Account based marketing has become a prominent strategy for B2B businesses.
These tactics can be used to drive the ABM process.
Account based marketing (ABM) is a new and emerging B2B marketing that can encompass a wide range of activity including email drip campaign to an omnichannel presence. It has become the new craze of the industry as many companies have adopted the strategy. According to a Sirius Decision study, about 62% of B2B companies have implemented ABM, compared to the 41% in 2016. If your company is a part of the 38%, it’s time to consider looking into it and find out if an account based marketing project plan is right for your business.
What is account based marketing? ABM is a B2B marketing strategy that focuses on sales and marketing resources on targeted accounts within an industry to drive them down the funnel through personalized campaigns. The marketing message is customized to highlight the attributes and needs of these targeted accounts to resonate with the decision makers. Compared to inbound marketing which focuses on generating a large volume of leads, ABM strives to specifically target accounts that make the most sense for their business. It’s essentially the quality over quantity route. When marketers look to implement an account based marketing framework, they usually make sure their company has enough bandwidth in order to make the strategy successful.
The primary reason why many B2B companies look towards this strategy is because of how competitive the market has gotten in recent years. As customer expectations rise, the pressure increases. Fortunately, ABM’s data centric system is able to help companies combat this obstacle and keep their heads above the water. By analyzing data, B2B companies can constantly adjust their tactics and campaigns to be more effective in resonating with account decision makers. ABM is an effective strategy that can help your business align marketing initiatives with sales and account management, as well as, capitalize on opportunities within marketing campaigns.
Here are a few ABM tactics that marketers use to drive processes.
Leverage Predictive Analysis
With the data available within ABM, you can predict what your target account is looking for. Like how Amazon is able to recommend products based on previous searches, ABM tools can provide a similar process based on the historic data of present customers and potential leads. By analyzing companies’ information, the technology they use, behavioral data, and engagement data, these tools can provide indicators and insight that can help your sales team drive accounts down the funnel.
Generate Quality Content for Your Target Accounts
When your sales and marketing teams are aligned, you are able to create a more seamless customer experience. One way to optimize on this is to collaborate with your sales team to generate account specific content. This personalized content will be greatly appreciated by your accounts and can help drive opportunities down the funnel. To do this, learn what are some of the questions that are most asked by accounts and prospects from your sales team. With this information, you can generate multiple types of content including blog posts, infographics, videos, webinars and much more. Not only will this showcase your knowledge within the industry, but also show your accounts and prospects that they are being heard.
Email Marketing for Decision Makers
Email marketing is an established marketing tactic that is still around because to put it bluntly, it works. Even with the plethora of content that you’re generating, it doesn’t mean that it’ll always reach the eyes of decision makers. So, to combat this, you may need to directly email them. A personalized direct mail to a decision maker can be very effective with the personalized attributes of an ABM plan because it can be more formal and resonating to the decision maker. If you feel like your content isn’t working, consider trying this tactic next.
