How to Use Account-Based Marketing Personalization In Your Marketing Campaigns
Account-based marketing: Imagine being able to begin the sales process by selling straight to your best-fit, highest-value accounts. No more wasting time marketing campaigns to unqualified prospects who aren’t a good fit for your company. As a result, you might jump right into engaging and pleasing your target accounts.
Isn’t that the definition of efficiency?
Account-based marketing allows you to screen out low-value accounts early on and ensure Marketing and Sales are on the same page, allowing your team to jump right into the key processes of engaging and delighting those accounts.
ABM enables your company to work with high-value accounts as though they were separate markets and marketing data. You’ll see higher ROI and increased customer loyalty if you accomplish this, along with personalizing the buyer’s journey and adapting all messages, content, and marketing campaigns to those unique accounts. Marketing personalization is so important.
How does account-based marketing operate and what does it entail?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a concentrated growth strategy in which Marketing and Sales collaborate to provide individualized buying experiences for a set of mutually specified high-value accounts.
Let’s discuss the relationship between account-based marketing and another essential strategy: inbound marketing before we look at the extra benefits of account-based marketing and specific methods you may adopt at your organization.
Inbound marketing and account-based marketing
Account-based marketing and inbound marketing, when combined, have the capacity to make (positive) waves for your company.
“How precisely does this cooperation work?” you might wonder.
We just went through the definition of account-based marketing, which is a highly focused strategy, as you learned.
Meanwhile, inbound marketing is more fundamental – this approach and growth plan allows you to attract clients by creating excellent content, optimizing your website, and providing a pleasant customer experience.
Rather than disrupting your target audience and consumers (as with outbound marketing), inbound marketing allows you to present your audience with the information they want when they want it in a more natural way.
By enabling highly-targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts, inbound sets the groundwork for a great ABM approach. Here are a few additional advantages for your organization to use both ABM and inbound marketing campaigns:
- Inbound marketing helps you acquire target accounts, and ABM speeds up the process so you can win and delight those accounts with an exceptional customer experience.
- Inbound marketing creates the groundwork for a successful ABM approach, enabling targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts.
- You attract a larger set of prospects with this combination strategy than you would with just one method.
- You can generate and employ content that serves both an ABM and an inbound strategy using your content.
- Software exists to make it simple to combine ABM and inbound marketing tactics, such as HubSpot’s account-based marketing data platform.
Framework for Account-Based Marketing
ABM is not the same as a typical sales funnel. Though ABM can be used in a variety of industries and business types, there is a fundamental framework that must be followed to ensure its efficacy. The following are the essential elements of account-based marketing campaigns.
Alignment of marketing and sales.
Because the importance of the working relationship between sales and marketing departments cannot be stressed. It is mentioned multiple times throughout this essay. Marketing and sales must be on the same page in order to have a holistic strategy to ABM and ensure target accounts enjoy an engaging buying experience.
When implementing ABM, sales and marketing companies must agree on resource allocation for each target account, assign roles and duties to guarantee a seamless transition for customers between marketing and sales activities, and determine how to measure their efforts’ performance.
Qualification of Accounts.
What criteria does your organization use to define a high-value account? Answering this question and developing an ABM framework require defining an ideal customer profile for the accounts your firm wishes to target. It’s also worth mentioning that you can involve both marketing and sales in these discussions.
When assessing what qualifies a potential account, consider the following factors:
- Consider how much income you can make from an account in light of your company’s sales goals.
- Is there potential to develop the account in the future based on what you know about the potential account’s business performance? Consider what additional services your business could offer to keep and develop the account.
- Who are your rivals selling to in your market? Knowing who is now looking for items and services similar to yours might help you spot future account prospects.
Approach to Market.
It’s time to design out a go-to-market strategy once marketing and sales have agreed on an approach and which accounts to target.
Using an ABM strategy, determine how a new customer might progress through the sales process. You may discover areas of friction. Those need to be addressed or areas of poor communication that may be enhanced as you prepare to go to market.
Furthermore, because a tailored experience is so critical in account-based marketing, your team will want to explore for new methods. The goal is to add value and provide a premium experience to these accounts.
Marketing Strategy Based on Accounts
You’ll need a solid strategy in place to get the most out of an account-based marketing approach. To build and implement an effective account-based marketing campaigns, consider the steps below.
Make sure your marketing and sales teams are on the same page.
Account-based marketing adoption requires marketing and sales alignment. A customer must have a seamless transition from lead acquisition to final sale in order to have a personalized buying experience.
Both organizations must commit to clear communication and find a middle ground to ensure that the marketing team is acquiring leads that the sales team can effectively sell to in order to improve synergy between marketing and sales.
A small task force of one marketer and one salesperson identifying and selling to target clients are sufficient if you’re just starting to deal with ABM. As your efforts expand, make it a priority for your marketer to help additional salespeople, as one marketer may generally align with up to 10 salespeople, and each salesperson can manage up to 10 accounts.