Casting a wide net in search of business-to-business (B2B) customers isn’t the right strategy for every company. Rather than spending resources on a larger market, find out why a personalized approach that targets specific accounts could better help your business achieve its sales goals.
If you’ve never used account-based marketing (ABM) before, there’s never been a better time to start. B2B companies with highly targeted audiences use ABM to create effective sales funnels that drive results. Find out how to take this marketing strategy to the next level with account-based personalization, and learn how it can help you meet high-reaching objectives.
Define Your Market
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One of the key differences between traditional digital marketing and digital ABM is that the former casts a wide net, while the latter considers individual accounts to be their own markets. To make the most of ABM, you’ll need to break your pool of both current and prospective clients into individual markets.
Doing this offers ample opportunity for personalization. Since you’ll work to build a marketing strategy for each client individually, you’ll customize digital campaigns, sales goals, and even relationship structures. Do the necessary research for each major account you want to win, and you can easily define and optimize your market.
For example, email marketing company Strongview used account-based personalization to define its target market and provide custom content with different greetings and unique images for each industry targeted.. As a result, the company experienced a 42 percent increase in web traffic, 29 percent increase in conversions from previously inactive accounts, and a 42 percent increase in engagement from target accounts.
Create a Personalized Experience for Each Account
With ABM software, you can even personalize website content for each account you’re targeting.
Easy-to-use personalization features track IP addresses for your target customers and enable your website to serve custom content to users from these select IP addresses. Doing this increases the chances that you’ll give representatives from each account exactly what they want to see, whether they’re searching for an answer to a question or they’re ready to make a purchase.
Integrate your ABM initiatives with marketing automation and sales platforms so you can easily follow up with the clients you want to land. Most ABM platforms offer seamless integrations with select platforms. Doing this automatically incorporates your target customers into each step of your marketing strategy, so you won’t miss the opportunity to follow up at key intervals.
Identify the Key Players
As you begin to develop an ABM strategy, it’s important to remember that each account or market consists of several key players. After all, most companies seek a consensus before reaching a decision, and not every person at the table will respond to marketing messages in the same way. That’s why it’s essential to identify the key decision-makers for each account and understand how best to get through to each one.
For instance, the marketing director, project manager, and CEO will each analyze your sales pitch from a different perspective. If you need all of these major players to sign off before greenlighting your project, then you need to tailor your messages to each one with headers, pictures, and white papers.
Find out who the key players are by doing basic research on the company’s website or on LinkedIn. As you shape each personalized account, review the key players with your team during internal meetings and redraft your list of target employees as necessary.
Use Retargeting
Just because you don’t generate warm leads the first time you get the attention of prospective clients doesn’t mean you should cross them off your list. Instead of abandoning hard-to-get clients, retarget them instead.
Retargeting is a key component of ABM, as it identifies clients who have engaged with your content previously and then works to place your content in front of their eyes again. Many ABM platforms utilize ad-based retargeting strategies that serve ads to users who have previously visited your website or clicked on your content.
Some platforms even automatically provide personalized content that prompts conversions and drives sales after detecting buying signals. With this kind of personalized power, you can strike while the iron is hot and land the clients you’ve been pursuing at the precise moment they’re ready to buy.
Measure Your Results
When you use a marketing platform like Funnel Envy, Google Analytics, or a combination of both, you can easily measure the results of your ABM strategy. Social tracking tools like Kissmetrics also enable you to monitor engagement across platforms to ensure that you’ve targeted the right players.
In addition, you can quickly collect metrics that help you determine the return on investment (ROI) for each campaign. Since you’ve already done research to determine how much each account is worth to your business, you can easily do the math to calculate your return. As Alterra Group states, most executives look for revenue growth over any other measure of ROI.
By knowing campaign ROI, you’ll reduce risk and wasted resources. Don’t let a generic marketing strategy deliver results that are less than optimal. Take advantage of FunnelEnvy’s account-based personalization tool, and find out for yourself how this strategy can help you take your B2B sales to the next level.
