In order to make B2B account-based marketing work for your benefit, you must have both your sales and marketing teams on the same page. Investing your time and money to carefully plan and strategize your approach with your account based marketing vendors is crucial for the whole process.
Another important thing to remember is that account-based marketing strategies need to evolve. Everything is changing so fast, so you have to be sure that you are on the right track. Brian Balfour of Reforge calls it the Cycle of Growth Tactic Effectiveness. If you are using the same strategy as your competition, the people might get quickly turned off.
Proven ABM Tactics That Convert
I am going to cover the ten most effective ABM tactics that I have been using over the past years. This way you can evolve B2B account-based marketing strategy to meet your target goals.
1. Build a Solid Target Account List
87% of marketers have found that ABM delivers a higher ROI than other marketing activities that require a target account list to focus your efforts on. The advantage of ABM lies in focusing on accounts that are a perfect fit for the product or service that you are offering. You need to find your exact buyer persona using to create a B2B target account list based on the companies that you’ve done business with or who are obviously going to benefit from what you’re selling.
Accuracy is key when it comes to successfully leveraging account lists to bolster sales efforts. Inaccuracies can be costly in terms of time and money because you want to be talking to the right decision-makers in the companies you’re reaching to.
2. Warm Up Leads by using Content Syndication
Many people approach ABM campaigns thinking that they need to go in cold, but this way you might get mixed results. The better approach is to send them relevant content to them which will target their pain problems with the help of Content Syndication. This might be newspapers they read, collaboration with sites they are often visiting etc.
But nowadays, there are even better ways to do it. Grabbing their attention with a great article that will generate a demand can be your lottery ticket to your dream clients. This way they will get to know you even before you reach them out.
3. Personalized Cold Email Campaigns
Sending cold emails is evergreen but the results you get are usually dependent on how good is doing the whole process. Nobody wants a plain cold email nowadays and people spot the salesy pitch too easy (especially C-level executives). With this being said you might realize that an email blast is not an option.
Marketers who really know their job by using the cold emails as a reaching medium knows that if the email is not personalized enough it won’t work. Simple as that. So, before you reach your prospect you need to really dig in deep down in order to find relevant information about the company and even the employee that is your main target. Company name, events they recently attended, their vision, first and last name are just some of the keys to reaching your destination sooner and with less effort.
There are strict rules in Cold Email Marketing that you have to follow, otherwise, you are just using this medium to waste your time or even turn off your clients.
4. Use Intent Data to Find In-Market Buyers
Only 25% of B2B business knows their buyer persona and how effectively they pass the sales funnel. Without knowing this data you are literally blind to make good decisions based on your current/previous results.
There are many sources of quality intent data. The best thing to start with is your website traffic. How many times a particular person has visited your site, where they stuck, how did they behave during the competition for the desired goal? These are questions that you must know the answers to. Using your data can exponentially increase your success. That is why Conversion Rate Optimisation is crucial for this step.
5. Intent-Based Advertising
Leveraging your ability to laser target your audience can never be underestimated. Using built-in tools like Google’s own Custom Intent Audiences can help you target the right people. On the other hand, customizing the content of your ads to meet your buyer persona pain problems is a great boost in the process.
You need to show them that you are the solution to their problem. That if you both combine together those desired goals are on the tip of the hand. Stop showing them a general message. Stop spending a fortune just to look “professional” with a standard general message. There are more effective ways to do it so use your ad budget wisely.
6. LinkedIn – Your Secret Weapon
Of all the popular social media platforms that businesses have used to sell, arguably the most effective of these for B2B is LinkedIn. A staggering 52% of buyers list LinkedIn as the most influential channel during their buyer’s journey. Only in January 2020, it has been found that over 664 million people were targeted by LinkedIn ads.I
More than just the trust, however, it also boils down to the fact that LinkedIn is designed with businesses in mind from the get-go. The professional nature of the platform primes people to be more receptive to thought leadership and marketing content than in any other. You can also count on unique and more laser-focused segmentation of audiences when you do decide to push for paid promotions—more so than other social media platforms would offer.
Most of the marketers forgot that they need to stand out in order for ads to work on LinkedIn (or any other medium that you might reach your next big client). Combining powerful Copywritting ideas with excellent and pain-problem solving creatives is your ticket to success.
7. Promote Great Marketing
Most of your ads will do the retargeting part and contain a direct call-to-action format. This is a great way to convert those buyers who are at the bottom of the funnel. But, in order for them to be there, you need to present your brand first in a way that will bring value to their eyes.
After you did your job with the rest pieces of the funnel, you can show them your awards, some of the top clients that are using your service to gain trust and to move the needle in the right direction.
8. Create Personalized Content
Nobody wants a general message in the ads that will revoke no emotion at all. Your ads, articles, and the website itself should answer the questions that the buyers may have. Personalization is the key to this part. 68% of marketers have found that personalization of content has a high impact on ROI, while 74% have found it has a high impact on engagement.
You need to move beyond your traditional marketing and sales talk and pitches, but rather providing concrete answers for your ideal customers to ground their decisions on.
9. Co-create Content with Complementary Brands
Why not expand your reach and more effectively execute a focused, account-based marketing campaign by collaborating with brands that complement yours? This is mostly missed part for the majority of the companies, but you are not like them so you must know the real value of this step.
Partnering with the right Brand can bring a lot of long-lasting customers in a matter of days and will expand your brand to more people than ever. People trust brands so if their favorite brand is sharing some valuable content, as I am doing now :), they automatically build better trust with the new brand that they have just met. Sounds right?
10. Publish Quality Research
Finally, it’s worth saying that if you intend to laser focus on specific accounts through ABM campaigns, you better be ready to prove you’re worth their time.
The marketing itself won’t just cut it. You must prove that your solutions and products are really worth purchasing.
The easiest way to do this is by publishing the quality research and results that you have with your current customers. Let your next potential customer see that you will bring great value to their company if he decides to get along with you.
ABM is the present, past, and future.