Gone are the days when ’one size fits all’ strategy ruled over the marketing world. The approach where companies transmitted the same message to almost every customer is long gone as well. In this age, businesses have easy access to customer data that enables them to personalize their approach for maximum success.
In business-to-business (B2B) sphere, this personalized approach is called account-based marketing or ABM. By marketing to every client in person considering their individual preferences, you can show your value. And, not just that, but you can seal the deal ultimately boosting the sales.
So, ready for your account-based marketing now? Well, consider these nine tips given below to target your audience effectively:
- Create client-specific offers
One way you can make your account-based marketing work is by personalization. It’s the gateway to success. Typically, in an ABM campaign, you will find just a few accounts targeted to get higher conversion rates. One way to achieve this is to personalize your content marketing strategies. And, for that, you need to create offers focused on a specific target account.
Take for an example, a video marketing report where two analytics companies would reach a potential client. Suppose the name of the companies is A and B. And, the client is IKEA.
Company A sends a report named ‘Video Marketing Effectiveness Report.” On the other hand, company B sends the report as, “IKEA Video Marketing Effectiveness Report.” Which report looks more personalized and client-specific? Of course the second one! And, most potential customers would be compelled to open it because it’s specific and valuable.
- Identify your prospects’ pain points
If you’re embracing account-based marketing efforts, you need to know what customers want. You also need to understand their pain points. Pay attention to factors that affect action threshold and minimize them, improve the assistance, and make your message easy, understandable and digestible.
Also, since your marketing efforts are curated towards a broader market, you need to embrace a long-reaching strategy. This will help you extend your model when your efforts start gaining momentum.
- Create “sales” offers focused on meetings
About 99.9 percent of marketers introduce offers that are focused on generating leads from whitepapers and webinars. You need to create a sale offer that would help you get inside sales or persuade your prospects for a meeting. Once again, we will talk about the video analytics company that we discussed earlier could proceed with IKEA with an offer. And, the offer would be to provide a report based on 1-hour long live-research, analyzing IKEA’s video marketing efforts vs. their competitors.
Not only this, but many other examples are still in practice. These include free website audits, security audits, technology assessments and others designed as sales offers to get an appointment for meeting in person. And pitches like— I would like to tell you what your peers are doing or what big brands are doing etc. are quite effective.
- Enlist brainy people for departmental collaboration
Do you want your account-based marketing to work as expected? Bring your sales and marketing team on a single platform. Create a pool of talented people from both the department who could participate, perform and repeat the results.
Educate your sales department on how to treat the ABM leads differently to offer personalized and well-timed services. However, focus on long-term revenue generation as short-term ROIs aren’t apt for ABM.
- Use Retargeting as a lethal weapon
Miss an opportunity, and you’ll be out of sight, out of mind, and ultimately out of business. That’s why marketers keep retargeting their audience. It’s an effective way to continually engage a particular account because the prospects of that account depend on online content. Of late, there have been many notable retargeting marketing innovations which you can implement in your ABM campaigns.
For example, the customers of IKEA visit many other websites. These sites would be the host for the advertisements by which the brand would try to target their audience. Studies have found that site visitors who are retargeted via display ads are 70 percent more likely to convert. This makes retargeting a crucial part of ABM.
It also highlights how vital retargeting is to stay in the minds of your prospects and win over their hearts.
- Develop Human-to-Human interactions
Humanized marketing is a key to success. And, it isn’t challenging. However, it will take some time to get you the desired results. Develop human-to-human (H2H) interactions and focus on enhancing it. It gives you opportunities to know how their personal goals or objectives are associated. Interact with them on a one-on-one basis and inform them how your service will help them get the exact results they want.
Start this campaign with a direct email or an email. Don’t forget to follow it with a personal phone call. Remember, the outreach should sound genuine, personal and make sure to mention the reasons why they should connect with you.
- Create a list of genuine contacts based on roles
Some traders make lists on the basis of roles or responsibilities. They will also guarantee that the list is active. Such contacts help account-based models to create the database with legitimate lists. Remember, titles do not tell a lot. Therefore a role-based contact list goes a long way in defining success. Ask for roles such as the ‘person in charge’, ‘person on the higher position’ and more.
Unfortunately, most of the businesses seed their database with names. In fact, they focus on creating their database with as many names as possible. It is where they lose control of data quality. Although this practice can still do the task, it’s less efficient. It will occupy inside sales to spend their valuable time finding out the appropriate roles.
- Employ social intelligence for a better understanding of customer needs
As said earlier, a core principle of ABM is to provide an account personalized communications on the basis of their challenges and initiatives. Businesses evolve quickly; therefore, smart vendors keep an eye on changes and start events at their prospects. While one tactic is to take the help of Google Alerts and understand what’s going on at a business level, another method is to examine social activity. PR-driven press releases and articles cannot tell you what your prospects need. But social data gives you a clear picture of the things they like.
For example, people on social media often share good news or good posts that matter to them. Even they don’t hesitate to share the product they like. Hence, social data is instrumental when it comes to the ABM model. When building an ABM campaign, you should adopt the agile process and re-message or re-direct when something new is explored.
- Create finely-tuned message and content
Finely-tuned messaging with a highly personalized approach is considered to engage your target audience. Account-based marketing takes this approach to a whole new level with the use of precise and quality content. This content needs to be moved all through a buyer’s journey. Dig deep the resources from where your accounts get the information. Publish content related to an industry-specific subject that your client is interested in and clearly shows how your business would solve their pain point if they have got any.
Publish it, tweet it, and share it to them or just shoot an email. Use a memorable logo design for relevance or grab their eyeballs any way that’s workable or you can do it.
Remember, creating such content that goes well with the buying process and resonates effectively allows your sales funnel yield results.
- Target your goals via your employees’ connections
The success story of any marketing effort starts from within. To put it simply, do not ignore the potential connections your employees, who aren’t a part of your sales team, may have. For example, LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s TeamLink feature allows you to check the connections that other colleagues in your organization have, which turn out to be your target accounts.