Account Based Marketing (ABM)

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

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

Unfortunately, it’s hard know whether ABM works or not, or how to actually do it, as explanations of the concept tend to be overly complicated, buzzword-laden, and lack practical examples.

Here's a typical description of ABM:

Putting aside the woolly language, I don’t think the sales and marketing teams at investment managers can really be expected to identify the "needs" of an entire company (which could be a wealth manager with thousands of employees managing money for millions of clients) as a single, homogenous entity.

In reality, an account is made up of people with different responsibilities, needs and interests. Communications sent at the account level that ignore individual subscription preferences will annoy recipients who haven’t expressed an interest — and if they are being targeted by ABM, these are likely to be some of the most important audience members. Investment managers should constrain their communications by subscription preferences that are set at the contact level.

It is also incredibly difficult for investment managers to come up with truly tailored content. Many attempts at ABM simply involve a target firm’s logo being added to standard content.

A better approach to ABM is already incorporated within this guide:

• Account level communications are included as part of a wider digital sales program (which is constrained by subscription preferences)
• Salespeople are alerted to digital activity of their tracked contacts to help with targeted follow-ups, with contacts at key accounts highlighted via lead grading