Account-based marketing or ABM is a proven sales and marketing method that targets a group of accounts that have something in common, usually pain points that a specific product or service can solve. ABM sales and marketing strategies take advantage of these commonalities by personalizing advertising efforts to target this group with campaigns that “speak” to their collective needs. The tactics mentioned here are some of the most effective ABM strategies for companies struggling to get started with AMB.
Customize Content
You’re probably already creating valuable content for your website to drive organic traffic, but this general content is not enough for ABM. You’ll want to customize your content to address your key accounts’ pain points and needs. This means you might have to have a separate blog just for your ABM segment. Even if it can be found on your website by anyone visiting it, your ABM campaigns will link directly to the customized content.
Your content also needs to be high quality and valuable, so you’ll need to demonstrate how your product or service can solve their issues. Don’t just talk about what it does. Talk about what it solves and how that solution will make your ABM audience’s life easier. This is what they want to hear or read and it will resonate with them if they understand how your solution works for them.
Video is Personal
Because ABM usually targets decision makers inside companies, they expect more personalization than your average prospect. In other words, they need to be wooed. Video is a great way to make a marketing campaign personal. You can incorporate video into almost all outreach efforts, including in emails, e-newsletters, and blog posts. Videos can demonstrate your product or service in a way the written word can’t, especially if there’s a process involved that solves various pain points at various points.
You can even send a direct personal message to your prospects, addressing them by name or company and personally explaining to them how your product or service can ease their pain points. Nothing is more personal than hearing from you directly, even if it’s on video and your ABM prospects will instantly feel more comfortable with you when you’ve put a face to your name.
Customer Testimonials Create Bonds
When a prospect sees that a similar company’s pain points were solved with your product or service, they form a bond with that company, and by extension, with you. They want to see your product or service in action and the best way to do that is to get testimonials from current customers that had the same issues as your prospects until your company helped solve them. Customer testimonials are extremely powerful in ABM because prospects think to themselves, “well, if it worked for them, it’s going to work for us too because we’re experiencing the same issues they were.” In terms of persuasion, there are very few ABM tactics that work as well as testimonials.
Conclusion
If you’re considering implementing ABM in your own company, there’s no better time to do it than right now. Start identifying your accounts that have the same pain points and start using the tactics here to convert them to sales.
