An account-based marketing program can take on many forms and include a wide variety of tactics. The overarching theme is that these initiatives focus on a particular segment of your target audience, are highly personalized, and incorporate multi-channel outreach. There is a great deal of preparation involved in creating a comprehensive ABM campaign. Here we walk through ten steps to complete prior to launch.
Segment Your Audience
Account-based marketing programs typically focus on a particular industry, vertical, micro-vertical, or even a specific group of highly sought-after accounts. A refined and segmented audience is required in order to create the level of personalization necessary for an ABM program to be effective. You want your personalization to focus not only on the company and contact name but on specific pain points being experienced by your target audience. You can also touch on any events, anniversaries, or product launches they may have going on.
Research The Competition
There’s a good chance you have competition seeking out the same accounts you are most wanting to land. What kind of tactics are they using to reach them? Have they had any success in working with these companies? Are they preferred vendors for these organizations? If so, is that something you need to look into before trying to with these businesses? There is quite a bit of business intelligence that can be gained by researching the competition.
Develop Premium Content
Premium content such as eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies should be developed and used in a variety of ways throughout your ABM campaigns. These pieces should be personalized to each segment you’re targeting and worked into all aspects of your marketing and sales process. Premium content should be created for each stage of the funnel and used accordingly. Quality premium content can establish you as a leader in your industry and provide valuable assets for generating digital leads.
Create Visual Content
Videos, infographics, and even memes will all play a significant role in the content marketing portion of your ABM campaigns. Videos and infographics can be highly effective in explaining complex ideas and are great for product demonstrations. A visual component will appeal to a large portion of your audience and is an essential component when undertaking a multi-channel strategy.
Write Educational Articles
Blog articles are one of the best ways to build awareness and draw prospects to your website. These blogs should educate and entertain your audience and be linked to premium assets that will move them further down the funnel. Articles should be promoted through organic social posts, paid ads, email, and any other channel your target audience gets their information from.
Craft Organic Social Posts
Social media will play a part in nearly every type of marketing campaign that you launch these days. There’s no getting around the importance or effectiveness of maintaining a solid social media presence. When thinking in terms of an ABM campaign, seek out discussion groups that your target organizations frequent. Post into these groups and engage with your prospect’s content. This will help to build the relationships that are so important in making sales these days.
Build Your Contact List
Your data will likely come from a variety of sources, including your internal database, purchased lists, and contacts gained through digital marketing efforts. The quality of your data will play a major role in the success of your campaign, so this is not a place to cut corners or costs. With ABM programs, the idea is to canvas a large portion of your target companies, so you’ll want to obtain between two and twenty contacts from each one. This allows you to network through the company, gain business intelligence, leverage influencers and identify true decision-makers.
Create LinkedIn Ads
While not every ABM campaign is going to use LinkedIn ads, they are very effective in the B2B space. Each campaign should contain at least four ads. LinkedIn will only show each person the same ad once every 48 hours, so multiple ads will allow you to get in front of them more frequently. It would be best to leverage various assets in these ads, including eBooks, whitepapers, case studies, and premium service offers. Your ideal budget will depend on the size of your audience, the cost to reach them, and the goals of your campaign.
Design Email Pieces
Email will play a variety of roles in your ABM campaigns. You’ll want to have pieces to use for email blasts at the launch of your campaign, fulfillment pieces that provide more information to interested parties, and a few that can be used to nurture those that have raised their hand but are not ready to set an appointment. Each piece should have an eye-catching subject line that entices recipients to open them and a call to action that leads to a premium offer.
Develop A Call Guide
There is still no substitute for the live touch and teleprospecting should be a part of every ABM campaign. Anyone who converts through an advertisement or clicks on an email should be made priority during the calling portion of your campaign. On average, between three and six touches will be needed in order to gain traction and set qualified appointments. Appointments that are set through live conversation are far more likely to remain intact. Additionally, a live touch allows you to further qualify leads and gain valuable business intelligence.
So, this is what it takes to prepare to launch an account-based marketing campaign. This does not include implementation and analysis to ensure what you’re doing is effective. Winn has been successfully running ABM campaigns for some of the top technology companies in the world for over 30 years. Contact us today to learn how we can help you land your most sought-after accounts.
