Account Based Marketing (ABM)

In this chapter

Once the digital marketing infrastructure is in place, some teams might be tempted to experiment with account based marketing (ABM).

What is account based marketing?

ABM is a strategy where marketing works closely with sales to identify the firm’s most important accounts and deliver them “personalised” messaging which addresses their specific “pain points” (which the firm’s products presumably address).

Issues with investment managers using ABM

While it all sounds great in theory, I’m not a fan of ABM, and think it’s many flaws are obscured by unnecessary complexity and buzzwords, along with a dearth of practical examples. Some marketers may be fooled into buying useless sales platforms.

Furthermore, the peculiarities of investment management pose even more issues that — in my view — render ABM essentially useless:

  • Investment managers usually offer multiple investment products
  • Investment products can be assessed without case studies or demos
  • Pain points will vary and can't be determined at the account level

What tends to happen with ABM programs is marketing end up slapping a target firm’s logo on standard content and distributing it through “personalised” emails or targeted ads. This inevitably fizzles out — but not before irritating the very audiences firms are trying hardest to engage.

More importantly, this type of unsolicited outreach contradicts the overarching inbound marketing approach.

What to do instead of ABM

As pain points can’t be determined for specific accounts, the ABM concept can therefore be theoretically expanded into a single program that covers all accounts — and thereby cancelling out its own premise.

The better alternative is already embedded in the existing digital marketing infrastructure:

  • Contacts subscribe to topics that match their interests and needs.
  • Sales, not marketing, lead on key accounts by running events, webinars, and client meetings, where real pain points emerge.
  • Marketing provides support to sales without resorting to superficial “personalisation”.