What Is Account Based Content Marketing And How To Utilize It?
Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
With the help of account-based content marketing your marketing department and digital marketing agency can concentrate on a specific group of accounts or clients. This allows you create hyper-personalized specific content that speaks directly to their issues and explains how your product can solve these issues.
Effective ABM content should deliver the correct information to each stakeholder at the right time in the buyer center. This means identifying the needs of each individual at various phases of their journey.
Targeting specific accounts
In contrast to traditional content strategies which seek to attract and convert strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing focuses on connecting with specific accounts in a highly personalized method. Marketers can create and present relevant content by identifying and knowing the decision makers in each account, their issues and goals. This can help create an effective conversation with customers and prospects which ultimately leads to greater business outcomes for the business.
After identifying your target accounts After identifying your target accounts, you must develop accounts plans for each. This involves analysing each account and determining the marketing channels to employ and which customers within the account to engage with, and what kinds of content are required to drive engagement and conversions. This could be thought leadership content, such as whitepapers or case studies. whitepapers, case studies, webinars, retargeting advertising personalized website experiences and other marketing strategies tailored to each account are all possible.
In the end, account based content marketing can deliver much better ROI than traditional content marketing tactics. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers who have incorporated account-based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.
While it takes more time and resources to nurture only a few target accounts but the benefits of an account-based content marketing approach are significant for businesses who want to increase revenues across all stages of the sales funnel. This is particularly relevant for professional service companies, where the quality of their prospects or customers is more important than the number of people they can attract.
In addition, ABM is a great choice for companies that wish to expand their business with existing customers by building trusting relationships over time. Research has shown that it's far more cost effective to invest in keeping existing customers than it is to spend money trying to find and convert new customers.
By combing ABM with traditional inbound marketing strategies, companies can maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. Marketers can enhance the relevancy of their content to prospects at each stage of the purchasing journey by using pillar content in conjunction with the retargeting technique and landing pages for lead capture. This allows them to create additional revenue opportunities through acquisition growth, acceleration, and expansion of their sales and marketing teams.
Making Hyper-Personalized Content
ABM is among the most popular trends in marketing, and it's vital for marketers to know how their existing strategies for content can be integrated into this new strategy. It can be hard to comprehend how ABM actually works. 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 aspects to consider, and what to expect from the success of implementation.
The most efficient ABM content strategy starts with understanding your ideal client's needs and objectives. Content that is in line with these goals allows you to provide a more personal service and boost conversions. Content should also be tailored to the specific needs of each account. This is why it's crucial to outline the path of users in each of your target accounts. By doing this, you will be able to discern what kinds of content (and even individual pages and items) are most popular with the people who are on them. This information can be used to improve the user experience on your website, displaying top performing content to people who visit those accounts.
It's not easy 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 consumers are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more customized experience.
One method to create hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing of real-time data. This will allow you to determine the way your content is distributed and provide suggestions for the next steps, and respond to events in real-time. While it isn't a substitute for multivariate testing or strategic planning, this is a great tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.
The cluster and pillar structure is another way to hyper-personalize content. This allows you to have a comprehensive piece of content that addresses the issues that your target accounts have to face, and connect to additional pieces that specifically address the issue. Fitness trackers, as an example, may have a number of common benefits and goals but the method in which different people use them can be quite different.
Getting Sales and Marketing Aligned
Traditionally, professional service marketers focused on developing an efficient sales funnel that was linear using broad marketing campaigns that appealed to large groups of people with the hope that a few would convert. This strategy might be effective in the past in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast-based model, however, it's not as effective with today's Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all leads through the same phase of the process, it's more important to focus on attracting the most valuable prospects and providing them with content and experiences specifically tailored to their particular needs and challenges.
The first step is to identify your ideal client profile (ICP). This isn't as simple as creating buyer personas as you must also be aware of the types of solutions that customers are seeking and how they can be used to the best advantage.
Once you have identified your ICP, develop a strategy for content that will connect to each account on different channels. This could range from social media ads 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 pertinent for each account and that you don't waste time or resources on the wrong people.
Another crucial step is to make use of the information you have about your top-performing clients. You can find positive traits that your customers share by looking at their historical data. For example they could all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar business size. This information can be used to create targeted campaigns for similar prospects.
Additionally, it's important to track the effectiveness of your ABM strategy and make changes whenever necessary. For instance, if your target account isn't responding to your content, it may be the right time to get in touch with them and find out what else you can do to help them move down the sales funnel. If you follow these steps you'll be able to improve your ABM strategy and content strategies more aligned, which will ultimately help to drive more conversions.
Measuring the success
Content marketing based on account is all about creating resources (videos reports, reports, blog posts and webinars) that are personalised and relevant to a specific account or persona. If you're aiming to target healthcare organizations for instance your content should be centered around their issues and pain points. This level of personalization is not only important in ABM but also a great way to build strong relationships with your potential clients and customers.
ai tools for content marketing can be utilized throughout the sales funnel. In fact, it can be even more effective than traditional lead generation when utilized at the top of the funnel. This is because you can recognize and connect with a limited number of accounts that are more likely to convert rather than trying to generate leads from an audience that may not be interested.
While offline tactics such as in-person meetings, phone calls or handwritten notes are still effective, today's buyers are more inclined to online self-service and remote interaction. This is why it's crucial to provide customers with the right content at the right time, and on the channel that's most suitable for them.
ABM is particularly effective at engaging executives from the C-suite, who are hard to reach. They tend to ignore mass email campaigns and are more likely to respond to content that speaks to their needs and use cases. In addition, ABM can help you accelerate sales by allowing you connect with your prospects at the most crucial stages of their journey -- such as when they're researching solutions to solve a specific business problem.
Although ABM isn't around for longer than traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's quickly becoming the most popular strategy for B2B companies seeking to improve their performance and drive 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.