How to Get Started with an Account Based Marketing Strategy (ABM)

ByGenerate UK

When implemented correctly, an account based marketing strategy can be highly effective and can produce some brilliant results for your business.

We have already discussed, what is account based marketing in a previous post, so now it’s time to get down to the creating your plan.

What do I need to do first to get my account based marketing strategy started?

The first thing you need to do is consider what your overall goals are for this campaign. If you clearly set these out at the beginning it will be easier to plan the rest of your account based marketing strategy.

Once you have set your goals break these down into bitesize pieces and think about how you can monitor and measure these. If, for example, you are looking to increase conversion rates this could be recorded through using analytics tools and keeping track of the sales teams’ interactions with the customers.

Finally, think about what a successful account based marketing campaign looks like for your goals. If you have these clearly in your mind and if you imagine what success looks like it will be easier to mould your strategy around this.

Building the ABM dream team

Unlike most other campaigns, an account based marketing strategy requires complete synchronisation of your sales and marketing teams to ensure consistency. If you want to succeed, we recommend building a team specifically for this campaign as it can be time consuming.

Your team needs to be a selection from both sales and marketing.  You want a good variety of characters and skills so that you can cover all bases, from writing, to follow up calls to creating the campaign. Once you have decided who will be a part of the team and who will be heading up the account based marketing strategy you can start with the planning.

Set your targets

The next thing you then need to do is identify and outline what you are promoting and then think about your perfect customer, in order to meet the goals, you set. When discussing this think about every aspect from location of the customer, size of business, industry, role within the company etc.

If you cover every feature it will be easier to come up with your target audience for the account based marketing strategy. If you already have a buying persona refer to this and try padding it out with more details.

Once you have a through, full profile of your ideal customer you can start thinking about what companies match your target. When considering whether they are the right company for you ask yourself; what benefit will they bring to my business? Why this industry in particular?

By answering these questions, you will be able to narrow down which companies will be best to target in your account based marketing strategy.

Research, research, research

The next step is one of the most important tasks of the campaign, research. Once you have narrowed down which company or companies you are focusing on you need to carry out through research into the individuals being targeted.

Find out as much as you can about them. Not just the basics; phone number, email, role etc. You also want to find out where they went to university, what they studied, what their hobbies are and so on.

We recommend creating a spreadsheet so you can record all this information on one document. This will make sure that anyone involved in the campaign is working with the same information.

This also means that if anyone in your company finds out extra details about the target individual, they can add it to the spreadsheet for everyone to see. This then avoids your colleagues duplicating information and wasting time on researching the same areas.

Use social media to your advantage

Follow them on social media, see what content they are interacting with and what they are liking, start interacting with them early on; this will give you an idea of what is important to them and what they are more likely to click on or interact with.

Every little detail will help you build an overall profile of your target individuals in order to make the account based marketing strategy as personalised as possible.

For example, if you find that they attended the same university as one of your sales team then make sure they are the ones who conducts the calls.

A shared interest or shared life event is a great conversation starter and a good way to build relationships with your target individuals.

Time to create

Once you and your team are happy you have full profiles on your target individuals and companies it is time to start creating the campaign and content.

This will vary greatly on the type of individual you are aiming your campaign at, the overall goals and the industry. But you may consider using some of the below tools:

Alternatively, you may choose a mixture of a few. Whatever you decide, make sure you make it as personal as possible to help draw the potential clients in. In the long run, this type of account based marketing strategy can be highly effective at building relationships with your target individuals which means potentially a long term business connection.

If you are interested in finding out more about account based marketing strategies and how you can increase your client base contact us today.