Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
Your marketing department and digital agency can concentrate their efforts on a particular segment of customers or accounts with account-based content marketing. This allows you to create content that is highly personalized and is directly addressing their problems and demonstrates how your product can help them solve their problems.
ABM content that is efficient must convey the correct information to each stakeholder in the buyer center at the right moment. This requires identifying the requirements of each individual at various stages in their journey.
Targeting Accounts with Specific Goals
In contrast to traditional content strategies which are designed to draw strangers into leads using broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing focuses on connecting with targeted accounts in a highly customized way. By identifying the top decision makers for each account and identifying their issues and objectives, marketers can create and deliver customized content that is relevant to the specific accounts. This can lead to a more productive interaction with customers and prospects, which ultimately leads to better business results.
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 which marketing channels that should be utilized, the buyers within each account and what type of content strategy marketing is required to increase engagement. This could include thought leadership content (e.g. Whitepapers, case-studies webinars, retargeting ads, webinars, personalized website experiences and other marketing strategies that are specific to each client are all possible.
In the end, account-based content marketing can yield a higher return on investment than traditional content marketing tactics. 84% of B2B marketing professionals who have implemented account-based marketing into their strategies report higher ROI than any other marketing effort.
Although it takes more effort and time to nurture a smaller number of targeted accounts, the advantages are significant for companies that want to grow their revenue throughout the funnel. This is particularly true for professional service businesses in which the quality of the customers or prospects is more important than the number of people they are able to attract.
ABM is also a great option for businesses who want to grow their business with existing customers over time, by establishing trusting relationships. Research has shown that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than investing money to find and convert new customers.
Combining ABM with inbound marketing strategies can increase the effectiveness of content marketing. Marketers can improve the relevance of their content to potential customers at every stage of the purchasing journey by mixing pillar content with the retargeting technique and landing pages for lead capture. This allows them to create more acquisition growth, acceleration, and growth revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.
Making Hyper-Personalized Content
ABM is among the hottest trends in marketing, and it’s vital for marketers to understand how their existing strategies for content are able to be integrated into this new method. It can be difficult to comprehend how ABM actually operates. In a recent presentation at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox provided a crash course on ABM and explained the most important considerations and what to expect in a successful execution.
The most efficient ABM content strategy starts by understanding your ideal client’s pain points and their goals. Making content that is in line with these goals will allow you to provide a more personalized experience, which will ultimately improve conversions. The content you create should focus on the specific requirements of each account. This is why it is important to map out the path of users in each of your accounts. By doing this, you’ll be able to discern what kinds of content (and even individual pages and items) are most popular with these people. This information can be used to improve user’s journeys on these accounts, displaying the most effective content.
Making content strategy marketing that is hyper-personalized can be a challenge, but it is an essential step in increasing the impact of your ABM efforts. According to State of Marketing, 2023 83% of customers are willing to give up their personal information to receive a more customized experience.
AI processing of real-time data is a method to create hyper-personalized content. This will help you control the way your content is distributed and offer suggestions for the future steps, and react to events in real time. This tool can increase the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It is not a substitute for multivariate testing and strategic planning.
The pillar and cluster structure is another method of hyper-personalize content. This allows you to create a a comprehensive piece of content that describes the problem that your target accounts face, and then link to supplementary pieces that focus on specific aspects of the issue. Fitness trackers, for example are able to provide a range of common benefits and goals but the method in which individuals use them may be completely different.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Professional services marketers have traditionally focused on creating an efficient sales channel by using broad marketing campaigns to reach large audiences in the hope that one or more of them would be converted. This strategy might have served its purpose when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model however, it’s not as effective in the current Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all potential leads through the same phase of the process, it’s important to concentrate on attracting high-value prospects and provide them with content and experiences specifically tailored to their specific needs and requirements.
The first step to this is to identify your ideal client profile (ICP). It’s not as easy as creating buyer personas, since you need to consider the kinds of solutions that customers are seeking and how they can be best utilized.
Once you have identified your ICP the next step is to design a content strategy that connects with these accounts across different channels. This could range from social media advertisements to email outreach.
It’s crucial 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, ensuring that you don’t waste time and resources attracting the wrong type of audience.
Another important step is to make use of the information you have on your top-performing clients. By looking at your previous client data, you can see what positive attributes they have in common, such as being in the financial sector or falling within a certain size. This information can be used to create targeted campaigns targeting similar prospects.
It’s also essential to keep track of your ABM strategy’s performance and make any needed adjustments. For instance, if you notice that your target account isn’t responding to your content, it could be time to reach out to them and find out what else you can do to help them move down the sales funnel. You can align your ABM strategy with your content strategy by following these steps.
Measuring the 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 instance when you’re targeting healthcare companies, your content needs to be focused on their issues and concerns. This type of personalization not only helps with ABM but also builds solid relationships with prospects and customers.
ABM can be utilized at any stage of the sales funnel. It is even more efficient than traditional lead generation at the top of the funnel. This is because it will help you to identify and engage only a few accounts that are likely to convert, rather than trying to generate leads from a huge crowd that may not be interested in your product or service.
While there’s a place for offline relationships-building strategies such as face-to-face meetings, phone calls and handwritten notes, the majority of customers today prefer digital self-serve and remote engagement. That’s why it’s vital to provide customers with the right content at the right time, and on the channel that is most effective for them.
ABM is particularly effective in engaging C-suite executives who are difficult to reach. They tend to ignore mass emails and are more likely to respond to content that is relevant to their requirements and uses cases. Additionally, ABM can help you accelerate sales by allowing you to connect with your prospects at the most crucial stages of their journey — like when they’re researching solutions to solve a particular business issue.
ABM isn’t as old-fashioned as traditional selling and marketing strategies, but it’s quickly becoming a top strategy for B2B companies looking to improve 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.
