Account-based marketing (or ABM for short) is a hot topic in the marketing industry. An increasing number of businesses are turning to ABM to ensure that they can market to the most important prospects for their solutions. In this blog, we look at what ABM services are available to support the account-based marketing teams to do an even better job!
ABM services are a core part of what Viewpoint Analysis does to help our clients to win more deals. We are a 'Technology Matchmaker', helping businesses to find and select new enterprise technology, but also helping IT vendors to understand their markets better.
What are Account-Based Marketing Services?
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Services are specialized solutions designed to empower marketing teams by enhancing their precision and impact when targeting high-value accounts. Unlike traditional broad-reaching marketing strategies, ABM is highly focused, treating individual target accounts as “markets of one.” ABM services provide tools that enable marketers to gain a deep understanding of specific accounts, ensuring that all outreach is highly personalized and relevant to each prospect’s unique needs and business objectives. These services typically include account research, contact research, content generation, and more, allowing marketing teams to build a more tailored and strategic approach to each targeted account.
In particular, account and contact research are foundational ABM services that gather in-depth insights into potential customers, identifying key decision-makers and uncovering unique pain points or priorities for each account. This research-driven approach, paired with custom content generation, allows marketing teams to develop tailored messaging that resonates deeply with each prospect, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
What are the different types of Account-Based Marketing Services?
There are a variety of ABM services designed specifically to help account-based marketing teams to perform their roles. Popular example services delivered by our team at Viewpoint Analysis and similar businesses include:
ABM Account Research
Perhaps the most fundamental part of any account-based marketing plan is account research or account profiling. To understand an account intimately - and to ensure they feel like the marketing and sales messages are specifically for them, the team (sales, marketing, business development et al) must have a deep understanding of the client.
Running account research for a large account (e.g., Bank of America in the US or Rolls-Royce in Europe) can take a number of days - as a minimum, it will take 2 days, even with the advent of AI. Whilst ABM teams understand the importance of account knowledge, finding the time to sit down and research accounts for such a period of time is almost impossible. Also, who does this? Who is qualified enough to go deep on the account research while having the time to make it happen?
Viewpoint Analysis runs ABM Account Research for a number of well-known technology vendors (but the research can be for any need) - companies like Nexthink, Informatica, LineView, and Pluralsight. Take a look at our ABM research service and our ABM research whitepaper which shows how to do the research in-house.
ABM Contact Research
Researching an account is one thing, but we need to understand to whom our marketing messages need to be delivered. Ensuring that we can deliver the right message to the right contact and that the message is personalized to them is core to what ABM delivers.
We research contacts for several technology vendors, and our experience is that most tech companies do not have a significant list of current contacts. In most cases, for established accounts, they may have a long list of aged contacts. In other cases, new prospective clients will have a small number of contacts - and those may also be outdated.
Finding the contacts is quite simple but time-consuming. The best approach is to look at LinkedIn. For the top contacts - the ones that matter most to our efforts, we recommend going a step further and doing in-depth research across social media and the web.
Contact research is a subset of our ABM research, and more details can be found here.
ABM Content
Generating account-specific content is perhaps the third leg of ABM services. Once we know the company in detail and the contacts that we need to market and sell to, the final step is to create content that is personal to them.
Marketers have two broad choices when it comes to content:
1) Content that is created in-house and under their logo and brand.
or
2) Content created by a third party and sponsored or supported by their brand.
Both work well for different scenarios. Third-party content is excellent as it usually demonstrates authority and supports messaging differently than anything that can be created in-house. Someone else saying something is often regarded differently to when you say it yourself. Different companies (usually analyst firms) can help with this third-party content. Viewpoint Analysis creates ABM content under our 'Content-as-a-Service' area.
ABM Account Identification and Selection
There is one step that comes before all of the items above - account identification. In most cases the team will already have a good sense of the target accounts, but where this is not the case, a third-party can provide territory research to help look at the accounts in a given sector, and define the potential target list.
Understanding the territory is the first step - there is much more science involved in then selecting the accounts from a given territory.
Competitor Analysis
Keeping an eye on our key competitors and how they might be messaging can be extremely useful. Every vendor knows their competitors - but generally, they know very little about them. For example, they may know their name and what they sell, but will know little beyond this. Without additional competitor intelligence, it is easy to be blindsided. ABM done well means having precise control of the market and messaging - understanding competitors and their messaging can be a game-changer.
What do we typically look at when researching a competitor? It is things like:
What language do they use
Who they say they are targeting (industry and persona)
What their sales team look like in a given market
What they say on social media channels
Who their top customers are and how they relate to our target accounts
And much more.
Custom Deal Structuring and Proposals
Deal-Based Marketing sits alongside Account-Based Marketing and is focused on how we market to an 'in-flight' opportunity. DBM is a great way to ensure that we are taking the next step - we've got the customer into the pipeline, and now we need to ensure we win the deal. You can learn more about how we do Deal-Based Marketing, but there is also the challenge of ensuring that we structure the right deal and how we write proposals. Viewpoint Analysis has a new service that can help with these aspects - RFP Response Training is where we help the sales and marketing teams to win more often than they might be doing right now.
Intent Data and Predictive Insights
Intent Data and Predictive Insights are powerful tools in Account-Based Marketing, enabling marketers to better understand and anticipate the needs of target accounts. Intent data tracks digital signals from target accounts—such as web searches, content downloads, or engagement with relevant topics—that indicate potential buying interest. This data can reveal where accounts are in their decision-making journey, helping sales and marketing teams prioritize outreach based on a higher likelihood of conversion.
Predictive insights take intent data further by using algorithms and historical data to forecast which accounts are likely to engage or buy soon. By analyzing patterns in behaviors and demographics, predictive tools can score accounts on readiness to buy, giving teams a more precise, data-driven approach to account prioritization. With this combination of intent data and predictive insights, ABM campaigns become more effective, allowing marketers to reach accounts at the right time with the right message, ultimately driving faster conversions and stronger ROI.
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ABM, done well, is a real game-changer. If you are interested in any of the services listed above? Why not request a call? Simply let us know what you are interested in and we'll make contact with you asap.
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