Account-based marketing (ABM) is an account-focused approach to digital marketing that aims to create a personalized experience for each prospect. It builds on top of lead nurturing, then goes deeper into customer relationships than traditional B2B marketing. ABM is about building a pipeline of potential customers, not just leads. It’s also about nurturing those prospects through every stage of their buying journey – from initial contact to purchase and beyond.
Here are five of our top tops for excelling at Account Based Marketing:
Be an active listener and build relationships
- Listen to what the customer is saying.
- Understand what they are trying to achieve.
- Understand their challenges and pain points.
- Understand their needs, wants and expectations.
This may sound like common sense, but it’s a very important step in understanding your customers’ journey as well as what they really want from you–and that’s where ABM comes into play!
Use technologies that offer greater insights on customer behavior
As a marketer, you need to be able to identify what your customers are doing and how they are interacting with your brand. This will not only help you gain actionable insights into their needs and preferences, but also help provide more relevant messages for them.
There are many tools available today that can help with this process including:
- Analytics tools – By analyzing website and content traffic data through tools like Google Analytics, marketers can gain valuable insight into which channels are working best for them, what pages visitors visit most frequently on their site and even how much time each visitor spends on each page before leaving or returning later another day etc..
- Behavioral tools – using a behavioral analytics platform like Clarity, you can gain information and data on your visitors behavior on your website, how far they scroll, where they click (including events and non-events like dead clicks), and what area they spend time looking at. This gives you insights past traffic data, into behavioral data on what your viewers do while on your site, insights into what is working and what doesn’t work with your content which can give you ideas on where to optimize or adapt content or messaging.
- Social media analytics tools – By analyzing social media data, marketers can gain valuable insight into which messages are resonating with their audience, what type of content is most popular among their followers and even who the influencers are in their network.
Make sure your data is up to date and accurate
Getting your data up to date and accurate is critical for a successful ABM campaign. Inaccurate or stale information will prevent you from targeting the right audience, which can lead to wasted ad spend and missed opportunities.
To ensure that your data is current and accurate:
- Make sure that all of your customer information is stored in one place so you can access it easily when needed.
- Update customer profiles regularly with new leads as they become available; this includes adding emails when someone fills out a form on your website or signs up for an email newsletter subscription list with their contact info included in the message body of the email itself (so make sure those messages are sent!).
Use a Multi-channel approach for outreach
Expanding your channels will increase your opportunities to reach your target audience. This could include phone calls, email, social media, direct mail and more. The more channels you are present in, the more likely your audience will see you, recognize your company, find relevance in your messaging or respond to your message, which will lead to increased conversions. It is important to be consistent in messaging, persistent in the approach, but not pushy.
Align with sales
Account based marketing, while a marketing tactic, is also a sales tactic, so it is important to have a close collaboration with the sales team and the marketing team. Ensure that the sales teams goals and objectives are reflected in your marketing goals and objectives and there are check ins on these goals on a frequent basis to ensure the campaign is optimized to meet both sets of goals.
Key Takeaways
ABM is a lot more than just a few tactics, so make sure you have a plan before you start working with it. It is then important to to use the data, objectives and skills noted above to really personalize your message to your individual accounts, messaging based on their specific needs and pain points will help increase your conversion rates, and is the main objective of account based marketing.
ABM is not a new concept, but it’s gaining traction and being adopted by more marketers. It can be used to build relationships with customers and sell to them in the future. However, it requires an investment in time and resources–so be sure that this type of marketing makes sense for your business before diving in!
ABM is a powerful tool, but it can also be overwhelming. If you’re new to the concept or struggling with it, try these tips to make your ABM efforts more successful.
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