Account-based marketing is a strategy that is especially effective for technology sales where there is often a long sales cycle, involvement of multiple decision-makers, and/or multiple buying centers. Best practices for account-based marketing involve multiple strategies such as:
- data map and append of subsidiaries and business units where applicable,
- profiling of corporate entities as well as subsidiaries and business units identified,
- identifying decision-makers and major influencers within each entity,
- collection of business intelligence,
- one-on-one email marketing,
- cross-promotion of relevant Partner or Corporate events,
- inbound response management, and
- outbound lead generation.
Account-based marketing ensures that marketers:
- identify all the relevant target audiences at every prospect account,
- identify and verify all the decision-makers and influencers within each target audience,
- learn what technology and environmental factors are driving the prospect’s business and how your solution might resolve their pain,
- test and modify messaging so that it resonates with each target audience at a prospect account, and
- learn who the competition is.
Account-based marketing is scalable. Any size organization can employ this method of discovery for qualified leads. It is important to note that while there may be immediate qualified leads generated, the primary benefit of account-based marketing is business intelligence that can be utilized over the long term.
