What is ABM (Account Based Marketing)?
ABM (Account Based Marketing) is a strategic marketing activity that maximizes sales from a predetermined target company (account company) by linking organizational functions such as sales and marketing. There are acquisition, Acceleration, and Expansion phases.
Acquisition is an activity to acquire customers. Like the demand generation “lead generation”, it does advertising, content creation, phone calls, etc., but it focuses on “whether the customer is the target company” rather than collecting a large number of leads. Set the KPI for that. Acceleration aims to increase customer contact points within the target company, and Expansion aims to maximize profits from one company with the aim of cross-selling and up-selling.
What is demand generation?
Demand generation refers to the activity of acquiring and nurturing prospective customers to raise their interest level and passing prospective customer information to sales in a state of increased interest. Marketing automation also supports this demand generation, which has phases of lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead qualification.
Acquire leads that are likely to be customers (lead generation), develop their prospects (lead nurturing), identify leads that are of sufficient interest (lead qualification), and pass them on to sales.
Differences between ABM and demand generation
The difference between ABM and demand generation is what you see in your activities.
At ABM, we first decide on the “target company we want to develop”, so all activities are based on the idea of “what we do to make that company a customer.”
For example, when creating content on a website, creating problem-solving content for a target company, or holding a seminar, plan the theme required by the target company.
Therefore, we do not pursue “the number of website accesses and the number of companies participating in seminars”. To the last, we aim to expand new transactions and transactions with “target companies that bring the greatest profits to our company”. In that sense, ABM is “customer-centric,” and it is decided from the beginning who you want to be your customer.
Demand generation is lead-oriented. From the acquisition of new leads to the passing of hot leads to sales, we will work to raise interest.
In the marketing funnel, leads decrease as you go through the steps, so if you try to increase the number of hot leads, you need to increase the initial “number of leads acquired”, and if you expand this, the closing rate will decrease. You will face contradictions.
As long as I am dominated by this funnel painting, I think it is quite difficult to get out of the structure of “maximizing the number” → “expanding the target”. What happens when the target expands? The content to be created and the content of the email will be general, and it will be “The number of leads has increased, but the contract rate has decreased”.
It is necessary to recognize that this is not just one event that the contract rate has decreased, but that the proposal power as a company has decreased.
| ABM | Demand generation | |
|---|---|---|
| Oriented | Customer-centric | Lead center |
| attitude | proactive. Design and implement measures in advance according to the target company. | Reactive. Execute after the other party's action such as calling the responding lead. |
| responsible person | Marketing and sales work together | marketing |
| range | Even after receiving an order, we will carry out up-selling, cross-selling, etc. | Until the hot lead is handed over to sales |
| Emphasis | quality | amount |
Another feature of ABM is that sales and marketing work together. From the perspective of a sales person, it is natural to “determine the company you want to develop first and optimize the measures.” ABM can also be regarded as marketing support for sales.
