There may not be such a thing as a “perfect marketing campaign”, but what if we told you that there’s something close? The good news is, account-based marketing exists!
Account based marketing, or ABM, is a strategic digital marketing tactic that targets highly qualified leads in the most cost efficient manner by catering to individual prospects as if they are their own market or sector. In doing so, marketing and sales teams can deliver personalized content directly to the specific people they want to appeal to. Because of the nature of B2B marketing, ABM is a great fit for marketers within this environment.
There are three main types of account based marketing:
1) 1:1 ABM – These are the most prioritized accounts which have specific needs and will bring the highest value to your business. This requires dedicated and focused attention to specific accounts that your business believes have the best likelihood to convert.
2) One to few ABM – This approach will be similar to that of 1:1, but with a cluster-level view of your accounts. If you have a number of accounts with similar needs and pain points, you can meet them by standardizing a good portion of your ABM marketing across the cluster, and customizing the rest to give it the personal touch ABM offers.
3) One to many ABM – This ABM style can help marketers scale their services to hundreds or even thousands of their target accounts, but does mean that they’ll be more thinly spread. The key to mastering one to many ABM is to find a healthy and sustainable balance between extent of scalability and depth of personalization.
Ready to jump into how to create a killer ABM campaign? Here are 6 best practices to help you do so:
1) Choose the best fit ABM type for your business structure. B2B companies and B2B marketers especially should carefully consider which of the three main ABM campaign types they want to pursue to achieve the greatest success with their high-value accounts.
2) Identify your ideal customer profiles and buyer personas. This process will entail identifying key characteristics of your ideal target audience member that you’re wanting to tailor your marketing strategy towards. The entire goal of account based marketing is to tailor your content and messaging to specific accounts. In order to do so, your marketing and sales teams should be well aligned and in communication, which leads us to our next point…
3) Align your marketing and sales teams! Making sure your marketing and sales teams are on the same page and practicing clear communication throughout all stages of the sales funnel is essential to streamlining your sales process and driving your set of target accounts to become qualified leads! When your marketing team is able to deliver high-value accounts to your sales team, these accounts are then placed in the best position to be nurtured and carried through the rest of the sales funnel with precision and care.
4) Go after the decision makers. Decision makers are leaders or people of influence who have the power to make purchase decisions within their companies and businesses. Identifying and targeting decision-makers along with their pain points gives you full access to influencing direct decisions within those accounts, and allows you to provide them with the solutions they need. Take a look on social media and professional platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn to find key influencers in the industries and companies your business wants to target.
5) Use technology to help you scale your ABM campaigns. ABM softwares can help your business automate workflows and tasks so that your marketing and sales teams can focus on building relationships with your accounts.
HubSpot also offers automation tools to help businesses streamline their account based marketing campaign process and execution. As a HubSpot Solutions partner agency, we are dedicated to helping you set up and optimize your ABM execution experience using HubSpot’s features. This will not only help maximize your marketing objectives, but will also set you above the rest when it comes to catering to your accounts.
6) Measure, measure, measure. Without measuring your account based marketing campaigns, you can’t know if you’re truly reaching the objectives you set for them in the first place. What should you measure? Here are some KPIs you should consider tracking and evaluating when it comes to optimizing an effective ABM campaign strategy:
- Target accounts acquired by channel
- Page views per role at target account
- Number of customer profile matches
- Engagement rates with websites, social media, ads, etc.
- Opt-ins for email marketing, newsletters, or direct mail
Maybe you’re wondering what the benefits of ABM campaigns even are, and why these strategies are worth pursuing in the first place?
Not only has ABM been linked to revenue growth and larger deal sizes, but it has also contributed to improved customer relationships and better reputations for businesses. Additionally, unlike traditional lead generation strategies, ABM tactics ensure that sales teams engage with only the best qualified accounts, who are most likely to purchase from a business. This way, marketers and sales reps alike save time, money, and energy by investing in the right people and ultimately securing the best fit customers.
Want to know more about ABM marketing and how we help businesses use it to succeed at Lift Digital Marketing? Set up a meeting with us to talk through your current ABM considerations, and we’ll walk you through it.
