“The B2B landscape has changed.”
“Marketers are increasingly spending on marketing automation.”
“Already complex B2B selling has gone digital”
B2B folks cannot agree more that these catchphrases have been overused and become nonetheless generic. Companies are pivoting to exploring opportunities for themselves. Identifying high-value accounts and engaging with them on a deeper, and personal level is undoubtedly every marketer’s powerful strategy. What other than a powerful targeted marketing strategy, such as Account-Based Marketing for marketers?
ABM is all about getting to know your prospects better. With ABM, marketers can step further, examine and better understand the motivation and pain points of their target accounts. Additionally, ABM offers organizations a unique opportunity to foster the integration of their sales and marketing departments and bring significant ROI. Organizations that have implemented ABM can easily understand the value of deep-diving into each target account and industry.
So, how can companies dive deeper to bolster their ABM campaigns?
Understand the value of in-depth research
Conduct individualized deep-dive research into target accounts as well as their industries to unearth key insights. Conducting specific desk research around the account and their industries yield great benefits for ABM marketers who face data and insight problems.
B2B marketers can leverage simple desk-based research utilizing various publicly available sources to form a deep understanding of your target industry. Marketers can leverage public sources such as published reports on the target industry if they’re targeting, look at outlook from the major players of the industry and listen to key people such as Industry analysts and the C-suite.
Focus more on target account challenges and pain points
Having a better understanding of the target audience, their industry, their challenges, and their pain points can help them to speak their language better. Research can help B2B marketers in building engaging content. Being aware and understanding where the target audience is heading is crucial. Marketers need to be more empathetic and focused on building a relationship with their prospects rather than trying to hard sell.
Place customers at the heart of ABM
Placing customers at the center of ABM campaigns is vital to their success. The target account’s needs and strategic priorities must be at the heart of every content and messaging. The majority of ABM practitioners face challenges in developing target content for specific accounts or personas. By placing prospects’ needs, strategic priorities, and challenges at the center, marketers will be able to overcome the fear of being unable to personalize and resonate with their target accounts.
Research helps to find all the little nuggets of information that might mean the difference between the success and failure of ABM campaign. Since a key component of ABM is knowing target accounts better to engage with every account keeping customization at heart. Often deep research about target accounts can also uncover ‘opportunities for conversation’ for sales reps, a potential game-changer for marketing and sales alignment.
Final thoughts
After you build a deeper understanding of your target accounts and industries, it becomes easier to speak their language. Remember: because no two companies are identical, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to leveraging ABM strategy. It’s essential, so it’s worth repeating: personalization is key. Once you have structured information that reveals key insights about target accounts, you have one of the most powerful sales and marketing intelligence tools at your fingertips. At its core, ABM is more than a marketing strategy. Every information matters – marketers need to develop a shared vision across teams and allocate resources properly.