With ABM being a strategy in itself, there is a deeper dive required to take your strategy a notch higher. Experience our drill-down of ABM on an implementational level.

Marketing is responsible for lead generation but casting a wide net for attracting potential customers to convert can hurt lead quality. For campaigns that need to target a particular audience, set of individuals or organizations, Account-based marketing (ABM), is one of the most effective B2B marketing strategies presently available.

The exploding interest of B2B marketers have shown in ABM is mostly about revenue. According to the research of Altera Group, 97% of marketers surveyed stated that ABM has higher ROI when compared to other marketing Initiatives.

As traditional marketing practices continue to decline, and inbound strategies fails to fill the gap, more and more marketers are shifting to targeted and personalized approaches to drive pipeline and revenue.

While ABM is evolving and adding new dimensions to it, Implementing ABM in the correct manner is important to produce maximum revenue results.

Define Your Target Audience Criteria

In Account-Based Marketing, the goal is typically to progress awareness and engagement with the decision-makers in your target accounts. To do so, you must first define who those potential customers or accounts and decision-makers are, as well as their attributes i.e. revenue, location, size, etc. Note that this can vary on the basis of your chosen ABM targeting criteria. For example, you might be targeting by vertical or industry instead of a specific decision-maker.

Once you have a clear perspective on the verticals/accounts/individuals you’re looking for, work to develop a shortlist of targets who fit those parameters, with whom you can start to raise awareness.

Target All the Stakeholders

As we know, for a long time B2B targeting happened at an individual level, the thought was to target the right decision-maker. However, the B2B marketing process is no longer restricted to one decision-maker. Instead, most accounts have multiple key decision-makers and influencers. Each player has his own set of compulsions and ideas about which solution or service best meets the account goals.

In such a situation, businesses cannot restrict themselves to a solitary decision-maker. Your Account-based marketing strategy should address this critical aspect of selling to a group by allowing businesses to tailor their messaging to first clearly define specific pain-points, and then inform and educate how their product or service can address the queries of individual stakeholders and their pain points effectively!

Deliver Personalized Experience

To engage a particular target account, your strategy must be highly personalized to resonate with their specific challenges and pain. This means that campaign messaging and content must be personalized and adjusted to reflect that; from site copy to landing pages, social selling messages, to digital assets like videos, guides, and eBooks. Your level of insight into key accounts will assist to inform the messaging and value to convey, and often the nature of the content and channels to prioritize.

For the best achievement, ensure every interaction your account has with your messaging and content is relevant to them.

Choose the Best Channel for Campaigns

Your ABM strategy and content will be useless if you’re not promoting your campaigns and creativity in the right channels. You have to understand where these stakeholders spend their time on the web, and what their state of mind is when they’re on social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

For B2B marketers, Facebook and LinkedIn can be the most powerful channels to target the right stakeholders because you can actually run campaigns to engage particular organizations, as well as titles within those organizations.

Keep Marketing & Sales Teams on Same Page

The responsibilities among sales and marketing team’s increases. In ABM marketing, both teams need to work together to recognize the best-fit targets and opportunities, and both must support the campaign throughout that customer lifecycle.

In ABM, both marketing and sales teams must have a clear idea of goals, target accounts, and activities required in order for campaigns to progress. Hold regular meetings with both departments, and ensure each team has clarity over responsibilities, insight, and progress, for best results.

Conclusion

Account-based marketing or ABM is much more than just a cool new trend. It’s a demonstrated method for taking your efforts to the next level. The majority of B2B marketers have found that ABM is yielding huge returns for their business. 

The sky is the limit with ABM, and each marketer who practices it should take that to heart.

There is always some part of any process that can be improved, and these 5 tips have hopefully given you a place to start that process in your own organization in a correct manner to drive more ROI.

With that new knowledge to enable you to power up this already potent marketing technique, you should have no trouble taking your ABM program to even greater heights.