Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
Your marketing department and digital agency could focus their efforts on a selected group of clients or accounts that have account-based content marketing. This allows you to create hyper-personalized content that speaks directly to their problems and demonstrates how your product can help them overcome them.
Effective ABM content should provide the appropriate information to every stakeholder at the appropriate time in the buyer's center. This involves identifying the needs of each persona at different stages in their journey.
Targeting Specific Accounts
Account-based content marketing is a more individualized approach to content marketing compared to traditional strategies, which attempt to convert strangers using large marketing campaigns into leads. By identifying the top decision makers for each account and understanding their needs and goals, marketers can create and distribute content that is relevant to the specific accounts. This creates a more fruitful dialogue with prospects and customers that ultimately drives greater business outcomes for the organization.
After identifying your accounts of interest You must then create account plans for each one. This requires analyzing every account and determining the appropriate marketing channels to be used and the customers within each account that should be engaged and what kind of content is needed to increase engagement. This could include thought leadership content, such as whitepapers or case studies. whitepapers webinars, case studies, etc.), retargeting ads, customized website experiences and other marketing tactics specific to each client.
This is why account-based content marketing can provide a much more ROI than traditional content marketing techniques. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers who have incorporated account-based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other type of marketing effort.
Although it takes longer and resources to cultivate only a few target accounts but the benefits of an account-based content marketing approach are crucial for companies that wish to increase their revenue throughout all stages of the sales funnel. This is particularly relevant for professional service companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the number of people they can attract.
In addition, ABM is a great fit for businesses that want to grow their business with existing customers through building trusting relationships over time. Research has shown that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than investing money to acquire new customers.
Combining ABM with inbound marketing techniques will maximize the impact of content marketing. Utilizing the combination of the pillar content, retargeting and lead capture landing pages, marketers can give greater relevance to prospects at all stages of the buying process. This enables them to create more acquisition as well as acceleration and expansion revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.
Create hyper-personalized content
ABM is a rage in the field of marketing. It is crucial that marketers are aware of how to adapt their content strategies to the new method. However, it can be a challenge to comprehend how ABM works in practice. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave an overview of ABM in a recent presentation. They discussed the most important considerations, and what to expect for a successful implementation.
Understanding your ideal client's goals and challenges is the first step towards creating an effective ABM strategy. Making content that is in line with these goals will enable you to provide a personalized experience, which will ultimately improve conversions. The content you create should also be tailored to the specific needs of each account. It is therefore important to track the journey of each user within the account. By doing this you'll be able to see what types of content (and even specific pages and items) are most popular with those who visit your site. This information can be used to optimize journeys for people using these accounts, and show the most successful content.
It's not easy to create content that is hyper-personalized, however, it's a crucial step in increasing the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of consumers are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more customized experience.
One method to create hyper-personalized content is by using AI processing real-time data. This can help you control the way your content is distributed and make suggestions for the next steps, and respond to events immediately. While it's not a replacement for multivariate testing or strategic planning, this is a great tool to increase the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.
Another way to hyper-personalize your content is to use the pillar and cluster content structure. This allows you to have an extensive piece of content that addresses the problem that your target accounts have to face, and connect to additional pieces that address specific aspects of the problem. Fitness trackers, for instance are able to provide a range of common goals and benefits, but the way that different people use them can be very different.
Getting Sales and Marketing Aligned
Professional service marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel, using broad marketing campaigns to reach large audiences in the hope that a portion of them would convert. This strategy may have served its purpose when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast-based model, however, it's not as effective in the current Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all leads through the same steps of the process, you should instead focus on high-value prospects. You can do this by providing them with experiences or content that are customized to their particular needs and problems.
The first step to this is to identify your ideal client profile (ICP). This isn't as easy as creating buyer profiles, as you also need to look at the different types of solutions each customer is looking for and how to make use of them.
Once you have identified your ICP, the next step is to create a content strategy that connects to each of these accounts across multiple channels. This could be anything from social media ads, to email outreach.
When you start implementing your ABM strategy, it's crucial to keep your sales and marketing teams on the same page. This will ensure that all of your content is relevant to each account, so that you don't waste time and resources trying to reach the wrong audience.
Another important step is to leverage the information you have on your most successful clients. You can find positive traits that your customers share by looking at their historical data. For instance, they may all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar business size. This information can then be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns targeting similar prospects.
Additionally it's crucial to monitor the effectiveness of your ABM strategy and make changes when needed. For instance, if your target account isn't responding to your content, it could be time to contact them and ask what else you can do to help them move along the sales funnel. If you take these steps, you'll be able to improve your ABM strategy and content efforts better aligned, which will ultimately increase conversions.
Measuring Success
Content marketing based on account is about creating content (videos, reports, blog posts and webinars) that are personalised and relevant to a specific account or persona. If you're looking to target healthcare organizations for instance your content must be centered around their problems and concerns. This type of personalization not only helps with ABM but also helps build solid relationships with prospects and customers.
ABM can be utilized at all stages of the sales funnel. In fact, it could be even more efficient than traditional lead generation when used at the top of the funnel. This is because you can recognize and engage with a small number of accounts that are more likely to convert than trying generate leads from a population that may not be interested.
Although offline strategies like phone calls and meetings in person, or handwritten notes are still effective, today's buyers are more inclined to remote and digital self-service. ai content writing software 's why it's so critical to provide customers with the right content at the right time, on the channel that's most suitable for them.
ABM is particularly effective for reaching out to executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach, who are often dismissive of mass-email campaigns, but are more likely to engage with content that is tailored to their needs and usage scenarios. ABM can also help you shorten your sales cycle by allowing engagement with prospects at key stages in their journey, such as when they are looking for solutions to solve specific business issues.
Although ABM isn't around for longer than traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's quickly becoming a leading strategy for B2B companies seeking to enhance their performance and generate more 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.