Account-based marketing is a strategy in B2B marketing that flips traditional marketing tactics on its head. Account-based marketing targets an individual company with your marketing campaign. This individual company is identified as very high value to your brand, and researching their concerns and needs is key to positioning your brand as the ideal solution.
Account-based marketing (also called ABM) is prevalent in B2B industries like commercial real estate because of the high value of individual leads, versus the B2C industry where business comes from a high volume of smaller sales.
A highly targeted account-based marketing campaign does require a joint effort of the entire company, though. Your sales team, for example, needs to be aware of this strategy so they can alter the company’s sales cycle. Your customer service team needs to be prepared to meet the hyper-specific needs of a high-value client, rather than the issues from a larger swath of clients.
And yet, account-based marketing does have merits in the B2B sales world:
93% of respondents from Foundry’s survey of 500 B2B technology marketers found satisfaction with account-based marketing.
76% of marketing using ABM experienced higher ROI in 2020, according to the 2020 ABM Benchmark Study.
ABM vs. Traditional Lead Generation
ABM versus lead generation strategy doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. In fact, your outbound ABM tactics should be reserved for high-value clients, while your traditional lead generation tactics can be reserved for building a large audience, brand awareness and generating warm leads.
When making the switch to ABM from traditional lead generation tactics, you’ll be reversing a lot of your marketing strategy, but what does this mean?
In the traditional marketing funnel, you spend a lot of time exposing your brand to a large number of people to build awareness and interest in your brand (lead generation). The goal is to nurture these leads and eventually convert them to sales. Therefore, you’re beginning at the “widest end” of the funnel.
This can be thought of as casting a very wide net when prospecting for potential leads. Your marketing team will spend most of their time identifying a large swath of people and companies that could potentially be customers for your business. This process is likely familiar to most businesses, but it involves outbound sales tactics like reaching out to industry contacts, cold calling, buying lead lists, or creating content on your social media, website, and email that leads may interact with.
In the ABM marketing funnel, you start at the “narrow end” of the funnel: A precision approach where your marketing team identifies and researches a few high-value leads. These leads are usually businesses, but those businesses are still made up of individual decision-makers. You’ll eventually try to build a relationship with these people to understand their company’s needs and worries to position your business as a solution.
ABM doesn’t have as broad of a reach as traditional marketing, which is also scalable higher or lower depending on your business’ budget. But, that’s OK! Some benefits of ABM versus account-based marketing are:
Higher conversion rates
More cross-collaboration and alignment between sales & marketing
Short sales cycle
Less wasted materials and resources
Better ROI
How Can ABM Be Used In CRE?
You may be wondering if ABM is right for you. The good news is, it’s easy to test alongside your traditional marketing and sales funnel. The companies that benefit from an ABM strategy are almost always B2B. Additionally, these companies tend to have:
Have high-value clientele
Adaptable product/service to the needs of a specific client
Access to a database of clients in their industry (as Biscred’s clients do)
The capability to produce personalized marketing content
You may see how some businesses within the commercial real estate industry are especially well-suited for ABM because of the innate high value of just a few leads. CRE businesses that typically do business with a few other companies that provide a majority of their revenue include:
Contractors
Architects
Developers
Property managers
Investment firms
Whether you’re a contractor, developer, or investor, ABM may be a more successful and realistic marketing strategy for your business. On the other hand, companies that depend on volume, such as paper suppliers, internet providers, and even property technology companies may benefit more from traditional marketing methods or a blend of traditional and ABM.
How can ABM and Biscred help you win at CRE growth?
A significant part of account-based marketing strategies is centered around identifying key players that your business would benefit from pursuing as a potential lead. You’ll be spending a lot of time deeply researching specific brands and the movers within those brands. This means having access to a database with detailed information about businesses, their specialties, and their needs.
Researching very specific audiences is exactly what Biscred is for. Our platform is the only database specifically with commercial real estate in mind. In this guide, we’ll show you the six steps for using Biscred to implement and ABM strategy to grow your B2B business.
6 steps for implementing ABM to grow your B2B CRE business
0. Do basic housekeeping. Before you even start your targeted prospecting campaign, review your digital assets. Walk through your marketing automation workflows as if you are a prospect and evaluate your landing pages, social media pages, and contact forms to ensure everything is working. As obvious a step as this seems (which is why we labeled it "zero"), many of use are guilty of not updating links, CRMs and content!
1. Set criteria for targeting companies, use Biscred to target them. Example: Pursue west coast developers who know retail.
Filters we used:
Company retail asset experience = Retail
Company industries = Developer
Company states = California, Oregon, Washington
2. Identify high-value accounts. You could, at this point, launch a one-to-many campaign to all 1,486 companies, but that’s not account-based marketing, unless you have a staff of hundreds who could divide and conquer two or three companies each. Better to narrow your search further to accommodate a one-to-few or even a one-to-one strategy. As ChatterBuzz suggests, “select a few prize fish accounts” to pursue. From the 1,486 records in Biscred, use filters to narrow your targeted list to the companies that best fit your needs.
Company contact count = minimum 10 and maximum 1,000+
Company property count = minimum 5 and maximum 50
People seniorities = senior level
Company states = California, Oregon, Washington HQ only
With those filters applied, our list narrows to 168 companies. From here, you can continue to adjust the filters if you want a smaller, more targeted list; otherwise, you can review the list of 168 companies to evaluate them for your needs.
3. Evaluate prospects. With a smaller list of prospects, you can now evaluate them for your goals. For instance, when reviewing the asset experience, you'll note that many of the developers dabble in more than one category. In fact, very few identify solely in retail, and many overlap with multifamily, mixed use and hospitality.
Define your criteria for a "perfect match." Only your organization knows this — your criteria could be based on building class types or retail building types that the company specializes in. It could also be based on less tangible criteria, such as corporate values.
Segment your audience. When launching an email marketing workflow campaign, use your tools to segment your prospects. We cover outbound sales segmentation in this post, 4 Powerful Outbound Sales Tactics for CRE Professionals.
4. Personalize your messaging. Using the information you gathered during the prospect evaluation step, craft personalized messaging. We suggest creating basic email templates and then tailoring the messaging to the people and companies. ChatGPT and other AI tools can be helpful when creating CRE email marketing messages. Personalized messages are less likely to be flagged as SPAM, as well.
5. Follow up. Biscred's B2B commercial real estate prospecting system was designed with ABM in mind. It is designed to identify high value prospects and target them with personalized, specific messaging and offers. ABM and Biscred view B2B connections as relationships, not transactions. A key part of the ABM “process” is following up with helpful content, personalized messages and invitations to connect.
Photo 79529902 | Tashatuvango | Dreamstime
Illustration 107091771 | Redeer | Dreamstime
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