Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
With account-based content marketing your marketing department as well as digital marketing agency can focus on a small number of accounts or clients. This allows you to create content that is hyper-personalized and is directly addressing their issues and demonstrates how your product can help them overcome them.
ABM content that is effective must deliver the right information to each stakeholder in the buyer's centre at the right moment. This means identifying the different individuals and their needs at various stages of their journey.
Targeting specific accounts
In contrast to traditional content strategies which are designed to draw strangers into leads using broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing is focused on interacting with targeted accounts in a highly personal way. Marketers can develop and distribute relevant content by identifying and knowing the key decision makers within each account, their issues and goals. This can lead to a more productive interaction with customers and prospects, which ultimately leads to better business results.
After identifying the accounts you want to target, you need to make account plans for each one. This involves analyzing each account and determining the marketing channels to employ and which customers within the account should be engaging with, and what types of content are needed to encourage engagement and conversions. This could include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, webinars), retargeting ads, personalized experiences on websites, and other marketing tactics specific to each client.
This is why account-based content marketing can deliver much more ROI than traditional content marketing strategies. 84% of B2B marketing professionals who have implemented account-based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.
It takes more time and resources to nurture the small number of targeted accounts however, the advantages of an account-based approach to content marketing are crucial for companies that wish to increase their revenue throughout all stages of the sales funnel. This is particularly true for professional service businesses in which the quality of the customers or prospects is more important than the number of people they can attract.
In marketing software online , ABM is a great option for companies looking to expand 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 find and convert new customers.
By combining ABM with traditional methods of inbound marketing companies can increase the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. Marketers can enhance the relevancy of their content to potential customers at every stage of the purchasing journey by mixing pillar content with the retargeting technique and landing pages for lead capture. This allows them to create more acquisition, acceleration, and growth revenue opportunities for their sales and marketing teams.
Creating Hyper-Personalized Content
ABM is one of the hottest trends in marketing, and it's vital for marketers to understand how their existing content strategies can be integrated into this new strategy. It can be hard to understand how ABM actually works. In a recent talk at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox provided a crash course on ABM that explained the main factors to be considered and what you can expect from a successful implementation.
The most efficient ABM content strategy starts with understanding the needs of your ideal customer and objectives. Creating content that aligns with these goals will enable you to deliver a more personalized experience and ultimately increase conversions. Content should also be tailored to the needs of each account. This is why it is important to map out the path of users within each of your accounts. This will help you determine which content (and particular pages and items) is most engaging for your target audience. This information can be used to optimize user's journeys on these accounts, and show the most successful content.
It can be difficult to create content that is hyper-personalized, but it's a vital step to increase the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing, 2023, 83% of consumers are willing to share their personal data for an experience that is more personalized.
One method of creating hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing real-time data. This will allow you to determine the way that your content is presented and offer suggestions for the future steps, and react to events in real-time. This tool can enhance the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It can't replace the need for multivariate testing or strategic planning.
Another way to hyper-personalize your content is to utilize the pillar and cluster structure. This allows you to have an extensive piece of content that explains the issue that your targeted accounts face, and then link to other pieces that specifically address the problem. For instance fitness trackers may have a variety of common goals and advantages, but how different types of users use it can differ greatly.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Traditionally, professional services marketers focused on developing a linear sales funnel using broad marketing campaigns that targeted large numbers of people with the hope that a portion of them would convert. This strategy might be effective in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model, however, it's not as effective with the modern Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to guide all leads through the same stages of the process, you should concentrate on prospects with high value. You can do this by providing them with content or experiences that are tailored to their particular needs and challenges.
The first step is to identify your ideal client profile. It's not as easy as establishing buyer personas as you must also take into account the types of solutions each customer is seeking and how they will be utilized.
Once you have identified your ICP The next step is to develop an effective strategy for content that is connected to each of these accounts across multiple channels. This could include anything from social media ads to email outreach.
When you are beginning to implement your ABM strategy, it's crucial to keep your sales and marketing teams on the same page. This will ensure that your content is pertinent to each account and ensure that you don't spend time or resources on the wrong audience.
One of the most important steps to take is to use the data you have on your top-performing clients. You can determine the positive characteristics that your clients share by looking at their historical data. For example, they may all be in the financial services industry or have a similar business size. This information can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns for prospects with similar characteristics.
It's also important to track your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary changes. If your target audience does not respond to your content, you might be able to contact them and find out what you can do to get them further down the sales funnel. You can align your ABM strategy with your content strategies by following these steps.
Measuring Success
Account-based content marketing is about creating content (videos, reports, blog posts and webinars) that are personalised and relevant to a specific account or persona. If you're trying to target healthcare organizations for instance, your content should be focused on their problems and concerns. This kind of personalization doesn't just help with ABM but also helps build strong relationships with potential customers.
The most appealing aspect of ABM is that it can be used at any stage of the sales funnel. It can be even more efficient than traditional lead generation at the top of a funnel. This is because it can help you identify and engage only a few accounts that are likely to convert, instead of trying to generate leads from a large audience that may not be interested in your product or service.
Although offline strategies like in-person meetings and phone calls, or handwritten notes are efficient, today's buyers prefer remote and digital self-service. It's important to deliver the right content at the right time and on the channel they prefer.
ABM is particularly effective in engaging executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach. They often ignore the mass email marketing, but are more likely respond to content that is relevant to their needs and use instances. ABM can also help you accelerate sales by allowing you to engage with prospects at the most crucial stages in their journey, for instance when they are pursuing solutions to solve specific business issues.
ABM isn't as old-fashioned as traditional marketing and selling strategies, but it's quickly becoming the most popular strategy for B2B businesses looking to improve performance and increase 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.