Reading time: 6 minutes
Account based marketing (ABM) is a marketing approach that brings together sales and marketing teams to concentrate their efforts, expertise, and resources on personalised campaigns aimed at selected high-value accounts and customers that are most likely to be interested in your product or service.
During the early 90’s, B2C marketing recognised the declining effectiveness of generic mass marketing, causing a shift towards prioritizing increased personalization, leading to the creation of tailored campaigns aimed at specific, well-researched customers.
This strategy has proven to be highly successful and was first documented as an official marketing term in 2004 by the ITSMA. Its usage gained increasing popularity during the following years, especially within the B2B world, where ABM was incorporated into their sales & marketing playbook alongside other models, to be used when appropriate.
With technological advancements in today's digital era, personalising your marketing towards your target prospect has become easier than ever, with more valuable prospect information being available. This allows for personalised engagement from the very beginning of the buyer's journey, as well as ongoing nurturing through delivery of bespoke content.
For a successful Account Based Marketing strategy, you will need to firstly identify key target accounts to contact, create a list of the relevant target persona’s that you wish to identify and engage with, extensively research identified accounts & key players, develop and market personalised communications to them using a multi-channel approach, and lastly, consistently monitor and analyse your ongoing performance.
Let’s dig a little deeper to understand what each stage requires:
To ensure the highest ROI from your ABM campaign, identify a selection of well-targeted accounts where winning them is likely to have a significant impact on your bottom line. One of the basic guiding principles is; quality over quantity.
Your identification process can be based on metrics that are either completely subjective or objective, such as based on size, sector or performance. However, to achieve a realistic image of your prospects, you need to delve deeper into what makes them tick, using prospect profiling.
It is also helpful to internally assess and identify key target accounts. Examine your existing customer database to identify high-value accounts that present opportunities for upselling or cross-selling, maximizing the potential value derived from your current accounts and cultivating an increasingly sustainable sales pipeline.
2. IDENTIFICATION OF RELEVANT DECISION MAKERS
Once you have identified key high-value accounts to target, it is now time to dig a little deeper and overlay the accounts with relevant personas, to identify decision makers or influencers associated with each account.
It is essential to understand who the key players really are in the business, not just the direct decision makers but operational champions, executive sponsors, stakeholders, and other influential individuals, as they collectively shape the decision-making process and hold the power to influence the outcome of B2B transactions. Do your homework and invest the time with your sales and marketing team to come up with a final list of relevant personas.
By identifying and building relationships with these key players, businesses can ensure that their personalised messaging, tailored solutions, and strategic initiatives align with the needs, priorities, and aspirations of the relevant decision makers, ultimately leading to more successful outcomes and fruitful long-term partnerships.
3. RESEARCHING TARGET ACCOUNTS & KEY PLAYERS
Research the selected businesses and key players well so you understand their unique needs and challenges, where they currently are, where they want to get to, what keeps them up at night and what business success looks like to them, through primary research, direct touch conversation, web or desk research. This includes mapping the business’s base location and global profiles.
Gather sales intelligence by analysing your prospects' characteristics and past behaviour, including company size, infrastructure, annual revenue, needs, and wants. Obtain this information using internal and external resources to gain a comprehensive overview of your prospect.
With these insights, you can accurately determine where they stand in the buyer's journey, as well as attract and convert leads effectively.
4. MULTI-CHANNEL OUTREACH
Embrace a multichannel approach to reach your target accounts through their preferred communication channels. These channels can either include offline platforms such as B2B telemarketing, using a field sales team, direct mail, running events, or digital heavy platforms that focus on SEO, PPC and email marketing.
Utilise social media ads on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to directly target individuals associated with a company. Use attention-grabbing headlines, optimise your social media profiles, include strong calls to actions (CTAs), utilise hashtags and images. Share content that addresses their unique pain points and demonstrate your expertise.
Elevate your campaigns and offers to achieve high conversion rates, and ensure you are avoiding audience fatigue & maintaining high levels of engagement by regularly changing up your offers and proposition.
This integrated approach ensures consistent messaging across various touchpoints, helps you drive deep and meaningful engagement within that organisation and be seen as a trusted advisor. This will ultimately develop into your sales pipeline, to the point where if a tender is released, ideally, you've got a hand in writing it.
5. MEASURE, REFINE, ADAPT
Monitor the performance of your campaign and personalised communication efforts regularly. Diligently track metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. Analyse the data to identify what works and what doesn't, to be able to refine current processes, as well as amplify your efforts in areas where success has a higher guarantee.
The data gathered can also be used to further personalise your messaging and content strategy, allowing for more personalised connections. These valuable lessons can be applied to your next campaigns for further optimisation and to ensure the same mistakes are not made twice.
Embracing ABM as a holistic marketing approach can yield substantial ROI and foster long-term business relationships in today's competitive market landscape.
By identifying key accounts & decision makers, researching where they’re at in their buyer’s journey, reaching out via multiple channels and constantly measuring performance, businesses can enhance their account-based marketing strategies and drive meaningful connections with high-value accounts, leading to increased conversions and a highly valuable sales pipeline.
Check out our free eBook ‘How Account Based Marketing Can Revolutionise Your B2B Marketing’, where we share more on identifying high-value accounts and targeting key decision-makers within those accounts.
Grow your ROI with the right lead generation partner
GCL is an international B2B lead generation expert with over 33 years of experience in assisting businesses with prospect profiling, market research and data services for their ABM campaigns.
We offer services to various regions including EMEA, the Americas and other emerging markets. If you are interested in finding out how GCL can help develop your ABM strategy, be sure to reach out for a chat today.
