Account-Based Marketing (aka Account-Based Engagement) vs Inbound Marketing

Trying to decide which method to experiment with?

Here’s how to go about it.

In the long run you don’t need to just do one or the other. They aren’t mutually exclusive, and as you’ll see below, you can even leverage some core elements of one for the other.

However, if you’ve got limited resources, you probably want to start with just inbound or just account-based marketing (ABM; also called ABE (Account-Based Engagement)) as your primary focus, and add the other later on once you feel stable. We’ll mostly use the term ABE here because it does a better job of reflecting the holistic aspects of this method.

Shortest answer:

Caveats abound….

If there are a “lot” of people looking for help with what you do, and you prefer to put effort into getting people to find you (as opposed to pushing yourself on them) when they have a need, lean more toward inbound.

If, on the other hand, you believe you can have the healthiest business by building and maintaining very strong relationships with a small number of companies (less than 10 to start, and maybe 20 total), and you have a strongly differentiated value proposition, and your sales team is good at getting in front of people, then lean toward account-based engagement.

What is account-based marketing / engagement at its core?

Account-based marketing / engagement is a set of methods for attempting to engage a very small number of companies (let’s say some number between 10-20 depending on several factors), with a very strong value proposition (implying that you can help each of these companies in a significant way). Sounds straightforward, right? It is. However, it’s not simple, and not easy. We’ll get into some of the reasons why below.

It’s very important to point out that ABE contains a huge sales component.

Something to start wrapping your head around with ABE is how you’re going to select your accounts that you target with ABE. The three main ways to think about this are:

Penetrate deeper into existing accounts
Opportunistically penetrate new accounts as they arise
Actively pursue completely unknown accounts

Each of these categories of account is progressively harder to pursue. You may want to start with existing accounts or opportunistic accounts before you push into active pursuit of unknown accounts.

What is inbound marketing at its core?

Inbound marketing is a set of methods to attempt to position your company so that you can be found when someone is looking for help with things that your company can help with.

Many people like this method because instead of focusing on pushing yourself on people and possibly being annoying (like with outbound methods, including ABE), you get yourself ready to show up when someone is actively looking for help in one way or another (whether through gathering information, or looking for a product or service). This psychological shift should not be taken lightly.

Key Differences

Account-based engagement is a heavier sales team lift

Account-based engagement relies more heavily on the sales team than inbound does. It requires sales to:

use outbound techniques to try to engage customers with a strong value proposition,
build sophisticated and deep relationships with several people at the target accounts,
and nurture them along the way until the timing for an opportunity is right.

The sales team needs a strong value prop and high EQ to build relationships over long periods of time (years).

Account-based engagement encourages outbound sales methods

If your sales team isn’t comfortable with outbound methods, ABE may not be the best choice for your company. The sales team is going to have to build relationships with the customer. Starting those relationships can often require active outreach (e.g. through LinkedIn, networking, referrals).

Psychologically, the tables are turned back to outbound selling methods. Your customer didn’t ask you to reach out to them, and you’re more likely to irritate the potential customers you’re trying to engage. That means your sales people have to have thicker skin, higher EQ, and your messaging has to be more focused and more insightful (stronger value prop).

A couple ways to make this slightly easier (but also less active/focused/targeted):

Opportunistically leverage a subset of contacts generated through other marketing methods.
Apply account-based methods to your existing customers.

Account-based engagement requires more sophisticated marketing than inbound

As you get into inbound marketing, you’ll discover it’s harder than you thought it’d be. Doing inbound reasonably well requires significant marketing sophistication and patience. Having said that, ABE requires all of the sophistication and patience of inbound, and then some.

Account-based engagement may involve more expensive tools to facilitate

When you’re trying to reach target accounts, there are tools to facilitate the analysis, advertising, and organizational aspects. These tools are not cheap. Targeting accounts by name is not cheap.

Similarities

They both leverage content.

Inbound relies on content in a big way…at it’s core. Much of the effort from a content aspect relies on a strong foundation of landing pages, articles, case studies, FAQs, etc. You need information for people to find when they’re looking for help. Content is that information.

With ABE, your content will likely be more specific, and may need to provide deeper insights (e.g. narrow research reports). For example, if your sales team is trying to show an existing customer how you can help them in some new way, how are you planning to show them? You need case studies that showcase this, possibly landing pages. If you want to open the door for a conversation with a target account, you probably don’t want to just tell them that you know about the topic of interest, you want to show them with a webinar/whitepaper/article/research report on that topic.

Check these out if you want to learn more about content marketing:

Both inbound and ABE require you to have a good understanding of your customer base.

Think you can just blab and be found with inbound? Good luck. Think you can just reach out to a company with ABE and say the equivalent of “we provide [insert service or product] and we’d like you to let us improve your [insert common benefit of time, money, quality] because that’s what we do as a business”. Nope.

You need to have a pretty solid understanding of their mindset and care-abouts at a persona level just to have a fighting chance of engaging them, especially with ABE.

They both require you to be empathetic.

It’s not about what you do. No one cares what you do. It’s about the customer and the problems you can help them solve. The quicker and more fully you realize that as a company, the better off you’ll be, regardless of the marketing or sales method. With inbound, it’s all about positioning yourself in the way that the customer views their problems and the solutions they need. For ABE, it’s a very similar line of thinking, just at a more individualized level, and with the recognition of the asynchronous timing aspect.

How can they work together?

There are two main ways that inbound and ABE can work together:

You can use inbound methods as a foot in the door to high-value accounts. Of course you have very little (if any) direct control over who reaches out, and when. However, when someone engages you with a need, and that person happens to work at a strategic account, you can then start utilizing account-based methods to penetrate deeper into that account.
They can both leverage some of the same core content, including landing pages, case studies, FAQs, and articles.

What now?

Now you pause and let this sit with you for a bit, and potentially re-think your next step from a business strategy standpoint. If you want to chat more about this, feel free to reach out.

Let’s chat about ABE vs Inbound

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