Account Based Marketing is a strategy that helps drive quality growth in B2B. ABM enables marketing and sales to coordinate in an ongoing manner to focus on the right accounts for their business. By aligning efforts and honing in on companies that are a good fit, organizations often see a greater ROI. But to reap the full ABM benefits, you need a killer ABM content strategy.
Three key factors drive the need for great content:
1. Delight Buyers Who Are Not Aware of You
A critical aspect of ABM is delivering a relevant and personalized experience, and content is an essential pillar of this. It is what fuels your programs.
While this is not a new idea, with ABM, teams execute more outbound efforts. Sales will call into cold accounts instead of waiting for. a VP to come to your website and downloading an eBook.
That’s why strategic, high-quality, personalized content is even more important to ensure your company stands out and makes an impression. For example, a simple white paper can be made extraordinary by writing a custom page for an account that is tailored to their business. Similarly, a personalized video or landing page that includes the buyer’s name and some pain points can be incredibly impactful.
2. Engage Multiple People Within an Account for the Journey—Not Just Acquisition
Multiple individuals are involved in most B2B sales cycles, which means the most successful companies create and deliver consistent content that speaks to each of the influencers in a decision-making process.
Additionally, to grow as a business, teams need to focus not only on acquiring the right types of customers, but also keeping them.
Because ABM it a hyper-focused strategy, it is very useful for teams that need to drive retention and expansion (upsell and cross-sell). Research on accounts and buying groups is done upfront, so revenue teams all should have a basic understanding of their key pain points and challenges.
To make sure relevant and targeted content is developed, early on, teams should develop a map that includes each persona and what is important to each individual at different stages of their journey. Think both about the subject matter and type of content that will help the buying team reach a decision within an account—not just one person.
Consistency of message is crucial here. After marketing touches key people within the account with content, ensure sales is reaching out with complementary messaging—the reinforcement from them is powerful. You can utilize technology to help scale some of the touchpoints. Figure out which types of engagement need to be hands-on and personalized, and those that can be automated.
3. Create Meaningful Content that Scales
The last key point around content for ABM is developing a framework that supports scale.
Of course, personalized assets will perform the best, but your team can’t do that for every account. Accounts are not created equal, so your approach to prospecting, working and closing accounts is going to be different for different companies, which also means your approach for content is going to be different. You must define that upfront.
Content is the means through which you can help your buyers and also stand out in a noisy market.
With ABM, it is only more important because buyers may be less familiar with your products and services because, at least initially, you are reaching out to accounts instead of waiting for them to come directly to you. You must be able to provide the value that brings them into your sales cycle, then consistently reinforces the message.
Teams need to put in the research and provide value to accounts at all stages of the journey, because keeping customers through retention and expansion is equally valuable. Figure out collectively what is needed and when for the various influencers that make up a deal. Optimize what needs to be done at a highly personalized level and what can scale.
