If you’re
part of the 89 percent of marketers who practice content marketing, then you’re
(hopefully) familiar with its basic formula. You start with your audience
personas, and then you create and distribute content that speaks to them and
attracts them to your business. And if your marketing team is aligned with
sales, then you empower salespeople with the content they need to nurture and
close leads for your business. It’s common sense — it’s not exactly rocket
science.
Now, what if
I told you that you could really expand on that formula and go after very
specific target audience members rather than general personas? This is called
account-based marketing, and more than 70 percent of B2B companies are starting
to focus on building their own ABM programs.
Before you
say, “John, my company is finally getting the hang of content marketing and
using content in the sales process, and I think we’ll stick to that right now
instead of trying this new approach, thank you very much,” let me remind you:
Marketing is constantly evolving. To stay competitive, you have to keep up with
those evolutions and what other brands are doing — and right now, they’re
testing ABM.
The benefits
of account-based marketing
Account-based
marketing is a pretty natural extension of content marketing; the biggest
difference is that you’re speaking and selling directly to specific accounts
rather than a broader audience. This approach offers some important benefits,
like:
Better
customer service. Because you’re focused on specific accounts, you’re able to
offer accounts more customized content, service, and interactions with your
brand.
More united
teams. When both sales and marketing are targeting the exact same accounts,
they can work more transparently with each other because they have the same
specific goals in mind. And when they’re united around the same goal, they’ll
work more smoothly together and be more likely to meet that goal.
Reduced
sales cycles. As marketing sends resources to your target accounts, those
prospective accounts will become more familiar with your brand and can see more
clearly what working with you might look like, which can shrink the sales
cycle.
This isn’t
to say that you should stop talking to your broader audience. You should still
engage those people and deliver value to them through your content. But if you
want to focus your teams on the same goals and grow your company without
scrapping all the content work you’re already doing, account-based marketing
might be the way to go.
If you want
to start practicing ABM, follow these five steps:
1. Identify
the accounts you want as clients.
Just like
you’d do with any other marketing strategy, you need to figure out who you’re
speaking to. In most cases, that looks like a pretty broad group of potential
customers you segment into different personas based on what you know about
them. In ABM, you take it a step further by identifying and listing the
specific accounts you want to go after.
These can be
any accounts: small startups, huge companies, a dream client you’ve always
wanted to work with. The specifics don’t matter as much at this point as the
names of the accounts, so start there. Who do you want to work with? Write them
down.
2. Get to
know them.
With a list
in hand, it’s time to start digging. Before you can target these accounts with
any messaging, you need to know exactly who within these accounts you’re
dealing with and what resonates with them. Figure out who the decision makers
are and what their jobs entail. This will give you a clue as to who you’re
specifically targeting and how your company can make this person’s job — and
life — easier. Learn more about what kind of content and stories they engage
with and where they go for information, and use that knowledge to inform your
next step.
3. Start
brainstorming and creating content for those accounts.
Put your
research to work, and let your content marketing team shine in the content
creation process. This is your chance to speak directly to those decision
makers, so make sure you use as much research as possible to make it
worthwhile.
Your process
for creating content will probably be similar to the way you create content for
your other personas; you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just make sure you
stick to an editorial workflow that keeps your efforts moving forward so you
don’t miss your chance to reach the accounts you’re going after.
4.
Distribute.
Publishing
content and calling it a day doesn’t work in traditional content marketing, and
it sure as hell won’t work to reach the handful of people you’re targeting in
your ABM approach. You have to be proactive about your distribution and do
everything you can to get your content directly in front of the people at the
accounts you want.
Start by
finding the leaders and decision makers of these prospective accounts online.
What platforms are they on? Which ones do they use most often? Where will your
message stand out?
For example,
if they’re fans of Twitter and engage with it pretty often, tweet directly at
them with the content you created just for them; don’t just share it via your
company’s Twitter account and expect it to make a difference. I really can’t
emphasize enough how important it is to distribute your content — and get your
team to help distribute it — if you want to reach and engage with your dream
account.
5. Measure,
measure, measure.
This is
another step that should sound familiar if you’re already doing content
marketing right: Measure your efforts. Set tangible goals around your tactics,
and measure how close you are to achieving them. Are you able to get these
accounts on sales calls? Are they closing? If not, are you at least building
relationships and providing them with valuable resources? Don’t give up if you
aren’t closing the sales of your dreams just yet; adjust your tactics, and keep
trying.
This guide
should leave you with a better understanding of why account-based marketing is
becoming more popular and why it’s worth considering — even if you already have
a marketing strategy in place that seems to be working. Just adapt your current
content approach to include specific accounts, and give it a test. Maybe, just
maybe, that very special account you’ve had your eye on will become a reality.
The writer, John Hall, is the CEO of
Influence & Co.; he wrote for FORBES
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