Account-based marketing has become a go-to strategy for many B2B marketers. This strategy has been proven to show profitable results for businesses. Many marketers are allocating more budget for their ABM strategy. According to TOPO, 80% marketers say that ABM improves customer lifetime values, while 86% say that it improves win rates. ABM focuses on a few select accounts rather than casting a wide net. Personalization plays a key role in ABM campaigns, as it helps connect with the target accounts. Content is an important aspect of ABM strategy to attract, nurture and convert the targeted accounts.
According to Forrester, 56% marketers strongly agree that personalized content is one of the key contributors for ABM’s success. Hence, personalizing account-based marketing content should be a priority for anyone implementing this strategy. Moreover, distributing that content effectively to the right target audience is equally important. In this article, we will discuss how you can personalize and distribute your account-based marketing content efficiently to create a successful strategy.
Personalizing Account-Based Marketing Content
Creating and personalizing content can seem challenging as you are only focusing on a few select accounts. Content offers value to your target accounts. Tailored content can resonate with your audience and they can connect with your brand. Traditional marketing creates content on a large scale to cast a wide net. Whereas in ABM, you first select your target accounts and then build content for them. Let’s look at how you can personalize your content to make it relevant and meaningful for your target accounts.
Research your target accounts
To create tailored content for your potential buyers, you need to understand them first. ABM strategy requires you to know your target accounts. Start by researching the target accounts you want to reach. Understand their needs and challenges. Identify the key stakeholders in that account, as those are the people you need to influence. Look at the type of content they are looking for. Analyze the digital platforms and technologies they are using. These areas are important to research about as it gives you insights on what your buyers need.
When you know the challenges that your buyers face, you can create content specifically dealing with these challenges. This is the best way to show your buyers that your products or services can help them out with their problems. Personalized account-based marketing content enables you to influence the buying decisions of your target accounts. Hence, do your research so that you can create relevant content that is meaningful to your customers.
Don’t forget the buyer’s journey
Each target customer falls in different stages of the buyer’s journey. Hence, you need to personalize content based on the buyer’s journey. Not all target accounts will respond to similar content. Understand their journey and customize content according to it. For example, blogs are useful in engaging target accounts who are at the beginning stage of their journey. While email marketing can be used to nurture them. However, you need to keep in mind that you personalize content all the way rather than just halfway for each target account.
To illustrate, if you create an email, don’t just personalize a few lines, and send it to different target accounts. Consumers can tell when the content feels impersonal and repeated. Ensure that you customize that content entirely based on a specific target account. To do this you need to analyze where the buyer is at in terms of their journey. Based on this you can create content which is relevant to their specific needs.
If you are communicating with a potential buyer who is looking for a solution to a certain problem, you can send them content that shows how your product or services can help them in that area. Sending them some vague or general information is not helpful at all, and you will lose them. The content that you use to attract a new target account will be different from the one which is used in the consideration stage. Always keep in mind the buyer’s journey when you personalize your content.
Organize and update content
It is important to keep track of all the content you create so that you can access and use it whenever needed. Audit all the content you have created in the past. Maintain a spreadsheet to have all the content organized in one place. This way you can segment your content in any way required. Once you have organized all your content, it becomes easier to personalize it as per the needs of any target account.
Often businesses require a lot of time and resources to keep building content as per the needs of a particular buyer. This can be done if you have enough resources. However, with limited time and resources you will need previously created content. You can update this content and personalize it for any target account. Like discussed above, don’t just change a few sentences but focus on changing various elements to customize it for your buyer. Understand the buyer’s needs first, and then update the content accordingly. When you have all your content organized in one place, it becomes easier to find it and update it as required. Hence, keep a track of all your content so that both sales and marketing teams can locate it easily.
Now that we have seen the best ways to personalize ABM content, let’s look at how to distribute this content.
Distributing Account-Based Marketing Content
Creating customized and relevant content is not enough, you need to figure out how to distribute this content to your target accounts. Not all your target accounts will consume content in the same way. Every account will have different channels they prefer to interact with. As discussed above, prior research about your target customers is important to understand the best ways you can reach them. Moreover, investigate what content formats you can use to convey your message. Here are some ways you can distribute your ABM content to ensure that you get the best results.
Determine the distribution channels
There are several channels which you can use in your marketing campaign. These channels include emails, text messages, chatbots, social media, online advertisement and more. Every channel has its own attributes and requires you to personalize content according to them. Creating posts for social media channels, such as LinkedIn, is very different from building an email for an email marketing campaign.
Always identify your channel first so that you can plan and create content accordingly. Understand your target accounts and find out what type of channels they prefer. For example, maybe your target account is very active on LinkedIn, you can drop them a personalized message through this platform. Pick the channels you will be using in your ABM campaigns so that you can plan your content and resources based on them.
Select high-quality accounts
When you implement your ABM campaign you will start with an account pool which includes all the accounts who will receive your content. Select these accounts based on your ideal customer profile or ICP. Segment these accounts based on different attributes like industry, company size, revenue, technology etc. This helps you identify the right target accounts who will receive your communication.
The list can sometimes seem small as you narrow it down based on various criteria. But this ensures that you are picking the accounts that are more likely to convert. Focus on spending your time, resources and efforts on the accounts which can bring profitable opportunities for your business.
Identify the key stakeholders
Every account will include key stakeholders or decision-makers who make important buying decisions for that organization. These are the people you will be distributing your content to. The sales reps will be in contact with these individuals as the business relationship progresses. Hence, it is important that you know who will be on the receiving end of your content strategy. Research these individuals as they are the ones who will make the ultimate decision of investing in your business.
Get to know their job title, professional background, challenges, interests etc. This will help you customize your content and use the right channels to send it. Knowing the specific challenges they face; can help you provide them with answers. Through content you can illustrate how your products and services can help resolve their issues. This valuable and useful content convinces potential buyer’s that your business can help them. It creates trust and loyalty among potential customers.
Use powerful CTAs
CTAs or call to action buttons have the power to encourage people into taking the desired actions. Integrate CTAs into your content as it can increase engagement and conversions. These calls to actions depend on your content strategy. For example, you can include CTAs in your blog that encourages users to book a free consultation. Messages like “Get a free consultation” can make it easier for users to get in touch with you.
The purpose of any CTA is to get a user’s attention and make it easy for them to take a certain action. CTAs are a great marketing tool to boost engagement and conversions.
Plan and schedule content
To distribute your content efficiently, make a schedule of when you will be sending out each content and follow-ups. It can help you be organized and send out all the content in a timely manner. For example, if you are implementing an email marketing campaign then you will need to plan and build all the elements like headline, subject, email body, CTA, etc. Once you create the sequence of emails you can automate it so they will be sent out after certain intervals. This is a great way to schedule all the emails so that you don’t forget to follow-up.
Similarly, you can also maintain a social media calendar to schedule all the weekly postings. Scheduling content helps you be consistent so that your audiences are engaged. Timing matters when it comes to distributing your content. If you are sending a message to one of the key stakeholders, ensure that it is at a time when they are likely to read it. It is a good practice to plan beforehand when you start distributing your content.
Content is an important element of your ABM strategy. Building meaningful and relevant content can help you attract high-quality accounts that result in profitable business relationships. These personalization and distribution tips can help you create a successful content plan that helps your business grow.
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