Thursday, March 23, 2017

7 Ways To Use Account-Based Marketing Throughout the Year

Far from a passing trend, account-based marketing is gaining traction as an approach to marketing that goes well beyond just seasonal targets like the holiday retail system and reaches out to create an impact throughout the year.

In fact, account-based marketing (also known as ABM) can be integrated into the digital sales framework, including drawing a picture of various buyer personas and creating the appropriate sales content for these personas.

Here are seven ways to put the power of ABM to work for your organization:

  1. Repurpose digital content to work for specific personas to address their specific needs and issues. A lot of existing content used for your marketing and sales efforts can apply to a wide audience, but now is the time to take that information and personalize it with statistics, findings, and language to illustrate your understanding of that group of accounts. They will appreciate access to these insights that they didn’t know existed or didn’t have the time to research themselves.

  2. Find events and environments related to the season (spring, women's sandal's) that impacts various accounts. While the monthly holiday's are one prime example for specific retailer accounts, there may be other areas where you can help your accounts based on the type of solutions you provide them. Many businesses experience lulls in their own sales volume during some seasons while other time periods are busy. It’s those slow times that your accounts are most concerned with, so develop support that can help them stimulate their own sales volume during this time. By doing so, you’ll also be increasing your own revenues.

  3. Focus on one aspect of your account’s business needs. One that seems to be applicable to almost every business segment is regulatory requirements since more companies are faced with increasingly complex compliance issues that leave them struggling to find a solution. Dissecting any regulatory issues (regtech) and illustrating your understanding of it can be a way to get the attention of your accounts when they would otherwise be distracted. They are willing to stop and listen more so because you are directing your efforts to an issue that typically costs them considerable time and money.

  4. Utilize existing data on each account to identify any personal or unique situations, preferences, or issues that can be further supported and then develop a customized marketing campaign built around that. Like the repurposing of existing content. It is possible to pull themes and approaches from previous campaigns while tailoring some of it to what was uncovered in the data. It is an approach that will delight your account when they realize the whole strategy was directed at them, and for them, helping to deepen your existing relationship and open up new opportunities for further business together.

  5. Take advantage of specific points in the year to research and pursue new accounts. While account-based marketing is for your existing relationships, it’s important to not forget about the idea that you should always be helping people and companies (to eventually be closing). That means taking the time to identify new accounts and determine if they fall into current personas or you can develop new personas with corresponding personalized messages and approaches. This keeps the pipeline full while you continue to build out account-based marketing strategies for these new and existing accounts.

  6. Leverage retargeting to stay at the top of their mind, with your accounts. A less direct way to ignite your account-based marketing strategies is to use a tactic that all marketers have found can be useful. Some tools that work with retargeting provide account-based insights that use the IP addresses of your specific accounts to follow them as they search the Internet. This not only helps you gather more insights on how to personalize your marketing, but it also gives you an idea of what sites you should use in your retargeting effort where these accounts will see you as they jump around the Internet. In this way, they are bound not forget about you.

  7. Generate personalized landing pages for your accounts so they reach these pages when they visit your website. And, you can get them to visit these landing pages by sending them a personal invitation. Once there, each account will be able to see a landing page that represents the content, offers, and images that reflect their issues and interests. As a deep personalization tactic, this is another way to reach out throughout the year to your accounts during those time periods where they may not have been thinking about making any purchases.

These seven ways are designed to keep your account-based marketing engine moving down the tracks all year long. Along the way, you are fueling it with information and insights from your accounts about what they want to know and how you can help them.

In return, you continually offer your accounts information that shows you have invested in personalizing all responses, it shows you care about them and shows them that you’ve been listening and you respect their individual needs.

A Guide-ing Light

As a B2B Marketer, you spend a lot of your time coming up with new ways to reach the right prospect, at the right time, with the right message. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a tried-and-true strategy to help you do all three.

Download the Account Based Marketing Guide For Modern Marketers to learn more ways ABM can help you up your marketing game.



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