Top 8 Account-Based Marketing Strategies Every Marketer Should Know

Account-based marketing is a phrase most people have heard, but might not understand. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy for identifying and approaching important accounts with the highest chance of becoming clients. It brings in the age-old debate between marketing and sales and who contributes more.

Sales is the first thing that often comes to mind; nevertheless, marketing teams assist in the conversion of prospects into customers via smart marketing campaigns and nowadays, account-based marketing techniques.

8 Account-Based Marketing Strategies

Understanding how to use account-based marketing strategies to convert prospects into customers is critical for marketers. The following are some of the most effective ABM strategies to implement to aid your efforts in converting a prospective client into a confirmed and paying one.

1. Define Your Target Market and Know Where They Spend Their Time

As a marketer, you need to know both your target accounts and where they are located. Your results will suffer if you do not use the appropriate avenues to discover potential clients. Note that finding potential customers requires collaboration between marketing and sales departments.

Both teams have distinct information on prospects, and you will need to collaborate to gather firmographic information such as industry, business type, location, company size, revenue, and sales cycle stage. It is also critical to do market research, which is more concerned with consumer behavior and trends than with specific statistics and figures.

2. Develop and Implement Targeted Marketing for Key Accounts

All marketing efforts must be coordinated between marketing and sales to optimize your reach. The sales team has to be informed of what marketing automation efforts your marketing team is doing and how these initiatives are affecting the final transactions. Similarly, your marketing team needs access to information about prospects that the sales team possesses.

To increase reach and demonstrate harmony across teams and processes, allow the two teams to organize focused ABM campaign efforts on specific high-value prospects. Knowing when to approach a prospect based on past efforts, what their preferred mode of communication is, and how to convert their hesitancy into decisiveness are all important.

3. Use Social Media as a Point of Contact

Marketers can engage with their consumers via social media. After you have established a list of ABM target accounts and highlighted some of the key connections through LinkedIn or their website, you want to discover all the related accounts accessible on Twitter, Facebook, and other related platforms Follow and interact with your connections, and start paying attention to their activities.

Before you engage with your audience more directly, you should get as acquainted as possible with how they utilize social media. You can participate in groups or Twitter conversations that they join, retweeting and sharing their content that is relevant to your customers, responding to their posts, particularly when there is a significant contribution you have, and sending them direct messages via appropriate channels.

Instead of treating social interaction as a distinct channel, consider how it can be integrated into your current campaign structures to increase your efficacy. If you have a ‘send customized LinkedIn invite’ stage included in a programmatic drip campaign, for example, social engagement can boost the results of your outbound email efforts.

4. Personalize Your Communications in Every Way Possible

Generic messages from a bot often throw people off. While some people might still buy from a bit, it is important to avoid sending prospects robotic-sounding emails or messages. If you treat a client as just another name on a list, they will notice and not like it, and as a result, not make a purchase.

You need to deviate from scripted messages and focus on developing relationships. Yes, inserting a prefabricated email and sending it to a list of prospects is simpler, but studies have proven that customized email campaigns always outperform the former. This is not to say chatbots are still not a fantastic way to lead a prospect to a real person, but they should not be your primary method of textual client communications. One tip you should consider is using an account-based execution software solution may let you create a unique message that seems customized without requiring all the extra effort. 

5. Create Creative Content That is Tailored to Your Audience 

People absorb and consume information in various ways. This applies to academic learning methods, such as the VARK technique (visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic), as well as your prospects.

Some individuals prefer to read written material, whether it is a blog post, an eBook, or a SlideShare with text. Some people would rather have infographics, movies, pictures, and podcasts. If you want to reach a large audience, the content marketing agencies in Chicago recommend that you ensure your content types and delivery techniques are diverse.

You do not know each prospect personally, so it is ideal to create content that incorporates elements of all of the aforementioned techniques as a means to get their attention. A 2500-word essay on sales enablement might not appeal to some people, but that does not mean they will not save an eye-catching infographic with a simplified version of the same information.

Also, make sure you are producing material that people are interested in. People seldom come to your site to discover self-promotional material; instead, they want to learn more about what you do, what you sell, and what value you can offer them as customers.

6. Select the Right Combination of Channels

Once you have identified the accounts and target profiles, as well as producing the appropriate material, the following step is to deliver it to them correctly. To do so, you will need to choose the right mix of platforms to reach out to them. This requires the use of both inbound and outbound marketing channels. The ultimate goal is to get the attention of your prospects. So, to grab their attention, use both conventional and innovative methods.

Use phone, email, and internet advertising to run multi-channel campaigns, and distribute your material across media that the target demographic might find interesting. You may also sponsor and attend industry-specific events that you anticipate your target audience to attend to amplify your efforts.

7. Go the Extra Mile to Impress

One of the strategies you can incorporate to make potential customers love your business is gift-giving. Personalization and customized content are used in direct mail marketing, which is a type of ABM. Direct mail demonstrates that your team(s) spent additional time getting to know the prospect as a person rather than a client.

This account-based marketing strategy might seem needless at first glance customers but think about it for a moment. You found out enough information about the prospect to choose a customized gift, work-related or not, and give it to them as a thank-you for their time, despite not yet becoming a client.

For example, you could send a customized package to a prospect on their birthday. This would almost certainly result in a thank-you letter and maybe a social media shout-out for your business. And they are simply the icing on the cake in terms of increasing their chances of becoming a client. Another option you could consider is, instead of giving everyone a generic gift, create personalized items, with specific messages and their name. 

A thoughtful present will not only provide free advertising for your business, but it may also demonstrate to the rest of the world how considerate, giving, and personable you and your staff can be in their interactions. That is enough motivation for most people to become your customer immediately.

8. Optimize and Measure Success

At the beginning of the campaign, you had a set of established goals. Part of your strategy should be comparing the results of your Account-Based Marketing initiatives to those objectives. This will provide you with a comprehensive insight into your present situation.

Determine how many of your objectives have been met or how close you are to achieving them. Use a full-funnel strategy. Check to see whether your target audience is reacting as anticipated if you are receiving enough qualified leads and if your sales staff is turning qualified leads into sales.

Since you are targeting a particular set of individuals inside a target list of businesses, the interesting part of using Account-Based Marketing campaigns is that your performance assessment is much more accurate. It is also simple to evaluate and identify the weak links in your strategy if you do not obtain the anticipated outcomes.

Final Note

In a word, a successful ABM campaign requires cross-functional cooperation and a thorough examination of your prospects. You will only be able to hit your targets with your ABM efforts if you have a comprehensive knowledge of everything, including your ABM objectives, personalities involved, problems your prospects are experiencing, and their preferred channels of interaction.

While the highlighted strategies for your account-based marketing efforts above are not in any way exhaustive, it provides you a decent sense of how to approach ABM strategies so that prospects become customers. You may finally move your sales and marketing teams into the next greatest B2B marketing trend by incorporating these and other suggestions.