Executing Account Based Marketing (ABM) In-house
Account Based Marketing (ABM) requires a variety of skills and is resource intensive. Industry and Account researchers, analysts, writers, graphic designers, and more come together to create an effective campaign.
Many managers feel they have better control over ABM projects if they hire employees that will be sitting close to them so they can mentor, and manage their performance.
However it is important to distinguish between something that is critical and something that is strategic. While you should hire, manage, coach, and build in-house account based marketing expertise for the products and services you sell, it makes no sense to waste payroll expenses and managerial capacity by hiring for operations that are critical, but not strategic.
Hiring for non-strategic operations such as marketing or IT is a distraction for most companies and only builds internal inflexibility at a time when most small businesses should be nimble and ready to change at any time.
If you were to assemble the right ABM team in-house, you must be prepared to make an expenditure that is similar to that shown below.
Typical Requirement of ABM Team
| Position | Salary ($) | Qty. | Total ($) | |
| Manager | 75,000 | 1 | 75,000 | |
| Researcher | 36,000 | 1 | 36,000 | |
| Copywriter | 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | |
| Graphic Designer | 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | |
| Video/animation | 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | |
| Social Media | 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | |
| 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | ||
| Paid Advertising | 45,000 | 1 | 45,000 | |
| Total before burden ($) | 8 | 381,000 | ||
| Total burdened ($) | 18% | 449,580 | ||
| Avg. monthly cost ($) | 37,465 | |||
Outsourcing Content-Driven ABM Execution
Outsourcing digital content and ABM execution confers an unmatchable ROI for clients on many fronts:
Cost ROI
As shown to the left, doing content-driven ABM right requires setting up a team of digital marketing experts and can run companies a minimum of $35,000 per month.
While larger companies have the customer base and product-market portfolio to cost-justify hiring such an account based marketing team, most small companies find this a luxury they can’t really afford. In the end, they settle for 2-3 people in their marketing department. Such teams are too small to do all of the work necessary to generate the desired number of high quality leads.
The right strategy is to outsource this critical service to an agency like SOMAmetrics that can build and run targeted campaigns for less than a third of what it costs you to do with an in-house ABM team.
Read more about why ABM works here.
Ramp Up ROI
Agencies like SOMAmetrics have worked with dozens of companies across a variety of industries and the expertise to learn any new business quickly and refine their ABM strategy, in a matter of weeks, since that is all clients typically give vendors.
Employees, however, are typically given 3-6 months because employers are generally reluctant to fire slow-learning employees.
Flexibility ROI
SOMAmetrics’ agreements are month-to-month, which means clients can stop projects anytime with a 15-day written notice. Firing employees for any reason is harder due to labor laws as well as concerns regarding affecting employee morale. Before you hire a new ABM team, find out more about how you can achieve what you need without the additional complications and expenses.