Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
If you’ve been keeping up with new terms in B2B marketing, by now you’ve likely heard of account-based marketing (ABM). The term itself has been around for years, but with recent advances in technology, this tactic is now being adopted at a much larger scale than ever before. Still, surprisingly, I find that many B2B marketers are in the dark when it comes to ABM. So here’s a quick look into the future of B2B enterprise marketing, and why I think account-based marketing will be one of the biggest revenue drivers for B2B businesses in the very near future.
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Account Based Analytics
Article | August 3, 2022
High-value content plays a key role in account-based marketing. Account-based marketing uses content to nurture leads and address their pain points throughout the sales process.
A perfect ABM strategy is one that provides relevant content to the right prospects at the right time. ABM content needs to be personal and highly relevant to create an impact on the stakeholders of your target account.
In an interview with Media 7, Stuart Sumner, Editorial Director at Incisive Media, talked about the importance of content in marketing strategy.
“The best way to win the content war is to have better, more valuable, and more timely content than your competitors. You need to offer audiences a regular supply of high-quality, in-depth content, which they can’t get elsewhere.”
The need for effective content is all-encompassing across industries, demographics, and niche domains. It helps businesses seek solutions to their critical business challenges. Reading through the opinions of other thought leaders from the industry influences their purchase decisions. So, good quality, reliable content can convince a business that you are the ideal choice for a B2B association.
How Should ABM Content Be Organized?
Creating effective content is the need of the hour, but it can be challenging if done without a direction or goal in mind.
Your ABM content should build brand awareness, and engage the readers while also presenting value to them. It should also be personalized enough to convey your involvement and dedication to your target account. To organize ABM content effectively, follow these steps:
Conduct Stringent Research
Stringently researching your target audience can help to create a content framework that can capture the solutions to their problems, their needs, and their interests. When you investigate the target accounts in-depth, you will know what aspects you can leverage to capture their attention and interest. Then you can organize the content to engage them.
Another interesting approach is to directly ask your audience about the kind of content they enjoy and their preferred formats. These insights can help you personalize the content better because 80% of consumers prefer shopping with brands that provide a personalized experience. You might also be able to leverage content for more than one account.
Maintain a Content Inventory
The research-based content that was created before you developed your ABM strategy can be repurposed to target the accounts in your focus. Creating a content library and mapping the intent of your content can help you with repurposing the correct content. The more detailed your content library, the easier it gets to reuse it. Consider organizing your content library with dates, extra information, highlights, and formats so you can start using the content without much ado.
The content you develop should complement your ABM strategy. As a part of your ABM strategy, it should add value to your marketing effort.
Create a Content Matrix
Create a content matrix that lists out the target accounts in your focus. It is a tool to organize your data to meet your marketing objectives. Based on your objectives, you can carry out content mapping to influence purchase decisions for these accounts. This can help you decide on the purpose of your content strategy. Do you want to create awareness or incite action from your readers? By figuring out what you want, you can use your content matrix to understand the scope to personalize the content in line with your ABM goals.
Analyze Your Performance
Experiment with different formats, visuals, and messages while creating your content. Measure the success of your content strategy like you measure the success of your ABM strategy using KPIs. Gauge how your audience reacts to different formats and visuals to know what to focus more on. Revise, retest, repurpose the content till you get the best output. It all boils down to how well you organize your ABM content.
ABM Content Best Practices
Best practices should be followed when creating content to achieve sales and marketing alignment, drive ROI, and target key accounts. Periodically engaging in website content mapping and content research to see how your content is doing is vital. Here are the ABM content best practices you should follow to organize ABM content:
1. Personalize the content to suit your target account’s needs.
2. Conduct regular SEO and content audits to find any flaws or unresponsive content.
3. Optimize your content to meet search engine optimization needs.
4. Repurpose your content regularly to make the most of it.
5. Support your content with good design.
6. Focus on creating interactive ABM content.
7. Your content should build trust in the minds of your target accounts.
How Coca-Cola’s Fanbase on Facebook Increased by 39% Because of Organized Content
Coca-Cola’s famous ‘Share a Coke’ campaign targeted Australian millennials to improve their sales numbers in the summer of 2011. Under this campaign, Coca-Cola offered name-branded coke bottles to the customers. Through stringent research, understanding their audiences’ preferred formats (TV commercials, newspapers, bus ads, and social media), and implementing strong CTAs in their ads, Coca-Cola gained a 39% increase in its Facebook fanbase.
