Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services
With account based content marketing your marketing department and digital marketing agency can focus on a specific group of accounts or clients. This lets you create hyper-personalized specific content that speaks directly to their needs and explain how your product will solve these issues.
Effective ABM content must deliver the appropriate information to each stakeholder at the appropriate time in the buyer's center. This involves identifying the needs of each person at different 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 interacting with targeted accounts in a highly personal method. Marketers can create and deliver relevant content by understanding the key decision makers in each account, their issues, and their objectives. This can lead to a more productive dialog with prospects and customers, which ultimately leads to more profitable business results.
Once you've identified the target accounts The next step is to design accounts plans for each one. This involves analyzing each account and determining which marketing channels to employ and which customers within the account should interact with, and what kinds of content are needed to increase engagement and converts. This could be thought leadership content such as whitepapers, or case studies. whitepapers, case studies, webinars, retargeting advertising, personalized website experiences and other marketing strategies that are customized to each customer are all possible.
Account-based marketing can yield an even higher return on your investment than traditional strategies for content. In fact, 84 percent of B2B marketers who have integrated account-based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other type of marketing campaign.
Although it takes longer and resources to cultivate only a few target accounts, the benefits of a strong account-based content marketing strategy are crucial for companies that wish to increase their revenues across all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially relevant for professional service companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the amount of customers they can draw.
Additionally, ABM is a great fit for businesses that want to grow their business with existing customers by building trusting relationships over time. Research has shown that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than spending money to acquire new customers.
Combining ABM with inbound marketing strategies can increase the effectiveness of content marketing. Marketers can make their content more relevant to buyers at every stage of their buying journey by mixing pillar content with retargeting and landing pages to facilitate lead capture. This enables them to create additional revenue opportunities through acquisition, acceleration and expansion for their sales and marketing teams.
Create content that is hyper-personalized
ABM is among the most popular trends in marketing, and it's important for marketers to know how their existing content strategies fit into this new approach. But it can be difficult to understand how ABM works in practice. In a recent talk at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox presented a nifty course on ABM that explained the main aspects to consider and what to expect from a successful implementation.
The most efficient ABM content strategy begins with understanding your ideal client's pain points and objectives. Producing content that aligns with these goals will allow you to deliver a more personalized experience and ultimately increase conversions. Content must also be tailored to the needs of each account. content creation software sickseo.co.uk is why it is essential to sketch out the user journeys in each of your accounts. By doing this you'll be able to discern what kinds of content (and even specific pages and items) are most popular with these people. This information can be used to optimize user's journeys on these accounts, displaying the most successful content.
It's not easy to create hyper-personalized content but it's an important step to boost the effectiveness of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of consumers are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more personalised experience.
One method to create hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing on real-time data. This will allow you to manage the way your content is presented, make suggestions for next steps, and respond to events in a flash. While it cannot replace your multivariate testing or strategic planning, this can be a useful tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.
The pillar and cluster structure is another method of hyper-personalize content. This allows you to create a a comprehensive piece of content that describes the problem that your target accounts have to face, and link to other pieces that specifically address the issue. For instance a fitness tracker could have many advantages and common goals however the way in which different types of people use it can differ greatly.
Getting Sales and Marketing Aligned
Professional services marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel using broad marketing campaigns to appeal to large groups with the hope that a portion of them would become converts. This approach may have worked in the past when B2B marketing employed a more broadcast model, but is not effective in the current Account Based Marketing strategy. Instead of trying to guide all prospects through the same phases of the process, you should focus on prospects with high value. You can do this by providing them with experiences or content that are tailored to their specific needs and problems.
The first step is to establish your ideal client profile. This isn't as simple as creating buyer personas as you must also take into account the types of services that each customer is seeking and how they will be utilized.
Once you know your ICP The next step is to develop an effective strategy for content that is connected with each of these accounts across different channels. This could range from social media ads, to email outreach.
As you begin executing your ABM strategy, it's essential to keep your sales and marketing teams on the same page. This will ensure that your content is pertinent to each account and ensure that you don't spend time or resources on the wrong target audience.
A key step to take is to utilize the information you have on your top-performing clients. Through analyzing your customer data, you can discover the positive traits they have in common, like being in the financial services sector or being within a certain size. This information can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns to target similar potential customers.
It's also essential to keep track of your ABM strategy's performance and make any needed adjustments. For instance, if you notice that your target account isn't responding to your content, it could be time to contact them and see what else you can do to assist them move down the sales funnel. You can align your ABM strategy with your content strategy by following these steps.
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. If you're trying to reach healthcare businesses for instance your content must be centered around their problems and concerns. This type of personalization doesn't just help with ABM but also builds solid relationships with prospects and customers.
The most appealing aspect of ABM is that it can be utilized at any stage of the sales funnel. In fact, it can be more efficient than traditional lead generation if used at the top of the funnel. This is because it will assist you in identifying and engaging just a handful of accounts that are likely to convert, as opposed to trying to generate leads from a large audience that might not be interested in your product or service.
While offline methods like in-person meetings, phone calls, or handwritten notes remain efficient, today's buyers prefer online self-service and remote interaction. This is why it's crucial to provide customers with the right content at the right time and on the channel that works best for them.
ABM is particularly effective in engaging executives in the C-suite who are hard to reach. They are often oblivious to mass emails and are more likely to respond to content that is relevant to their needs and use instances. In addition, ABM can help you reduce the time to sell by allowing you to connect with your prospects at the most crucial stages of their journey, like when they're researching solutions to solve a specific business problem.
Although ABM isn't around for longer than traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's quickly becoming a top strategy for B2B companies seeking to improve their performance and drive greater 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.