Account-Based Marketing is a popular strategy because it aims at high yielding and specific prospects. Whether you are a small/medium business owner or a huge company, ABM can contribute to increasing your revenue multi-fold. After all, there are numerous benefits of account-based marketing. That is why 92% of marketers believe ABM is very important, and 72% of businesses increased their ABM budgets in 2017, with an average increase of 23.5%. Indeed, that can’t be overlooked! Do you know what is surprising though? 80% of marketers find ABM less effective than they expected. Why? Because a lot of marketers (whether beginners or experts) fall prey to these 5 disastrous ABM mistakes! This post will serve as a reminder for what to look out for when implementing an ABM campaign Let’s discuss the top 5 ABM mistakes –

ABM Mistakes #1 – Ignoring Accounts Selection Methodology

Account-Based Marketing is all about accounts or prospects. It implies, if you have a great strategy BUT don’t have the right accounts, you will not see the desired results. Work on developing a detailed strategy to select the right and most relevant accounts. There are many different methods or strategies that companies and business put to use to select the best accounts. While some businesses specify each criterion (for example, company size, designation etc) others pick up accounts that already use a product that is similar to theirs. Whatever strategy you decide to implement, there are a few things that you cannot afford to miss –

• Focus on accounts that can give you higher ROI, meaning, accounts that can land you higher than average deals.
• Focus on accounts that perfectly fit your buyer persona. Meaning, you need to figure out your accounts pain points and see if your solution is a great fit.
• Assessing competitors customer base

If you are guilty of making this ABM mistake, start by identifying the right accounts for your next ABM campaign.

ABM Mistakes #2 – Focusing On Your Existing Database

It is important to analyze and gather leads outside of the existing database. There are many list building agencies that you can outsource this work to. They have a clear process in place to research new companies, gather, analyze and verify leads before they hand it to you. Just give them a detailed criterion and they can work wonders! (like, we do for our clients!) This gets us to our next point, using the unclean database.

Must Read: Boost your Engagement with Email Personalization in Your ABM Strategy

ABM Mistake #3 – Using Unclean Or Bad Database

STOP using unclean data, right away! If you are running campaigns on unclean data, you will not achieve your targets. Let’s assume you ran an account-based marketing campaign but did not fetch results. After a few months, you realize that the company you were targeting made several changes and the influencers you targeted have either changed their roles or left the organization People change jobs, change roles, companies change the structure, etc. Your data is worthy only if it is regularly cleaned and updated. Did you know that a study by DiscoverOrg found that sales and marketing departments lose approximately 550 hours and as much as $32,000 per sales rep from using bad data?

ABM Mistake #4 – Failing to Coordinate Between Teams, Especially Sales and Marketing

We have already discussed how lack of coordination between sales and marketing teams can damage your campaign results. To quote Engagio, in traditional demand generation, marketing throws leads over the fence for sales to chase. In ABM there is no fence. The collaboration is close, constant, and focused on defined, account-specific objectives. It is essential that all the relevant teams participate and contribute to the campaign. After all, in Natasha’s words, if different parts of your organization are working in silos, it will prevent the sharing of Target Account contacts and relationships – or lead to misaligned information on account progression; causing campaigns to fall short. There you go! If your sales and marketing teams are not aligned and coordinated, work towards it before you launch your next ABM campaign.

ABM Mistake #5 – Not Personalizing Content At Each Level

It is no surprise that personalization is important at every step of marketing and sales. Remember, the entire focus on ABM campaign is to narrow down the challenges and pain points of a specific type of businesses and then engage the decision-makers with personalized content. If your content is generic and non-targeted, you might save money today but in the long run, you are losing out on huge chunks of money.

According to Marketo, 79% of consumers say they are only likely to engage with an offer if it has been personalized to reflect previous interactions the consumer has had with the brand. Look ABM works when communications and content are personalized and customized to suit your target audience. Almost 85% of marketers measuring ROI say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments (ITSMA) 

These are the 5 ABM mistakes most businesses and marketers make! If you follow this post and do not make any of these ABM mistakes, you will see a difference in your ABM results.

What do you think? Which one of these ABM mistakes are you guilty of? Or, is there any other ABM mistakes you will like to add? Comment below and let us know.