Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
Your marketing department and digital agency can focus their efforts on a particular group of clients or accounts that have account-based content marketing. This lets you create highly-personalized, targeted content that speaks directly to their issues and explain how your product will help them.
Effective ABM content must deliver the correct information to each stakeholder at the appropriate time in the buyer's center. This requires identifying the requirements of each person at different stages in their journey.
The goal is to target specific accounts
Contrary to traditional content strategies that seek to attract and convert people who are not leads through broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing focuses on connecting with targeted accounts in a highly personalized method. By identifying the key decision makers for each account and understanding their needs and objectives, marketers can create and provide content that is relevant to specific accounts. This can lead to a more productive dialog with prospects and customers which in turn leads to greater business outcomes.
After identifying your accounts of interest After identifying your target accounts, you must develop accounts plans for each. This involves analyzing every account and determining the marketing channels that should be utilized, the buyers within each account that should be engaged and what type of content is required to increase engagement. This could include thought-provoking content such as whitepapers, or case studies. Whitepapers, case-studies webinars, retargeting advertisements, webinars customized website experiences, and other marketing techniques specific to each client are all possible.
Account-based content marketing can provide an even higher return on your investment than traditional strategies for content. 84% of B2B marketing professionals who have incorporated account based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.
Although it takes more resources and time to nurture small groups of targeted accounts, the benefits are significant for companies that want to grow their revenue at all stages of the funnel. This is particularly relevant for professional service companies, where the quality of customers or prospects is more important than how many people they can attract.
ABM is also a great alternative for businesses looking to expand business with their existing customers over time by developing trusting relations. Research has revealed that it's much more cost effective to invest in keeping existing customers than it is to spend money trying to locate and convert new ones.
By using ABM with traditional inbound marketing strategies companies can increase the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. Through a combination of pillar content, retargeting, and lead capture landing pages, marketers can give greater relevance to prospects at all stages of the buying process. This allows them to create more acquisition growth, acceleration, and expansion revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.
Create content that is hyper-personalized
ABM is a hot topic in the field of marketing. It is crucial that marketers are aware of how to adapt their strategies for content to the new method. But it can be difficult to understand how ABM can be applied in real-world. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert, and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave an overview of ABM in a recent talk. They discussed the most important factors to consider, as well as what to expect from a successful implementation.
The most effective ABM content strategy starts with understanding your ideal client's needs and goals. Content that is geared towards these goals will allow you to provide more personalized service and increase conversions. Content should also be tailored to the needs of each account. This is why it's important to map out the journey of people within each of your target accounts. This will help you determine what content (and specific pages and items) is most popular with your intended audience. This data can be used to optimize journeys on your site, showing top performing content to people from the accounts.
It can be difficult to create content that is hyper-personalized, however, it's a crucial step to boost the effectiveness of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of respondents are willing to share their personal information in exchange for a more personalised experience.
AI processing of real-time data is one way to create hyper-personalized content. This can help you manage the way that your content is presented, provide suggestions for next steps, and respond to events in real-time. While it isn't a substitute for multivariate testing or strategic planning, it can be a useful tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.
The cluster and pillar structure is another method of hyper-personalize content. This lets you create a full piece that addresses the issue your targeted accounts face and link it to supplementary pieces which specifically address the problem. For instance a fitness tracker could have a variety of common goals and benefits however the way in which different types of people use it can differ greatly.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Professional service marketers have historically focused on creating a linear sales channel, using broad marketing campaigns to draw large numbers of people in the hope that a few of them would be converted. This strategy might have been effective in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model, however, it's not as effective in the current Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Rather than trying to push all potential leads through the same process of the process, it's important to concentrate on attracting high-value prospects and provide them with experiences and content that are tailored to their specific requirements and needs.
The first step is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This isn't as easy as creating buyer profiles, as you also need to look at the different types of solutions that each client is looking for and the best way to use them.
Once you've identified your ICP then, create a strategy for content that connects with each account through different channels. This could range from social media ads to email outreach.
best ai seo software SICK SEO that your sales and marketing teams are on the same page as you implement your ABM strategy. This will ensure that your content is relevant to each account and ensure that you do not waste time or resources on the wrong people.
A key step to take is to use the data you have on your top-performing clients. By looking at your previous client data, you can determine what positive characteristics they have in common, such as being in the financial sector or falling within a certain company size. This information can then be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns targeting similar potential customers.
It's also crucial to monitor your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary adjustments. If your target account does not respond to your content, you may be able to contact them and find out what you can do to help move them down the sales funnel. If you take these steps you'll be able get your ABM strategy and content efforts more in sync, which will ultimately help to drive more conversions.
Measuring Success
Account-based content marketing is about creating content (videos reports, blogs, posts, and webinars) that are personalized and relevant to a particular account or persona. For example If you're focusing on healthcare companies, your content needs to be focused on their issues and concerns. This kind of personalization isn't just important in ABM but also an excellent method to establish solid relationships with your prospects and customers.
The best part about ABM is that it can be utilized throughout the sales funnel. In fact, it can be more efficient than traditional lead generation when used at the top of the funnel. This is because you can identify and connect with a limited number of accounts that are more likely to convert rather than trying to generate leads from an audience that might not be interested.
While offline tactics such as phone calls and meetings in person, or handwritten notes remain effective, today's buyers are more inclined to remote and digital self-service. It's crucial to provide the right content, at the right time, and in the format they prefer.
ABM is particularly effective in engaging hard-to-reach C-suite executives who are typically skeptical of mass-email campaigns, but are more likely to engage with content that addresses their needs and usage scenarios. Additionally, ABM can help you reduce the time to sell by allowing you to connect with your prospects at key stages of their journey, like when they're researching solutions to address a specific business issue.
ABM isn't as old as traditional selling and marketing strategies, but it's rapidly becoming a top choice for B2B companies looking to improve their performance and increase revenue. In fact, 76% of marketers who have adopted the ABM approach say it improves ROI, while 81% report that it increases deal close rates and upselling/cross-selling rates.