Have you ever found yourself trying to come up with a plan to close deals quicker through account-based marketing but don't want to burn the midnight oil? Account-based marketing is a strategy that uses methods to hand-select companies that fall into certain target markets based on needs. ABM strategies are not for everyone, as companies who have a financial productivity that is high-volume, low-value sales will not benefit from ABM. Here are a few steps to follow to segment your account-based marketing audience.

Targeting Your Market

When researching your company's products or services, you want to review a few years to see who exactly is benefiting from your company's offerings. You can break it down by age group, company type, location, or even the job sector that is purchasing from your company. This will be one of the steps that help break down the audience you are going to target. Once you have this information start developing your searches in the platforms, you plan to use to gather other companies in that target.

Level Of Fit

Once you have determined your market, the next step is finding companies that best fit your needs. In order to get a list together, you will need to develop something such as an ideal customer profile based on account scoring by either numbers or letters. This type of system allows you to have a scoring system for all companies that came up in your original grouping.

Mapping Your Buyer Journey

After developing your customer profiles, you can start reaching out to companies to try and determine where they are in their buyer journey for the solution you are offering. There are various levels of where someone can be in that journey. Here are the main stages companies can be in:

• Not-in-market: not actively searching for a solution
• In-market: actively researching potential solutions 
• Anonymously engaged: visiting our website and engaging with content anonymously
• Opted-in: they have provided us with permission to email them
• Hand raiser: they've submitted the "Contact Us" form

Account-based marketing is a very beneficial type of marketing if used properly. Account-based marketing is a strategy that uses methods to hand-select companies that fall into certain target markets based on needs. ABM strategies are not for everyone, as companies who have a financial productivity that is high-volume, low-value sales will not benefit from ABM.

Want to learn more? Download our Account-Based Marketing Guide!