Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
With account-based content marketing, your marketing department and digital marketing agency can concentrate on a specific group of clients or accounts. This allows you to create hyper-personalized content that speaks directly to their pain points and shows how your product can help them overcome these issues.
Effective ABM content should provide the appropriate information to every stakeholder at the appropriate time in the buyer's center. This requires identifying the requirements of each individual at various phases of their journey.
Aiming at specific accounts
In contrast to traditional content strategies which seek to attract and convert strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing is focused on interacting with specific accounts in a highly personalized way. Marketers can create and present relevant content by identifying and knowing the decision makers in each account, their pain points, and their objectives. This results in a more productive interaction with customers and prospects which in turn leads to better business results.
Once you've identified the target accounts The next step is to develop account plans for each account. This involves analyzing every account and determining which marketing channels to be employed, the buyers within each account and what type of content is needed to drive engagement. This could include thought-provoking content such as whitepapers, or case studies. whitepapers, case studies webinars, retargeting ads, webinars customized website experiences, and other marketing strategies specific to each client are all possible.
Account-based content marketing can deliver a much higher return on your investment than traditional content strategies. In fact, 84 percent of B2B marketers who have integrated account-based marketing into their strategy report higher return on investments than any other marketing campaign.
It takes more time and resources to cultivate the small number of targeted accounts, the benefits of a strong account-based approach to content marketing are crucial for companies that want to grow revenue throughout all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially relevant for professional service companies where the quality of each prospective client or customer is more important than the amount of potential customers they could attract.
In addition, ABM is a great option for companies looking to expand their business with existing customers by building trusting relationships over time. Research has shown that it's much more cost effective to invest in keeping existing customers than to invest money trying to locate and convert new ones.
By combining ABM with traditional inbound marketing strategies, companies can maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. Utilizing an array of pillar content, retargeting, and lead capture landing pages, marketers can give more value to potential customers at every stage of the buying process. This enables them to create additional revenue opportunities through acquisition, acceleration and expansion for their sales and market teams.
Create content that is hyper-personalized
ABM is a hot topic in marketing. It is crucial that marketers understand how to adapt their strategies for content to this new approach. However, it can be a challenge to comprehend how ABM works in practice. In a recent presentation at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox gave a quick overview on ABM that explained the main considerations and what to expect in a successful execution.
The most effective ABM content strategy starts with understanding the needs of your ideal customer and goals. Content that is geared towards these goals allows you to provide a more personal service and boost conversions. The content you create should also be tailored to the specific requirements of each account. This is why it is crucial to outline the path of users in each of your accounts. This will help you determine the type of content (and individual pages and items) is most appealing to your intended audience. This information can be used to improve user's journeys on these accounts, and show the most effective content.
It's not easy to create hyper-personalized content however, it's a crucial step to boost the effectiveness of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of people are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more personalised experience.
One method to create hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing of real-time data. This will allow you to control the way your content is presented, make suggestions for next steps and respond to events immediately. This tool can enhance the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It can't replace multivariate testing and strategic planning.
Another way to personalize your content is to use the pillar and cluster content structure. This allows you to create a comprehensive piece that describes the problem your target accounts are facing, and then connect it to other pieces that address specific aspects of that problem. For example a fitness tracker could have many advantages and common goals, but how different types of people use it can differ greatly.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Traditionally, professional service marketers were focused on creating an efficient sales funnel that was linear using broad marketing campaigns that targeted large numbers of people with the expectation that one or more would be converted. This strategy might have worked in the past when B2B marketing was based on a broadcast model, but is not effective in the current Account Based Marketing strategy. Instead of trying to guide all prospects through the same phases of the process, you should instead focus on prospects with high value. You can accomplish this by providing them with experiences or content specifically tailored to their particular requirements and issues.
The first step is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This isn't as easy as creating buyer profiles, as you need to look at the different types of solutions that each customer is looking for and how to make use of them.
Once you have identified your ICP, develop a strategy for content that will connect with each account through different channels. This could range from social media advertisements to email outreach.
As click here to investigate begin executing your ABM strategy, it's crucial to keep your sales and marketing teams on the same team. This will ensure that all of your content is relevant to each account, ensuring that you don't spend time and money attracting the wrong type of audience.
One of the most important steps to take is to utilize the information you have about your most successful clients. You can determine the positive characteristics that your customers share by looking at their historical data. For example they could all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar company size. This data can be used to design targeted campaigns targeting similar prospects.
It's also essential to keep track of your ABM strategy's performance and make any needed changes. If your target account doesn't respond to your content, you may need to reach out and see what you can do to help move them down the sales funnel. By taking these steps, you'll be able to make your ABM strategy and content strategies better aligned and ultimately increase conversions.
Measuring Success
Account-based content marketing is the process of creating resources, such as videos, reports, blogs and webinars that are relevant and customized to a particular persona or account. For example If you're focusing on healthcare companies, your content needs to be focused on their pain points and challenges. This kind of personalization does not only help with ABM but also builds strong relationships with prospects and customers.
ABM can be utilized at all stages of the sales funnel. It is even more efficient than traditional lead generation at the top of a funnel. This is because you can recognize and engage with a small number accounts that are more likely to convert than trying generate leads from an audience that may not be interested.
While there's still a place for offline methods of building relationships such as in-person 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 them with the appropriate content at the right time, and on the channel that is most effective for them.
ABM is particularly effective at engaging executives from the C-suite, who are hard to reach. They often ignore mass email campaigns however, they are more likely to respond to content that is relevant to their needs and use cases. In addition, ABM can help you accelerate sales by allowing you reach and engage your prospects at crucial points in their journey -- such as when they're researching solutions to solve a specific business problem.
Although ABM hasn't been around for as long as traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's rapidly becoming a top strategy for B2B organizations looking to increase their efficiency and generate higher 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.