Account-based marketing is an alternative way of targeting customers. Rather than designing campaigns for the majority, it prefers to base itself on key customers. Thus, it is a process that takes the personalization of the marketing message to the extreme. This has several advantages: prospects are more easily converted and feel fully understood and satisfied. But how to implement a good account-based marketing strategy? At the end of this article, you will find the 3 tactical pillars to keep in mind.
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Summary
- What is account-based marketing?
- 3 major advantages of account-based marketing
- The 3 best practices of account-based marketing
What is account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing (also known as ABM) is based on targeting. In this case, it focuses a brand’s marketing efforts on a limited sample of high-value customers. Thus, it is fundamentally different from traditional marketing strategies. Indeed, ABM is adapted to the latent needs of each targeted customer.
This method is all the more relevant when we know the impact of personalization on customer relations. In addition, account-based marketing is beneficial to many types of structures:
- B2B brands
- any structure with a high value-added offer
- and companies with a multi-party cooperation model
Indeed, account-based marketing tactics are known for their effective use of marketing & sales resources. All this, put together, creates a targeting strategy with multiple advantages, among which we find:
- a strong focus on the best market opportunities
- improved internal collaboration
- and increased engagement rates
3 major advantages of account-based marketing
ABM is a unique process that reshuffles the deck in target marketing. This bold choice is anything but vain. As proof, we present 3 of its most palpable advantages:
- its effectiveness in customer prospecting
- its strong customer conversion
- and its higher customer retention
Leveraging your marketing resources
First of all, account-based marketing makes efficient use of the commercial resources of companies. To do this, it targets a small group of customers that corresponds precisely to the brand’s ideal customer persona. This process personalizes prospecting like no other marketing strategy! It also avoids spreading marketing efforts over too wide a range of prospects.
Consequently, this approach grants many positive points:
- creation of more impactful marketing messages
- strengthening the links between brands and their potential customers
- better customer loyalty
- more opportunities for cross-selling
- and so on
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Ultimately, account-based marketing detects which resources to use for each operational step. This is when brands better track their Return on Investment.
Converting high-value customers
Second, this tactic is very rewarding, as it simplifies the acquisition of typical customers. Its targeted approach provides key metrics to optimize marketing campaigns: brands adapt to their customers. It pushes companies to consider each key customer as a market segment in its own right. (Kelly S. et al. 2017)
Not only that, account-based marketing allows brands to maintain good contact with the decision-makers of the targeted brands. As a result, the cost of customer acquisition is lower than usual (i.e., with traditional marketing campaigns).
More account-based marketing to increase loyalty
The effective communication and increased conversion enabled by ABM have other beneficial effects. We are referring to the increase in customer retention. After all, who would remain unmoved by a company presenting solutions that precisely meet your latent needs? At first glance, not many people. For example, customers recently acquired through account-based marketing are very satisfied with the deliverables they receive. And we know that a satisfied customer will likely call on your services again soon.
Discover 6 good reasons to satisfy your customers better
In short, the benefits of ABM can be summarized in one sentence. It improves the customer experience while making it more consistent.
Account-based marketing and its personalized approach reduce the negotiation time with key customers.
The 3 best practices of account-based marketing
Before concluding this article, here are 3 strategic examples of ABM. They will allow you to launch your ABM campaigns on a solid foundation. To do this, you need to:
- keep an eye on target marketing
- use data marketing
- create and personalize your content
Define your ideal marketing target precisely
This strategic point is the basis for successful account-based marketing. In addition, the correct definition of the ideal target marketing remains fundamental to reaching key customers better. Indeed, we detect 3 positive effects enabled by this good identification:
- Resource management: distinguish priority investment areas and allocate sufficient time to personalize the marketing message.
- Return on investment: analyze relevant marketing data to perfect its follow-up. Some metrics to track are customer conversion rate, lifetime value, acquisition cost, and so on.
- Industry knowledge: determine which customers are the most prolific and understand their behavior. Among other things, this allows you to identify their main buying motivations.
Thus, the identification phase of the best customers is based on an important analytical effort.
Use data marketing for a more efficient account-based marketing
As we mentioned in a previous article, data marketing offers many advantages. For example, it explains the real motivations of customers. As you can see, it is in brands’ best interest to mix data marketing practices with account-based marketing practices. In this case, here are 2 suggestions of good practices for your data use:
- Rely on several databases: this is what the so-called “classic” companies do. Moreover, more and more are opting for this method (Hartmann, P.M. et al. 2016).
- Choose the most relevant data: moreover, they should be classified according to their difficulty of acquisition and according to their expected impact on the financial accounts
Personalize your content
Finally, let’s finish with content marketing and emailing.
Indeed, it would be a pity to be satisfied with commercial prospecting with such an amount of data. This is why an adapted content creation must accompany ABM. To do this, here are some suggested actions to implement:
- create an editorial calendar
- be present on as many channels as possible to promote its productions
- optimize its content through natural referencing techniques. We explain how below.
The truth is that personalization determines the success or failure of account-based marketing.
Posted in Marketing.