Key Takeaway
The way you formulate and organize ABM content plays a key role in driving results from your ABM strategy. It is crucial that you dedicate time and resources to creating, personalizing, organizing, presenting, and analyzing the content you offer to your target accounts. You can drive a higher ROI from your ABM and content strategy only when your approach to content is as focused as your ABM strategy.
FAQ
What is a content matrix?
A content matrix is a tool that a marketer can use to plan and offer the right content in the right format and on the right platform to the target audience.
How can you use old content in your ABM strategy?
You can use your old content by repurposing it to better target your key accounts.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | August 23, 2022
Introduction: Account-based Marketing and ABM Tactics
B2B account-based marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on targeted campaigns for high-value accounts. An account-based marketing strategy involves identifying target accounts, reaching out to them using hyper-personalized content, and engaging them in the right way and at the right time, irrespective of their position in the sales funnel. Closing the deal through an alignment between sales and marketing is the ultimate goal of an effective account-based marketing campaign. By using certain ABM tactics, you can enhance your campaign. Let us first understand what account-based marketing is, what challenges it can help you scale, and how it can help you get a higher ROI compared to any other marketing strategy that exists today.
Why Should You Implement Account-based Marketing?
According to ITSMA, 87 percent of marketers say that ABM marketing outperforms other marketing investments. B2B account-based marketing gets better results year-over-year after its implementation. With changing times, B2B customer expectations have changed. A more humane marketing strategy, customized content, the right channels, and a smooth customer experience are some of them. Not only does ABM targeting offer solutions to customers’ specific challenges, but it also converts leads with buyer intent into customers. Here are some of the challenges that an effective account-based marketing strategy will help you overcome:
Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams
The account-based marketing process involves streamlining the goals, objectives, and metrics of your sales and marketing teams. This eliminates the possibility of poor communication. Instead, there is a group effort to go after the right people to get a better return on investment.
These teams centrally view the targeted accounts through your CRM. This breaks the silos and boosts the impact of your ABM tactics. It allows unobstructed data sharing between marketing and sales. The account-based marketing process solely functions using centralized data and empowers both teams to make the most of the intent data and predict when and how to engage with the stakeholders of the target accounts.
Effective Content Personalization
As a central metric, customer experience is of paramount importance to creating lasting associations with target accounts. Most customers know what they want and need, are aware of the market conditions, and seek solutions that work best for them. They want these solutions to be offered to them on a platter through predictive customer experience. ABM scores a homerun in this aspect. It connects customers with content personalization characterized by distinct messaging speaking about challenges and solutions. Content is important to the success of an account-based marketing campaign right from the start.
Achieving Complete Data Utilization
B2B account-based marketing is a data-driven marketing technology that drives success for your business. Data is used to predict the needs of target accounts, understand their pain points, and preferred channels of communication. Clean intent data helps in increasing brand awareness among target accounts, streamlines the buying cycle, and assists marketing in creating content and messaging that best represents your brand and sharing it with sales teams so that they can use it to convert leads. Feedback data can also help marketing to access the success of the account-based marketing campaign and improve it to get better results in the future.
Maintaining Long-term Relationships with Customers
No matter the kind of B2B marketing strategy (ABM Lite, Strategic ABM, or Programmatic ABM) you choose to apply, its personalized approach boosts confidence and trust in buyers because they experience a stellar customer experience. Through customized content and focused service offerings, lasting long-term relationships with target accounts can become a reality. It also creates new opportunities for businesses.
Marketing Budgeting
An account-based marketing program enhances marketing budgets by improving customer retention and makes it easier to track ROI. It also improves your brand awareness, engagement, and lead quality metrics, so you can allocate your resources better.
