Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
Your marketing department and digital agency can 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 issues and demonstrates how your product can help them overcome them.
Effective ABM content must deliver the appropriate information to each stakeholder at the right time in the buyer center. This means identifying the needs of each individual at various stages of their journey.
Targeting 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 way. By identifying the key decision makers at each account and identifying their issues and goals, marketers can create and distribute content that is targeted to the specific accounts. This helps to create an effective conversation with customers and prospects which ultimately leads to greater business outcomes for the business.
After identifying the accounts you want to target After identifying your target accounts, you must create account plans for each. This involves analyzing every account and determining the appropriate marketing channels that should be utilized and the customers within each account that should be engaged, and what type of content is required to encourage engagement. This could include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies webinars, retargeting ads, webinars customized website experiences, and other marketing strategies that are specific to each client are all possible.
Account-based content marketing can deliver a much higher return 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.
It takes more time and resources to cultivate the small number of targeted accounts, the advantages of an account-based content marketing approach are crucial for companies who want to increase revenue throughout all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially applicable to professional services companies where the quality of each prospective client or customer is more important than the number of people they can attract.
In addition, ABM is a great option for companies looking to grow their business with existing customers by establishing trusting relationships over time. Research shows that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than spending money to acquire new customers.
Combining ABM with inbound marketing techniques will maximize the impact of content marketing. Through the combination of pillar content, retargeting and lead capture landing pages, marketers can provide more value to potential customers at all stages of the buying journey. This allows 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 important for marketers to comprehend how their existing strategies for content can be integrated into this new strategy. However, it can be a challenge to comprehend how ABM works in practice. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert, and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave a crash-course on ABM in a recent presentation. They discussed the most important factors to consider, as well as what to expect for a successful implementation.
The most effective ABM content strategy begins with understanding your ideal client's pain points and objectives. Making content that is in line with these objectives will allow you to provide a personalized experience and ultimately increase conversions. Content should be tailored to the specific needs of each account. It is crucial to trace the path of users within each account. This will help you determine the type of content (and particular pages and items) is most appealing to your target audience. This data can be used to optimize the user experience on your website, displaying the most effective content to visitors who visit these accounts.
It's not easy to create hyper-personalized content however, it's a crucial step to increase the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of people are willing to provide their personal information in exchange for a more personalized experience.
AI processing of real-time data is one way to create hyper-personalized contents. This will allow you to manage the way your content is distributed, make suggestions for next steps, and respond to events in a flash. While it isn't a substitute for multivariate testing or strategic planning, this can be a powerful tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.
ai tools for content marketing to personalize your content is to use the pillar and cluster content structure. This allows you to have a comprehensive piece of content that addresses the issues that your target accounts face, and then link to supplementary pieces that focus on specific aspects of the issue. For example, a fitness tracker may have a variety of advantages and common goals however, the manner in which different kinds of users use it can differ significantly.
Aligning Marketing and Sales
Traditionally, professional services marketers were focused on creating an efficient sales funnel that was linear using broad marketing campaigns that targeted large numbers of people in the expectation that a few would be converted. This strategy might be effective in the past in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model, but it's no longer efficient in the current Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all potential leads through the same process of the process, it's more important to focus on attracting the most valuable prospects and providing them with content and experiences that are adapted to their individual requirements and needs.
The first step to this is to identify your ideal client profile (ICP). This isn't as simple as establishing buyer personas as you must also be aware of the types of solutions that customers are looking for and how they can be best utilized.
Once you've identified your ICP and a strategy, you can create a plan for content that connects with each account through multiple channels. This could range from social media advertisements to email outreach.
When you start implementing your ABM strategy, it's essential to keep your marketing and sales teams on the same team. This will ensure that your content is pertinent for each account and that you do not spend your time or resources on the wrong people.
One of the most important steps to take is to utilize the information you have about your most successful clients. By analyzing your historical customer information, you will be able to discover the positive traits they have in common, such as being in the financial services industry or falling within a certain company size. This data can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns to target similar prospects.
It's also important to track your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary changes. If your target audience doesn't respond to your content, you may need to reach out to see what you can do to help move them down the sales funnel. If you follow these steps, you'll be able to make your ABM strategy and content efforts better aligned, which will ultimately increase conversions.
Measuring the success
Account-based content marketing is all about creating resources (videos, reports, blog posts and webinars) that are personalised and relevant to a specific account or persona. For example, if you're targeting healthcare businesses, your content needs to be geared towards their issues and concerns. This kind of personalization is not only important in ABM but also an excellent method to establish strong relationships with your potential clients and customers.
The best part about ABM is that it can be used at every stage of the sales funnel. It can be even more effective than traditional lead generation at the top of a funnel. This is because it will help you identify and engage just a handful of accounts that are likely to convert, as opposed to trying to generate leads from a large crowd that may not be interested in your product or service.
While offline tactics such as phone calls and meetings in person or handwritten notes remain efficient, today's buyers prefer remote and digital self-service. That's why it's vital to provide them with the appropriate content at the right time, on the channel that works best for them.
ABM is particularly effective for reaching out to executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach who are typically skeptical of mass-email campaigns, but are more likely to respond to content that addresses their needs and usage scenarios. Additionally, ABM can help you shorten the sales cycle by allowing you to connect with your prospects at crucial points in their journey -- for instance, when they're looking into solutions to solve a specific business problem.
ABM isn't as old as traditional marketing and selling strategies, but it's fast becoming the most popular strategy for B2B companies 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.