Account-Based Marketing, Digital Tools for Relevant Targeting

November 13, 2019

Category: B2B Strategy, Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends

MAXIMIZE YOUR BUDGET WITH RELEVANT ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING

How Account-Based Marketing (ABM) helps B2B businesses generate qualified lead$.

Generating qualified leads for your business often poses one of the greatest challenges that B2B companies encounter. Between all of the sales calls, e-mails and networking, the task of finding interested buyers can become both daunting and tedious. However, put the right account-based marketing campaign in place, and these struggles quickly begin to subside. Read on to learn more about how account-based marketing can benefit your business.

The Goal: Generate Qualified Leads

Account-based marketing is a methodology that allows you to develop highly focused business strategies so that you can identify key decision-makers within your target market.

Where is the value generated? ABM connects you as quickly and efficiently as possible to potential clients that bring the most value to your business.

For example, ABM creates personalized campaigns to engage with prospects that would be most interested in your marketing message. Keep in mind though that ABM is more than just a lead generation tactic; it also encourages upselling and cross-selling to existing customers. Hello, customer loyalty!

Key Benefits of ABM

For B2B markets, ABM is becoming the predominant approach to target more valuable accounts. Here are some of the benefits:

Personalized Marketing Approach

A personalized message is more enticing than something that’s equivalent to your generic junk or spam mail. ABM provides marketers with insights about highly targeted potential leads. This allows them to create tailored campaign messaging based on a customer’s particularities and specificities.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Collaboration in any business is an important key to success. With ABM, marketing and sales departments work together; identifying target accounts, crafting customized campaigns and working together to move accounts through the pipeline.

Shorter Sales Cycles

Major purchase decisions oftentimes involve multiple stakeholders, which means slower sales cycles. Without ABM, the sales process may have to start at a lower level in the organization and move sluggishly upwards towards the primary decision-maker. ABM helps speed up the sales process as you can nurture all of your prospects at once, and oftentimes will put you in touch with at least one key decision-maker from the get-go.

Distinct ROI

Never miss the mark! Account-based marketing is exact and measurable, providing the highest ROI of all B2B marketing tactics.

85% of marketers who measure ROI describe account-based marketing as

delivering higher returns than any other marketing strategy.

Less Wasted Resources

For any B2B company, closing a sale without expending all of their resources is a top priority. Account-based marketing connects you with highly targeted accounts, allowing your company to utilize your time and resources more efficiently so you can close deals faster.

Account-Based Marketing Tools

There are several ways to utilize ABM, but the strategy begins with creating meaningful segments; finding your ideal target market often takes a lot of initial industry research. Companies need to also discuss which tactics will work best for their business model. How you choose to implement ABM ultimately depends on your business’ wants, needs and goals. It’s all about personalization. Here are some common tactics:

Events

In-person events are usually very successful. Most people like to put a face to a name to persuade their decisions on sales. Some examples could be dinners, facility tours, or other events like meet-and-greets.

Webinars

The web is becoming more and more personable. Like meeting at an event, webinars can also be unique to specific companies as long as they are relevant and timely.

Direct Mail

A personalized letter says a lot in this digital age. ABM is highly targeted, so gifts and marketing sent through direct mail have a potentially higher value for customer conversion.
Check out This Custom Thanks – a service dedicated to handwritten thank you notes and major events for businesses.

Email Campaigns

Nobody likes spam mail. However, e-mail can prove to be a valuable method of reaching clients, especially since ABM involves crafting tailored messages for each company or individual. Marketo conducted a study where 78% of consumers said they would only engage with offers that have been personalized to their previous engagements with your brand.

Paid Advertising

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, is a way of reaching out to targeted prospects online. Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social platforms allow for specific targeting and retargeting. PPC campaigns can be tailored to focus on a handful of potential leads at specific stages of your marketing funnel.

Web Personalization

ABM can help you identify the gaps between your web content and the content that your targeted leads typically engage with. After these gaps have been identified you can utilize website personalization technology to create a tailored web experience for targeted prospects.

Bulls-eye for Your Business and Budget

You have a story to tell, but you want to tell it to the right people who will actually listen and respond (i.e. convert to a qualified lead). The bottom-line for ABM is reaching the right people within your target market, hence why personalizing your marketing campaigns is crucial to your success with customer conversion.