Data-driven 10X Digital Marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a system that allows digital marketers to work with sales teams to optimize strategy, personalize content and increase conversions. This approach reverses the traditional marketing model by starting with a small segment of leads to build relationships with, instead of casting a wide prospect net. After working with clients to evolve their approach, here are four ways we’ve seen ABM marketing improve client conversions:
1. ABM Unifies Sales and Marketing Teams
It’s not always easy to get everyone in an organization on the same page, even if their end goal is the same. The ABM model, however, is deeply rooted in collaboration. It creates a shared, clear goal for your entire team to follow. At a high level, this process breaks down into four simple steps:
- Sales identify a specific segment of accounts (clients) to target;
- Content marketers use personalized content to engage the prospects;
- Persons with high content engagement in the marketing funnel are identified;
- Sales move to land and expand these relationships, leading toward conversion.
While this process may not work seamlessly every time, it’s a hyper-focused way of sharing the lead generation and conversion process between your teams. From step one, the entire team is working in lock-step toward a clear, focused target person and end goal.
2. ABM Helps Build Data into your Strategy
ABM is all about placing bets, but they don’t have to be blind. The most effective sales teams and digital marketers use a variety of data to identify the accounts worth pursuing. You can’t get specific if you don’t do your research. For many organizations, this includes an effort to gather audience research, behavior analysis, digital footprint data, target persona development or trend forecasts. All of these data points, both qualitative and quantitative, can drive how you shape your campaigns.
3. ABM Focuses on High Probability Conversion
As mentioned earlier, ABM is—for all intents and purposes—reversed traditional marketing. Instead of creating campaigns to reach large numbers of people at once and then deciding who is a likely prospect, you start with those prospects from day one. Though it may take more initial effort to determine who that is, you end up with a strategy that’s inherently focused on conversions with high probability. This also reduces the stress on your sales team, as it ensures that the leads they pursue have already been significantly vetted and proven interested.
4. ABM Creates a Roadmap for Marketing Content Creators
“Who are we creating this for? And what do they care about?” There are two of the most important questions you should ask yourself when applying content to the ABM approach. Hyper-targeted content is one of the only ways to catch the attention of your intended audience.
Solomon Thimothy, Forbes contributor shared that, “in account-based marketing, you’ve got to make sure you are speaking to the right person with the right message. Otherwise, they won’t have any reason to care about it.” He continued by pointing out that, “you can create relevant and valuable content and then target specific companies with LinkedIn ads or Facebook ads or promote it via email. If this is something that solves their problem, they will be happy to engage with it.”
An ABM strategy without meaningful content can’t work. Just as you build up your sales team, you have to create an engine that builds up your content library.
Implementing an Account-Based Marketing Approach
Whether you’re new to ABM or simply looking to expand your strategy, our team of content strategists and marketing experts are here to help. If you’re interested in learning more about our approach, reach out to us today. It’s time we turn that prospect pipeline into meaningful conversions.