchilla and, as a MarTech expert, reports in the MatchZINE on news and trends in marketing, automation, analytics and data.
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