Introduction
When you first launched your account-based marketing program, expectations were high. The sales team may have been wary at first, but they immediately hopped on board once they heard whispers of the higher win rates and larger deal sizes. The greater alignment between teams and data-driven direction resonated with the marketers. As your campaign ramped up and you found relative success in ABM tactics, you began to wonder… What’s next in ABM? Should we invest in a new platform? Rethink our content strategy? How can we effectively scale our current efforts?
The short answer for each concern is omnichannel account-based marketing. By integrating each relevant channel, tool, and best ABM practice, your company will be able to better understand your customer, strengthen engagement, and significantly improve your RoAS. Whereas multichannel ABM (what you may be running right now) concentrates on buyer engagement, omnichannel ABM works to create a seamless customer experience—and if B2B digital marketers have learned anything in the past year, it’s that truly understanding and valuing the customer is the best way forward.
86% of B2B buyers would pay more for a “great customer experience.” (PWC)
More often than not, B2B companies find themselves running ABM paradigms that fall short of omnichannel—and they find it difficult to scale strategically and see the extent to which ABM can bolster both sales and marketing teams. Over the next several pages, we’ll go over two examples of common ABM scenarios—and how the ROAS on these programs compares to that of a true omnichannel ABM campaign.
Benefits of Omnichannel ABM
- Better ROI
- Greater Deal Size
- Shorter Sales Cycles
- Stronger Engagement
Omnichannel ABM Includes the Integration of…
- Customer relationship management (CRM) platform
- Marketing automation
- Complete multi-channel digital advertising (programmatic, PPC, LinkedIn advertising, SEO, content syndication)
- Visitor intelligence and data (intent data, company match software)
- Content and website personalization
- Analytics and data visualization
- Sales enablement
Scenario 1: Using an ABM Platform + Marketing Automation Software
The most common types of ABM campaigns are those led by larger platforms—Terminus, Demandbase, or 6Sense—that can also integrate with other sales and marketing technologies (namely marketing automation) to assist in lead nurture.
Through the ABM platform and an integrated marketing automation technology (like Hubspot, Pardot, or Marketo), display ads, email marketing, programmatic advertising, retargeting, LinkedIn advertising, personalization, and data visualization are all possible. There are even resources for your sales team to reference. That said, many B2B companies consider this a complete ABM strategy—but there’s a substantial missing piece, which leaves them without means to scale campaigns and see more impressive results.
Without paid search or B2B SEO tactics, there’s no method of filling out the lower funnel. Once leads or target accounts have been exhausted, finding more who are genuinely interested in what the company offers will be time-consuming and, in worst-case scenarios, fruitless. In this case, a B2B organization will need to pay an additional fee or another employee’s salary to run and optimize search channels.
What’s Included in Scenario 1:
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
✓ Marketing automation
- Complete multi-channel digital advertising (programmatic, PPC, LinkedIn advertising, SEO, content syndication)
✓ Visitor intelligence and data (intent data, company match)
✓ Content and website personalization
✓ Analytics and data visualization
✓ Sales enablement
Estimated spend: $12,500 per month; including $2,500 for platform fees, $10,000 on media spend*
Estimated RoAS: 2.5x
Company A Example:
Problem: An international software company initially ran an ABM pilot using an ABM platform and marketing automation for three months, which resulted in mixed, unclear results—primarily due to several gaps within the digital marketing channels, blind spots due to a lack of clear data and reporting, and a lack of internal resources to run a true omnichannel campaign.
Solution: The ABM Agency partnered with Company A to implement omnichannel ABM. By working within their current ABM platform and marketing automation software, we were able to fill in where they needed help, including integrating paid search, SEO, and extensive content marketing strategies into the existing campaigns.
Scenario 2: Strictly Marketing Automation, No ABM Platform
There are several reasons B2B companies are hesitant to make the commitment to platforms like Terminus or Demandbase—including the large expense, legacy systems that can’t integrate with the ABM platform, or lack of sign-off from stakeholders. In these cases, the companies are most likely running ABM campaigns by exclusively sticking with marketing automation and lead nurture.
While the tactics used via these channels might be inherently ABM—hyper-targeted, personalization content and outreach—the ability to create a scalable, larger ABM campaign is nonexistent without utilizing other digital channels. Without these other channels (programmatic, PPC, SEO, and content marketing), you miss out on engaging with accounts at every relevant stage of the sales funnel—and growth in your ABM program will never reach sustainability.
What’s Included:
✓ Customer relationship management (CRM)
✓ Marketing automation
- Multi-channel digital advertising (programmatic, PPC, LinkedIn advertising, SEO, content syndication)
- Visitor intelligence and data (intent data, company match)
- Content and website personalization
✓ Analytics and data visualization
- Sales enablement
Estimated spend: $2,200 per month**
Estimated ROI: 3X
Company B Example:
Problem: A global 3D software provider looked to leverage ABM without having to integrate ABM technology with its current technology systems. Its current lead nurture and ABM program was successful but operating at a smaller-than-optimal scale. Company stakeholders wanted to launch a full-scale ABM campaign to capitalize on opportunities to continue to increase sales.
Solution: Removing the need to integrate the marketing tech stack meant removing the barriers to a successful ABM campaign. Instead, The ABM Agency developed and launched the omnichannel campaign on external platforms with the company having complete visibility via a live, robust reporting dashboard and data visualization.
Scenario 3: Omnichannel ABM
In omnichannel ABM, the entire funnel is seen as an opportunity to attract, engage, and convert accounts. But the true key to success via an omnichannel ABM campaign is the ability to integrate everything that isn’t integrated—you want to be able to execute and visualize your entire campaign cohesively.
To do so, you’ll need alignment across paid search, content marketing, paid social, marketing automation, as well as both sales marketing teams. This may seem like a daunting task, but as the saying goes, the juice is worth the squeeze; the ROAS for this kind of alignment speaks for itself. If the ultimate goal of ABM is showing the right message to the right job title at the correct stage of the sales funnel, this approach ensures continuity in the entire buyer’s journey, regardless of how many actual participants there are in the buying committee. It’s scalable, profitable, and dynamic.
What’s Included:
✓ Customer relationship management (CRM)
✓ Marketing automation
✓ Multi-channel digital advertising (programmatic, PPC, LinkedIn advertising, SEO, content syndication, programmatic)
✓ Visitor intelligence and data (intent data, company match)
✓ Content and website personalization
✓ Analytics and data visualization
✓ Sales enablement
Estimated spend: $31,700*
Estimated ROI: 9x (after 12 months)
Company C Example:
Problem: A global supply chain software company sought to activate its first true omnichannel digital marketing approach to ABM by combining traditionally lead generation channels with ABM best practices.
Solution: The ABM Agency crafted an omnichannel ABM strategy tailored to the company’s
individual product offerings—with additional assistance in tech stack implementation (ex: agency advised on a more effective company match platform) and a heavy focus on account targeting by scoring. Paid search, SEO, content syndication, and programmatic were the main digital channels focused on as these channels represented the areas where directly targeting an account was possible.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt omnichannel ABM is a larger investment upfront—which can often be a tough hurdle to get over. It also requires more bandwidth and a solid understanding of ABM on both the granular level and the overarching strategy. In many cases, bringing in an ABM partner or agency to integrate your processes, platforms, and marketing channels becomes the most viable option.
*Disclaimer: These numbers are estimates based on previous ABM campaigns run by The ABM Agency.
**Estimate from numbers included in the March 2020 Terminus economic impact study from Forrester.
To find out how your organization could benefit from an omnichannel ABM campaign, use our ROI calculator to see how much growth you could experience in a pilot program.