Now that the benefits of account-based marketing are evident, let us now look at ABM tactics to further enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy.
ABM Tactics to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy
Before you start using any tips and tricks to optimize your account-based marketing program, you should set your expectations and finalize the KPIs you intend to use to measure the success of your B2B ABM marketing tactics.
Let us explore some ABM tactics that can optimize your account-based marketing program:
Optimize Your ABM Funnel
Optimizing your ABM funnel may be one of the most effective account-based marketing tactics that can help you achieve growth.
Target Accounts
Optimize your target accounts using the following ways:
Content Auditing
Audit your content and verify if it caters effectively to your target accounts’ personas and the industry they belong to. Stringently review every content piece you have to ensure it is hyper-personalized and addresses the target accounts’ needs and pain points. Sometimes, your content may help you tighten your target account list.
Use Intent Data Wisely
ABM targeting should be dynamic. Update your target account list based on the intent data you receive from CRM and other platforms. You must know what your target accounts are searching for. Is it something about your business, your product, or the solutions you offer? You should always use this data to enhance your list.
Approach Different Segments
Simultaneously run multiple account-based marketing campaigns with different levels of personalization and investment. Choose from ABM Lite (one-to-few accounts), Programmatic ABM (one-to-many accounts), or Strategic ABM (one-to-one) based on your ABM targeting goals.
Engaged Accounts
Optimizing engaged accounts can be difficult because no two engaged accounts can be in the same stage of the sales funnel. Checking on how your ads are performing through click rates, organic visits on your website, email click through rates, or any other digital interaction with your brand can be a good start. Your ads should be informative yet beautiful. Improve on your copy and tighten your target account list so you reach out only to the accounts that are engaging with your content. Go all out through social media, emails, and all other channels available on the internet to reach out to engaged accounts. These account-based marketing tactics ensure that you take advantage of target account engagement enthusiastically through all channels.
New Opportunities
Help your sales team to enhance the rate of new opportunities through lead generation strategies created by ad retargeting so they can tap into the accounts that have interacted with your ads previously with renewed vigour. Creating an account engagement model to define an ‘engaged account’ in collaboration with your sales team can smoothen out the process of controlling the number of accounts it has to work on.
Outreach
Focus on creating or warming up existing relationships with the employees of your target account stakeholders. Use direct mail or personal meetings to get in touch with your target accounts. This opens the doors to new pipeline opportunities. One-to-one C-level campaigns, phone calls, and demos can be used to reach more people, warm up leads, and create brand awareness.
Improve Sales Velocity
Sales velocity is the average time taken from when an opportunity is created to when it is converted into a customer. Treat every opportunity that comes your way with the same dedication that you show to your target accounts. This approach is applicable to all the lead generation strategies you execute. Opportunities may make their way through your ABM platform or through inbound channels. Once they make their way through the funnel, make it a point to shift from awareness to ROI campaigns by exhibiting customer success stories and testimonials. These efforts can lead to a shortened sales cycle.
Harness Social Media
For the success of your B2B marketing strategy, using social media can be an effective way to capture important target accounts’ behavioral data. Follow their company accounts, stakeholder accounts, and employee accounts to remain updated. Understanding stakeholders’ and employees’ social media behaviour, likes, and engagement can help you narrow down your target account list. Strategically calling out the target accounts on social media through mentions can work in your favour.
Use Paid Advertising & Content Marketing
LinkedIn targeting, paid Google ads, industry-specific blogging along with problem and solution-oriented content can create target account engagement. Consider using account-based marketing services to market your content better and more accurately.
Marketing Automation
Artificial intelligence (AI) based marketing can optimize your account-based program by providing you with predictive insights and enhancing your communication efforts. Email campaigns can be executed using marketing automation to offer measurable account engagement. AI and big data rely on CRM data to gather user information from different platforms. This information can help you personalize your content better. Account-based marketing services offer these options to execute targeted marketing campaigns at scale.
According to a MarketingProfs survey, companies that used this ABM tactic saw 59 percent increase in closing rates.
