Imagine calling out a name in the crowd. Hundreds will look back and respond to you. But do you need them all? Of course, not! However, when you call out a particular name, you would get exactly the person you need. That’s how account-based marketing (ABM) works. It focuses only on specific prospects instead of entertaining hundreds.
ABM helps you personalize your marketing efforts to individual needs, nurture relationships, and do what is necessary. However, defining it is much easier than working it out. Hence, to do the latter, you need the right strategies from B2B account profiling to converting the leads. Here are some vital tips in this regard.
5 Key Strategies to Succeed in B2B ABM
From identifying the right prospects to establishing solid relationships, achieving success in B2B ABM won’t be a tall tale when you have these five key strategies.
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Identify Prospects with High Conversion Potential
One of the first steps to decoding success in B2B ABM is knowing who you must target. There’s no point chasing someone who is least interested in your proposal. High-value targets or prospects would show interest and want to connect with you further.
However, how do you identify one? Thanks to data analytics that can help you track a lead’s entire journey with your brand. Here’s an example of how you can identify a potential lead. You can monitor a lead’s interaction with your campaign. For example, they begin by expressing interest in your campaign and then visiting your website, downloading whitepapers or the free literature you provide, and lastly, filling in the contact form. Of course, this is a very straightforward example. But fundamentally, this is how it is. Once you do that, you can try connecting with the prospect and take the interaction ahead.
Another move in identifying prospects with high potential includes defining your ideal customer profile (ICP). For that, you must have a clear picture of how your ideal customer would look like. For instance, if you sell SaaS products, overall, your customer would be someone spending more than required on current software, searching for SaaS to reduce expenses, or someone requiring only a particular service. Matching these elements with a real-time lead will help you measure the potential of a lead.
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Build Personalized Communication and Content
Reiterating, ABM is a highly personalized form of marketing. Hence, you cannot generalize anything here. While personalizing your efforts, you must also tailor your content and communication, specifically addressing the pain points, challenges, and needs of your high-value prospect. You can do so with videos, precise research reports, educating blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, webinars, and personalized emails.
Remember, it is about making the prospect feel comfortable and confident about your understanding of their business and capabilities. Content and communication form vital aspects in this regard. Accordingly, you must work extensively to craft bespoke and compelling content encouraging the prospect to step ahead. Somehow, if you feel you don’t have the bandwidth or resources to do it, B2B lead gen companies can cover you.
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Engage Through Multiple Channels
Personalized marketing doesn’t refer to leveraging a single channel. Remember, marketing is specific but the sources through which you engage with your leads may be diverse. Thus, you shouldn’t rely on a single platform to interact with them.
For example, if you are a canteen management company, you can approach your potential clients, including IT companies, manufacturers, banks, etc., via platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, emails, and more. It takes some effort to identify the right and relevant platforms. However, those efforts prove worthwhile, especially when you see specific and high-quality leads coming your way. While targeting multiple channels, you must also maintain consistency in terms of brand communication and experience.
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Let Your Sales and Marketing Teams Collaborate
Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Hence, none of the teams can work disparately or make isolated efforts. ABM demands collaborative thinking and working to identify target accounts, develop strategies, and execute campaigns. Additionally, you must set common goals and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of both teams while working on achieving ABM success and converting high-quality leads to sales.
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Nurture Relationships
Business is about profits. Yes. It surely is. However, companies focusing solely on profits usually disappear over a period. How can a business forget that it is people who will interact with it, make decisions, and help it thrive? So, while business is about sales and profits, it also is about people. In that view, making your ABM strategy successful also requires you to stay connected with prospects, focus on delivering value, and ensure a healthy and fruitful relationship with them.
An essential part of maintaining relationships is identifying opportunities to cross-sell or upsell within your target accounts to drive additional revenue.
For example, you are a hospitality group with restaurants, resorts, and hotels across different locations. You want more leads for your resort business. So, one way of doing it is identifying repeat customers in your restaurant and proposing them to become a member of your resort. It involves explaining the benefits of becoming a member, F&B and stay discounts, value add-ons, etc. Convincing them to visit the resort and taking them on a guided tour can make a difference and expedite decision-making.
Conclusion
Before wrapping this up, we’d like to emphasize the significance of ABM, especially in the B2B context, where personalization is the basic need and key to success. These days, businesses come with distinct requirements and look for providers with the ability to fulfill them. ABM focuses on being specific. Thus, instead of casting a wide net into the ocean, spearfishing can help you get what you’ve been precisely looking for. Of course, in some cases, it takes time. But nothing beats the satisfaction of a prospect hard-earned!
Being a specific marketing strategy, ABM needs to partner with expert B2B lead gen companies. If you’ve been looking for one, Demand Fluence is here to help. Our proven track record and expertise in ABM define our prowess and capabilities to help our clients get closer to those game-changing leads they’ve always been looking for.
Please email us at hi@demandfluence.com to learn more about support, including B2B account profiling, lead generation, and more.
