Account-Based Marketing is More Than Just Another Buzzword
For 96% of B2B marketers, it’s a major strategy for marketing success; helping land sales that otherwise may not have been possible.
Account-based marketing allows marketing teams to focus resources on “sales whale” accounts to increase engagement and draw out new opportunities. Through automated, targeted and personalized campaigns, account-based marketing can grow accounts and profitability—not to mention create better alignment between marketing and sales to achieve a shared goal.
If you want to implement an account-based marketing strategy—or if you’re already using one—be sure you’re getting the most out of it.
Here are 5 steps for implementing an account-based marketing strategy that will achieve real results for your company.
5 Steps to Turn Account-Based Marketing Strategies into Marketing Successes
Begin building an account-based marketing strategy that will create long-term results for your business.
- Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams.
While account-based marketing brings sales and marketing teams together by virtue of its focus on shared accounts and goals, you can only benefit from taking additional steps to get sales and marketing to speak the same language. It’s a big undertaking for sure; one thing you can do right away is create content for sales enablement.
- Take Advantage of Marketing Automation.
Using marketing automation to power your account-based marketing strategy will allow you to get a better handle on the leads you’ll be generating through target list prospecting. You’ll be able to handle more accounts more easily, and those accounts will be what you’re looking for.
- Identify Your Target Accounts.
Pinpoint your ideal prospects—the high-value accounts that meet the business goals you have set. These goals may be:
- Expanding into new markets
- Winning a specific client
- Increasing your market share
To ensure your goals are met, analyze your target accounts by industry, size and location, type of customers and digital behavior, etc.
- Define and Create the Right Messaging to Market to Your Target Accounts.
Your account-based marketing strategy will fall flat without customized messaging.
First, segment your target account list and identify the key stakeholders to whom you’ll be messaging.
Second, map your existing content to your audience, and fill in any gaps in content that could speak to your target accounts’ pain points or goals.
Third, choose the right channels by which to market to your target accounts. Keep your messaging consistent, but vary the channels (i.e. email vs. display ads) based on the accounts.
- Measure, Learn, and Adjust.
Only by measuring the results of your account-based marketing strategy will you see what is working (and what isn’t) to inform decision-making at every stage. It’s important to track results throughout the entire sales funnel to see which strategies are effective at moving leads through.
Engagio, a software company, argues measuring leads and opportunities is not enough. Marketers must also keep in mind:
- Coverage – Do you have sufficient information and data about your target accounts?
- Awareness – How much does each target account know about your company and value promise?
- Engagement – Are the right people engaging with your company where want them to, and is that engagement increasing?
- Program Impact – Is your account-based marketing strategy reaching the target accounts and having a long-term effect?
- Influence – How is your account-based marketing strategy improving specific sales outcomes?
Account-based marketing is here to stay, and for B2B marketers, it’s positively impacting their entire sales funnel over time—and 70 percent say it’s boosting sales and marketing alignment.
