Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services

Your marketing department and digital agency could focus their efforts on a particular group of clients or accounts that have account-based content marketing. This lets you create highly-personalized specific content that speaks directly to their needs and explain how your product will solve the issues.

ABM content that is efficient must convey the correct information to each stakeholder in the buyer's center at the right time. This requires identifying the requirements of each individual at various phases of their journey.

Aiming at specific accounts

Account-based content marketing is a more personal approach to content marketing than traditional strategies, which aim to convert people who are not familiar with marketing campaigns into leads. By identifying the key account decision makers and identifying their issues and goals, marketers can create and distribute content that is targeted to specific accounts. This helps to create a more fruitful conversation with customers and prospects which ultimately leads to greater business outcomes for the organization.

Once you've identified the target accounts, the next step is to create account plans for each account. This involves analyzing each account and determining the marketing channels to be used, the buyers within each account and what type of content is required to encourage engagement. This could include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, webinars) as well as retargeting ads. personalized website experiences and other marketing strategies specific to each client.

Account-based marketing can yield greater returns on your investment than traditional content strategies. In fact, 84 percent of B2B marketers who have incorporated account-based marketing into their strategy report higher returns on investment than any other type of marketing strategy.

While it requires more resources and time to nurture small groups of accounts, the rewards are significant for companies who are looking to increase their revenue throughout the funnel. This is especially relevant for professional service companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the amount of people they can attract.

ABM is also a great option for businesses who want to grow their business with existing customers over time by developing trusting relations. Research shows that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than investing money to acquire new customers.

Combining ABM with inbound marketing methods will maximize the impact of content marketing. Marketers can improve the relevance of their content to prospects at each stage of their buying journey by combining pillar content with retargeting and landing pages for lead capture. This enables them to create more acquisition growth, acceleration, and expansion revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.

Create hyper-personalized content

ABM is a rage in the field of marketing. It is crucial that marketers are aware of how to adapt their strategies for content to this new approach. However, it can be a challenge to get your head around how ABM can be applied in real-world. In a recent presentation at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox presented a nifty course on ABM and explained the most important considerations and what to expect from a successful execution.

Understanding your ideal client's goals and issues is the first step to creating an effective ABM strategy. Content that is in line with these goals allows you to provide a more personalized service and increase conversions. The content you create should also focus on the unique requirements of each account. It is crucial to map the journey of users within each account. This will allow you to determine what content (and specific items and pages) is most appealing to your target audience. This data can be used to improve the user experience on your website, displaying the most popular content to users from the accounts.

Creating hyper-personalized content can be a challenge, but it is an essential step in increasing the impact of your ABM efforts. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of respondents are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more personalised experience.

One method to create hyper-personalized content is through AI processing on real-time data. This will allow you to manage the way that your content is presented and provide suggestions for the future steps, and react to events in real time. While it's not a replacement for multivariate testing or strategic planning, this can be a powerful tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.

The pillar and cluster structure is another way to personalize content. This allows you to create a complete piece that describes the problem your target accounts are facing and then connect it to additional pieces that focus on specific aspects of the problem. For instance fitness trackers may have many advantages and common goals however the way in which different types of users use it can vary significantly.

Making sure that Marketing and Sales are aligned

Traditionally, professional service marketers were focused on creating an efficient sales funnel that was linear using broad marketing campaigns that enticed large numbers of people with the hope that a few would convert. This approach may have been effective in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model however, it's not as effective in the current Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to force all leads through the same process of the process, it's more important to focus on attracting the most valuable prospects and providing them with experiences and content that are adapted to their particular needs and challenges.

The first step to this is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This isn't as simple as creating buyer personas, since you need to take into account the types of solutions that customers are seeking and how they can be best utilized.

Once you know your ICP, the next step is to create a content strategy that connects to each of these accounts across different channels. This could range from social media ads, to email outreach.

It is essential that your marketing and sales teams are on the same page when you implement your ABM strategy. This will help ensure that your content is relevant to each account, ensuring that you don't waste time and resources trying to reach the wrong type of audience.

A key step to take is to make use of the data you have on your top-performing clients. You can find positive traits that your customers share by studying their past data. For example, they may all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar company size. This information can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns to target similar potential customers.

It's also important to track your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary adjustments. If your target audience does not respond to your content, you might be able to contact them and find out what you can do to help move them down the sales funnel. You can integrate your ABM strategy with your Content marketing tools strategies by following these steps.

Measuring the effectiveness

Account-based content marketing is the process of creating resources, like blogs, videos, reports, and webinars, that are relevant and personalized for a specific persona or account. If you're aiming to target healthcare organizations, for example your content should be focused on their issues and pain points. This type of personalization doesn't just help with ABM but also helps build solid relationships with prospects and customers.

The most appealing aspect of ABM is that it can be used at any stage of the sales funnel. In fact, it can be even more efficient than traditional lead generation when utilized at the top of the funnel. This is because it can help you to identify and engage only a few accounts that are likely to convert, rather than trying to generate leads from an crowd that may not be interested in your product or service.

While there's a place for offline relationship building tactics such as in-person meetings, phone calls, and handwritten notes, the majority of customers nowadays prefer digital content marketing agency self-service and remote engagement. It's essential to provide the right content, at the right moment and on the channel they prefer.

ABM is particularly effective in reaching out to executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach who are usually skeptical of mass email campaigns but are more likely to respond to content marketing agencies uk that speaks directly to their needs and usage scenarios. ABM can also help shorten your sales cycle by allowing engagement with prospects at key stages in their journey, like when they are pursuing solutions to address specific business challenges.

Although ABM isn't around for as long as traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's rapidly becoming a leading strategy for B2B companies seeking to improve their performance and drive greater revenue. In fact, 76% of marketers who have adopted the ABM approach say it improves ROI, while 81% report that it increases deal close rates and upselling/cross-selling rates.