While numerous businesses focus on one-to-many marketing, it has its downsides and isn’t always effective. Sound familiar? Account-based marketing could be the solution for your business in 2021. For those struggling to align marketing and sales teams, the time has come to switch to account-based marketing or ABM.
Why is Account-Based Marketing Important?
ABM helps create personalized strategies that are bound to yield results. Thus, it is perfect for businesses that cast wide nets when it comes to potential clients but don’t see too many conversions.
With this process, you’re guaranteed to see better results, which is why it’s best not to stick to old ways and make the shift to account-based marketing. In 2021, the core features that set it apart include the following:
1. High Personalization
Since they target decision-makers within an organization, these strategies are fine-tuned to meet their needs and resonate with what the company wants. Appealing to a wider audience often makes you lose out on the necessary personalization that makes a customer feel that the campaign is tailored for them.
With ABM, this is no longer a problem and the rate of conversions is bound to increase.
2. Shortened Sales Cycles
You’ll find the time between a first follow-up and the closing of sales to be highly reduced using ABM. In most B2B approaches, there are leads from the marketing team which your sales team cannot convert to something concrete.
But, with ABM you’re already sure that the client base wants to hear what you have to offer. This is why the sales team no longer has to sift through leads of poor quality and can focus on closing sales.
3. ABM Creates Greater ROI
Most marketers agree that ABM generates higher ROI as compared to other strategies. Attribution might be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to marketing, but with this campaign type you can always pinpoint where the sale has come from. This is because here you can target buyers based on shared personal links.
4. Greater Time Efficiency
Since you don’t need to focus on prospects without business values, your sales team can turn its complete attention to prospective customers they’re in a position to close. Obviously, this saves time and in turn helps you target more viable clients.
Account-Based Marketing Tactics for 2021
1. Identifying Target Accounts
Your first step should be knowing target audiences. Since ABM targets organizations instead of people, the goal should be identifying its needs to create customer profiles. Collaborating with your sales and marketing teams and using their data and research is the right way to go about it.
Characteristics such as location, industry type, company size, revenue generated, expected profit margins and chances of repeat purchase are also taken into account. It helps to identify clients who show the strongest potential of coming on board, and then targeting them accordingly.
2. Determining Campaign Goals
It is vital to know what your campaign goals are. See whether you need to meet a certain quota or focus on repeat customers. You might even need to generate new leads based on existing accounts.
Once you determine this, it will help tailor marketing campaigns accordingly. Opt for methods like targeted paid ads or email marketing.
3. Choosing the Right Channels
Going by characteristics of target accounts, you’ll know which platforms you can use to promote campaigns. Where the audience spends their time and how they interact with these campaigns will provide good feedback about success rates.
Some examples of platforms include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Google advertisements are also a great way to reach out specifically, while others prefer LinkedIn, email or even phone calls.
4. Running ABM Pilot Campaigns
If you’re new to ABM then consider running pilot campaigns. Start off with proposal software or something on a smaller scale so you can test results and adjust them accordingly. Either reach out to a few decision-makers in one organization or go to a similar organization with a lower status to test your strategies.
Whether this campaign does well or poorly doesn’t really matter because you can incorporate insights gleaned from it during the official launch.
5. Retargeting Ad Campaigns
To drive conversions for ABM campaigns, try retargeting. This means you have to market to clients with whom you’ve interacted before. You could also reach out to organizations that have visited your webpage.
There are trackers available to collect the data of companies who visit your site and provide details like contact information. Accordingly, you could target them through different platforms. And since they’ve interacted with you before it is easier to market your products or services rather than reaching out to a cold first-time audience.
6. Personalizing Landing Pages
After setting targeting parameters for campaigns your job shifts to creating compelling content for landing pages that will convince potential clients to actually buy your product. The key to making personalized landing pages work is by focusing on the benefits the visitor will receive.
For example, creating a landing page promoting a free video training, white paper, or discovery call tailored towards their needs will convert much higher than something generic.
It inspires click-worthy calls to take action and clients are likely to sign up so they can work with you. Due to personalized content you’ll see how a lead ends up at your page instead of going elsewhere and finally you can close the sale after a scheduled call with designated teams.
7. Aligning Marketing and Sales Teams
Aligning both sales and marketing teams will ensure viable leads won’t slip through unnoticed. Marketing teams should work to generate leads while sales teams go and close them. Effective communication is vital as marketing teams relay sources for leads and the kind of content interaction that has occurred.
Based on this information, sales teams know better about what to offer. Alternatively, this team can give feedback to marketing about the quality of lead conversions. It helps both teams apply these insights for future campaigns.
8. Strengthening Relationships with Existing Clients
Always look at past marketing strategies to see what worked in converting clients and making them stick with you. See sales data and try to identify trends that you can apply in your new campaign.
A good habit is to understand the purchasing habits of audiences to cater to them better. Going to repeat businesses ensures you get increased revenues from them, and they might refer you to other clients as well. This creates a network of trust which helps towards future sales.
9. Measuring Results
With preset goals you can always see whether your campaign has measured up to them. After going through the results you can make adjustments accordingly. ABM is not stagnant as a strategy and constant changes to cater to audiences results in better growth in ROI.
With data readily available you can always fine-tune approaches to become more personalized for future clients.
Wrap Up
Most businesses are shifting to ABM as a viable option to create better relationships between themselves and clients. After using a personalized approach, each campaign feels individually tailored as you position yourself uniquely to meet your clients’ needs.
Following these strategies will help you drive a more streamlined and effective campaign. While we believe this to be comprehensive enough to guarantee success, you can always reach out to us with doubts.
The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.
- 9 Account-Based Marketing Tactics to Succeed in 2021 - February 2, 2021