Implement Influencer Marketing
Harness the influence of industry experts, thought leaders, and recognized contributors that your target accounts consider authentic. It can improve your conversion rate. By humanizing the buyer experience through an influencer, you can win over the trust of your accounts, encourage brand advocacy, attract new audiences, and increase the authority of the content you share. This tactic adds value to your B2B marketing strategy.
Test, Measure, Improve
Periodically testing your ad copy, content, design, and channel elements to see what works and what doesn’t is crucial to improving B2B account-based marketing. Tracking important KPIs that measure the success of your strategy can help you make it more effective. Avoid being constrained and try new things boldly. If something doesn’t work, find other ways to achieve your goals instead of scrapping the strategy. Account-based marketing tactics will only work if you analyze how they affect your strategy and accordingly keep improving its execution.
In an interview with Media 7, Daniel Englebretson, the founder of Khronos, talked about how to improve an account-based marketing strategy.
“The best programs, and the best marketers, have built their success on the back of rapid iteration and a long history of testing, learning, and continuously improving.”
Northrop Grumman Won a $2 Billion Contract by Leveraging Account-based Marketing
Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company headquartered in Virginia, clinched a ten-year, $2 billion contract with VITA. Their B2B ABM marketing tactics included using marketing and business development teams that worked closely to understand VITA’s issues, needs, and priorities. They used all this information to create a focused branding campaign to target the key decision makers at VITA. They ensured that every interaction they had with VITA reinforced their IT expertise.
The Takeaway
These ABM tactics are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing your account-based marketing program. Confidence, attentiveness, and patience are key to achieving expected conversions from an ABM strategy.
FAQ
What are the types of ABM marketing?
Programmatic ABM (one-to-many approach), ABM Lite (one-to-few approach) and Strategic ABM (one-to-one approach) are the three types of ABM marketing.
Why is account-based marketing more effective than traditional B2B marketing?
Account-based marketing targets accounts with buyer intent. It increases the conversion rate and customer experience through content personalization and a close understanding of key accounts’ needs and challenges. This focused approach leads to a higher ROI.
What are the benefits of using account-based marketing software?
An account-based marketing software powered by AI can help you reach, engage, and convert target accounts and provide you with actionable data through your websites, CRM, and marketing automation platforms. It helps you grow your business quickly and efficiently.
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Core ABM
Article | July 20, 2022
When it comes to ABM vs. demand generation, most businesses struggle to find the right balance. Swinging too far one way or the other can completely derail your performance — and your organization's trust.
Here are some things you can do to get the best of both ABM and demand generation:
Check If You Are Too Heavy on Demand
If you are someone who focuses more on demand, then you should:
Gather insights from data, intelligence, and signals to develop a strong ICP. A strong ICP will help you target the individuals that make up the buying committee.
Keep your TAL (target account list) short and base it on buying intent.
Build an ABM program that encompasses teams, channels, and activities to gauge output and refine the use case.
Engage the double funnel to understand where you should draw the line between ABM and demand generation.
Are You Too Focused on ABM?
For the account-based marketer in you, it must be very hard to think beyond your target accounts. To balance this out, you should:
Get more information on the channels and tactics that your buyers respond to.
Draft messaging that creates urgency around your target account’s pain points.
Test your content on a large audience to see which gets the most engagement.
Use these insights to find the right balance between your demand generation strategy and ABM.
Beat the Odds When Implementing Strategies
Issues like no alignment between your sales and marketing teams and a superior insisting on implementing 100% ABM may arise. To address such issues, you should:
Expertly measure your data so all your responses are data-driven.
Chase directional improvements instead of trying to perfect your strategies right away.
Define a single metric for success, so your teams work towards achieving the same goal.
Keep your efforts balanced when implementing demand gen and ABM strategies.
Conclusion
If you do not strike a delicate balance between your ABM and your demand generation plan, your SDR teams will get overwhelmed and may not reach the level of efficiency you desire. Remember, your demand generation program should supplement your ABM efforts and not drive them.
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