Are you losing leads due to a lack of personalization in your account-based marketing (ABM) campaign? ABM works best when complemented with techniques that build your relationship capital. With the right marketing plan, you will have a fair idea about pitching relevant content and crafting customized responses. However, the real challenge lies in implementing your ABM strategies into action.
How do you deliver messages that resonate with the right person at the most opportune time? This is where marketing automation tools come into the picture. A good marketing strategy can only be effective if you can adjust and scale it on the go seamlessly.
Account-based experience
A report by Gitnux found that B2B companies are as enamored of consistency in the buying experience as are B2C customers. About 80% of B2B buyers prefer similarity in the engagement process, which was considered a factor only in the B2C context. What’s more, individualized and tailored messaging can boost interactions by 20%, something most marketers struggle with the most.
Most marketers often dread the initial period of any campaign involving repetitive tasks with little ROI. Automation frees your marketing team from manual tasks to focus on marketing strategies to boost prospect engagement. It’s best suited to interact with multiple decision-makers, such as those serving on committees. You can customize your message according to each person’s job profile and role.
It makes sense that nearly two-thirds of B2B buyers often grumble that vendors do not comprehend their specific needs. What it means is that you need to communicate keeping in mind with whom you are talking.
You wouldn’t consider something that clearly originated from a mass mailer, would you? The same logic applies in the B2B context. Nearly 60% of B2B decision-makers want their vendors to create an account-based experience to signify familiarity and trust.
Most ABM marketing software providers have started taking note and including automation for ABM capabilities in their suite of features. No wonder about three-fourths of B2B buyers only consider the product if it’s couched in a personalized context.
Marketing and sales alignment
Are you finding it challenging to align your marketing and sales team on the same page? Do you frequently encounter a disconnect between how both teams transition across the funnel?
The best part of automation is that it allows your marketing and sales team to collaborate. An oft-stated complaint from both teams is a need for more involvement during different funnel stages. Automation helps you to keep everyone in the loop, bringing together different skill sets and viewpoints.
This lets a salesperson give their input if the discussion gets too technical during the initial phases. Similarly, a marketer could jump in with an insight from a behavioral perspective if a lead proves to be challenging to convert.
And the stats agree. More than 85% of leaders from the marketing and sales domains said that better alignment between the two domains contributed to critical growth in business, according to a LinkedIn survey.
Blending Inbound & Outbound in ABM
In Account-Based Marketing (ABM), integrating inbound and outbound strategies is critical to effectively targeting and engaging high-value accounts.
Outbound in ABM involves direct, proactive outreach to target accounts through tactics like personalized emails, direct mail, cold calling, and attending industry events. It’s about initiating contact and making target accounts aware of your solutions.
Inbound Marketing in ABM focuses on attracting target accounts to your brand through tailored content, SEO, social media engagement, and webinars. It’s about creating valuable experiences and content that draw potential clients in, facilitating their discovery of your solutions.
Integration of Both Strategies in ABM ensures a comprehensive approach. Outbound efforts reach out directly, while inbound tactics attract accounts, working together to engage and convert target accounts with a mix of personalized communication and content. This dual approach maximizes engagement and conversion opportunities by addressing each target account’s specific needs and interests.
Account-Based Marketing Tactics:
i) Tailored Value Proposition
This tactic involves crafting a unique value proposition for each target account, emphasizing how your product or service solves their specific problems or meets their unique needs. It requires a deep understanding of the account’s business, challenges, and industry trends to tailor messaging that resonates with them specifically.
ii) Stakeholder Mapping and Engagement
It identifies and understands the key decision-makers and influencers within a target account. This process, known as stakeholder mapping, helps tailor communication and engagement strategies for each stakeholder, considering their role, concerns, and influence over the buying process.
iii) Web Personalization
Web personalization refers to customizing visitors’ experience to your website based on their company, industry, or specific interests. For accounts targeted in an ABM strategy, this could mean displaying content, offers, or product information that is most relevant to them, thereby increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.
iv) Account-Based Social Selling
This tactic involves using social media platforms to directly engage with and sell to the key stakeholders of target accounts. It requires a strategic approach, where sales teams use social media to share relevant content, participate in discussions, and build relationships with potential buyers within the targeted accounts.
v) Paid Advertising
Paid advertising in ABM is highly targeted, focusing on the specific accounts and stakeholders you’re trying to reach. This can include PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, display ads, or social media ads only shown to individuals from your target accounts, ensuring your advertising budget is spent on the most relevant audience.
vi) Retargeting
Retargeting is a powerful tool in ABM, allowing you to keep your brand top of mind among the stakeholders of your target accounts who have visited your website but have yet to take the desired action. By displaying your ads to these individuals as they visit other sites online, you increase their chances of returning to your site and moving further along the sales funnel.
The tactics mentioned are integral to the success of an ABM campaign, each contributing to a cohesive strategy that aims to convert targeted accounts into loyal customers.
AI and ABM: The best of both worlds
And what happens after the deal is closed? Automation lets you monitor and record the entire transaction’s life cycle, providing valuable insights into customer behavior. This is crucial in boosting customer retention, a central part of ABM’s strategy.
Your marketing team could define the best buyer persona, while your sales team may develop the ideal customer profile. However, translating the strategy into action might lead to duplication of efforts and unnecessary back and forth between different stakeholders.
But what if process automation was a viable alternative? You could then automate the entire workflow from the inception stage by classifying firmographic data according to how it matches the buyer persona.
A great automation solution will integrate seamlessly with all your existing CRM and marketing applications. This will give you a comprehensive picture of your accounts, letting you track ROI across the funnel.
Automation is expected to change the rules of B2B marketing as we know it. While currently, it’s seen more as a support function and enabler, the future will likely see automation having a say in campaign strategies.
