How to develop a successful account-based marketing strategy

When the market becomes competitive and you have a very small room to move your top and bottom lines, it is essential to follow smart and impactful strategies to convert prospects into paying customers. Among these strategies, account-based marketing (ABM) is considered very useful. It is the reason more and more companies are transitioning to using it.

One of the major reasons companies are making the shift is that to make a purchase, your sales and marketing teams are supposed to talk to and convince at least five key decision-makers within a company. It makes the sales cycle long.

That is why, nowadays, they are keener on setting their sights on key accounts instead of indiscriminately attempting anyone and everyone.

What is an account-based marketing strategy (ABM)?

ABM is a marketing strategy, which is focused on developing, executing, and monitoring campaigns designed for targeting specific accounts. 

So technically it is the reverse-engineering of the conventional marketing funnel. You do not go to the whole world of prospective businesses that you think want your services or products.

Instead, you will work in a focused and targeted manner with those that you know have a need for your business.

It is very obvious that here you have much more personalized campaigns and not generic ones targeting large groups jointly. You develop niche content to move the right prospects through a funnel. And now you understand that ABM begins at the other end or bottom of the funnel.

You begin with the target accounts and then move backward towards creating content and campaigns that are targeted to specific people at those companies. It is an effective strategy that works well. Around 40 percent of companies use these plans to grow their ABM efforts in the future.

Experts say that ABM strategy can vary based on the company, ideal customer profile, and target audience. Statistics say this strategy is more useful for enterprise-level customers because of the effort and time involved. Also, it is essential that your sales and marketing teams work in sync. This method leverages marketing automation to streamline steps in process.

Steps of creating a successful Account-based marketing strategy

1. Align the sales and marketing teams

As said earlier, the success of your ABM strategy is dependent on how well your sales and marketing teams are in sync. They have to work together. If they work in silos, then the strategy will not be impactful.

So, bringing the collaboration process is recommended. It doesn’t matter whether they are working in the same room, same building, or they are working remotely. What is important is that they should work together. Just by bringing them together, it is possible to find out potential roadblocks and challenges that are being faced by these teams. If they are not identified in time, they can impact the results of your ABM.

2. Now bring together the core team members

Experts say that the important step to execute the strategy of ABM, you need to track down the following roles and make them part of the core team.

• Marketing manager that can handle the marketing automation and ensure that the accounts and contacts are aligned well based on their buying journey.
• The sales manager that will manage the details of key accounts and keep them updated.
• Account executive that is responsible for executing the ABM strategy.
• Content creators, who are responsible for the development of targeted and personalized content in all formats.

3. Invest in the best tools for account-based marketing

You must ensure that there are the right tools in place. Not only they will help your team effortlessly execute the ABM strategy but also help the team to monitor and track the progress.

4. Find out and prioritize the target accounts

If you end up choosing the wrong accounts to target, then it is not a desirable situation. You may waste a lot of resources and time.

So, when you find out and prioritize the right accounts and determine which distribution channels to include in the ABM strategy.

5. Content creation for your target accounts

Now, everything is ready, you need to develop personalized content. It could be blog posts, ads, emails, white papers, etc.

6. Serve your customers

One way to achieve this is by offering them excellent customer service. It is one of the critical aspects that should be considered.  Also, it is essential to provide them with a solution they can implement quickly. Thus, their business will not be compromised.

When you want to track the progress of your ABM strategy, you have to track it at all places. It is your website, distribution channels, and even the CRM system. You can use tools to consolidate real-time metrics from various platforms and integrate them into a dashboard.

Thus, there will be an at-a-glance view of the ABM strategy. Experts say that ABM is not just a strategy for big enterprises today, but it is applicable to every company.