How to Master
an Account Based Marketing Strategy
An account based marketing strategy, once crafted properly, can position your business to win.
Yes, that’s right!
This type of marketing strategy involves the creation of marketing campaigns with the aim of attracting specific high-value accounts who are seeking to improve their marketing efforts. Also, it aims to help businesses with establishing some really solid relationships with targeted prospects and increase their revenue.
I strongly believe that solid client relationships along with improved revenues, represent a win-win for any business.
An account based marketing strategy can position your brand to dominate in the competitive landscape which is highly necessary as marketing is forever evolving.
So, get ready to dive into firstly understanding its meaning, its key ingredients and how to execute it.
Let’s go!
What’s an Account Based Marketing Strategy?
Account-based marketing is a type of (B2B) strategy that includes a strategic alignment of sales and marketing activities that are designed to target specific high-value accounts.
The overall aim of account-based marketing is to design personalized marketing campaigns that offer solutions to address the unique needs and challenges of each account.
This type of marketing strategy is a good opportunity to create and deliver personalized messages along with experiences to promote engagement and increase conversion rates.
The Key Ingredients of an Effective Account Based
Marketing Strategy
1. Target the Right Accounts
The first thing to do when crafting your strategy, is to identify and focus on the accounts that are fully aligned with your business goals, objectives and vision. Pay particular attention to the accounts with the potential to grow together with the ability to establish strategic partnerships and produce a huge positive impact in your industry.
Additionally, ensure that you spend ample time working and consistently communicating with your sales teams to establish an overall concrete understanding of the target accounts.
2. Create and Research Buyer Personas
Creating very specific and detailed buyer personas is an important ingredient of an effective account based marketing strategy.
Take as much time as needed to carefully develop clear and descriptive buyer personas for each target account. In addition to that, outline the key decision-makers, their specific marketing challenges and what drives them.
Research your target accounts to the core!
Conduct as much research as possible on what’s trending in their industry, their business challenges and their competitive environment. This is definitely the key to develop the ideal brand messaging and create content that will attract engagement.
3. Develop Personalized Content
Creating brand messages that are connected with the issues and challenges faced by your target accounts is another major ingredient of an effective account based marketing strategy.
It’s important that your content consist of actionable solutions to their problems. This can be presented in the form of educational videos and even case studies that are tailored to address their unique challenges.
The magic behind this ingredient, is to portray the value and return on investment (ROI) your products/services can bring to your target accounts.
4. Explore Several Marketing Channels
Explore as much marketing channels as possible as this will surely help your brand with effectively reaching your target clients. This approach is definitely the perfect way to connect and engage with each key decision-maker attached to your target accounts.
You can implement targeted advertising, social media, personalized website experiences and email marketing to deliver consistent brand messages at each touchpoint as a way of positioning your brand as ‘an expert brand.’ Moreover, it’s important that each interaction is well aligned and relevant to each target client’s needs.
5. Align Sales and Marketing Activities
The cohesiveness of the sales and marketing teams is what drives a successful account based marketing strategy. This can be achieved by facilitating clear and open communication as well as developing shared goals and a consolidated strategy.
Another point to note, is to always share customer and industry insights, encourage feedback and provide updates that are designed to enhance the target marketing efforts and messaging.
Mastering the Art of Executing an Account Based
Marketing Strategy
1. Tailor Marketing Campaigns to Each Target Account
First things first, tailor your marketing campaigns to each target account. The key to success is to make full use of personalized content and messaging together with sharing relevant experiences. Also, design your engagement efforts to be aligned with the preferences and behaviors of the individual decision-makers of each target account.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation tools are exactly what you need to effectively monitor and track interactions.
2. Build Relationships with the Stakeholders of Target Accounts
Building solid client relationships can create the path for a well-executed account based marketing strategy. Therefore, try to spend as much time as possible on building and nurturing relationships with the key stakeholders of each target account.
Building relationships involves making sure that there’s a thorough understanding of their problems and objectives by engaging in conversations and facilitating meetings or even networking events.
This is surely the ideal opportunity to create personalized experiences that can consist of one-to-one workshops or product demos to showcase the value of your products/services.
3. Measure and Optimize Campaign Performance
Trust me, key performance indicators (KPIs) are your best friend when implementing your account based marketing strategy. After all, these tools help to determine if your ABM campaigns are successful or not. Always pay close attention to metrics such as engagement rates, conversions rates, revenue and customer lifetime value.
4. Aim to Scale and Grow your Business
You can aim to expand your account-based marketing efforts to attract some additional high value accounts when you have achieved success with a large set of target accounts. This is the level that indicates a true reflection of how reputable your brand is.
The trick here, is to keep applying what you’ve learnt from previous marketing campaigns plus adapt your marketing strategies to industry trends and most importantly, apply the insights collected to your strategies.
When your business grows, refine how you select your target accounts on a continuous basis to ensure consistent alignment with your brand mission and values.
An effective account based marketing strategy involves a thorough understanding of its key ingredients and knowing how to master the art of executing it. Always remember that the major ingredient for success in account-based marketing, is to always deliver value to your target accounts and adapt when necessary.
Delivering value, building good client relationships and the ability to keep up with industry trends, will for sure, help your business grow.
- Marketing
- What is Marketing Strategy?
- Account Based Marketing Strategy