How to use ABM without a cost involved?

What do we understand from ABM? It stands for Account Based Marketing. Generally a popular activity on LinkedIn to tap accounts and mature them as per your business requirements.

My main objective behind this article is to draw your attention towards an organic ABM practices rather go for paid mode. It is also about the two dimensional nature of it just to understand that it is not always about the paid campaigns.

Before I move further, I would like to educate you over the Paid services of LinkedIn and how much it can be worth for you based on your business requirements . It will further help you understand to opt for right mode of ABM.

Implications of Paid Campaigns on LinkedIn

Your budget plays a very important role to go for LinkedIn Paid campaigns. You need to be clear in your business goals before you opt for the mentioned solution. Generally in my opinion I will not recommend this for SME's and MSMe's at all , but moderate and big companies who can have a situation to conduct Paid campaigns can give it a shot.

Why companies go for a Paid Campaign?

The first point which comes in mind is to reach out to the maximum audience in short time with your products or services .

Second aim is to establish company as a Brand.

Third, to get the Leads. We get the leads of the Executive level people in a form of their contact details and email addresses. (Which can be obtained though organic ABM as well, We will talk later about it. )

Factors (Metrics in technical) like Location, Industry, Job roles/Designations/ Companies (In terms of employees) should be considered thoroughly in your measurement plan to drive results.

Budget Required: Min $300 is required to start a campaign , where it is not certain whether it will be acknowledged by the targeted audience or not because in this budget you can not run your Ad for more than two days. As we all can understand our engagement rate on sponsored Ads. they are likely to be skipped.

Unfortunately, when it comes to ROI, the results are different for different industries.

IN ORDER TO DEVELOP ENGAGEMENT ON SPONSORED ADS IT IS RELEVANT TO DO ORGANIC ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING TO GENERATE AWARENESS FROM SCRATCH UNTIL AND UNLESS YOU ARE RENOWNED ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKET.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

The popular brands always gain attention from their campaigns and get maximum engagement because of their brand awareness

How Organic Account Based Marketing (ABM) works)? Its importance to each category of users on LinkedIn.

We generally keep doing ABM activities knowingly and unknowingly on Social Media. Here i would like to talk about LinkedIn only.

Examples

1. Users approach HR recruiters to help them in their Job search.
2. Services/Product oriented companies approach Top CEO/CTO level users on LinkedIn to have a look at their product and make a sales.
3. I would not like to spare Career Coach or Life Mentor who enjoys a good following on this platform. All of their post is all about target the undefined users , where they are urge to Like, Follow , Comment and Share their posts. This is a direct form of ABM

How to Start it?

Parallel Roles of Social Media and Sales Team

The first step to make it a success without involving any cost is to publish at least three posts on it with a fraction of relevant Hashtags.

Hashtags: LinkedIn also gives you a platform to keep a record of the trending and widely used Hashtags which you can add in your posts to increase their visibility.

Image 1: Hashtag option on LI

Image 2: Click on the black marked area

Continuing with a three times post in a day, you have to make it sure that it should remain a consistent process with a unique, short and crisp content and here your expertise and level of creativity will play a main role to gain attention. It will help to create followers.

For example .. if after a period of time a company decides to come up with a new product or service which will be recognized by the followers and likewise it can gain the visibility.

Sales executives/Mangers Role: (In reference to the example No.2)

Put the filters, select companies and people accordingly to Target the specific audience.

In most of the profiles you will see their contact details which can be visible to you after profile accepts the request. In other ways you can find the details without even sending the connection request. But sending a connection request with a brief note is important.

This will also help Sales people to tap a executive of a particular company to whom you want to pitch your product. You can go for the messages options and can make a regular follow on him/her.

You first communication starts when your request get accepted. A thank you msg will cost you nothing. Same time you can keep a record of their work and birthday anniversaries.

Later, how you create your company image in front of them is very important. Just remember your dealing with intellectual minds if you are planning to get in touch with some one at Director/ Executive/ Experience level people. So do some homework on your company USP's and Product specifications in context to their competitors.

One more thing, if you are not confident about your Company profile/Brochure then do not share with them rather make presentation on your own where you can describe your company products in a best way you can.Try to get a appointment as I thoroughly believes it is possible and later face to face touch make the connection bond stronger because the second party is familiar of you.

In the current Pandemic situation we have no option left to mature the business online in most of the business type.

With the help of regular followups, success will come to you one day for sure. Followups is the main key to it.

Social Media Team and Sales Team has to work parallel to achieve the role.

In reference to Example No 1

It will help in your profile recognition from the recruiters. If you are a candidate and looking for a job, it makes a sense to talk about your experience and skills with examples. You can also come up with your work done in a form of presentations and talk about yourself that how you can be more productive for a company. It has been observed that videos are playing a very important role as they get more engagement.

Return on Investment: Without investing a penny if you become successful in maturing business then its a best practice which would be continued.

Organic ABM not only help is connection bond but also gives authenticity to your profile and company image. I will not say that its a slow procedure because even despite of conducting sponsored campaigns the result varies from industry to industry and case to case and sometimes not matches the expected ROI and even Goal.

So pick your ABM mode wisely. My opinion is based on my experiences on Paid campaigns and it is advisable to always go though your Business Measurement Plan wisely.

All the best

Thank You

Isha Chauhan

Brand & Digital Marketing Specialist