Page 14 - Engage - no.9 - Summer 2017

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Summer 2017
ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING
Sales, Meet Marketing.
Marketing, Meet Sales.
Account-based marketing (ABM) isn’t new—or is it? Jumping into the spotlight in the last few years, it shows no signs of disappearing. We talked to ABM experts Sangram Vajre and Bev Burgess to nd out what it is, how it’s done, and what your organization needs to do to make it work wonders for you.
f or better or worse, it’s rather well accepted that marketing is as statistics
based as it’s ever been. We make decisions about what consumers we target and how we target them based on metrics such as reach, engagement, comments, thumbs-up, hearts, and retweets. Do they like us? Do they talk to us? Do they share what we say with their friends
and colleagues?
Then, we use these numbers to determine whom we market to as well as when we say it and how. So, if numbers we think we can trust influence and sometimes determine our marketing efforts, it stands to reason that our sales efforts should follow the same. After all, plenty of organizations have forgone the idea of marketing and sales as separate departments, going so far as to hire a single vice president for sales and marketing simply to ensure that the two groups work together more closely. Still, for whatever reason, most sales teams have failed to use new marketing tactics to help their own cause.
That trend is changing, however, and something called account-based marketing (ABM) is at the helm of the shift. ABM is laser-focused B2B marketing. Sangram Vajre, cofounder and CMO of Atlanta-based Terminus: Account-Based Marketing, says that while technology has given B2B marketers thousands of tools to connect with prospects, B2B marketing technology is both a blessing and a curse, because buyers are inundated with thousands of messages every day. “This is why it’s essential for marketers to identify their best-fit customers versus worrying about generating leads,” Vajre says. Based on a Forrester Research statistic that says less than one percent of leads generated ever become customers, Vajre says, “B2B marketers who are blasting emails and ‘spraying and praying’