Why Account Based Content Marketing Is Fast Becoming The Hottest Trend…

Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services

Your marketing department and digital agency could focus their efforts on a selected segment of customers or accounts with account-based content marketing. This lets you create content that is highly personalized and is directly addressing their pain points and shows how your product can help them overcome these issues.

ABM content that is efficient must convey the correct information to each stakeholder in the buyer center at the right moment. This involves identifying the needs of each persona at different stages of their journey.

Aiming at specific accounts

Contrary to traditional content strategies that are designed to draw strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing focuses on interacting with specific accounts in a highly customized method. Marketers can create and present relevant content by identifying and understanding the key decision makers in each account, their challenges, Account Based Content Marketing and their objectives. This creates a more fruitful dialogue with prospects and customers that ultimately results in greater business outcomes for the organization.

Once you've identified your desired accounts The next step is to develop accounts plans for each one. This involves analysing each account and determining which channels to utilize to reach the customers in the account should be engaging with, and what kinds of content are needed to drive engagement and conversions. This could be thought leadership content such as whitepapers, or case studies. whitepapers, case studies, webinars) Retargeting ads, customized website experiences and other marketing tactics specific to each client.

In the end, account based content marketing is able to deliver much higher return on investment than traditional content marketing tactics. In fact, 84 percent of B2B marketers who have integrated account-based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other type of marketing effort.

While it takes more time and resources to cultivate the small number of targeted accounts but the benefits of an account-based content marketing approach are vital for businesses who want to increase revenue across all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially applicable to professional services companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the number of customers they can draw.

ABM is an excellent option for businesses who want to expand business with their existing customers over time, by establishing trusting relations. Research shows that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than spending money to find and convert new customers.

By combing ABM with traditional inbound marketing techniques businesses can maximize the impact of their content marketing efforts. Utilizing a combination of pillar content, retargeting and lead capture landing pages, marketers can give more relevance to prospects at all stages of the buying process. This allows them to generate additional revenue opportunities through acquisition as well as acceleration and expansion for their sales and marketing teams.

Create hyper-personalized content

ABM is a hot trend in marketing. It's important that marketers understand how to adapt their content strategies to the new method. It can be hard to understand how ABM actually works. In a recent talk at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox gave a quick overview on ABM and explained the most important factors to be considered and what you can expect from a successful implementation.

Understanding your ideal client's goals and issues is the first step towards developing a successful ABM strategy. Content that is aligned with these goals will allow you to provide more personalized service and increase conversions. The content you create must be tailored to the specific needs of each account. This is why it's important to map out the user journeys in each of your accounts. By doing this you will be able to discern what kinds of content (and even individual items and pages) are the most interesting for these people. This information can be used to optimize user's journeys on these accounts, displaying the best performing content.

Creating hyper-personalized content can be a challenge however it is an important step to increasing the impact of your ABM efforts. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of people are willing to provide their personal information in exchange for a more personalized experience.

One method to create hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing of real-time data. This can help you determine how your content is distributed and make suggestions for the next steps, and respond to events in a flash. While it isn't a substitute for multivariate testing or strategic planning, it is a great tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.

Another method to personalize your content is to utilize the pillar and cluster structure. This allows you to have an entire piece of content that explains the issue that your targeted accounts are facing, and then link to supplementary pieces that specifically address the problem. For instance a fitness tracker could have a variety of common goals and advantages, but how different types of people use it can differ significantly.

Aligning Marketing and Sales

Professional service marketers have historically focused on creating an efficient sales channel by using broad marketing campaigns to appeal to large groups in the hopes that one or more of them would become converts. This approach may have been effective in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model but it's no longer effective with today's Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all prospects through the same phases of the process, you should instead focus on the most valuable leads. You can accomplish this by providing them with content or experiences that are customized to meet their specific needs and challenges.

The first step to this is identifying your ideal client profile (ICP). It's not as easy as creating buyer personas as you must also be aware of the types of solutions each customer is looking for and how they will be utilized.

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

When you start implementing your ABM strategy, it's essential to keep both your marketing and sales teams on the same team. This will ensure that your content is pertinent to each account and ensure that you do not spend your time or resources on the wrong target audience.

Another important step is to utilize the data that you have on your most successful clients. By analyzing your historical client data, you can determine what positive characteristics they share, such as being in the financial services industry or being within a certain size. This data can be used to create targeted campaigns for similar prospects.

It's also crucial to monitor your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary changes. If your target account doesn't respond to your content, you might need to reach out to see what is a content marketer you can do to move them further down the sales funnel. You can make sure that you align your ABM strategy with your content strategies by following these steps.

Measuring Success

Account based content marketing is about creating content (videos reports, reports, blog posts, and webinars) that are personalised and relevant to a specific account or persona. If you're trying to target healthcare organizations, for example your content must be focused on their pain points and issues. This kind of personalization is not just essential in ABM but also a great way to build solid relationships with your prospects and customers.

The best part about ABM is that it can be utilized throughout the sales funnel. It can be even more efficient than traditional lead generation at the top of a funnel. This is because it will help you identify and engage just a handful of accounts that are likely to convert, as opposed to trying to generate leads from a huge audience that may not be interested in your product or service.

While there's still a place for offline relationships-building strategies such as face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and handwritten notes, the majority of customers nowadays prefer digital self-service and remote engagement. It's crucial to provide the right content at the right time and using the channel they prefer.

ABM is particularly effective in engaging C-suite executives who are hard to reach. They tend to ignore mass emails however, they are more likely to respond to content that is relevant to their requirements and uses instances. Additionally, ABM can help you reduce the time to sell by allowing you to connect with your prospects at crucial points in their journey -- like when they're researching solutions to solve a specific business issue.

Although ABM isn't around for as long as traditional sales and marketing strategies, it's rapidly becoming the most popular strategy for B2B companies looking to increase their efficiency and generate higher 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.