The Guide To Account Based Content Marketing In 2023
Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
Your marketing department and digital agency could focus their efforts on a specific set of clients or accounts that use account-based content marketing. This allows you to create content that is hyper-personalized and addresses their specific problems and demonstrates how your product can help them solve these issues.
ABM content that is successful must provide the right information to every stakeholder in the buyer's centre at the right moment. This means identifying the different personas and their requirements at different stages of their journey.
Aiming at specific accounts
In contrast to traditional content strategies which aim to attract and convert people who are not leads through broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing focuses on connecting with specific accounts in a highly personal method. Marketers can create and deliver relevant content by knowing the decision makers within each account, their pain points, and their objectives. 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 must then develop account plans for each one. This involves studying each account and determining which marketing channels to use, which buyers within the account to engage with, and what kinds of content are needed to drive engagement and conversions. This could include thought-provoking content (e.g. whitepapers webinars, case studies, etc.), retargeting ads, personalized website experiences and other marketing tactics specific to each client.
Account-based content marketing can deliver greater returns on your investment than traditional content strategies. 84 percent of B2B marketing professionals who have implemented account-based marketing into their strategies report higher returns on investment than any other marketing approach.
While it requires more resources and time to nurture a smaller group of accounts, the advantages are significant for companies who want to grow their revenue throughout the funnel. This is especially applicable to professional service companies, where the quality of customers or prospects is more important than how many people they are able to attract.
ABM is an excellent alternative for businesses looking to increase their business with existing customers over time by developing trusting relations. Research has revealed that it's more cost-effective to invest in maintaining existing customers than it is to spend money trying to find and convert new ones.
Combining ABM with inbound marketing techniques will maximize the impact of content marketing. Utilizing an array of pillar content, retargeting, and lead capture landing pages, marketers can provide more value to potential customers throughout the buying journey. This enables them to create more acquisition growth, acceleration, and expansion revenue opportunities for their sales and marketing teams.
Create content that is hyper-personalized
ABM is one of the most popular trends in marketing, and it's crucial for marketers to know how their existing strategies for content are able to be integrated into this new method. It can be a bit difficult to comprehend how ABM is actually used in practice. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave a crash-course on ABM in a recent talk. They discussed the most important factors to consider, as well as what to expect from an effective implementation.
The most efficient ABM content strategy starts by understanding the needs of your ideal customer and goals. Content that is geared towards these goals will allow you to provide a more personal service and boost conversions. ai tools for content create should focus on the specific requirements of each account. It is therefore crucial to track the journey of users within each account. This will allow you to determine the type of content (and particular pages and items) is most engaging for your intended audience. This information can be used to improve user's journeys on these accounts, and show the most effective content.
It can be difficult to create hyper-personalized content but it's a vital step to increase the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of respondents are willing to share their personal information in exchange for a more personalized experience.
AI processing of real-time data is one method to create hyper-personalized content. This will help you control the way your content is distributed and provide suggestions for the next steps and respond to events immediately. While it isn't a substitute for multivariate testing or strategic planning, it can be a useful 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 lets you create a full piece that describes the problem your targeted accounts face and then link it to supplementary pieces that specifically address the issue. Fitness trackers, for example are able to provide a range of common benefits and goals but the method in which different people use them could be quite different.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Professional services marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel using broad marketing campaigns to reach large audiences in the hopes that one or more of them would be converted. This strategy may have served its purpose in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model but it's no longer effective with today's Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of attempting to push all leads through the same stages of the process, you should instead focus on the most valuable leads. This can be achieved by providing them with experiences or content that are customized to their particular requirements and issues.
The first step is to identify your ideal customer profile. It's not as easy as creating buyer profiles as you also need to look at the different types of solutions that each customer is seeking and how best to use them.
Once you have identified your ICP then, create a strategy for content that will connect with each account through several channels. This could include everything from social media advertisements to email outreach.
It is essential that your sales and marketing teams are on the same page as you implement your ABM strategy. This will ensure that your content is relevant to each account, ensuring that you don't spend time and resources attracting the wrong type of audience.
Another crucial step is to utilize the information you have on your most successful clients. Through analyzing your client data, you can determine what positive characteristics they share, such as being in the financial services industry or being within a certain size. This information can then be used to create targeted marketing campaigns to target similar prospects.
Additionally it's also important to keep track of the effectiveness of your ABM strategy and make changes when needed. For instance, if your target account isn't responding to your content, it may be time to reach out to them and ask what else you can do to assist them move down the sales funnel. You can integrate your ABM strategy with your content strategies by following these steps.
Measuring Success
Account-based content marketing is all about creating resources (videos, reports, blog posts, and webinars) that are tailored and relevant to a particular account or persona. If you're trying to reach healthcare companies, for example your content must be centered around their issues and pain points. This type of personalization not only helps with ABM but also builds strong relationships with potential customers.
The most appealing aspect of ABM is that it can be used at every stage of the sales funnel. In fact, it could be more effective than traditional lead generation when utilized at the top of the funnel. This is because you can identify and engage with a small number of accounts that are more likely to convert than trying generate leads from a population that might not be interested.
Although offline strategies like phone calls and meetings in person, or handwritten notes are efficient, today's buyers prefer online self-service and remote interaction. It's crucial to provide the right content, at the right time and using the channel they prefer.
ABM is particularly effective at engaging C-suite executives who are hard to reach. They are often oblivious to mass emails and are more likely to respond to content that speaks to their needs and uses cases. ABM can also help you reduce the time it takes to sell by allowing engagement with prospects at key stages in their journey, such as when they are looking for solutions to solve specific business challenges.
Although ABM isn't as well-known longer than traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's quickly becoming the most popular strategy for B2B companies seeking to increase their efficiency and generate greater 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.