As a great sales leader your priority is to make and show the numbers. But being sales leader in B2B marketing realm brings myriads of challenges. One challenge that is often thrown at you is to come up with strategies to make your Account Based Marketing (ABM) a success. Before we divulge into these strategies let us first define what Account Based Marketing is.
Here is an easy to understand definition of Account Based Marketing, provided by trueinfluence.com:
“Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a framework focused on targeting specific accounts or account segments, usually by purchase history, firmographics, product need, or strategic value.”
So, instead of wooing every prospect or lead in the industry, through ABM we target individual business, often termed account, with personalized campaign. ABM starts where inbound marketing ends. Through inbound marketing the idea is to target a larger group of audience in order to get to those few who actually need your service or product. But in case of ABM the funnel gets flipped and the audience (or account in this case) is identified long back. Now, the job is to know their pain points and needs to bring them closer to conversion through personalized campaign. And this is where many account based marketing mistakes happen.
Benefits of Account Based Marketing
It is not that Account Based Marketing is a new term or new method of doing business in the world of B2B marketing. It has always been there. This was when marketers and advertising agencies were handling the accounts of their big clients in relentlessly designing and testing campaigns for them.
Now, with the arrival of technology and digital marketing, you’ll agree that there are more number of sources to get your leads from (both qualified and unqualified or junk leads). This brings you more closer to the use and adoption of Account Based Marketing (ABM), where you can use predictive analytics to sieve through leads and identify big accounts with clear need.
So, step back and think if you have adopted ABM in your sales and marketing journey. If not then you may want to do it now as there are clear cut advantages:
1) Precise and targeted campaign
You have identified your clients and you know what its needs are. So, you will design personalized campaign for them without beating around the bush. End result: client loves it and you don’t waste your resources.
2) ROI increases with ABM
Because the campaigns are narrowly targeted, there is no wastage of resources which gives clear and better ROI. According to ITSMA, nearly all B2B solution providers that measure Account Based Marketing (ABM) ROI find that ABM delivers higher ROI than other marketing initiatives.
3) It becomes easier to use analytics to measure effectiveness
Conscientiously targeted campaigns remove lot of redundancy and unnecessary inputs at the planning stage itself. This leaves analytics with clean, small and clear picture to track and measure the effectiveness of strategies applied in case of each target account.
Successful Tactics for Account Based Marketing
Getting a big player to buy or invest in your product or service isn’t as simple as selling to an individual customer. There is a flip in the game in case of B2B marketing. There are gamut of tested tactics which can be selected and applied based on your case if your goal is to leverage on ABM. Here are some important ones:
ABM thrives on content
- Use content to draw attention of target accounts. This can be achieved after doing thorough research on your target account’s need and preferences.
- Identify the influencers. Always remember that in case of ABM there can be more than one decision maker you are pitching to. So, your team needs to identify and know them.
- Next, use personalized content for every target account to get noticed by the influencers. This helps in setting up the first meeting. Since the content is personalized and tailored for individual accounts, more resources are needed to create quality content.
- Ideally, the goal is to have a face to face meeting with the prospects and not over mails or phones. Give offers to allure them for the meeting.
Use mix of media to woo target accounts
- Choose right channels to reach out to the decision makers. For example, in case of sending them interesting offers use direct mails instead of emails. Generally, direct mails have worked in this case and have proven to be much more effective than emails when you are sending offers.
- Through your content or blog posts don’t forget to mention their prominent social media account. For example, use Twitter handle of your prominent prospect. This will give them limelight in their industry and sure enough will draw their attention towards your product/ service.
- Make a list of all stakeholders of your target account/s. Find and mention them throughout the sales journey on various social media especially Twitter and LinkedIn. This gives them importance as these leaders are individuals too who would like to be noticed for their work and achievements.
- Get personal and send gifts directly on special occasions. Send something tangible that they can use to remind them of you and your organization.
Use social media and social intelligence
- Now that you have made list of influencers in your target accounts, use social media analytics tool to know what they are talking about. Set real-time alerts to know who is talking about you or your competitors.
- Use Google Adwords for serving hyper targeted ads to your target individuals whenever they are logged on to their Google account.
- Similarly, tap into the features of other social media platforms. For example, use Facebook to create custom audience so that you can serve your ads to profiles who are similar to your existing customers.
Host and attend events
- Be open and attend important events where your influencers are going to be present.
- Let them know in advance that you or one of your reps would be attending the same event, in case the prospects need to talk to you about what you have to offer.
- From time to time invite individuals from target accounts to events. Give them platform to talk and mingle with others from the same industry. This opens an opportunity for you to network with most of your prospects under the same roof.
With these strategies in place you can definitely influence your targets and strengthen your existing relationships too. Sure enough to get new accounts added to your business portfolio.
