B2B life science marketers use AI healthcare consulting services to help them cast a wide net with their promotional campaigns to attract as many companies as possible to their target market. Since marketing science professionals are always focused on creating new accounts and maintaining existing ones, account-based marketing (ABM) presents an alternative B2B strategy.
ABM lets marketers concentrate on sales and life science marketing resources on a particular set of target accounts. Marketers design personalized campaigns to resonate with each account, such as catering to prospects' specific needs, hence the name account-based marketing.
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What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based Marketing is a form of strategic business marketing. A business organization treats a customer account or an individual prospect like its own market. It specifically caters to the needs and requirements of that particular account, either existing or prospective.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is not a new concept; it has been around since the 1990s. However, it has recently been introduced back into the marketing strategy and is at the forefront of B2B marketing. ABM has recently earned more recognition by directing companies to focus their marketing efforts on individual accounts rather than generating new leads and sales.
Companies seeking to acquire specific high-value customers often find an account-based marketing strategy better. This strategy allows them to focus on targeted accounts rather than take a traditional, broad-reaching approach to their sales and marketing efforts.
ABM requires more account-level personalization than traditional marketing, which historically costs more to implement. Marketers implement ABM more successfully and for much less. It requires strong collaboration between the sales and marketing teams, who collaborate to identify and target a smaller number of high-yielding and valuable accounts.
Once these accounts have been picked, the sales and marketing professionals personalize the sales message to fit the needs of these accounts based on their associated personas.
The purpose of an ABM strategy is to address the specific needs of the target company by connecting with all its stakeholders. This is why account-based marketing works so well in B2B. By focusing sales and marketing efforts on a discrete number of target accounts, ABM expands the benefits of having key accounts.
When you focus on target accounts, you concentrate on their untapped potential. It's not always about which accounts you get the most revenue from; it's more about finding accounts with untapped potential and which ones would be the easiest to break into to benefit from that potential.
Account-based Marketing for Life Science Companies
Adopting the ABM strategy is rapidly increasing internationally and has gained acceptance in B2Bs across the UK and the US. It has been estimated that around 70 per cent of B2B companies have hired staff that is either fully or partially dedicated to managing and running ABM-specific programs.
B2B marketers have achieved three main goals using the ABM strategy: higher-quality leads, increased revenue, and an increased sales pipeline.
Unlike traditional targeting, which focuses on the entire industry, product, or channel, account-based marketing brings everything together and focuses all marketing efforts on specific accounts. Under this strategy, companies develop dedicated frameworks, scoring, alignment, and measurement tactics to support it.
One of the significant benefits of ABM is that it lets businesses make an effort that extends beyond awareness, from demand generation to nurturing and leading to advocacy. It is also agnostic in terms of the products or services being promoted. It works as well for medical equipment sales as for pharmaceutical marketing.
Businesses belonging to the life sciences sector do not always market to their traditional accounts, which is why they often feel eliminated from this effective marketing approach and are left wondering how to drive relevant communications, align their sales and marketing teams, and align their life science consulting efforts to drive sales through targeted accounts.
When it comes to biotech, pharmaceutical marketing, and medical device companies, one thing is clear: healthcare consulting firms are all looking to gather intelligence data, drive demand, increase leads, encourage conversion, and identify new prospects.
Many life sciences companies view ABM as their growth strategy of choice because it helps them achieve their goals and outcomes that matter to their businesses, such as an increase in sales pipeline and revenue. It serves as a revenue growth strategy that helps companies prioritize a finite number of target accounts and align sales and marketing efforts towards them, consequently improving their Marketing ROI and increasing sales efficiency.
Why is ABM considered a good fit for the Life Sciences?
More and more marketers in life sciences companies are rapidly building new skills for ABM as they ramp up to support ABM programs. ABM lets them treat every target account as if it were a market unto itself; it lets them map the opportunities and stakeholders from strategic accounts to maximize penetration. The more data is available, the better.
Data is crucial as it helps marketers determine which accounts have the highest number of conversion opportunities, who the stakeholders are, what backgrounds they belong to, and what content is required to satisfy and cater to each stakeholder.
Data is vital for ABM. There are two main types of data: internal and external. Internal data is available within the company and stored in the CRM or marketing automation systems. In contrast, external data is located outside the company, either on the Internet or third-party data sets.
In most industries, companies only have access to internal data collected from marketing automation systems and interactions with support teams. External data is hardly ever available, and even if it is, it is limited and also quite expensive. However, access to internal and external data is readily available in the life sciences industry.
Life sciences companies can easily derive essential data from both internal and external sources. Data can be derived from publications, patents, venture deals, grants, clinical trials, R&D pipelines, and other research data sets that describe customers and their needs.
By combining internal and external data, companies can confidently answer the questions needed for an advanced Account-Based Marketing system.
Benefits of Account-based Marketing for Life Sciences Companies
An effective ABM marketing strategy drives clear business results. As part of the B2B marketing strategy or tactic, ABM has also delivered the highest return on investment.
Since ABM is so targeted, marketers can efficiently focus all their energy on target accounts and run personalized marketing programs that are explicitly optimised for their target accounts.
ABM personalizes marketing campaigns and communications to attract specific healthcare, biotech, or pharma accounts so that those campaigns resonate with the target audiences. This is more appealing to targeted customers (e.g., medical device sales), and they are more likely to engage with and react to content that is geared specifically to them and relevant to their business.
ABM lets companies analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns, whether they are running them via email, web, ads, or events. With ABM, it is easier to draw conclusions by examining a smaller set of target accounts and seeing how well they worked.
ABM is considered to be one of the most efficient ways to align health sales and health marketing. When a marketer runs an ABM program, he/she operates with a medical marketing mindset that is very similar to sales, which means he/she thinks in terms of accounts and how best to target them, persuade them, and generate revenue from them.
ABM strategy helps life sciences companies achieve more big-impact wins with their target accounts using science marketing techniques. It reinforces the importance of the marketing team's role in the sales process and smooths its flow.
Account-based marketing is customer-focused. We all know that buyers are never looking for a sales call or a marketing email, rather they are interested in exploring solutions on their terms and getting in touch with vendors when they want to. ABM efficiently delivers on this need across the entire buyer’s journey.
ABM focuses on qualified leads. When marketers select target accounts under the ABM strategy, they look for those business profiles that are more likely to buy their products and return to them for more. Therefore, ABM helps generate more conversions and qualified leads, saving marketers time and effort in attracting a more comprehensive, disinterested audience.
Under traditional marketing, companies spend thousands of dollars to acquire as many leads as possible and then wait for them to convert. Compared to conventional marketing, ABM is far more cost-effective, as it initially determines which accounts are the best and more likely to buy products or services. This strategy lets companies spend their valuable marketing budget on business accounts that matter.
ABM helps personalize content on a larger scale with minimal effort. By sending out personalized emails and creating customized landing pages targeted at specific accounts, ABM directs the efforts of sales and marketing teams in the right direction.
Need For Account-Based Marketing In Life Sciences
Account-based marketing offers an innovative marketing strategy for life sciences companies specializing in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. It can positively impact their performance and help them grow.
The importance and need for account-based Marketing (ABM) programs and account profiling in the life sciences sector cannot be underestimated. Especially in this era when a vast majority of B2B clients desire a customized marketing experience, clients are no longer interested in sales calls or sales emails. They value customized sales alerts that are relevant to their challenges. Deployment of targeted healthcare advertising agencies through ABM helps life sciences companies reach out to customers who matter.
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