Account-Based or Inbound? Choose Marketing Strategy to Boost Sales

ABM—aiming for the big fish

As you can see, there’s much more to inbound marketing than the popular fishing-inspired analogy would suggest. And how does the ABM-spearfishing metaphor hold up?

Although inbound is intentional when picking the audience, account-based marketing (ABM) takes it to a different level. Here, determining and targeting high-value prospects is the primary focus.

In ABM, each prospect is assigned an account. Every account is treated as a separate “market”, with custom advertising campaigns and content created specifically for every target. This means focusing on the problems of high-ranking decision-makers and offering a solution to build a long-lasting relationship.

Speaking of content, account-based marketing uses it on a much smaller scale than inbound because it’s often tailored to very narrow audiences or even individuals like C-suite executives. In addition to industry-specific case studies and testimonials, comprehensive guides, webinars, and proofs-of-concept, ABM campaigns often rely on personal contact with prospects during on-site product workshops or live demos.

This highly customized approach (or “throwing the spear”) takes a lot of time and energy, so you better ensure it's worth the effort. And what better way to learn more about the value of your prospects than asking the sales team?

The sales-marketing alignment is a good thing to have regardless of your marketing strategy, but it’s especially crucial in the ABM methodology since it relies on high-effort, high-gain leads. 

And it’s a win-win situation for both teams. Salespeople can share their inside-out knowledge of the product and past qualified leads to help marketers find the right prospects and adjust campaigns to their needs. In return, they get quality leads that convert. Over time, this strategy will make it much easier to select promising leads to follow, shortening the sales cycle and increasing ROI.

A recent example of a clever and successful ABM campaign comes from O2. To get ahead of the competition in the B2B sector and increase deal size, marketing and sales teams jointly selected 64 key customer accounts that were then divided into three tiers, depending on the potential of each prospect. Then, the telecom giant developed personalized communication strategies and bespoke assets presenting all products relevant to each account. 

The results? 583 new C-level contacts in the CRM, up to 50% click-through rate on emails between segments, and $52 million of pipeline generated.

Account-based marketing vs. inbound: what’s the difference?

One of the main differences between inbound and ABM lies in their target audiences and, consequently, in what these audiences are looking for.

With inbound marketing, you “cast the net” to attract as many people as possible to your business. This method works best for companies that offer a product or service to a general audience—think productivity tools, streaming services, or non-industry-specific business solutions. 

Another perfect example is consumer goods brands like Starbucks, Nike, or The Body Shop. They all use inbound to stellar effect. Individual deal size may be low, but inbound balances it with volume. Overall, it’s also a great strategy for businesses that want to build brand awareness and scale up.

As for ABM, much more effort is put into finding, attracting, and nurturing each lead. All this combined work of marketing and sales teams has to pay off, so the ideal target for account-based marketing campaigns is high-yield prospects who promise to close major transactions that will bring ROI. 

ABM also makes sense when the product is highly specialized, has a complicated and costly development process, and offers a solution to a specific business challenge.

For these reasons, ABM campaigns are often preferred in corporations and large companies. Their clients have the resources to buy sophisticated products or services at a scale that warrants the return of funds spent on marketing and development.

A blend of ABM and inbound

It would seem that with audiences and offerings that different, the choice is binary: it’s either ABM or inbound. Luckily, the two strategies also share some common features which make it possible to get the best of both worlds.

Firstly, both require knowing your audience inside-out. All the knowledge of your user base and the experience you’ve gathered while researching and developing personas for either strategy will be extremely handy for the other. 

The same can be said about the personalized customer experience. Both ABM and inbound rely on humanized, meaningful, and highly targeted content. Its goal is also similar: it needs to present value to your customers-to-be, whether by educating them or providing a solution to a challenge. The only real difference here is the level of personalization: while the content used in ABM campaigns is often tailored for a narrow audience, the one created for inbound tends to be more general.

This means that much of the content created for your inbound campaigns can probably be repurposed for the needs of ABM—all you need to do is personalize it even more for the needs of a specific part of your audience. Once you start using ABM alongside inbound, you’ll be able to create content that can be applied in both strategies to get the most out of your marketing and sales teams’ time.

In a sense, you can think of ABM as an extension of inbound. First, you use inbound marketing techniques to attract a broader audience. Next, you select the most promising accounts and adjust your current content and experiences to them. Here’s how to get started with a hybrid marketing strategy.

Build a strategy aligned with your audience

Now that you know what ABM and inbound are about—how they differ, what they have in common, and how to combine them—you have everything to pick the marketing strategy that will work best for your business. But remember that no matter your choice, delivering value to your customers should be your top priority.

Running a successful marketing or sales campaign always requires optimized content and an efficient customer relationship management platform like HubSpot. At 6minded, we can help your business with both—all you need to do is to reach out to our team!