Account Based Marketing: The Best B2B Strategy
Marketing is marketing, right? Well… it’s just not that simple. Marketing is a blanket term that refers to a plethora of industry + channel + strategy combos. Understanding what strategy is the best fit for your needs can be difficult, but if you’re selling B2B, you’ve come to the right place.
We’ve already explained how to utilize funnel marketing in the world of B2B, but now we’re going to look at the best B2B marketing strategy: ABM.
ABM is all about quality over quantity.
Account Based Marketing, or ABM, has actually been proven to generate the highest ROI of all B2B marketing approaches. Plus, it’s more budget-friendly to begin with. ABM is all about setting your sights on a specific target, rather than casting your net and hoping you catch something good. Instead of your goal being to attract 20 new random, low-probability leads per month, it should be to attract 5 solid leads. ABM is all about quality over quantity. Overall, this is the most effective B2B marketing strategy out there. So what makes it so great?
The deep personalization of this approach is what makes it so effective.
ABM is the equivalent of a comedian fine-tuning their standup material specific to the region in which they will be performing. Odds are, if a comedian is making jokes to a room full of New Yorkers, they’ll have success with New York related content. The same goes for your business. If you tailor your marketing efforts to speak to a specific audience, they’ll likely be better received than if they were merely generic, catch-all messages. The deep personalization of this approach is what makes it so effective. As with all interpersonal communications — dating, making friends, delivering jokes — sharing a common ground makes things easier.
The more you understand your target account as well as your top competitors, the stronger your ABM efforts will be.
So, when working on your ABM strategy, make a list of shared values between your business and the account(s) you’re targeting. Make another list of what their needs are and how your organization can solve those problems. Do some research on your top competitors for this account and figure out what makes you the better choice. The more you understand your target account as well as your top competitors, the stronger your ABM efforts will be.
Selecting the accounts you will target is the foundation for your ABM efforts, so don’t rush the process.
Possibly the most important thing when it comes to ABM is selecting the right accounts to target. Since you’re going to be focusing on bringing in a smaller number of leads, you want to make sure that your goal client is high-value. Again, the focus here is quality over quantity. That said, you also want to make sure that your goals are realistic and attainable. The sweet spot is in the overlap between high-value and promising. Selecting the accounts you will target is the foundation for your ABM efforts, so don’t rush the process. Utilize whatever resources you can to identify your target accounts and the decision makers within them.
The channels you choose to rely on are just as important as the content in your messaging.
Once you’ve set your sights and made your lists, it’s time to get the ball rolling. The next step is to define what messaging will be most effective. Here is where you’re going to want to use that list of pain points and address them one by one. The channels you choose to rely on are just as important as the content in your messaging. Think about where the key decision makers at your target account will be most reachable. Is it in their email inbox, on their personal cell, or on LinkedIn? Perhaps none of the above. Usually you’ll be most successful when hitting from multiple angles. This is possible with ABM in a way that it’s not for more traditional marketing because your approach is more focused and therefore can be more thorough.
ABM relies heavily on customer relations and a genuine personal connection.
Because ABM is so client-centric, you’ll really want to focus on building a two-way street of communication. With other more traditional marketing strategies, it’s usually one-way messaging with no room to converse. ABM relies heavily on customer relations and a genuine personal connection. Opening up the door for your potential clients to reach out with any questions/comments/concerns will not only improve your marketing efforts, but also build a strong foundation for a relationship. Boosting engagement with your target audience is always a solid foot in the door, and ABM has been reported by 83% of companies to do just that.
ABM minimizes dead-end leads and replaces them with high value, high probability prospects.
With the hyper-focus required for ABM, less resources are wasted on trying to generate a higher quantity of less significant leads. Plus, it makes the conversion from lead to sale a lot easier since the relationship has been nurtured at a heightened degree. ABM minimizes dead-end leads and replaces them with high value, high probability prospects. Why waste effort on small potatoes when a strategy shift could land you the big ones? 91% of businesses that use ABM report significantly larger deal size, 25% of whom actually report deals being 50% larger than before using ABM.
If you’re not already leveraging this approach: stop wasting time and commit to making the shift. If you’d like to talk strategy with the experts, schedule a consultation with Social Canvas today.
