Salt and vinegar. Tequila and lime. There are some things that just work better together. This blog looks at how inbound and ABM marketing strategies can support and complement each other, to find and close more right-fit leads in the most efficient way.
ABM vs inbound marketing; what's the difference?
An inbound marketing strategy is a core marketing approach that focuses on creating high-quality, expert content and brand experiences to attract, qualify and convert right-fit leads into loyal customers.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) on the other hand, uses a mixture of outbound and inbound marketing tactics to target and convert specific high-value accounts with highly personalised messaging and sales offerings.
In the 'inbound' mindset, businesses define their ideal customer profile and build the content offerings that organically draw the right leads to engage with them. Inbound rejects the resource-hungry, traditional sales tactics of outbound marketing.
But in many ways, the ABM approach looks to resurrect them, running more interruptive campaigns to conquer new territories and 'reach out' to qualified leads with specific marketing offerings.
Inbound marketing is one-to-many, but ABM is one-to-one or one-to-few.
ABM typically requires a lot of time and resource to build the personalised content and buyer journeys that can lead to conversion.
So, who needs an ABM approach - and exactly how does it relate to an inbound marketing strategy?
What is ABM? Just consider the peacock
Just why is the Peacock's tail feather display so dazzling and intricately patterned? Because its chances of successfully mating in its lifetime are only 5%.
Tragically, the shortsighted Peahen is not good at recognising the male's advances, so the Peacock creates a bespoke display for her that she cannot miss. For the Peacock, it's worth the evolutionary effort involved in creating a specific and compelling display.
ABM campaigns work on the same principle.
Sometimes a sales opportunity is so great, a match so perfect, a prospect so valuable but hard to reach - it's worth the extra effort to target them specifically.
The business won will be sufficiently valuable to justify the time and resource spent developing the tailored messaging and conversations that will resonate most personally with your target accounts.
Companies with long and complex buying cycles and multiple decision makers like OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) - are prime candidates for such treatment.
With this highly direct approach, it is possible to target and fast-track any leads where you know there is a pressing need and opportunity to convert and close.
What do inbound and ABM have in common?
1. Both need in-depth understanding of your ICP and buyer personas.
It is this insight that helps you understand:
- The structures and requirements of the ideal customers buying process
- The needs, goals and aspirations of buyer personas (professionally and personally)
- The nature of their buying cycles and timelines
- The kind of content that will answer their most pressing questions and help them in their roles
- How to deliver the content - what media and format will cut through most successfully with them
Both ABM and inbound need to get the under the skin of their target audience to deliver better content experiences.
2. Both strategies require creative and storytelling skills
Knowing your target personas so intimately gives you an excellent handle on their tastes and the content that is likely to move the dial for you. It helps you angle your storytelling to chime successfully with them and create moments of engagement that transcends the ordinary.
For inbound and ABM strategies you need the creative chops to develop impactful content and messaging - while delivering the practical guides and information that will mark you as the experts they need on side.
For ABM you need these creative skills - and more - to tailor content for ever more specific audiences and purposes.
3. Both require collaboration for continuous improvement
Both marketing strategies use growing market intelligence and feedback from past success to continually improve and optimise campaigns. The insights and content they create and share can be mutually beneficial.
Your inbound team creates great content for your broad target audience and uses gathered insight to continually improve its performance.
Your ABM team can repurpose this same content, optimise it and publish it. They can then share their insight on its success - inspiring the inbound team to tweak and optimise what they are doing for better results earlier in their cycle.
In this way, it's easy to see how ABM is a natural extension of inbound - and how both can be deployed together to improve results.
5 steps to use your inbound approach as a springboard for ABM success
Here's our summary of the steps you can take to build an ABM strategy on the foundation of your inbound success.
1. Identify: Begin by pinpointing your target ABM accounts using detailed data metrics such as company size, revenue, and location. Your inbound approach will help you use existing content analytics and user behaviour data to refine your target account list.
2. Expand: Develop bespoke content tailored for each potential buyer profile within the target organisation. Data from your inbound marketing campaigns should help you identify the value-driven content that can speak to the challenges and needs of these buyers. Target existing inbound content that you can easily customise to demonstrate your relevance to their vertical. Look for quick wins such as topping and tailing existing guides
3. Engage: Plan and execute specific campaigns and bespoke nurturing tactics designed to snag the interest of your target accounts. You can use the full gamut of marketing techniques honed in your inbound work to achieve this. This may include
- Targeted, customised email
- Dynamic web pages that serve personalised content
- Retargeting with social media ads
- Customised videos
- Event invitations
The aim is to use a combination of manual and programmatic ABM to funnel target accounts into ever more personalised nurturing sequences inspired by tailored content marketing.
4. Advocate: With each success, strengthen and nurture bonds with select stakeholders who can champion your product or service within their organisation. With inbound marketing's emphasis on building trust and providing value, these stakeholders become empowered advocates, amplifying your message within their company.
5. Measure: Make sure you continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your approach. Tools like HubSpot's ABM software can provide insights on company growth, stakeholder engagement levels, and content interaction. This data-driven approach ensures your strategies remain agile, effective, and aligned with audience needs - and offer opportunities to improve your creative targeting.
Conclusion
Choosing to dedicate time and resource on an Account Based Marketing strategy can pay dividends with high value, slow-burn accounts. But those with an inbound strategy in place will already be at advantage as they set about designing and executing their ABM campaigns.
By using inbound marketing to lay a strong foundation of valuable content and customer insights, and then applying the precision of ABM to target and engage high-value accounts, companies can achieve more significant and sustained business growth over time. This integrated approach not only enhances the effectiveness of marketing efforts but also ensures more seamless and personalised Account Based Experiences (ABX) throughout the customer lifecycle, which can drive both immediate and long-term success.
There are benefits to using both inbound marketing and ABM as stand-alone strategies. But, just like Tequila and Lime - they work better together.
Editors note: This blog post was originally published in September 2021 and has been updated for relevance and accuracy.
