Introduction

B2B marketers know that their path to success requires building long-lasting, trusted relationships with the accounts that matter most. With the focus on creating trustworthy experiences, marketers have rushed to adopt account-based marketing (ABM) as a solution. This rush has been focused almost exclusively on lead generation, which is only a part of creating a robust customer experience. While these efforts can drive an uptick in short-term sales, it’s only one piece of the customer relationship puzzle. Too often, they ignore important brand-building activities up front, as well as lead-nurturing efforts further down the funnel.

Companies that want to be leaders need to evolve their ABM approach and create account-based experiences (ABX) that orchestrate the entire customer experience – from brand awareness to deal closure and beyond. This integrated effort is the path to deliver a seamless and continuous customer experience that never breaks down, always nurtures trust, and continually drives value for customers.

It’s important to remember that in the B2B world, where customers are accounts, we are also looking to deliver orchestrated CX and engagement.

In B2C, delivering excellent customer experiences (CX) is nothing new. In fact, research shows that B2B decision makers expect a more B2C approach, including better experiences, ease of path to purchase, and an orchestrated journey. It’s important to remember that in the B2B world, where customers are accounts, we are also looking to deliver orchestrated CX and engagement to the account level and individual decision makers.

While the upside of ABX is compelling, many companies are still in the early stages of activating a successful ABX program; the focus is often on using a list to drive leads. Getting there requires a new vision for customer experiences, coordination across traditionally siloed departments, and supporting capabilities in campaign personalization, channel execution, data, and technology. Bringing all these groups, technologies, and capabilities together can be daunting or even seem impossible.

In this paper, we’ll explore how you can move to a true ABX strategy, one step or ecosystem at a time. We’ll examine why taking a brand-to-demand approach with ABX is critical. From there, we’ll look at how to approach ABX transformation in a way that is manageable, actionable, and incremental, so you can ignite an effective ABX strategy at your organization that delivers value at every step of the way.