Account-Based Marketing vs Demand Generation: What’s the Difference?

by The MNTN Team

6 Min Read

Marketing can sometimes feel like a whirlwind of jargon and strategies. Luckily, two of the most popular tactics are easily identifiable: account-based marketing (ABM) and demand generation. Not familiar what sets account-based marketing vs. demand generation apart? No worries — here’s everything you need to know about ABM vs. demand gen.

What Is Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing is a highly focused strategy through which your sales and marketing teams collaborate to identify accounts that are the best fit for your business. These can include current accounts that you can build on to generate more revenue, as well as prospective clients you’d like to add to your portfolio.

ABM is primarily used in the business-to-business (B2B) space and is a way of ditching the oft-used “cast a wide net” approach to digital marketing. Instead, it focuses your resources on the accounts with the highest value. You’ll create personalized campaigns designed to resonate with the unique needs, pain points, and challenges of each group or client.

Importance of Account-Based Marketing

ABM allows you to invest in more personalized marketing efforts. When you shift your attention away from a broad audience and target specific clients or niches, you are better able to speak to their pain points and needs.

As such, a personalized approach like ABM can lead to higher conversion rates and stronger relationships. Businesses using an ABM strategy typically experience a large boost in revenue, as well. On average, they experience a 77% growth in revenue.

Account Based Marketing Metrics

ABM campaigns rely on a mix of traditional and strategy-specific marketing metrics to measure overall success. Some ABM-specific performance indicators you’ll need to watch include the following:

Account Engagement: How actively your target clients interact with your content
Pipeline Velocity: How quickly accounts move through your sales pipeline
Deal Size: Whether your deals are larger than average
Account Retention: Whether you’re keeping new clients and expanding business with them

Using these data points — along with go-to metrics like conversion rates, leads generated, and average cost-per-conversion — will provide you with a holistic view of your campaign’s success and help you improve.

Account-Based Marketing Strategies

Aligning your sales and marketing teams is crucial. These two orgs should work together to identify target accounts and create coordinated campaigns.

After you know who you should be targeting, it’s time to win them over with personalized content that speaks to their unique needs and pain points. Deliver ads over multiple channels to nurture leads and drive them deeper into the sales funnel. Some effective channels include email, social media, and Connected TV (CTV).

What Is Demand Generation?

Demand generation is all about creating buzz about your products or services. It aims to build and nurture long-term customer relationships by giving audiences valuable content. As such, it casts a wider net to draw in as many viable prospects into your funnel as possible.

Importance of Demand Generation

Demand generation is crucial for creating brand awareness and giving your sales team a steady flow of leads. Your marketing and sales staff can nurture these prospects over time, eventually converting some of them into loyal customers. Companies in the B2B and B2C spaces alike employ demand gen strategies.

Demand Generation Metrics

Key demand gen metrics include:

Lead Volume: The number of new leads you generate in a specific time frame (i.e., month, quarter)
Lead Quality: How relevant leads are — and how likely they’ll convert
Conversion Rate: How frequently leads turn into customers
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The amount you spend to acquire one customer

As with ABM, demand gen relies on a wide mix of metrics to tell a complete story. Generating a slew of leads won’t have much impact on your bottom line if your CAC is high or your conversion rate is low.

Demand Generation Strategies

There are all sorts of great ways to generate leads. Content marketing remains a fan favorite among many brands, focusing on creating valuable assets that engage and educate audiences. But social media, email, and CTV marketing are also useful strategies. Use these and other channels to connect with prospective customers on their preferred medium.

Once you’ve acquired leads, continue to build their interest through ongoing retargeting. You want to transform a mild curiosity into a strong desire to make a purchase or sign up for your services.

Summary of Key Differences

The primary differences between ABM vs. demand gen are as follows:

Target Audience

ABM campaigns focus on specific, high-value accounts. Depending on the potential value of an account, you may run an entire campaign targeting a sole prospect.

Demand generation, on the other hand, targets a broader audience in order to generate as many leads as possible.

Campaign Approach

ABM campaigns are highly personalized. You must speak to each prospect’s unique pain points and position your product or service as the solution.

Demand generation campaigns, in contrast, are broad and may touch on multiple challenges or needs at once.

Metrics of Success

ABM metrics focus heavily on tracking engagement while also measuring pipeline velocity and deal size.

Demand generation uses data points like lead volume and quality, conversion rates, and CAC.

How Performance TV Can Help

MNTN Performance TV can be a remarkably valuable addition to both ABM and demand-gen campaigns. For ABM, you can effortlessly upload email addresses to our platform, and those addresses will then be cross-referenced against our targeting data to serve ads to those via CTV platforms. You can also use our retargeting feature to serve streaming ads to viewers who have already visited your website.

If you need help with demand generation, in particular, MNTN Matched allows you to create bespoke audiences using a wealth of consumer data, thereby letting you nurture demand among viewers who are likely to become customers. As a proprietary interest-based audience targeting solution, MNTN Matched is changing the way brands connect with consumers.

Schedule a demo of MNTN to learn more about our solutions.

Account-Based Marketing vs. Demand Generation: Final Thoughts

The ABM vs. demand gen debate comes down to your business goals and target audience. If you operate in the B2B space and want to build strong relationships with high-value accounts, ABM might be the way to go. But if you need to raise awareness among a broad demographic, demand gen is the better fit.

Either way, MNTN Performance TV can be an invaluable tool to help you achieve your campaign goals at the top and bottom of the funnel. Check it out today and start rethinking the ways you connect with your customers.