Why ABM in B2B Life Science Marketing?

Author: Aaron Burke

After starting a new role at a specialty CRO, I was able to work with the marketing team to push through some changes that very quickly turned the website and inbound program into a machine that consistently delivered leads for the BD team. When I began, the website was producing an average of half an inbound inquiry a month. Less than a year later, after the first significant update, it was producing more than 35 each month – an increase of over 70X.

Most of those leads were strong: good-fit companies asking for the services we specialized in. The aggregate pipeline from inbound was a key contributor to new business, and by any reasonable measure the program was a success.

Where inbound leads fall short

Every month, though, a meaningful share of inbound leads were rejected by the BD team or converted at a low rate. Once I started looking at those leads closely, three patterns showed up.

1. Price shoppers. Some inquiries came from organizations that were clearly shopping on cost. We were not a budget vendor – the value proposition rested on domain-specific expertise. Our pricing reflected this premium     position, so these inquiries rarely progressed past a budget estimate.
2. Academic inquiries. Academic organizations tend to be budget-conscious and were seldom a good fit for us. The European region tended to have a much higher percentage of leads from academia, and by extension a much higher lead rejection rate as compared to the US BD team.
3. Uneven distribution across territories. Inbound leads did not arrive evenly by region. One territory would have a strong month or quarter while another sat nearly dormant. On the whole leads could be very good, but one BD rep could be drowning in inquiries while another went months with almost nothing.

None of this was a flaw in execution. It was built into the method. We were producing content in the areas where most of our business opportunities were, and promoting it to relevant contacts already in the CRM. But most new leads came in through search and paid channels, and that was, in effect, fishing and hoping for a good catch. SEO, SEM, and ad promotions through various channels and external sites all work by dangling something you think is relevant to your audience and waiting to see who bites. Sometimes you get a beautiful fish that you can feast on for weeks, sometimes you get something good but small, and sometimes you pull up an old bicycle tire. The three patterns above were us pulling up bicycle tires.

So while the inbound program was performing well on pipeline and ROI, marketing was not aligned as tightly to commercial goals as it could be, and it could not consistently support every member of the BD team. It made sense to keep running the inbound program, but no amount of “fixing” the inbound program would fully address these gaps.

Inbound marketing vs. account-based marketing: what each does well

The answer, it seemed, was to complement the broad inbound program with a targeted one: an account-based marketing program built specifically for selling into pharma, biotech, and diagnostics companies. Each part of this combined inbound and ABM program had specific strengths, and could do things the other could not.

• An effective inbound program pulls in bottom-of-funnel, ready-to-buy leads from a wide net, which keeps a consistent flow of opportunities coming. It also regularly surfaces strong-fit accounts you did not know existed, which is how inbound expands your reach.
• An ABM program engages a defined set of high-value target accounts, often before they are actively looking, so that the BD team is set up for productive early conversations at the accounts most likely to turn into significant revenue. And because it is targeted, ABM lets marketing distribute focus and spend deliberately across every BD territory, which inbound, and SEO in particular, is poorly suited to do.

There was another reason to want a more deliberate approach. When I analyzed the timeline from first contact with a lead or account through to engagement with the sales team, it was often several months long, and it typically took three or more touchpoints before an inquiry or a reply to outreach occurred. In a long B2B life science sales cycle, ensuring those touchpoints happen can be the difference between an opportunity in your pipeline and silence. An account-based program builds those consistent touchpoints; they are engineered to happen rather than left to chance, and each one is meant to move the account a step closer to a business conversation.

From disparate targeted tactics to an orchestrated life science ABM program

Within the full suite of marketing we were doing, there was already targeted marketing happening – but mostly as individual tactics. We ran LinkedIn ads against defined lists of companies and specific personas. We sent segmented email to CRM contacts based on their personas and company area of interest. We invited specific contacts to meet with BD at conferences. Any one of these could reasonably be described as targeted marketing.

What we didn't have was a program to deliberately and consistently structure tactics against targeted sets of accounts, and a way to measure the overall contribution to pipeline. Each tactic was planned and measured on its own, against its own list, on its own schedule. This meant the key persons from a company might see a LinkedIn ad in March, get an email in June on an unrelated topic, and hear from a BD rep in September who knew nothing about either. Rather than building the perception of an ideal solutions partner through consistent messaging, these disparate messages may fail to make an impact, or simply come across as noise.

Building an actual ABM program meant thinking strategically and building in an approach that the individual tactics lacked.

Account selection and tiering. The first job was deciding, together with the BD team, which accounts were worth sustained investment, and sorting them into tiers that would set how much effort each one got. Accounts with the largest potential, and where we had a credible reason to be in the conversation, would justify custom work. Lower tiers would get a lighter, more scalable version of the same approach. Just as important, the list needed to be built territory by territory, so that every BD rep had a defined set of accounts that marketing was actively working on their behalf. That was the direct answer to the uneven lead distribution problem.

Content built for those accounts. Generic content asks the reader to do the work of figuring out whether it applies to them. With a defined account list, content could instead be built around the specific scientific, regulatory, or operational problems those accounts were likely facing, so that the first thing they saw from us was recognizably about them. For a company selling expertise, this is where the value proposition either lands or doesn't.

Tactics woven into a sequence. Ads, email, content, events, and BD outreach needed to be planned as one coordinated story for each tier, rather than as separate campaigns that happened to overlap. The goal was to build familiarity through a deliberate series of touches, so that by the time a BD rep reached out, the account already knew who we were and why we were relevant to them. Marketing's job became moving accounts from first touch to the point where a BD conversation would be welcome, and then handing off with context: what the account had seen, what they had engaged with, and who at the account had done the engaging.

That is the difference between running targeted tactics and running ABM – a commercially aligned, strategic layer that chooses the accounts, gives them a reason to listen, and connects the tactics.

Why ABM belongs in a life science marketing mix

The lesson I took from this applies to most life science companies selling high-value services or products to a defined set of buyers. Inbound marketing that works should keep running. It finds buyers who are already looking, and it does so at a return that few other programs can match. But it also leaves the decision about who shows up to the channel. If the accounts that matter most to the business are a known, finite list – and in this industry they usually are – then some part of the marketing mix has to be built to pursue that list deliberately, consistently, and in a way that supports every BD or sales territory. That is the role ABM fills. It is not a replacement for inbound. It builds on a successful inbound program, aligns strategically with commercial goals, and is built to drive pipeline from high-fit accounts.