An introduction to Account Based Marketing
Many have asked the question, “how do I get better quality leads?” after their lead generation campaign brought in less than desirable results. There are many ways in which a company can generate leads, but what if you went and started directly targeting your ideal customers instead of vaguely showing up where both organizations that are a good fit and a mediocre fit may be. What if, with a little extra effort on the front end, you focused your marketing efforts towards organizations (based on certain criteria that you set) that were an ideal customer? What would happen? Would you see sales and revenue go up, higher conversion rates, decreased cost per acquisition? Let’s explore the world of Account Based marketing
What is Account Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing (ABM) takes a focused and tailored approach when it comes to marketing and sales strategy, by specifically targeting accounts (businesses in our case), by creating a tailored marketing strategy to these accounts and then personalizing messages to nurture the customer relationship. You cannot personalize your marketing efforts if you are targeting a vast group of companies. ABM may seem to take longer to get a lead that converts, but really what you’re doing is weeding out organizations that are not the ideal fit before they have a chance to enter your sales funnel, saving you time and money trying to nurture a bad fit in the long run.
In 2021, the ways in which businesses communicate is increasingly more complex and abundant. The beauty of ABM is that it can apply to any industry, but works best for B2B organization. This is because technology has provided companies like Sherpa with countless tools to optimize their account-based marketing efforts and reach target accounts.
We’ll dive deeper into the benefits of ABM and ways that companies, just like yours, can utilize tactics and stimulate growth. This includes analyzing the benefits for small businesses, aligning marketing and sales teams, along with using data collection to tailor information to high-value accounts (customers).
What are the Benefits of Account Based Marketing?
ABM provides a tremendous amount of value to small businesses. Before tailored marketing solutions like LinkedIn and Google Analytics, cold knocks, calls and emails were the primary way to reach new clients and businesses. While somewhat effective, companies with limited budget and resources would have trouble garnering sustainable ROI. Focusing time and energy on high-value accounts is a great way for businesses to follow the theme of quality over quantity, especially when operating under the constraints synonymous with a small business. Hence, small businesses have much to gain from the implementation of ABM.
ABM = Quality over quantity
Gather Data
Tailoring information to high-value accounts through gathering data. One of the most important aspects of ABM is collecting data regarding how target accounts are reached and the rates of response. In doing this, businesses are able to enhance their marketing effectiveness. For example, try some A/B testing by using different message prompts on LinkedIn and seeing which texts garner more qualifies responses. Moreover, there are a multitude of software solutions that can be implemented, which allows companies to send up to one hundred messages per day to high-value accounts on LinkedIn.
Steps to Starting an ABM Strategy
1. Align Your Marketing & Sales Teams
Get the Sales and Marketing team leaders together to make sure that Marketing is contributing to the bottom line. The synergy that happens when you align your marketing and sales teams so that they work together instead of in silos creates a huge value to any organization. ABM helps break down those silos in your organization since analyzing target accounts and the tactics in closing a deal work hand-in-hand. Open lines of communication and a shared mindset is effective in building relationships with target accounts because both sales and marketing teams can outline a clear solution.
2. Create a Target Account List
In this step you’ll want to determine who your ideal customer is so that you can understand them better. Go through an exercise to create your ideal customer profile (also known as a Building a Customer Avatar). Once you have developed your ideal customer profile, this will give you insights to their lifestyle, likes, dislikes, habits, points of interest etc., which will help you build your target account list. Depending on your products or services, you might have a few ideal customer profiles and figuring out what makes each of them unique will only help your AMB efforts.
3. Choose Your Channel(s)
Next, you'll have to determine how you want to reach your target. Knowing you who your Ideal Customer is will help you develop a strategy to reach your target accounts in the places they are. So whether you decide that Webinars, Social Media or Displays Ads are the way to go, just base your decision on where your target audience is and go from there.
4. Measure Your Performance
Measuring your performance will help you adjust and pivot your strategy as needed. Prior to launching your AMB strategy, develop key performance indicators (KPI) and overall goals that you want to measure throughout your ABM campaign. Create A/B testing where you can, if you’ve chosen to do Display Ads, why not pick two creatives and see which one performs better. Why not try a few variations or a different tone to you tele prospecting scripts? Recording, reviewing and analyzing your performance will help guide you to better results. And I remind you better results, means better leads.
To recap:
Account Based Marketing is an extremely beneficial marketing strategy that can help you get better qualified leads. By simply aligning your marketing and sales team, they can work together on contributing to the organization’s bottom line. From there, develop your Ideal Customer Persona to better understand your key target accounts, finally, create a strategy that determines where and how to target those accounts. Your data will help you shift your strategy to optimize your efforts. At the end of the day, people want to know “What’s in it for me” and what solution you can provide to the problems and challenges they are facing. Implementing an ABM strategy is the best way to portray the value you can bring to your potential clients and how you can help them. The key reason for ABM’s continued success is the focus on making a company feel like they are your only client and not just part of a random mass marketing campaign.
Sherpa Marketing can help you implement a well-rounded ABM campaign to increase quality leads. Contact us today with any ABM questions you might have.