Although account-based marketing and demand generation are commonly adopted digital marketing strategies, they cater to different purposes. Understanding their similarities and differences and how these approaches complement each other would help your business achievements.
Let’s take a closer look at the distinctions between B2B demand generation and ABM strategy to figure out how those can benefit your go-to-market efforts.
What Is ABM and Demand Generation Used for in B2B Marketing?
Account-based marketing strategy targets few customer accounts or specific segments of the total addressable market. Marketers have previously identified their demands and problems and considered them a good sales opportunity. Therefore, ABM efforts prioritize converting highly qualified and likely-to-buy leads into customers. Additionally, ABM tactics can target inbound business accounts if you want to reactivate and retain them.
Conversely, the demand generation strategy addresses a broad segment of TAM to encourage them to engage with your content. Demand gen content aims to arouse interest in your products and services. Its goal is to nudge prospects to enter your marketing funnel and become leads.
In practice, ABM and demand gen don’t oppose each other. To reach niche segments and raise their awareness, GTM teams must scrutinize their target audience. This is when demand generation specialists can leverage detailed ABM account data.
Key Differences Between Account-Based Marketing and Demand Generation
Given that ABM and demand generation have different marketing focuses, they serve different goals and lead to different outcomes.
- Goals. ABM targets “named” accounts with detailed firmographic, technographic, and behavioral attributes. In contrast, the demand generation activates barely qualified leads for further nurturing.
- Approach. Demand-based marketing delivers broad messages through mass emails and paid social to reach a broad pool of audience segments. Personalized ABM messages speak to selected accounts persuasively, addressing pains specific to a particular customer or smaller group.
- Sales Alignment. In lead-generation campaigns, marketers generate many leads for salespeople to pursue. However, it’s mostly a quantity-over-quality approach. On the other hand, a successful ABM campaign demands tight-knit collaboration between Sales and Marketing to maximize revenue from acquired buyers and lookalikes.
- Achieved ROI. ABM ROI is generally higher than that of demand-gen campaigns. That’s reasonable since broad reach doesn’t necessarily bring in qualified leads that convert.
- Metrics. ABM prioritizes pipeline contribution and post-sales KPIs like increased average lifetime value (LTV) and retention rate. Demand Generation leverages traditional lead gen metrics like the number of generated leads, cost per lead, and sales cycle length.
Key Tools for B2B ABM and Demand Gen
Both ABM and demand gen teams use similar email and paid ads automation platforms with integrated analytics tools. However, the martech stack can extend depending on specific data points needed to hone targeting precision.
We’d like to highlight Primer ABM and data orchestration capabilities that cater to most use cases. This platform ensures seamless CRM data enrichment by appending essential data points from external B2B customer data sources.
Enriched audience lists can then be pushed directly to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other ad networks. These custom lists show increased ad network match rates, increasing ad impressions and conversions.
Why Demand Generation Got Pushed Aside by ABM Lately?
The fact is B2B sales cycles have become much more lengthy these days. Most B2B entrepreneurs surveyed by Data Box admitted that it usually takes at least 1 month for them to close the deal.
Regarding that, companies have no other choice but to meticulously mine available customer data to identify and pursue high-intent prospects. The account-based marketing outdoes demand generation spray-and-pray approach due to its:
- Priority of lead quality over broad reach. A strong focus on qualified accounts allows you to grab the attention of the relevant audience that subscribes and requests free demos, i.e., goes further down the funnel.
- Shorter sales cycles. ABM campaigns allow marketers to capitalize on the strong buying intent that already exists and gain revenue with less effort.
- Higher total ROI. Tailored ads and sales pitches resonate with specific wants and needs, resulting in greater customer satisfaction. It multiplies the chances of winning customer loyalty and boosting LTV.
How ICP-Centered Approach Reconciles Demand Generation and ABM
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) provides the enterprise-wide concept of potential customer that wins most from purchasing from you. The initial ICP concept stems from the generalization of customer success cases. That said, you can scrutinize it through data enrichment and continuously improve it by analyzing how well the target audience engaged with your content.
ICP-driven marketing fosters ABM-level personalization of demand-gen content, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates. That’s another incentive for Sales and Marketing to centralize their knowledge and inform each other decisions. Such collaboration allows you to tailor killer demand-gen content that will push consumers from the Awareness to the Consideration stage much more quickly.
