Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach to B2B marketing that focuses on accounts instead of generating mass leads. B2B Account-Based Marketing, in a nutshell, is the process of identifying and targeting your company’s best current and potential customers and then engaging them with tailored content and campaigns until they become loyal, profitable customers.
It is a specialized marketing strategy that connects sales and marketing teams and aims to turn best-fit accounts into clients. Account-based marketing is not a new concept, but it has recently experienced a resurgence due to evolving technology and a changing landscape. ABM is an effective strategy for B2B companies that sell complex products or services to large organizations. Businesses can use ABM to better align their marketing efforts and sales and measure and optimize their return on investment (ROI).
Create Personalized and Compelling Content
Try to identify the topics and pieces of content that are most important to your accounts, and make sure that you focus on problem-solving when creating a content strategy. The best way to figure out what works best for your target audience is to try a variety of tactics and see which ones resonate the most. Keep track of what works and what doesn’t, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
When developing your ABM strategy, it’s important to remember that each account is unique. As such, you’ll need to tailor your approach to each one. This means that a cookie-cutter approach will not be effective. Instead, you’ll need to take the time to understand the specific needs of each account and develop a custom solution.
Take Advantage of B2B Influencers
B2B influencers can play a huge role in your account-based marketing efforts. There are several ways to work with this, but the key is to identify the right ones since not every influencer will be a good fit for B2B marketing. Once you’ve filtered influencers from a list of options, you can collaborate with them on content, co-marketing initiatives, and more.
The goal is to get your brand in front of as many executives, managers, and senior management as possible, and B2B influencers can help you reach a larger audience. For example, if your product is about design automation, then a good B2B influencer to work with could be an influential blogger who writes about design and understands the industry or, even better, a YouTuber with a popular channel focused on strategies with content targeted towards businesses.
Audience Segmentation
The most crucial thing to keep in mind regarding account-based marketing is to segment your accounts depending on individual personas. Such a strategy will help businesses understand target accounts inside and out and craft relevant and interesting messages.
To be successful with ABM, first, identify businesses that are likely to have a need for your product or service. Once you have a list of potential accounts, you can begin segmenting them based on their preferences.
This can be achieved in many ways, but a few key methods include understanding how their business works and providing tailored solutions, trying to be more proactive in reaching out and directly asking, offering assistance, and going above and beyond to meet their expectations.
Forge Stronger Relationships with Customers
Customer intimacy is an important goal for ABM. Rather than depending on data-driven guesswork about what these accounts are seeking, marketers should try to build up genuine relationships with their customers. This includes creating personalized content and messages relevant to the specific individual.
Building strong relationships with customers and engaging with them on a sincere and honest level fosters trust and helps create more loyal advocates who are likely to recommend your company to others. You should also consider meeting - in person - with decision-makers from these companies to strengthen the relationship. It’s also critical that sales and marketing teams collaborate to ensure that important themes drawn from these customer touchpoints are reviewed, refined, and optimized.
Conclusion
There are many things that go into making a successful B2B account-based marketing strategy, but the above tips should help get you started on the right foot. As always, keep track of what’s working and adjust your approach as needed. With a little effort and some creativity, you can make your account-based marketing efforts work for your business.