The global ABM market is expected to reach $1,196.9 million by 2023. ABM or account based marketing is all about focusing on account quality rather than the number of accounts you are targeting. The aim here is to identify high-value clients and focus on closing them by adopting a personalised marketing approach.
You can surely use all-in-one ABM platforms or tools to measure the success of your ABM campaign. But, remember ROI is more than the number of accounts closed or the leads generated. You should monitor different metrics according to your business objectives to understand the effectiveness of the ABM campaign.
How to Measure ROI of Account-Based Marketing?
Define Realistic Objectives for ABM
Before starting any new marketing strategy, you first need to ask yourself, what are you trying to achieve? What does the success of an ABM campaign mean to you? Remember, objectives might differ from one business to another.
Set up objectives considering the results you have with your current strategies and your team’s skills to handle the campaign. Setting realistic goals is essential. For example, do not expect a 50% to 70% improvement in your KPIs the first time you run the campaign.
Assign a Fixed Cost to Every Component of the Campaign
Several activities need to be performed for the successful execution of an account based marketing campaign. For example, you need to identify high-value accounts, create buying personas, tier the accounts, draft marketing content, and select the right channel for communication.
Every task of the campaign is time, effort, and cost-intensive. Thus, you need to assign a fixed cost to all these tasks to understand that the results generated are worth the effort you are taking.
Identify Overall Metrics You Want to Track
Metrics can be selected depending on the current status of your business. However, it is recommended you measure a mix of revenue and non-revenue-based metrics to understand the results better. For example, along with lead generation and conversion focus on other metrics like customer engagement, impressions, and brand recall, among others.
Measure Consistently for Learning
Now that you have your objectives, cost, and metrics in place, you can start tracking and measuring these metrics to understand if your campaign works and provides results. While tracking revenue-based metrics such as conversions, sales are comparatively more straightforward.
It is the non-revenue-based metrics such as engagement or brand sentiment that will be difficult to track at the beginning. You could start by using tools to know how many people are following your social media accounts or how many customers visited your website, and the pages they spent the most time on. Then, you can create datasets depending on customer behaviour and understand what factors influence conversions.
You must continue to measure the results provided by the ABM campaign every month. Compare the results with previous numbers to understand if ABM strategies are working in your favour. Then, study and analyse the metrics to see what worked and what else you can improve upon. Remember, account based marketing is not a one-time campaign you run and forget. It is more about adopting an organization-wide strategic marketing approach.