What is account-based advertising?
Account-based advertising (ABA) uses hyper-personalized digital advertising campaigns to target, persuade, and win decision-making units (DMUs) and accounts with high revenue potential. Unlike traditional demand gen, which focuses more on lead quantity, account-based advertising prioritizes which key account-level decision makers get to see advertisements. As a result, businesses using account-based advertising software experience a higher return on investment (ROI) on their digital advertising spend.
Account-based advertising methods
Account-based advertising success depends on an advertiser’s ability to target the right business accounts based on buyer intent intelligence, firmographics, customer relationship management (CRM) data, and engagement. Advertisers use the following methods to serve personalized ads at scale.
- Internet protocol (IP) address targeting is one of the earliest account-based advertising methods. Companies still use it to deliver targeted advertisements based on customers’ IP addresses. Some advertisers combine contextual targeting and third-party audience data with IP-based targeting to dynamically deliver content that matters to decision makers.
- Programmatic advertising is more advanced than IP targeting. It relies on cookie-based targeting to deliver in-channel, native advertisements. Advertisers use cross-channel advertising software to publish ads on websites, mobile apps, social media, and search engines. Programmatic advertising also allows advertisers to target devices customers use to search the web.
- Social media advertising is another way to focus on different buyer personas and accounts. For example, social media advertising platforms like LinkedIn Marketing Solutions let advertisers deliver sponsored content to people who don’t even follow their company on LinkedIn. Advertisers can also test out different ad units to understand what’s performing well.
- Retargeting uses cookies to re-engage customers who have already visited or interacted with a website. Retargeting aims to convert visitors into customers based on their behavior, history, and time spent on a website.
- Partnering with business-to-business (B2B) databases or buyer intent data providers is another way to fuel account-based marketing (ABM) and advertising campaigns. These solutions and providers gather actual buyer journey and purchase intent data, both of which are key to understanding how prospects and customers interact with brands.
Account-based advertising benefits
Account-based advertising can effectively influence complex sales cycles due to its proactive approach to identifying and persuading high-potential accounts. ABA is also popular with advertisers because it:
- Persuades high-quality accounts. Account-based advertising pushes both sales and marketing teams to find target accounts, set qualification criteria, and standardize reporting methods. Sales teams are then able to work with better-qualified leads.
- Reaches decision makers. Complex decision-making processes involve C-level executives who may not interact with websites or content like other leads. Account-based advertising reaches those decision makers directly on the platforms they use.
- Complements inbound marketing activities like email marketing. High-value accounts turn to email management tools to filter promotional emails and opt out of email subscriptions. Account-based advertising can easily supplement email marketing by showing advertisers’ brands in target accounts’ inboxes.
- Proactively engages with the target audience. Reactive advertising tools like Google Ads or CRM retargeting reach people who search for a business online or visit the business website. Account-based advertising is proactive and reaches potential customers, regardless of whether they’ve visited a company’s website.
Account-based advertising best practices
B2B marketers eager to win accounts with hyper-personalized advertising should keep the following in mind while building tailored campaigns.
- Choosing the right advertising platform based on audience type, messaging, and budget is key to building campaigns that resonate with target accounts.
- Buyer persona research helps create messaging that builds rapport and shows a company’s ability to solve its customers’ problems. Contextually relevant messaging speaks to both decision makers and the organization at large. That’s why it’s best to customize messages based on challenges and industry verticals, along with the name, company name, and job title.
- Using the right intent data is critical when creating a hyper-targeted list of accounts. Advertisers must balance first-party data (prospects who have already engaged with a brand) and third-party data to find their intended audience.
Ready to take ABM to the next level? Learn ways to adapt ABM strategy to serve the modern buyer.
Sudipto Paul
Sudipto Paul is a Sr. Content Marketing Specialist at G2. With over five years of experience in SaaS content marketing, he creates helpful content that sparks conversations and drives actions. At G2, he writes in-depth IT infrastructure articles on topics like application server, data center management, hyperconverged infrastructure, and vector database. Sudipto received his MBA from Liverpool John Moores University. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
