Leveraging the ABM Buyer's Journey for Pipeline and Revenue Acceleration

A familiar theme emerges in strategy conversations with Demandbase customers: frustration in using buyer’s journey stages to boost funnel velocity, improve conversion rates, and accelerate revenue. Demandbase tools offer highly configurable Buyer Journey Stages for each customer’s unique Go-to-Market (GTM) requirements. To account for the variety this configurability creates, we’ll combine journey stages into three actionable groups: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

The Power of ABM in the Buyer’s Journey

ABM aligns marketing and sales efforts to target accounts. By treating individual accounts as markets in their own right, ABM enables B2B revenue teams to meet the needs of each account, providing a clear path to a personalized and impactful buyer’s journey.

Awareness: Laying the Foundation with Precision

The first stages of the buyer’s journey create market and brand awareness. ABM ensures awareness equates to relevant interest in what we offer. By identifying and targeting high-value accounts, evaluating their affinity within our offerings, and delivering personalized content that speaks directly to their needs; we grab the attention of key decision-makers in the earliest stages of procurement. This precision increases engagement, predisposes prospects to our value proposition, and starts the prospect’s bespoke buying experience.

Consideration: Nurturing with a Purpose

As we move to the consideration stages, ABM shines by facilitating deeper engagement through personalized approaches to reaching target accounts. This is where the magic of ABM happens—targeted communication from sales and marketing resonates on a personal level, making each prospect feel seen and understood. ABM builds on the foundation of awareness to foster strong, meaningful relationships with key stakeholders, accelerating their decision-making process.

Decision: Closing Deals with Confidence

ABM’s personalized approach pays off in the decision stages. Tailored messaging designed to perfectly fit the specific needs and business challenges of each target account demonstrates a deep level of understanding and commitment. This elevates the perceived value of our offering and significantly boosts the likelihood of conversion to closed revenue.

The ABM Advantage: Win-Win for Businesses & Customers

Implementing ABM across the buyer’s journey offers undeniable benefits to our growth efforts: from improved conversion rates to enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty, ABM’s focus leads to a more efficient use of marketing and sales resources, increasing revenue and simultaneously delivering superior customer experience.

ABM’s success doesn’t hinge on strategy alone; it also depends on the right mix of technology and tools. Leveraging a highly configurable ABM platform in conjunction with a CRM system, a marketing automation platform, and analytics tools, we can streamline our ABM efforts, ensuring the right person at each target account receives the right message at the right time to affect the next right decision; accelerating journey stage velocity, and improving the likelihood of positive revenue outcomes.

Measuring Success and Moving Forward

ABM success stories don’t end with the close of the sale. Measuring the success of ABM strategies through key metrics such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and ROI is crucial for continuous improvement.

Always have an eye on proving value when planning your ABM program. For each target account list, build a control group you can measure performance against. These may be “lookalike” accounts, or you might use “Sales Only” or “Inbound Only” cohorts to compare velocity, conversion rate, and resulting revenue outcomes. And don’t stop there: consider downstream metrics such as NPS and LCV for ABM-influenced closed won deals. A “fit-first” ABM approach leads to better overall outcomes.

By closely monitoring these indicators, we can justify budget and resources, refine ABM tactics, adapt to changes in customer preferences and market dynamics, and ensure we remain one step ahead of the competition. The path to leveraging the buyer’s journey for increased sales and revenue is not through broad strokes but through focused and personalized approaches of Account-Based Marketing. By aligning marketing and sales efforts with the stages of the buyer’s journey for key accounts, we not only improve our conversion rates, we build stronger, lasting relationships that drive greater growth and success.

For more information on leveraging the buyer’s journey, check out our ROI Cookbook Recipe for Leveraging the Buyers Journey to Increase ROI, or book a meeting to speak with a member of our sales team. If you’re already a Demandbase customer interested in professional assistance with your ABM program, consider using our Strategic Services team.