Anyone involved in the design of marketing strategies, especially for B2B companies, will tell you that account-based marketing (ABM) is your one-stop shop to enhance customer relationships and increase revenue. The reason that ABM is so efficient is that it places more emphasis on the quality of leads, i.e. those who are actually a suitable fit for the company’s goods or services, as opposed to the quantity of leads.
Offering key accounts a tailored and highly focused approach is one of the main factors clients take into consideration when deciding whether or not to buy from you. Therefore, personalizing your marketing strategy to address those key accounts is vital in today’s extremely competitive digital market.
Read on for our actionable tips on how to make your ABM marketing campaigns more successful.
Make the ICP crystal clear
Defining your ideal customer profile will enable you and your team to concentrate on the most valued clients and leads. Instead of dividing up marketing efforts among hundreds of new prospects, concentrate on a select group of your most essential clients and those similar to them, as those are the ones with the highest likelihood of helping you generate income.
To develop and improve your company’s ICP, ask your sales staff for statistics. All of the leads that your marketing team passes on to your sales team have been converted at least once and as a result, your sales team is perfectly positioned to provide you with the traits that the leads who converted the quickest have in common with each other. This kind of information is also of use to you when conducting market research to identify similar customers that fit your ICP.
Another useful tip is to use the account targeting feature on LinkedIn. In addition to letting you execute native ABM campaigns within the social media platform, LinkedIn’s marketing tools make it possible for you to locate key accounts based on your ICP. Your sales team can start the engagement process right away by sending a tailored message or InMail to potential key accounts.
The significance of the collaborative link between your sales and marketing departments cannot be stressed enough. Marketing and sales need to work together to develop a complete ABM strategy and guarantee target accounts have an excellent customer journey.
In order to achieve this, sales and marketing teams must agree on resource allocation for each target account, as well as roles and responsibilities needed for a smooth transition between marketing and sales activities. There also needs to be clear and precise communication between these two departments at all times; make sure to establish this dynamic with new teams as it is crucial to the success of your ABM approach.
Understand the buying center
Once you have your ICP pinned down, the next step is to establish enduring bonds with their buying centers. Your team will likely work on this for a long period of time because it typically takes months or even years to forge these relationships. However, consider this part of your ABM strategy as providing a consistently excellent customer experience.
Some ideas on how to establish a long-lasting rapport with a key account’s buying center include tailored engagement by providing personalized content on a regular basis as well as educational material confirming the value of your business for your accounts; scheduling one-on-one meetings with the buying center’s representatives to reaffirm you see them as a priority; and also (where possible and appropriate) hosting events or dinners to network and interact with them in a more relaxed setting.
Implementing an omnichannel strategy across all digital marketing platforms is another crucial step to designing a successful ABM campaign. The channels you should aim to include are Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn, while also focusing on website personalization and email (e.g. through recurring email messaging).
Your strategic accounts should be directed through ads to content on your website, blogs, or social media profiles, after which you may use challenger messaging, which is content that highlights the problems your target audience is facing and encourages them to understand and relate to those problems. The aim of this is to demonstrate how your company, products or services have addressed those exact problems, so be sure to use different kinds of tools to present your solutions (such as spec sheets, videos, virtual showrooms, etc).
Finally, distribute messages across all platforms that emphasize your company’s benefits, underscore the issues faced by purchasing group members, and outline why you are the ideal choice of partner or business. This is when the magic will happen, and your sales staff will be well-positioned to seize the opportunity to close.
Your website is a great way for you to communicate directly with your target audience and direct them to the content they’re searching for. Create personalized landing pages or microsites containing customized resources and, for each type of buyer persona or industry, highlight pertinent material so every target can quickly access information that applies to them.
Additionally, when customers visit your website, immediately address your high-priority accounts by utilizing plugins and tools that scan visitor IP addresses so they may tailor your website’s message and show the name of the target account on the landing page.
Email campaigns
Apart from website customization, personalizing email campaigns is also quite effective. A generic email will not be seen by your targets — but if you provide a distinctive message that shares your prospect’s values or addresses specific needs that they have, they will be much more likely to continue the conversation.
Find something that will resonate with, delight, and inspire your target to connect with your brand (e.g. a shared commitment to a social cause). This will demonstrate to them that you took the time to learn more about their company and how your company’s values align with theirs.
Measure the impact of ABM
The ability to make better judgments about the campaigns you run and invest in what is effective depends on accurate ABM measurements. Precise measuring also allows you to share your achievements and build internal ABM confidence, both of which are crucial to securing support from the teams that make your ABM strategy a success. Perhaps most markedly, given that ABM aligns so closely with sales, it frequently has a stronger relationship with revenue than other marketing branches — so you should strive to accurately measure its contribution to ROI.
The opportunities produced and revenue generated are two KPIs that stand out above all others and underpin the alignment of marketing and sales. These KPIs are the most reliable gauges of whether your ABM campaigns are generating profit from the customers you are targeting. However, many ABM campaigns have more subtle effects on sales that call for additional measurements, such as engagement and close rates, as well as overall sales efficiency.
Ultimately, dedicate your efforts to discover the numbers you need and be aware of what matters most to your company, as opposed to relying on vanity metrics that won’t help you understand anything of value. It is worthwhile to invest in solutions that enable you to more accurately gauge target account engagement with your website, content, ads, events, and overall attribution.
Conclusion
Account-based marketing is no longer just a technique exclusive to big businesses thanks to all the developments done to marketing technology in recent years. You may now employ ABM tactics to target the key accounts for your small or midsize business, win their business, and earn scaleable income thanks to the techniques and resources discussed here.
We hope this article will give you a good head start to designing and implementing a successful ABM campaign!
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