Building a meaningful and high-value relationship is essential for any business, especially in the highly competitive SaaS market.
Imagine yourself investing in a marketing campaign that does not reach the right target. This is where Account Based Marketing (ABM) comes in.
ABM helps in targeting high-value accounts and uses personalized marketing strategies to convert themes into long-term customers, for sustainable and long-term growth. This can eventually transform your SaaS business to attain growth faster and smarter.
Let’s take a look at how Account Based Marketing works for SaaS and how they are done.
What is Account Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing refers to B2B marketing that aims at the business accounts, and business personnel, allowing the marketer to create tailored, personalized ad campaigns to build brand awareness, generate leads or business opportunities.
ABM is implemented both for marketing and sales to convert them into profitable customers. The combined efforts of marketing and sales can help reach accounts that are in different areas within the sales funnel.
Why Does ABM Work for SaaS Brands?
- Securing Investment Resources: ABM is a resource-focused approach, where a SaaS entity should ensure that it is within the fully matured or within the rapid stage, to have reliable data for marketing. The primary indicator that your SaaS brand is ready for an ABM campaign is the financial ability and sourcing for other resources like time, sales, marketing, and training.
- Deal Size: ABM largely depends on a personalized approach targeting large accounts leading to the signing of bigger contracts. ABM needs higher levels of financial investment, time, energy, and other resources.
- Growth: ABM drives sustainable growth sustainable, long-term growth, reducing churn rate and giving cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): ABM helps SaaS brands to identify and target the ideal Customer Profile. This ensures that the marketing efforts are spent on the right accounts, who are most likely to turn into customers, thereby increasing sales and revenue.
Different Types of ABM Campaigns
1: Many
- This is the most common type of ABM campaign that targets a wide range of accounts with less personalization.
- Broader messaging or content, which involves efforts of both marketing and sales teams in sharing resources and notions to target the right accounts. This can be done by personalization software.
- This campaign is ideal for accounts that are involved in small-to-medium-sized businesses or a particular niche.
1:1 ABM
- This is a highly personalized campaign that focuses on individual target accounts, usually large enterprises or high-value clients.
- This can be done by tailoring personalized messages and content, by having deep insights into the pain point of the audience, associated challenges, and business objectives.
- This is best suited for high-value, strategic accounts, where closing deals are crucial.
1: Few
- This is a medium-scale AMB approach that targets a small group or a set of people with common characteristics.
- This can be approached with personalized, yet general messaging that covers the common themes of the group.
- Content and campaigns can be optimized to suit a specific segment, to close the deal effectively.
For more deeper understanding, explore our detailed guide on how different Types of Account Based Marketing apply personalization at scale for SaaS businesses.
How to Run an Effective ABM Campaign?
Define Your ICPs
- The effective way to start the ABM campaign is to identify the characteristics of your ideal Customer Profiles.
- This involves collecting data on your customers, industry, company size, revenue, location, and specific pain points.
- Understanding these ensures which account best suits your ABM efforts and is most likely to convert into customers and provide long-term value.
Identify Specific Targets
- Select specific accounts that fall within the ICP you are targeting, based on factors like company fit, budget, and purchase readiness.
- It is important to identify the right target, as it has a high chance of closing deals with long-term values.
- Combining the efforts of the sales and marketing teams can be used to identify the right account, by sharing insights.
Personalize Your Message
- Tailor-specific messages and content based on each account, highlighting the solution for their unique pain points, challenges, and goals.
- The personalization approach helps understand the needs of the account better, which increases the chances of engagement and conversion.
Launch Your Campaign
- Choose the right channel and launch your campaign to increase the engagement of your target accounts, with personalized content.
- It is necessary to go for a multi-channel approach, which increases the visibility, engagement and chances of conversions.
Nurturing Relationship
- Keep your target accounts engaged by keeping them updated with the relevant content, and offers, and addressing their queries and concerns through mails, calls, and personal interactions.
- Building a rapport with your target account ensures a strong and long-term relationship to move them down the funnel.
How To Measure ABM Performance?
- Average Order Value measures the average value of deals closed with target accounts. This can be done by calculating the total revenue from ABM-targeted accounts by the number of deals closed.Â
- Account Engagement measures the level of engagement of the targeted accounts with your campaign content. This can be done using analytic tools that track the interactions based on the account’s activity such as website visits, content downloads, social media activity, emails, and more.
- Customer Churn Rate is measuring the percentage of customers of your ABM account who stopped using your product or service over a specified period. This can be tracked by dividing the number of lost customers by the total number of customers at the start of the period, and their percentage.
- ABM Software Tools and platforms can help automate and streamline your campaigns, from targeting to reporting. This can measure key ABM metrics such as pipeline, velocity, progress, and rate of investment of the campaign.
Conclusion
ABM for SaaS can be a highly effective strategy that primarily focuses on high-value accounts to drive long-term growth.
Analyzing the right account, understanding the pain points, creating personalized content, utilizing multiple channels, and nurturing relationships are the crucial steps in driving the accounts down the sales funnel.
Following these with regular analysis can help optimize resources, align teams, and generate better ROI, for sustainable and long-term growth in the highly competitive SaaS market.
