Account-based Marketing: How to win your desired target group in 5 steps
No question: Account-based marketing (ABM) is currently on everyone’s lips and is one of the marketing trends par excellence, not least because of its extremely high effectiveness. Are you responsible for marketing or products in a medium-sized company and are considering testing ABM? In this article we present a five step guide with which you can implement ABM effectively and sustainably in your company.
1. Organizational setup
First of all, it is necessary to set up an organizational structure. There are usually two ways in which you can implement account-based marketing in your company. In the first version, you map the processes completely in-house with your own marketing department. Important: Your employees must have the necessary know-how and technical tools (e.g. marketing automation software). This method is particularly recommended if you want to implement the topic in the long term, so that the high acquisition and running costs for the tools alone are worthwhile.
If you are not yet able to fulfill these requirements, it is recommended to involve an agency specializing in account-based marketing. In addition to the experience gained from previous projects and the required knowledge, these usually also include marketing technology.
If you simply want to test whether ABM is the right way for your company, this external option is certainly the right one for you. With the help of an initial campaign, learnings can already be worked out that show whether you should reflect the topic internally or externally in the future.
2. Define accounts
In general, there are many ways to define accounts to be targeted in ABM. Thus, pure clustering of companies according to characteristics such as size, number and type of contact person or phase in the sales funnel is also possible. Alternatively, you can also select specific companies that you would like to address with your products or services. However, you will not be able to avoid researching additional criteria. Specialized agencies can already support you if you only pass on your clusters. Agencies rely on social monitoring and other research options here, in addition to the existing and obvious sales funnels, which are based on your product or service. The bottom line is that a list of companies is created after this process, which can then be targeted.
3. Define strategy
Together with an agency, you first define the strategy for how you want to carry out the ABM campaign. There are a number of things that need to be clarified: For example, you should define how sharp the targeting should be. Can you also target industry-related companies? How sharp should the group of contacts be who you would like to address? At what stage of the sales funnel is the target group?
You should bear in mind that the digital sales world has its own laws, which is why you should work relatively open here. Even if you only want to address CIOs or CEOs, in theory the assistant can also download a white paper that he or she then submits to the supervisor.
Some agencies also help with the sales team’s training process. It’s not uncommon, for example, for Evernine to conduct workshops here and support companies in the sales process in order to convert previously generated leads into customers.
4. Campaign implementation
As a rule, an agency relies on landing pages for the technical setup of the campaign, which, for example, provide a white paper for lead generation. In order to lead potential leads to the landing page, Evernine uses a large setup of publishing platforms (e.g. MyBusinessFuture.com, cloudmagazin.com) and associated social media appearances that suit the industry. Various channels (e.g. LinkedIn, Native, Advertising, Google Ads) are used for the implementation, each of which has its own targeting options. In addition to the usual target group settings, static IP addresses are also used to address large companies in a targeted manner.
All assets are usually backed by a marketing automation tool (e.g. HubSpot), which can be used to address the customer with different content depending on the phase of the sales funnel.
5. Nurturing & optimization
As soon as the campaign generates your first leads, comprehensive scoring and lead-nurturing must be performed. Tools such as HubSpot have their own CRM, which records the leads and can, for example, automatically nurturen with individual e-mail campaigns. Through flexible channel selection in conjunction with marketing automation and manual monitoring, the leads are then converted directly into customers in the best case scenario.
Once the campaign is complete, the ABM concept really gets underway. Because the first campaign delivers important learnings and valuable information about the target group. The first round of A/B testing shows which channels and campaign content work best to convince the user of a conversion. As a result, follow-up campaigns are usually much more efficient and effective than initial campaigns. In addition, generated MQLs can also be specifically converted to SQLs here.
Whichever ways and variants you choose in ABM: At best, get expert opinions beforehand and discuss the topic in your team. A consultant from the Evernine Group will be happy to discuss your requirements with you without obligation.
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