You’ve certainly heard about the main marketing and sales strategies that help prospect customers. But which one should you implement in your business? Which one generates more results? If you are looking for an answer to these questions, this content is for you. We will explain about ABM vs Inbound vs Outbound, highlighting the differences between these practices.
We know that the best known action of these is inbound marketing, also called inbound marketing. It is about creating content that attracts leads, educates, generates interest, engages, maintains relationships, converts and delights customers.
Outbound, on the other hand, refers to active prospecting techniques, with the modernization of the commercial department. This is accomplished by structuring a team containing:
- Commercial intelligence for generating the prospecting list according to the ideal customer profile, using big data and artificial intelligence, and validating the contacts of qualified leads using other tools;
- Sales representatives, who are responsible for the cadence flow and the commercial approaches indicated in the cadences involving the various points of contact, such as email, social network and telephone;
- Closers, who receive the real business opportunities generated by the representatives and carry out the negotiation, proposal and closing process.
Finally, comes the term ABM (Account-Based Marketing). And you must be wondering: ‘if one strategy attracts and the other seeks the lead, what does this ABM do?’. But calm down and we’ll explain.
In fact, ABM is a more targeted, focused, customized and intelligent process.
Read more: How to create a persona in 3 steps
How does the ABM vs Inbound vs Outbound relationship work?
From what we’ve said so far, it’s worth making an analogy to better understand these sales strategies and their relationship. As we have already said, the inbound is responsible for attracting leads with content actions and the outbound goes after the leads, finding the contacts of potential customers with a lot of research in databases.
ABM, in turn, as the name implies, is a practice aimed at specific accounts. Thus, your company chooses accounts that it wants to have as customers and ABM actions are intended to relate to and conquer such accounts.
In other words, Account-Based Marketing can be associated with both inbound and outbound, directing the efforts of both towards a much more personalized approach.
Meet the fisherman analogy for ABM vs Inbound vs Outbound
At first, you can see that inbound and outbound are different but complementary strategies. ABM, on the other hand, can be executed together with both, demanding more time and dedication to carry out customized marketing and sales practices, but promoting more results and achieving high sales performance.
The difference is that:
While inbound and outbound act, each in their own way, in a broader and more generic way to generate a good amount of leads, ABM focuses on these more strategic accounts.
So, going back to the parallel we mentioned, let’s make a comparison with fishing. We will see:
Net fishing is like inbound
You leave it there in the sea or river and wait for the fish to fall into your net, in a natural and organic way. Likewise, in inbound, you produce relevant, attractive and high-value content according to the strategy, seeking the best organic positioning and ranking on Google.
Thus, B2B buyers, when searching for a solution to their pain or challenge, can naturally fall into your content, become interested, read more content and convert as leads, getting in touch with the brand.
With that, they are placed inside the sales funnel, being nourished, educated and engaged with content, until they evolve to the next steps, interacting with salespeople and reaching the bottom of the funnel, closing a deal.
Rod fishing is like outbound
Now, when we think of active prospecting, we can highlight fishing with a rod, since, in this modality, the fisherman goes in search of fish with his kit, hook, bait and the like, normally looking for the ideal place inside the river, where the fish will be.
With the search for qualified leads in big data and other tools, the performance of active prospecting is similar. This way, cadence flows can be activated more quickly, making contact with leads, optimizing the relationship and closing deals faster too.
As a result, it is possible both to obtain more business opportunities and to reduce the time of the commercial cycle, in relation to inbound. In parallel with fishing, more fish are caught more quickly.
On the other hand, it is more expensive to catch fish with all the equipment to go to the middle of the river with a pole. Likewise, the cost of active prospecting processes is a little higher compared to inbound, but it guarantees a high return on investment.
Spear fishing is like ABM
Finally, what about ABM? Where does he fit into this analysis? It can be considered that very assertive harpoon fishing and well directed to a specific fish. You come with your spear and hit the blowfish. After all, it’s that fish you want. Thus, it is the strategy of Account-Based Marketing.
Through it, you can completely focus on the accounts you want as a client and go after them, whether by building content and relationships via email nurturing, as inbound provides, or by actively seeking out leads contacts to carry out commercial approaches, with cold e-mail or cold call.
Differences of ABM vs Inbound vs Outbound in practice
Allegories aside, in practice, the differences between ABM vs Inbound vs Outbound are concentrated as follows:
Inbound and Outbound
Market focus: business segments and sectors within businesses
Finding Leads: Persona and ICP
Active prospecting or attraction indicators: number of leads generated
Purpose: Increase sales and close deals
ABM
Market focus: selected strategic accounts
Finding Leads: Account Selection and Identifying Decision Makers
Indicators: number of target accounts in the relationship process
Objective: in addition to increasing sales, expanding the customer base with high value-added businesses
It is worth remembering that all strategies are combinable and linked to greater sales generation, ensuring a focus on sales performance and optimizing results.
Learn more: Sales performance: how it works and what is its importance
Count on ASB Marketing to increase your sales
If you want to implement demand generation strategies in your business, it is of paramount importance to start with planning.
In this scenario, understand your audience, online behavior, preferences and, especially, make an analysis of your competitors and current demands of the market.
Then understand how your sales process works and what characteristics need to be changed to meet your ideal customer profile.
In addition, it is essential to keep in mind that demand generation does not only occur by paid media, on the contrary, inbound marketing actions (attraction marketing) and demand generation generate very advantageous results for organizations when well employed.
Finally, you can count on an experienced marketing and sales company to support the implementation of these strategies, such as ASB Marketing.
With the best innovative methodologies and tools, ASB Marketing finds its ideal customer and qualifies them through fully automated and personalized email cadence.
When the lead arrives at the purchase decision phase, we only passed on to your commercial team to close the negotiation. With this, we guarantee increased sales, reduction of trade cycle, cost optimization and support in long -term business expansion.
Do you want to know more? Go now and see how ASB Marketing can help your business!