Ad formats

Sales and marketing teams both aim for the same target: high-value, loyal customers. So why do they often work in silos?

Account based marketing (ABM) unites sales and marketing, and is gaining traction as a leading B2B marketing strategy. ABM involves highly focused marketing tactics, closely intertwined with sales activities, for a specific group of target accounts. When done well, the result is more efficient and effective campaigns delivering personalized, valuable customer experiences.

This article will help you understand the power of ABM, overcome roadblocks to adoption, and identify partner tools to enhance your ABM efforts on LinkedIn.

ABM at a Glance

Account based marketing is predicated on a fundamental shift: from high-scale mass prospecting to a more deliberate, thoughtful, and orchestrated approach. Organizations select a list of target accounts based on key parameters, then sales and marketing collaboratively work to build brand awareness and relationships within these specified organizations.

The heart of ABM is that your customers feel understood and taken care of, not sold to. This fosters customer loyalty and keeps your brand top-of-mind when it comes time to buy. Some of the key benefits of ABM are:

Efficiency: Tailoring messaging to best-fit accounts makes the most of your efforts and increases the likelihood that customers will be receptive.

ROI: Concentrating on high-value accounts leads to increased customer lifetime value and improved ROI. In many cases, it can also result in a shorter and more successful sales cycle.

Focus: ABM fosters strong alignment across the organization and its well-defined goals produce more meaningful analytical insights

Partner Solutions to Overcome ABM Challenges

Although the ROI argument for ABM is strong, adjusting your strategy can be bumpy. Some of the primary challenges associated with ABM:

Identifying the best target accounts and prospects

Data quality and availability

Content creation and management

Internal alignment and culture shift

Meaningful analysis and appropriate metrics

LinkedIn’s network of marketing partner solutions can help you overcome ABM challenges and break through with tailored campaigns that connect. Here’s a selection of partners that can help jumpstart your ABM journey in various ways. See the complete list of LinkedIn Marketing Partners here.

Identify Best-Fit Accounts and Prospects

Terminus

This ABM leader provides improved target account data and matching, campaign-level reporting, and LinkedIn support for up to 10,000 accounts.

HG Insights

Provides B2B technology-focused companies the most comprehensive technographics available. To help your brand determine target accounts, HG Insights gives LinkedIn marketers access to a detailed census of the technologies businesses use.

G2

Millions of monthly visitors research, compare, and buy software and services on G2. Integration with LinkedIn grants access to decision makers who have recently visited a seller’s G2 profile, category, or competitors.

Integrate

Integrate’s Demand Orchestration Software connects with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to quickly and accurately generate leads for marketers. Automated top-funnel marketing and easy to measure down-funnel performance yield three times more high quality sales leads and four times as many opportunities.

Madison Logic

Identifies your best accounts and tracks multi-channel programs through target account performance. When paired with LinkedIn ABM campaigns, Madison Logic helps convert prospects into clients faster.

Optimize Campaigns and Customer Engagement

Demandbase

A targeting and personalization platform that combines multiple data sources for ABM campaigns. B2B marketers can easily build account and email lists and perfect communications based on unified data and 360-degree customer and account views.

6sense

Account Engagement Platform combines
behavioral data — including anonymous buying — to power AI predictions about which ICP accounts are ready to buy. The results are highly personalized, targeted campaigns for channels such as LinkedIn.

Sprinklr

Offers the only unified customer experience management platform and helps the world’s biggest companies enhance CX at every touchpoint. Sprinklr integrates systems such as email, CRM, and websites into one center of engagement.

Adobe

Adobe Experience Cloud integrates company data analytics and LinkedIn content with all of your other channels.

Bombora

Use intent data to better understand where the audience is in their buying journey to plan to send the right message, at the right time.

Optimize Campaigns and Customer Engagement

Metadata.io

Boasts the largest database of B2B decision makers and the best match rates to Facebook and LinkedIn. Their technologies automate routine ABM tasks and deploy campaigns at scale for improved inbound lead flow.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s CRM and marketing tools create targeted audiences, align marketing and advertising, and report on true advertising ROI. HubSpot’s tools help you pinpoint your most valuable content and the best contacts to engage.

Rollworks

Helps sales and marketing teams identify ideal target accounts, fully engage buying committees on multiple channels, and measure effectiveness across web, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The benefits of ABM can’t be ignored, which is why more and more organizations are adopting it as a strategic framework. To find out more about how your organization can excel with account based marketing, we invite you to view our on-demand I Heart ABM webinar.