The ABM Study Key: Better Marketing

Ahh, ABM. It’s everywhere, isn’t it? Pretty difficult not to notice how big it’s gotten in marketing and sales circles worldwide — wouldn’t be an understatement to say that it’s like

Soon enough, you’ll be using everything you’ve taken away from this nifty little three-letter abbreviation to transform your campaign strategies for the better. There’s a lot to cover, though, so we’re going to have to do this in parts; from ABM basics and a short history lesson all the way to the metrics and KPIs you need to keep in mind for your next campaign, we’ve got it all here for you!

Here’s a quick list:

• What the hell is ABM?
• Implementing a Good ABM Strategy
• Measuring and Optimizing ABM Campaigns

What the hell is ABM?

Simply put — ABM is just a more targeted approach to marketing that focuses on best-fit customers. This stands in contrast to more traditional approaches to marketing, where instead of getting the word out and narrowing it down to the few deal-makers, you instead identify the clients you want, tailor your messaging and content to engage and fit their needs, and then land that sweet, sweet deal.?

At some point, you might not even hear about ABM as its own thing — it’ll just be called modern B2B marketing. This is the kind of revolutionary stuff we’re talking about here: the kind that completely uproots common convention and marketing norms.

So, how’d this all come about??

Inbound marketing’s been the standard for B2B marketing strategies for a long while, up until the 2010s. This was when ABM entered mainstream use by companies across the globe, with a spike in global search traffic in around 2014.?

In the nineties, companies in the B2B business realized the value in personalizing brand experiences for their own clients — something they took from the strategies B2C companies often employ. It wasn’t called “ABM” back then, as every one of these companies always had a list of big-ticket prospects they were gunning for, but the concept was largely the same. It would take around two decades after that for it to enter the mainstream, and going by recent trends after the pandemic, it’s likely we won’t even be hearing the term be used at all, becoming entirely synonymous with B2B marketing.

Implementing a Good ABM Strategy

So, you’ve decided to start with ABM. Let’s say you’ve assembled everyone you need — the sales reps, the folks in charge of content, the account execs, the managers and administrators, and on top of that — you’ve got the c-level leadership of your company involved and invested in your ABM strategy. What now?

1. Set Your Goals

• As any decision goes, it’s important to define the objectives your actions ought to accomplish. Whether it’s speeding up the account pipeline or retaining what customers you already have, knowing where you’re going goes a long way towards figuring out how to get there.

1. Acquire Your Targets

• Get down to business — figure out who your ideal customer is. This can be done using an Ideal Customer Profile, defining the perfect customer for what your organization solves for. This isn’t an exact description of the end-user or individual buyer, but a general idea of a fictitious company that best fits the solutions you provide.
• When this is done, start building detailed audience segments of your future customers. Use both Intent and CRM data to segment further, then prioritize the accounts that are most likely to buy. This is where collecting a figurative ton of data from both first and third-party sources becomes crucial — the more you do have, the clearer the bigger picture becomes.

1. Tailor Your Content

• Start crafting your message and choose the channels you want to use. What’s most important is that you spread the same, unified message across many different channels, like personalized web pages and targeted advertising. Keep it consistent, keep it fresh, and try not to overwhelm your audience with too much information, or too much of the same thing.

1. Execution

• Kick your campaign into gear and start reaching out to potential clients. While you’re targeting the most important accounts with advertising tailored to their needs, bring together the data, visibility, and alerts your teams need for outreach.

Measuring and Optimizing ABM Campaigns

So you’ve got your ABM strategy in full swing, and the accounts you want are starting to show interest in the solutions you have on offer — what now? Just like any other campaign, it’s important to make sure you appropriately respond to the data you collect while it runs its course, and optimizing your strategy is a big part of this.

For example, optimizing account engagement as well as the degree to which they’re engaged can be achieved by strengthening your messaging, making sure they’re aligned to personalized web pages or content experiences. Making good content that leaves you wanting more is an excellent way to get this done.

Accelerating the pipeline is another part you’d want to refine as well, making the process of converting prospective customers into paying ones by deploying automated stage-based campaigns that deliver content relevant to where they’re at in the sales process.

Whatever you do decide, keep in mind that you’re going to need to pull in as much data as you can during the process of engaging, and winning deals from targeted accounts — something more easily done when you’ve got a good tech stack as well as a switched-on team to help you through it all. Measuring things like how many accounts you’ve won or the total revenue gained from the whole ordeal is important, but knowing things like how well your relationship with a target account is proceeding or how much it costs to engage an account are just as relevant to your decision-making.

Conclusion

The marketing landscape has changed over the past few years, what with the pandemic of 2020 messing things up for everyone and the subsequent changes in every facet of life — business included. Today’s revenue teams have been able to make more out of less, becoming smarter and more targeted with their approach as their budgets shrank. Whether it’s ABM or some other advantageous strategy, it’s our responsibility as the decision-makers in our organizations to keep up with these advances, lest we get left behind.

So, do you want to know how ABM can be applied to your own business? Check out our website and find out how ???? https://www.effiqs.com