6 Step Strategy For Successful Account Based Marketing Campaign

If executed well, an Account-Based Marketing campaign could result in improved conversion rates for your top target accounts. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic discipline that made its foray in the B2B world many decades ago. The irony is that many marketers are still struggling to develop successful account-based marketing campaigns. 

According to a survey done by ITSMA, in 2013 the Investment in ABM was at an all-time high and was expected to rise in the coming years. With time there predictions have been proved correct, and as of now, 80% of marketers have started emphasizing ABM efforts. 

ABM empowers B2B marketers to create more brand awareness and better engagement with their target list of accounts. Like any other business strategy ABM campaigns should also start with clear objectives and expected outcomes. Typical objectives you should consider are: 

• Your expectation for qualified leads (Quantity and Quality)
• Average Revenue expectations per closed account
• Overall ROI from ABM campaign
• The right Budget for the ABM campaign? 

Account Based Marketing Campaign Strategies: 6 Steps to Make it Successful

Some essential components should be appropriately incorporated to develop an effective ABM campaign. Here is the list of the same.

1. Identifying Target Accounts

The identification of target accounts is the most crucial part of any marketing campaign. Considering the right data makes you scientifically identify and pick up the accounts that possess a high likelihood of being your customers.

The essential data that you should consider to get more real company-level insights are:

• Firmographics to pick the right look and feel of your broad target companies
• Secondary Research to add a layer of intelligence to pick companies that are prime for your product or service

The firmographics analysis provides you broad company information, i.e., company size, industry, employee strength, revenue estimation, estimated growth, and graphical presence.

Secondary Research analysis reveals a deeper layer of intelligence. For example, if you are selling mobile app security software that is good for financial services companies the secondary research layer should help you identify Financial Services companies that have a Mobile App that is being widely used by its customers. 

Considering data from this analysis will enable you to decide on the relevant accounts to pitch.

2. Building Account Centric Profiles

Now its time to get personalized with the particular people from the selected list of accounts for ABM. The objective of an Account-Based Marketing campaign is to build relationships with people, not with companies. Remember you may be targeting an account but at the end of the day, people in that account are going to make the purchase decision. You can explore LinkedIn to find out the people occupying the relevant roles in those companies. You can also invest in buying quality leads from list broker companies.   

3. Developing Personalized Messages

Once you are done with collecting their contacts (emails or social media handles) next, you should build messaging that will resonate with the audience personas. The messaging should make them feel engaged and immediately makes sense to them. 

Do proper homework before creating and building personalized messaging to these personas. You should research and know about their pain points, the current priorities, their needs, and their general buying behavior. After identifying their priorities, develop a straightforward content strategy to make them believe that you know what they need, and you can offer the best solution.

Psychology says buyers want to be treated like a human and your ABM targets are no different. In fact, referring to one recent Salesforce report, 72% of decision-makers in any business prefer personalized marketing instead of being treated as just another prospect in your marketing automation software. 

4. Choosing The Right Mix of Channels

After identifying the accounts, target profile, and creating the right content, the next step is to present this content to them in a fitting way. For that, you need to choose a perfect blend of platforms through which you will target them. Inbound and outbound marketing channels need to be involved in this. Your ultimate aim is to get noticed by your prospects. So, try all traditional and creative options to get their attention. 

Run multi-channel campaigns using phone, email, online advertising and publish your content across mediums that may be of interest to the target audience. To intensify these efforts, you could also sponsor and attend industry-specific events that you expect your target audience to attend.   

Check out some Content Marketing Best Practices that will help you to deliver the right content to your ABM prospects through the right channel.

5. Aligning Sales & Marketing

The success of any marketing strategy is often calculated by the performance of actual sales. Running an Account Based Marketing campaign allows marketers to concentrate on particular people only. The ABM campaign activates sales and other revenue teams with account intelligence that aids in prioritizing the marketing qualified accounts. Moreover, it helps in 360-degree alignment in the sales & marketing departments. Here are some stats showing the benefits of ABM efforts.

• The B2B companies working on the ABM efforts; reported for having 200% more revenue than those who don’t.
• There are 67% higher chances of lead conversions and getting new clients. 
• Along with higher sales companies experienced 36% higher customer retention; who have tightly aligned ABM efforts. 

The entire ABM structure works around lead management that widens the scope of more conversions. Sales from ABM perspective concentrates on increased engagement, larger deals, and faster growth.

 6. Measuring Success & Optimizing

Remember the objectives that you set at the initial stage? You should measure the performance of your Account-Based Marketing campaigns against those goals. Doing this will give you a clear picture of your current standing. 

Check how many of those goals are achieved or how close you are to making those goals. Have a full-funnel approach. Check if your target audience is responding as expected if you are getting adequate qualified leads if your sales team is converting qualified leads and getting the desired sales results?

The beauty of playing with Account-Based Marketing campaigns is that your performance evaluation is much more precise as you're targeting a specific group of people within a target list of companies. And in case of not getting the expected results, it is easy to analyze and pinpoint the weak links of your plan.

In a nutshell, a successful ABM campaign demands company-wide collaboration and an in-depth study of your prospects. You should have a clear understanding of everything, your ABM goals, personas involved,  challenges your prospects are facing and their preferred channels of engagement only then you can hit the bull's eye with your A Marketing efforts.

Well, it doesn't sound easy, but those who manage to pull it off the rewards are great. We can help you in creating perfect ABM strategy and manage your ABM campaign, write to us at info@growthnatives.com