Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on individual customer accounts rather than broader business marketing. It is commonly used in enterprise sales to increase account engagement and align marketing with customer strategies. ABM considers each account as its own market and brings together industry, product, and channel marketing efforts. It can help increase sales within existing accounts and to new prospects. Effective ABM requires close collaboration between sales and marketing teams.

1. Aladesuru Adewale Global Entrepreneurship Annex!
Account-Based
Marketing
Key Account Marketing …
Aladesuru Walter Adewale
www.aladesuru-walter-adewale.strikingly.com

2. 1 | P a g e
Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing
(ABM), also known as key account
marketing, is a strategic approach to
business marketing in which an
organization considers and
communicates with individual prospect
or customer accounts as markets of one.
Account-based marketing is
typically employed in enterprise level
sales organizations.
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3. 2 | P a g e
Account based marketing can help companies to:
Increase account relevance
Engage earlier and higher with deals
Align marketing activity with account strategies
Get the best value out of marketing
Inspire customers with compelling content
While business marketing is typically organized by
industry, product/solution or channel (direct/social/PR),
account-based marketing brings all of these together to focus on
individual accounts.
As markets become increasingly commoditized,
customers see little or no difference between suppliers and their
competitors, with price as the only obvious differentiators.
ABM is increasingly adopted by companies in markets
under pressure from commoditization.

4. 3 | P a g e
Background and differences with traditional business
marketing
In the marketing of complex business propositions,
account-based marketing plays a key role in expanding business
within existing customer accounts (where, for example, wider
industry marketing would not be targeted enough to appeal to an
existing customer).
In scenarios where the initial sale has taken several
months, it is reported that account-based marketing delivers an
increase in the long-term value of the customer.
ABM can also be applied to key prospect accounts in
support of the first sale.
For example, Northrop Grumman, in which it
contributed to the completion of a successful $2 billion deal.
Account Based Marketing has been used at Shell to
drive $13m deal.
Research demonstrates that buyers are looking for
their existing suppliers to keep them updated with relevant
propositions, but are often disappointed with this.

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In UK research, existing suppliers came top of all the
different information channels that IT buyers use to look for
new solutions – but more than 50% felt that marketing by their
suppliers was poor.
The research also demonstrates how much easier it is
for organizations to generate more sales from existing customers
than from new customers - 77 per cent of decision-makers say
that marketing from new suppliers is poorly targeted and makes
it easy to justify staying with their current supplier.
By treating each account individually, account-based
marketing activity can be targeted more accurately to address
the audience and is more likely to be considered relevant than
untargeted direct marketing activity.

6. 5 | P a g e
The roles of sales and marketing teams
ABM is an example of the alignment of sales and
marketing teams.
In the aligned model organizations able to unite
tactical marketing efforts with defined sales goals and use
feedback from sales to identify new potential markets.
For ABM to succeed, joint working relationship with
sales is essential and marketing needs to be measuring and
optimizing based on accounts.
ABM is targeted at accounts (or companies as a
whole) as opposed to traditional inbound marketing, which is
targeted at leads (or people within these companies).
The need for sales and marketing alignment also
comes from the fact that there is an inherent disconnect between
marketers, who market to people, and sales people, who sell to
companies (or structured groups of people).
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7. 6 | P a g e
Marketing will also take an increased role in
developing intelligence on key accounts – as proposed by
Peppers and Rogers (1993):
“When two marketers are competing for the same
customer’s business, all other things being equal, the marketer
with the greatest scope of information about that particular
customer […] will be the more efficient competitor.”
Account-based marketing and the IT industry
Organizations which are seeing the greatest current
benefit from account-based marketing are IT, Services and
Consulting companies.
With complex propositions, long sales cycles and
large customers, these organizations are ideal candidates for the
approach.
It is, though, spreading into other sectors and a benefit
can be seen to be an increased return on time (ROT).
Many suppliers have woken up to the fact that the
revenues of some of their customers exceed the GDP of some
nation states.
They are changing the amount of their resourcing
accordingly.

