In B2B marketing, precision and personalization are key. Account Based Marketing (ABM) helps you focus your marketing and sales efforts on the 20% of accounts that will generate 80% of your future revenue. By identifying and targeting high-value accounts, ABM enables you to operate efficiently and drive significant business growth.
However, for Account Based Marketing to be successful you need to have a strong foundation of the program. You ideally want to start small, validate signals at every step of the process, collect feedback, iterate and scale.
In this blog we will look at the top five reasons your Account Based Marketing efforts may be falling short and offer actionable strategies on how to improve account-based marketing for better results.
1. Wrong Targets: Identifying the Right Accounts to Improve Account-Based Marketing
The Problem: Selecting the right accounts is one of the earliest and most critical steps in account-based marketing. It can set your program up for success or doom it to failure. Investing time and resources into accounts unlikely to convert wastes budget and delays results.
The Fix:
- Prioritize accounts with clear needs: Look for accounts that align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), have well-defined challenges your solutions can addresses, & with the right technical infrastructure to implement your solution. This requires deep market research and direct engagement, not just data signals.
- Combine data sources: Use a blend of first-party, third-party, and qualitative data to gain a comprehensive understanding of target accounts.
- Partner with third-party research firms: Collaborate with firms specializing in identifying accounts and key contacts with pressing challenges. These partners can provide actionable insights into the pain points and priorities of target accounts, enabling you to focus on accounts with the highest conversion potential.
2. Ads Targeting Too Many Accounts: Narrowing the Focus to get maximum yield from Account-Based Marketing
The Problem: Casting too wide a net can dilute your ad spend and lower the effectiveness of your campaigns.
The Fix:
- Prioritize high-value accounts: Identify the top 20% of accounts likely to drive 80% of your revenue and focus resources there. You ideally want to start with 200 to 250 accounts for your ABM program to keep things simplified and be able to easily track program effectiveness.
- Monitor Ad spend per Account: In order for your ad campaigns to be successful and to ensure a high degree of penetration per account you should be spending a minimum of $50/account/month via advertising. If you are spending less than that per account, it would be best to either increase spend or decrease target account list size or check if you have added enough contacts per account to your targeting.
- Measure and optimize: Continuously evaluate the conversion rates across the ABM funnel and average time spent by accounts in each stage. Over time you want the velocity increasing as your campaign effectiveness improves and program scales.
3. Inaccurate Intent Data: Strengthening Data Reliability
The Problem: Relying solely on weak or misleading intent signals can lead to wasted efforts on accounts with little genuine interest. Over-reliance on intent data alone can also misdirect efforts toward accounts that may show interest but lack immediate pain points or urgency.
The Fix:
- Validate intent data with third-party insights: Intent data can indicate which accounts are researching solutions, but it doesn’t always reveal the full context. Validate intent signals with additional research to ensure you’re targeting accounts with both interest and relevant pain points.
- Focus on behavioral insights: Look for meaningful engagement, such as repeated visits to high-value pages or attendance at webinars, to identify genuine interest.
- Combine qualitative and quantitative data: Ensure your targeting strategy includes a mix of validated intent signals and broader market intelligence for a well-rounded approach.
If you are using DemandBase, Foundry, Bombora, 6sense or any other intent platform, you should customize the intent to suit your buyer by combining it with your internal signals to create ABM stages and campaign triggers.
4. Misaligned Teams: Improve Account-Based Marketing by Aligning Teams
The Problem: Sales and marketing teams not working the same accounts. The two teams often work in silos, leading to mismatched targeting efforts.
The Fix: Improving Sales-Marketing Alignment in ABM
- Establish shared goals: Align sales and marketing on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as accounts engaged, meetings booked, pipeline created, and revenue generated.
- Collaborate on account selection: Use cross-functional meetings to define high-priority accounts and agree on targeting strategies.
- Give visibility: Marketing should share with sales messaging and campaigns being implemented for Target Accounts. Sales should work with marketing to create account engagement and outreach plans for each stage of the ABM funnel. The greater the visibility both teams give to each other, the better they will be able to work in sync and achieve better results.
5. Weak Personalization: Improve Account-Based Marketing by Crafting Resonant Messaging
The Problem: Generic messaging fails to capture the attention of decision-makers at target accounts.
The Fix:
- Invest in account research: Understand the unique pain points, goals, and preferences of each target account.
- Customize content: Use personalized email templates, landing pages, and ads tailored to each account’s needs.
- Adopt dynamic content tools: Leverage technology like Hushly to automate personalization at scale, ensuring relevance for every interaction.
Bonus – Poor Account Cycling Practices: Improve Account-Based Marketing by creating a clear process to rotate target accounts
The Problem: Cycling through accounts too quickly or running them for too long can harm your ABM strategy. Moving on from accounts prematurely may result in lost opportunities, while overextending campaigns can lead to wasted resources.
The Fix:
- Set a clear timeline: Set a clear timeline for each stage of the ABM funnel, usually spanning 4 to 6 months for enterprise awareness campaigns. If no significant progress is made during this period, swap out the accounts to focus resources more effectively.
Conclusion
To truly improve your account-based marketing efforts, remember to:
- Align your teams: Bridge the gap between sales and marketing to ensure cohesive and effective strategies.
- Select the right accounts: Start strong by identifying high-priority accounts that align with your goals and ICP.
- Focus your resources: Avoid spreading your efforts too thin by narrowing your focus to high-value accounts.
- Personalize your messaging: Craft tailored communications that resonate with the unique needs of each account.
- Validate your data: Use high-quality intent signals and market research to refine your targeting.
- Cycle accounts effectively: Establish a clear timeline for campaigns and adjust your strategy based on performance.
By addressing these challenges, you can create a robust Account-Based Marketing strategy that delivers measurable business results.
Ready to take your Account-Based Marketing efforts to the next level? Contact CampaignRev to learn how our research-driven insights can help you create an accurate target account list, identify pain points, personalize messaging, validate advertising effectiveness and intent data accuracy.
