This article is the first in a series of us taking a deeper dive into account-based marketing.
Rethinking your inbound marketing strategy to go after the larger, more profitable accounts can be daunting. Yet more and more, businesses are taking the ABM plunge because it focuses your efforts on the highest opportunity, highest value clients. However, particularly for companies and organizations with limited resources, coming up with a foolproof ABM strategy may seem daunting and counter-productive in terms of costs—but not if businesses do it the right way.
Here are strategies in laying the groundwork for a sound ABM plan before accelerating growth for your business.
1. Determine the accounts that would bring the most value to your business.
The first step in building an ABM plan is to identify the accounts that fit your criteria of an ideal client. If you already have an existing customer base, determine which accounts would be most profitable and are most likely to sustain long-term partnerships with you. Additional factors to consider are an account’s pain points and spending power—analyze whether or not a particular account has specific needs that your product or service can address and how much budget they’d be able to allocate for it.
2. Harness the combined power of inbound marketing and ABM.
In an article published on RollWorks, ABM requires reaching out to multiple stakeholders from different departments to address their unique pain points. The best way to engage these individual decision-makers is by creating highly personalized content and building your overall campaign around their specific needs and behavior (e.g., get back to those personas!). Compared to doing inbound marketing alone, ABM’s tailored approach allows marketers to gather more account insights, get results cost-effectively with faster turnaround times, and win more meaningful deals.
3. Identify the most effective channels for your target accounts.
Your target accounts regularly research current market trends, info on their competition, and anything related to their industry or the clients they serve. A part of your ABM strategy is to know which channels your customers are using for this purpose and which work best for them. Meet these accounts where they already are living and working online.
4. Invest in an ABM tech stack that will propel your business towards growth.
In starting with ABM, building a tech stack would make the overall process as seamless as possible for everyone – both internally and externally. Integrate your systems with other relevant platforms to help to ensure that your sales and marketing teams align in reaching out to your target list and gathering valuable account insights to base your ABM content. Furthermore, using the same platforms makes costing and reporting a lot more accurate and efficient. These integrations and tools are one of the building blocks of your ABM campaign and what you should also focus on when targeting enterprise accounts.
Winning Deals and Driving Growth through ABM
ABM allows companies to fine-tune their marketing strategies and gain a lot from deals closed with key decision-makers in a competitive and ever-changing business landscape. Whether you’re an early-stage startup or an established company looking to get into ABM, the bottom line is making sure that your business is ready for it in all aspects and that it would be the best route to take towards scalable growth.