What is the difference between ABM and Growth marketing?

You can think of Growth Marketing and ABM like rectangles and squares. ABM is a specific flavor of growth marketing just like a square is a very specific rectangle. The magic of either approach is unifying the digital experience with business goals and customer data. 

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) focuses on targeting and engaging specific, high-value accounts with personalized campaigns, while Growth Marketing takes a broader, holistic approach to driving business growth by optimizing the entire customer journey. ABM is highly targeted, personalized, and focused on individual accounts, whereas Growth Marketing aims to scale and optimize the entire customer lifecycle, including acquisition, retention, and referral. Both aim to unify sales and marketing goals. Both use data-driven strategies and optimization. Data Criteria is unique. 

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) 

• Target Audience:
  Focuses on a select list of high-value accounts, often with personalized campaigns and tailored messaging. Inside the account there are buyer roles which can further have different messaging tailored to each buyer role when personalization comes into play. 
• Focus:
  Prioritizes converting those specific accounts to customers, often with a sales-driven approach. 
• Metrics:
  Tracks account engagement, deal size, revenue generated per account, and other account-specific metrics, retention, meetings booked. 
• Scalability:
  While ABM can be scaled, it's often more resource-intensive and requires more personalized outreach. 
• Examples:
  Tailored content and events for specific accounts, personalized sales outreach, and targeted advertising according to LinkedIn. 
• Goals: Drive revenue by removing obstacles from specific buyer roles in the sales process since buying likely happens by committee. 

Growth Marketing 

• Target Audience:
  A broader audience, aiming to scale and optimize the entire customer journey. 
• Focus:
  Drives business growth by optimizing all stages of the customer lifecycle, including acquisition, retention, and referral. 
• Metrics:
  Tracks Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), conversion rate, retention rate, churn rate, and revenue growth rate. 
• Scalability:
  Designed to be scalable and repeatable, often using automation and marketing tactics that can be applied across a wider audience. 
• Examples:
  Content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and customer success strategies.
• Goals: Create conversions and provide experiences that gather more data that you can use to infer details about your customer’s wants and needs. 

In essence, ABM is a tactic within the broader strategy of Growth Marketing. ABM focuses on individual accounts, and buyer roles tied to specific contacts in the account with the goal of removing obstacles, influencing contacts and aligning the buying committee. This approach is appropriate after proper identification of high value accounts and buyer role contacts so there is a lot you will already know about the account by the time you get to this play. Growth Marketing aims to identify customers, grow the data, transactions and revenue with a wider segment of prospects or customers as there may not be as large of a committee involved in the sales cycle. 

The impact of either approach is clear. Unifying insights gained from your website visits and insights gained from customer data supercharges a website from being a brochure to an active participant in business goals.