Account-based marketing is a marketing strategy that helps business generate higher quality, more targeted leads – as opposed to as many leads as possible hoping that there will be more business generated by a higher number of sales leads. Some businesses have found that more personalized, tailored marketing – while requiring a good deal of upfront preparation and research – pays off because it focuses on those business accounts and customers who are more likely to want or need the solution the business is offering. You can spend less time trying to convert everyone who might have an interest and more time nurturing along with those relationships that have been identified as high value.
Even if you have a small to medium-sized business, you can benefit from account-based marketing. To run an account-based marketing strategy and begin working to prioritize leads and personalize their outreach, you need an account-based marketing platform to help you manage the data, documents, communications, and other pieces of your sales approach.
What’s the right account-based marketing solution for your small or medium-size business?
Here are some of the best account-based marketing platforms to consider for your SMB.
1. HubSpot
When talking about ABM for B2B businesses, Hubspot says, “where more traditional marketing tactics rely on casting a wide net, nurturing contacts through a wide sales funnel, account-based marketing can be thought of as ‘fishing with spears’. It’s targeted, it’s calculated, and when executed correctly, it can be highly effective.” They help small and medium-sized businesses create an exacting, targeted approach to finding, defining, and engaging with accounts. With HubSpot’s free CRM tool (hugely popular with small businesses), accounts can more effectively align their sales and marketing teams for better outreach and more customized messaging that can lead to more quality leads and higher customer engagement. HubSpot helps small businesses make a big impact by helping them easily customize messaging with website pages, landing pages, emails, and CTAs that are set up for specific accounts. HubSpot even offers the options of using integrations with partner advertising software that allows you to extend that same personalization to targeted advertising off-site.
2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another tool that helps SMBs with their account-based marketing. The first step is to find your key accounts and individuals on LinkedIn. Our new service, LinkedIn Account Targeting, takes the guesswork out of the process. Through LinkedIn’s Account Targeting feature, businesses work with their LinkedIn account team to match your business’s key account list with LinkedIn Customer Pages. This creates your target accounts. You can target even more specifically by only advertising or communicating with people who have a certain job title or function at those organizations. This creates a highly customized list for your marketing campaigns. You can also use LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content to help match your creative assets to your custom segments.
3.Marketo
Marketo is a powerful marketing automation tool, but it isn’t just for enterprise-level businesses. It can also help a small to medium-sized business identify and target high-value accounts and grow their strategy over time.
Account-based marketing can work for any business if implemented correctly. Creating more customized, focused marketing is a more effective way of reaching your customers and positioning yourself as the best solution for that business. No matter what size your organization, having the right ABM tools to guide and support your efforts is key. There are plenty of solutions available for SMBs that can scale with your growth. When choosing your account-based marketing platform, consider how it will allow you segment and target audiences, how it can assist in creating and distributing custom content, how well it helps align sales and marketing communication and goals, and how good the analytics and reporting on campaign efforts are.