8. 7 | P a g e
Organizations supporting sales and marketing efforts
in the IT industry – including the Information Technology
Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), The Marketing
Practice, IRSDirect Ltd, and VAZT Global, Inc.
NOTE:
(VAZT) have developed a great deal of the
intellectual capital and practical tools shaping the direction of
ABM.
The first to codify the trend was Bev Burgess when
she was European MD of ITSMA. She co-created the approach
with organizations like Fujitsu, BT, HP, and Accenture. Others
have adapted it and modified it since.

9. 8 | P a g e
Choosing the key account
Key accounts are accounts that are identified within
organizations as being a focus for account-based marketing.
Not all accounts meet the requirements to be
designated as a strategic or key account and organizations need
to be careful about which accounts to focus on for their account-
based marketing efforts or risk losing a valuable client.
When choosing, organizations should look at revenue
history, account history, margins and profitability as well as the
viability that the client in question would be interested in a long-
term relationship.
Lastly, asking what the client and the company have in
common helps in solidifying the approach that the client cannot
find this kind of service anywhere else.
There are also some red flags that help recognize that a
relationship with a key account is about to change:
Business that regularly would have come to the company
goes elsewhere.
A re-organization within the company forces a change in
relationship.
Both involved companies aren’t seeing ROI from the
relationship.
Mutual goals are not achieved.

10. 9 | P a g e
ABM Programmes
- Program frameworks
There are a number of different frameworks for account-
based marketing campaigns but, in general, the following
approach is used:
- Create the strategic framework:
Methodology for selecting the accounts that will be focused
on and framework of objectives and measures for the ABM
programme.
- Planning workshop:
Joint marketing and sales session around each of the
account to agree on goals and explore understanding of the
account and relevant propositions.
- Required research:
Marketing activity to build a more complete picture of the
structure of the target organization and its requirements.

11. 10 | P a g e
- Create plan:
Bringing together existing corporate marketing activities
with new account-specific communications to achieve
account-specific goals.
- Execute:
Build a joint sales and marketing team to deliver on the
plan.
- Review:
Apply measures such as the value of sales, amount of
potential revenue in the sales pipeline, coverage of
communications in the account, perception-shifts or
appointments made.
ABM framework
Example Account selection:
Opportunity sizing & Propensity Modelling Planning and
insight: Account research and profiling Messaging and
propositions: Account vision and Propositions Content and
communication: Content, Digital Media and marcomms
Execution and engagement: Campaigns, events and seminars

12. 11 | P a g e
Strategies
In terms of specific marketing activities that form part
of account-based marketing programs, the following provides a
basis for selecting the appropriate tactics for any specific
account:
Intelligence – marketing’s role in profiling the target
account and contacts within it to identify relevant
propositions and communication preferences.
Awareness – in target accounts where awareness of the
supplier is low, regular communications have a role to
play in creating a more favorable perception.
Campaigning – in large target accounts, lead generation
campaigns can be run to uncover opportunities and
appoint meetings. This can also be combined with a
digital targeted marketing campaign targeted to the
chosen companies.
Sales – marketing has a role to play in supporting sales
bids to improve conversion rates and shorten the sales
cycle
Advocacy – the cycle is completed when customers
become advocates and are used to drive further
incremental business.

13. 12 | P a g e
May history
always be kind to you,
Walter Aladesuru Adewale;
the restless one of an
extraordinary story of a
young Africa entrepreneur who consistently proved in
numerous ways that a single individual can indeed make
a difference.
Enjoy the journey!
Aladesuru Adewale Walter
A Great Entrepreneur and A Self-Made Billionaire of the Future.
www.aladesuru-walter-adewale.strikingly.com
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“I love connecting with people, helping them, and educating
them.” -- Walter
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