Over the past decade, the power of mass marketing has significantly waned, especially for enterprise sales. In a world of cookie-cutter solutions, account-based marketing (ABM) has quickly become the go-to marketing method for its ability to connect more powerfully with the consumer.
ABM can be profoundly successful with proper execution; however, some companies encounter challenges and can’t figure out where they’re going wrong. If you’re having trouble with your ABM process, it may be as simple as implementing a few small tweaks. If you want learn more about streamlining your ABM processes, keep reading for tips and strategies that will get you on your way to effective account-based marketing solutions.
Establish Specific Goals for Campaigns
The first step in streamlining your ABM process is to makes sure you’re defining specific goals for each campaign. The ABM campaign design process essentially functions backward; defining the end result is the best place to start. A simplified map of the process looks like this:
- Define desired outcomes first, including identifying target accounts and desired quantitative results.
- Identify channels and develop the best tactics for reaching these outcomes. Base your plans on research about target accounts and marketing expertise.
- Break strategies into steps, and create methods for achieving each step
- Throughout the process, define metrics and measure results to determine how effective the strategies are.
Specific goals act as a compass for the entire campaign. Without them, you’ll lose your path.
Create Customized Offers for Leads
Personalization is one of the strengths of account-based marketing. Rather than throwing every possible offer at every prospect, successful ABM relies on carefully choosing the appropriate products and solutions for each individual account.
Along with targeting leads with the most relevant offers, try further personalizing each offer with the company’s name and information. A decision maker is more likely to open an offer that uses the company’s name and relevant details than a vague promotion that might not pertain to their particular needs.
Customization is especially important for ABM because this approach relies on a higher quality of engagement with fewer accounts. Fewer accounts means marketers need to create higher conversion rates to be successful; customized offers for prospects are one way to accomplish this.
Close Leads With Sales-Oriented Offers
an be hit-or-miss, try increasing sales by offering current or potential accounts personalized offers with a sales agenda. This can be a great way to streamline the lead-generating and closing process.
The goal of sales-oriented offers is to encourage accounts to set a meeting at which your sales team can promote products and services that might be of interest. Some examples of sales-oriented offers are company-specific research reports that highlight areas where your products or services would be useful.
Other successful sales-oriented offers take the form of free services that will help your company get face time with targeted accounts, such as security audits or other assessments of your current systems.
Employ the Best Creatives to Reach Designated Markets
Even more so than mass marketing, ABM can suffer heavily from less-than-stellar creatives. Because ABM is a targeted approach, creatives need to understand how to analyze and respond to each account with a high level of accuracy. A high level of clarity and flexibility requires better creatives, as no one-size-fits-all campaigns work.
Make a Campaign Calendar to Stay on Top of Details
It may seem obvious, but don’t neglect administration. Once you’ve created a concrete plan based on defined outcomes, losing track of the important steps and relevant dates can cause major setbacks in achieving those goals. Something as simple as a shared calendar with reminders before roll-out dates can eliminate stress and error. This will help ensure everyone from sales to your creative department is on the same page.
Personalized Web Experiences
Personalizing landing pages for each account is a wonderful way to maximize conversion rates. These days, there are many technology-driven options for targeting individual accounts.
Account-specific images and offers can enhance the online experience for each of your accounts, ensuring you don’t lose precious clients by overwhelming them with options that aren’t relevant to their needs. This can be an incredibly powerful tool for conversion. According to Insightera, personalized landing pages convert four times more web traffic than mass marketed material.
An example of poor web personalization is the now-common use of a generic landing-page web carousel or “hero” banner. These options present too much information that may not pertain to the targeted account and increase the likelihood of losing their interest. Rather than employing a generic hero banner or carousel, try offering custom hero messages to engage each account.
Flesh Out Your Contact Database
One of the biggest barriers to a streamlined ABM process is a lack of complete coverage in targeted accounts. The easiest way to remedy this is to create a comprehensive database of contacts for each of your accounts.
Contact information should not only include the contact’s department and level, but their specific role – especially as it relates to your marketing efforts. Titles are often not descriptive enough on their own. Providing specific role information will eliminate the need for your employees to spend time figuring out which person they need to contact in any given instance.
Providing a centralized location for all of your contacts will also help reduce the amount of time wasted in hunting for the right person or accidentally sending targeted materials to the wrong contact. Additionally, updating this database regularly will ensure that inactive contacts are removed from everyone’s contact lists.
Streamline for Success
ABM is proving to be a powerful new approach to marketing. In an age where people have become desensitized to marketing, ABM allows marketers to return to a more personalized approach. When it comes to making ABM successful, however, it can be easier said than done. Using these steps, marketers can work to ensure that their companies aren’t letting precious resources slip through the cracks, undermining the potential success rate of the ABM approach.