Observations
Why Businesses Need Nurturing and Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Explaining with Numbers How to Stop Wasting 95% of the Marketing Budget
Take a look at your marketing budget and ask yourself, “Where is this money really going?” I’ll tell you where. In most B2B companies, up to 95% of the budget is wasted. This is not an exaggeration.
The problem isn’t that your marketers are doing a poor job. The problem is that there are two massive “black holes” in the standard sales funnel that consume your money.
The first is attracting a non-target audience. You pay to show ads to hundreds of people who will never become your customers.
The second is losing “good but not ready” leads. You pay to attract target customers, but when they say, “I need to think about it,” they are forgotten forever, and your investment is written off as a loss.
This is why nurture marketing (systematic lead nurturing) and account-based marketing (marketing focused on key accounts) are not “trendy tricks” or additional expenses. They are two systemic “patches” designed specifically to address these issues.
In this article, we will break down the logic and basic math behind these approaches using a very simple example and without complex jargon. You will learn how to stop wasting money and start investing in real growth. Ultimately, you will be able to assess your business’s potential financial impact yourself.
Problem No. 1. “A Good Lead, but Not Now”: The Hole in the Middle of the Funnel
This problem is familiar to any commercial director. The marketing department attracts a lead. A sales representative contacts them and delivers the verdict: “The client is good, a fit for us, but will only be ready to buy in six to nine months.” What happens to this contact next? In 99% of companies, nothing. It sinks to the bottom of the CRM and is forgotten. Sales is busy with “hot” deals, while marketing is focused on attracting new leads.
Let us calculate how much this costs. Suppose you invested 10,000 rubles in marketing and received 100 leads. The cost of acquiring each one (CAC) was 100 rubles.
Out of these 100 leads, let us say 3 are ready to close a deal right now. Excellent. Another 50 are non-target; we will talk about them in the next chapter. And 47 are exactly those “good, but not now” leads.
What does this mean in monetary terms? It means that 4,000 rubles (40 leads × 100 rubles) of your budget were spent on creating an extremely valuable asset—a database of potential customers—which you simply throw away. It is like buying construction materials for 4,000 rubles and leaving them to rot in the rain.
This is precisely the “hole” that systematic lead nurturing (Nurture marketing) closes. It is an automated system that does not allow your future customers to “cool off.” It regularly and unobtrusively reminds them of you by sending useful content: case studies from their industry, research, invitations to webinars. It maintains interest and builds trust while the client “matures.”
According to statistics, well-designed nurturing allows you to eventually convert up to 20–30% of those who were previously considered “lost” into deals. In our example, this means recovering from 800 to 1,200 rubles of “written-off” investments and, of course, generating profit from future deals.
Nurturing is not about “creativity.” It is about financial discipline and a careful attitude toward money that has already been invested.
Problem No. 2: The Hole at the Top of the Funnel
The second significant “hole” in the budget is allocating funds to attract an audience that is clearly unnecessary. Traditional marketing is like “firing a cannon at sparrows”: you cover a large area in the hope of hitting a few valuable targets.
Let’s return to our example. You spent 10,000 USD and received 100 leads. We established that three of them are “hot,” and 47 are “good, but need time to think.” Who are the remaining 50?
They are the “noise”: non-target companies from other industries, businesses that are too small for you, students, and competitors. However, you paid to attract them as well. You paid 5,000 rubles for 50 leads at 100 USD each. This is a pure loss incurred before the sales department even started working.
Marketing focused on key accounts (Account-Based Marketing, or ABM) solves this problem. The logic is simple and intuitive for any chief executive or commercial director. Instead of spending money to attract everyone indiscriminately and then trying to find “your” prospects within that group, you do the opposite. First, you and the sales team compile a list of 20–50 “dream companies,” and then you spend 100% of the marketing budget on targeted work with those companies.
ABM is a strategy that, in principle, eliminates the possibility of spending money on “noise.” It shifts the focus from lottery-style marketing to sniper-style marketing.
Nurture + ABM = Financially Efficient Growth Engine
We have two systems. ABM ensures that we only spend money on high-potential companies. Nurturing ensures that we don’t lose valuable contacts who aren’t ready to buy right now.
When these two systems are implemented in your sales funnel, it stops being a “leaky bucket.” ABM seals the leak at the top and nurturing seals the one in the middle. As a result, you have a financially efficient growth engine, and every invested dollar generates maximum return. Your CAC decreases because you stop paying for “junk.” Conversion increases because you stop losing “maturing” customers.
From “How much did we spend?” to “What is our ROMI?”
Nurturing and ABM are not “creative toys” for marketers or additional costs. They are fundamental tools for increasing your business’s financial efficiency. They are the answer to the question of how to stop wasting budget and start investing wisely.
Understanding this logic is the first step. The next step is applying it to your real numbers. What would your return on marketing investment (ROMI) be if you could recover 20% of “lost” leads and reduce spending on non-targeted audiences by 50%?
