ABM Versus Lead Generation – Which One Is a More Favourable Choice?

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(Newswire.net — October 16, 2020) — All the marketing strategies that you use in your firm have only one goal; generating leads. It doesn’t matter how effective your marketing strategy is, if it will not be able to generate leads then there will be no use of it. This is the main reason why firms have started using a wide array of strategies for generating quality leads for their company and over the past few years, the very effective approach of ABM has been acting as a go-to marketing strategy for all the B2B firms.

It’s true that the popularity of ABM has soared in the past couple of years and this is why there is a battle between the basic lead generation strategy and ABM. If you are also in the dilemma of which one to choose for your company then you have come to the right place. In this blog post, we will go through both the marketing strategy in a detailed manner and understand which one is better for your firm.

Lead-based marketing

Lead based marketing is a traditional approach of generating leads in which loosely targeted messages are sent to a wide base of the target audience and such an approach keeps on working without any touch of personalization. Such type of strategy draws a long list of leads for the company that may or may not be useful for the company.

ABM

Account based marketing or what is more popularly known as ABM is a strategy that aligns all the marketing resources in order to target a specific set of the target audience. When a company uses ABM marketing then it needs to make sure that both the sales and marketing team work together on the level of personalization and turn all the leads into customers.

Difference between the two on the basis of:

Conversions, engagement, and influence

Lead based marketing might look an impeccable plan on the papers but when implemented, they don’t turn out to be as productive as you thought. Even in the case of conversion, lead generation tactics might push users for reading content or filling out forms but when these leads come from non-targeted accounts, it means that all your efforts are going astray. You can also generate a large number of leads through lead generation strategy but the number of leads doesn’t add any value to the bottom line until and unless they get converted.

But ABM can be called as a long term strategy that allows you to keep track of whether your efforts are giving you meaningful engagement with targeted accounts or not. Even the ABM metrics like engagement, awareness, coverage influence and reach improve the overall ROI of the company while allowing you to stay productive with your strategy.

Quality of leads

When it comes to the quality of leads then ABM marketing is much ahead of lead generation strategy. When you will be using traditional lead generation strategy then you will surely be drawing in many leads but you will never be sure that all those leads will be useful for your company or not. While on the other side, ABM never uses loose messages for throwing a wide net rather it uses strategic and properly personalized messages while moving on with the approach of ‘market for one’ at each account.

This simply means that you might get more leads with lead generation strategy but the quality of leads will always be better in account based marketing. With the help of ABM marketing, you will be able to push highly-priced targets through the sales funnel.

Size of sales

One of the main reasons why sales are unconnected, individual and smaller in the case of lead generation is it drags leads from a wide array of companies and levels. But in the case of account based marketing tactics, you are able to reach the right executives in the right company since it works on account based targeting. According to a report published by Demandbase, it has been found that the average contract value for targeted accounts has been 35% higher for enterprise accounts and therefore even the number speaks for the success of account based marketing tactics for B2B firms.

Even the widening of accounts with the existing customers is very much common in the case of ABM and this is another reason why the size of sales is much larger. And since the marketers are well aware of the industry, interest and buying behaviour of the leads, orchestrating continued sales becomes much easier.  

Which one is to choose?

You can surely catch many fishes through a large net but you will never be sure whether all those fishes will be useful for you and this is why if you want to catch the big fish, then you will need to be very specific with your approach and this is what account based marketing tactics offers to B2B firms. The growing popularity of ABM is itself a sign of its effectiveness and since this approach uses highly targeted communication, you will never end up wasting your resources. Just choose a reliable B2B database provider and start working on your ABM strategy.