How to Target Companies with Account-Based Marketing

With business priorities evolving and budgets tightening, now is not the time to be wasting your marketing efforts on companies that are not interested in your offering. Instead, focusing your attention towards specific accounts that are likely to convert is the most efficient way to survive during this difficult economic time. This is where ABM comes in.

Deep Dive Into Your Most Valuable Prospects

ABM is a highly efficient and cost effective marketing strategy because it prevents marketing and sales efforts being wasted on unqualified leads. Hence, with ABM you can dive right into engaging with your targeted accounts and fulfilling their business needs from the get-go! Head over to this article for more information on ABM basics.

ABM is an effective way of engaging with customers who are likely to convert. This is supported by research which demonstrates that:

Respondents indicate that account based methods improve customer lifetime value, improve win rates and deliver higher ROI than traditional marketing methods
Organisation’s report, on average, a 48% higher win rate from their account-based efforts

The first step for setting up a successful ABM campaign is to identify and select your unique target accounts. For more information on developing account lists refer to this previous article.

Discovering More about Your Key Accounts

Once you have collated your account list, you’re now ready to reach out to these accounts with your online advertising and marketing campaigns.

Understanding your Accounts

The natural next step in the ABM process involves getting to know your accounts. This involves understanding their online behaviour, current business interests and potential purchasing intentions. This information will be contained within your intent data and via performing research on your accounts. Through understanding this information you will be able to produce content that meets their needs at any given time. The more you know about your target accounts, the more detailed your campaigns directed towards them can be and hence the more successful the campaign will be!

The Importance of Personalisation

Personalisation of your sales and marketing approach is essential for ABM. Each of your target accounts are likely to be facing different business challenges and hence will be requiring differing expertise, products and solutions at varying times. Your content needs to be tailored to each individual account’s business needs. Your key messages should revolve around how your products and solutions can assist the account with their unique business challenges. This will ensure your outreach strategy is relevant and useful and will boost the likelihood that the accounts will convert.

The information you previously gathered from your data and research will inform you about all aspects of your outreach strategy:

What type of ads will reach them best?
Where can you find them online?
What are they interested in?
What do you want to say?

Let’s look at an example; say your intent data highlights that one of your targeted companies are interested in the latest video conferencing technology. You know this because your data demonstrates that they spend time searching for these types of video solutions online and reading articles on this topic. You could then meet this demand by producing display banner advertisements that portray the video technology products that you offer.

Choosing the Right Channel

To get the most out of your campaigns it is essential that you utilise a variety of channels including social platforms, online mediums and mobile networks. This can involve a variety of advertising types such as display adverts, video adverts, native adverts, advertorials and social media adverts.

Different industries and business roles make use of specific channels to suit their unique needs. Therefore, you need to make sure you are placing your content on the right channel in order to reach your accounts effectively.

Tactics for Targeting your Accounts

Once you fully understand the needs of your account list and have created content that aligns with their needs, it is time to target them with your campaigns. These campaigns can be placed on different B2B websites depending on where your accounts are online at a given time. But how do you do this?

There are three main ways of targeting your accounts:

Using their IP addresses
Using intent data
Using hyper-local targeting

An IP address is the unique identifier for devices within a certain corporate Internet network. These allow adverts to be targeted to your accounts wherever and whenever they are active on the web. Intent data is stored ongoing information about your account’s B2B interests and purchasing intentions. You can target your campaigns based on this information to ensure that the most relevant content is being delivered to the right accounts at the right time. Hyper-local targeting involves using your account’s geographical location to ensure that you reach the most appropriate B2B individuals within the account.

Using a combination of all three of these targeting methods allows you to target your accounts with a high level of precision and will enable your ABM campaign to achieve significant results.

Monitoring the Results of Your ABM Campaign

Potentially the most important part of ABM comes after the campaign is live. Sounds strange right? But this is the part that makes ABM so unique and special.

The success of your ABM campaign towards each individual account can be objectively and accurately measured once the campaign is live – unlike any other form of marketing.

What can be measured?

How many accounts have converted?
Which accounts achieved the most impressions?
What is the CTR of each account?
Is the number of known individuals within the target account growing?
Has there been any changes to the way these accounts are engaging with your brand and content?
How much revenue has been generated from each targeted account?
What is the exact ROI?

Measuring the performance of your ABM campaign is key to understanding its success and will aid how your future ABM campaigns are conducted. So, take the time to learn which channels and what content yields the best results and continuously adapt your campaign accordingly to ensure you’re placing your resources into the right strategies.

One thing to be aware of is that accounts will not always react immediately or how you typically expect them too. But do not despair! Even if these target customers do not directly convert, you will instead have increased their awareness towards your brand and your offering. Also who’s to say these accounts will not convert later down the line? Be patient. ABM relies on your accounts being active online- this will happen eventually.

Final Thoughts

ABM provides a cost effective and highly efficient way to reach high-quality accounts and convert them into long-lasting customers for your brand. An ABM campaign allows you to deliver a personalised experience to each individual account. Targeting your customers with ABM campaigns may seem overwhelming at first with all the data, tools and information. However, it will be a strategy that will boost your overall growth and increase your revenue!