When it comes to trying to reach C-suite execs with marketing messaging, account based marketing (ABM) tends to be a better strategy than generalized email marketing.
Why? Because executives are often too busy with weighty company issues to bother responding to any marketing they view as mass marketing. Conversely, ABM involves putting more effort into a smaller number of highly tailored campaigns targeted toward high-potential clients. Predictive analytics can help you identify the companies and managers most likely to be receptive to your products, whereupon you can form individualized strategies aimed at getting the attention of those key people.
Recent statistics indicate that 90 percent of B2B marketers in the U.S. consider ABM “very important,” while such strategies are being used by 86 percent of B2B sales and marketing professionals. Further, 97 percent of marketers say ABM produces higher ROI than other activities.
Interested in trying ABM to reach the higher-ups among your potential clients? Consider the following suggestions:
- Choose a select number of ABM targets made up of companies and people fitting your ideal customer profile. Prioritize “warm leads” with which you already have some kind of relationship.
- Evaluate your available marketing resources and whether your campaign can last long-term. Successful ABM can take months or even years. “Winning the account is only half the battle,” notes Maureen Magionni on Salesforce.com. “The other half is nurturing the relationship beyond the initial sale, which can lead to greater retention and opportunities for cross-selling or upselling. If marketers don’t build a meaningful connection with existing customers, they run the risk of losing existing business.”
- Conduct research about who your prospects are and what they do; show them you’ve done your homework when you message them so you can work toward building relationships. Check out their social media presences for insights. Discern what you can offer prospects that their current vendors cannot.
- Get your sales and marketing teams together to collaborate on how to solve the clients’ pain points. Form clear plans for who will handle each part of your ABM campaigns; for example, certain specialized sales personnel may jibe better with certain prospects.
- Save automated email marketing for more generalized messaging and send ABM prospects highly personalized emails instead. As Mike Lieberman puts it on Square2marketing.com: “If you want their attention (and you do), you had better rock their world, you had better swing for the fences and you had better disrupt their status quo so that they can’t sleep at night without worrying or thinking about what you had to say. Sales helps marketing understand the challenges and the situation within the prospect’s business, and marketing then comes up with the message, story and content that delivers the disruption.”
- Consider investing in valuable content such as whitepapers and eBooks aimed specifically at meeting the needs of ABM prospects.
- Consider adding personalized landing pages to your website for key accounts.
Finally, remember to optimize tools that can continually measure the results of your ABM campaign so you can adjust what is and isn’t working. Ask Dial800 how you can make that process faster, easier and more efficient than ever before.
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