The Benefits of Account-based Marketing in Healthcare

This post is to help anyone weighing up the benefits of account-based marketing. This should help you make the case that 2025 is the year you move from thinking about it to doing it.

If you are Thinking About ABM, You Are Not Alone

Earlier this summer, we polled our community to see where they were on their ABM journey. As you can see, the vast majority of your peers are considering ABM in 2024.

That’s great! Now, let’s get moving. Let’s make 2025 the year you move from idea to action.

The Benefits of Account-based Marketing in a Nutshell

If so many are thinking about it, why haven’t they taken the next step?

Look, I get it. ABM is hard, and it may take a while to see results. Understandably, you may feel that you are putting yourself at risk by moving ahead with ABM. We all suffer from FOMU – Fear of Messing Up.

But if you operate in a market with long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, and complex decision-making, there are some big reasons why ABM is not just something nice to consider but something that you MUST consider.

Why?

It’s simple. It’s all about how buyers buy in complex regulated markets like healthcare.

Consider these stats

1. According to recent research by 6Sense, B2B buyers won’t engage with a vendor until they are 70% of the way through their buying process.
2. By then, the buying group managing the process have almost made up their mind on the buying criteria.
3. To make matters worse, in 84% of cases, the first company the buyer reaches out to is the firm they select. This is because the buying group has made up its mind based on the research it did during the first 70% of the buying cycle.

This means that as marketers, we have to answer two very tough questions:

Who is in-market right now?

How do we persuade them to put us top of their list?

And that is what ABM is about.

In its simplest form, ABM uses various types of data and market intelligence to divine who may be in-market right now and…

…focus disproportionately more effort and investment on these accounts to convince them that when they start calling vendors, they call you first

As a result, the deal will be yours to lose.

Why The Benefits of Account-based Marketing Are Uniquely Suited to Healthcare

In January 2024, in partnership with HIMSS, we reviewed their research on the HIT Buyer Journey. The key findings support why there aren’t many industries that warrant the benefits of account-based marketing.

• 69% of companies have sales cycles lasting 13+ months, and over 40% have sales cycles longer than 24 months.
• Six in 10 organizations report that five or more people are involved in the technology buying process and 27% report that ten or more people are involved.
• Content drives purchase decisions and with 78% of buyers say that it helps them make informed decisions.
• Respondents took action in the last 6 months after finding valuable healthcare technology-related information or content.
• 86% of respondents said that Product Demos are important to them when researching a potential technology vendor, followed by Vendor-focused content (Case studies, Whitepapers, eBooks, etc.) Peer- focused content (Executive Briefs, Q&As, etc.) and Research.

In addition, there are aspects of healthcare that make ABM even more important:

• It is a highly addressable market. The great deal of data available makes it much easier to define your target accounts and build a buying group list in your CRM.
• Buying cycles are especially long, so the buying group may be more fluid. This means that you may need to reach a larger list of potential buyers
• Typical healthcare buying groups include non-business and non-technical buyers including physicians and nurses. They often need more education and the content that you use to educate them needs to be tailored to them

The Benefits of Account-based Marketing in Action in Healthcare

In a recent post, we shared five examples of ABM in action in healthcare. My personal favorite is Caregility. Their CMO, Kelly McDermott shared their story here. In short:

• Caregility, a telehealth platform provider, targets about 300 enterprise-level accounts, with 20% actively seeking solutions at any given time, requiring a mix of active and passive marketing strategies.
• The sales cycle is lengthy (7-18 months) and involves multiple stakeholders (up to 15), necessitating a coordinated approach between marketing, sales development representatives (SDRs), and sales executives.
• ABM requires integrating data from various sources (CRM, website analytics, ad platforms, etc.) to create a unified view of each account, though this integration remains challenging due to data silos.
• The ABM approach involves four key stages: anonymous research, initial lead outreach, stakeholder expansion, and purchase, with tailored strategies for each stage to maintain engagement throughout the long sales cycle.
• Collaboration between marketing and SDRs is crucial in ABM. SDRs act as an extension of marketing to nurture leads and schedule qualified appointments for sales executives, ultimately driving substantial revenue growth through major sales.
• The results of implementing ABM at Caregility have been significant: after two years, they have successfully transitioned to a full-scale ABM model, leading to more collaborative sales and marketing efforts, a faster-moving pipeline, and the creation of a “farm team” of future sales account managers through the addition of SDRs to the marketing team.

Taking the First Step

There are many ways we can help you on your ABM Journey:

1. Ready to get started? Take a look at our ABM Acceleration It’s battle-tested.
2. Want to know what your peers consider best practice? Check out the State of ABM in HIT?
3. Looking for a step-by-step process? Read our book on ABM, Total Customer Growth.
4. Interested in learning even more? Take a look at our ABM Launchpad, a resource center on ABM.
5. Want to chat about? Let’s schedule a call. We’ll talk about your business, what you’re trying to achieve, how you’re targeting, how you’re engaging prospects, the use of intent data, alignment, measurement and all that goes into an effective ABM program.