At first glance, account-based marketing (ABM) and inbound seem like polar opposites: ABM focuses on decision makers within particular enterprises and engages them with personalized communication. Inbound marketing takes a more expansive approach, attracting customers to products and services by creating valuable content.
In ABM, sales and marketing align to focus their efforts on a specific, mutually identified group of accounts. The team then targets particular individuals within these accounts and tailors personalized messages to these prospects. Especially advantageous for companies that sell expensive, enterprise-wide solutions, ABM specifically targets a smaller pool of clients -- those who need and can afford to buy the products -- and spends more time establishing and nurturing relationships and invests in more resources to bring in these individual customers.
With inbound marketing, marketers cast a wider net to attract more customers to create marketing qualified leads, ultimately becoming sales qualified leads to achieve goals. Particularly beneficial for business with less expensive offerings, inbound nurtures prospects using content marketing, social media, and keyword strategies. The goal is to attract the right kind of traffic -- the people most likely to buy your product -- by providing content that helps them find answers to solution-related questions and then slowly draw them toward your brand.
The Synergy of ABM & Inbound
With all those differences, ABM and inbound marketing work very well together. Whether you’re aiming to gain a toehold within specific, high-value accounts, or attract a bigger pool of customers through valuable, keyword-optimized content, you’ll need an in-depth understanding of your prospect to create the right type of content and deliver it through the appropriate channels.
Moreover, both strategies must ensure that content is customized and tailored enough to address the specific pain points of the customers. Remember, the goal for both ABM and inbound is to ensure customer buy-in and retention.
By combining both strategies, you increase your power to influence and enhance business results by:
- Creating two different paths to attract top prospects
- Using complementary approaches - Inbound sets the foundation by attracting the right customers and ABM speeds up sales by pinpointing best-fit customers
- Making content work twice as hard - Inbound provides lead-generating content, which ABM can personalize once it identifies its specific target audience
- Luring in a more expansive group of prospects and ensuring no customer-attracting opportunities are missed
Account-based marketing and inbound marketing require two different sets of skills. Make sure you team up with the experts at K2 Global Communications. We’ll communicate your value with niche-focused ABM and inbound marketing services.
