Personal customer experience is becoming increasingly important in B2B & account-based marketing (ABM) plays to this trend. It’s become one of the most powerful tools you can use to encourage engagement with your business, generate revenue & nurture long-term client relationships. In this article we share the 5 Tenets for ABM success.
The frequent questions we get asked regarding ABM B2B strategies is how do organisations close the gap between their buyers & their own sales team, & how can they strengthen the relationship with (potential) customers?
Before we share our tenets, it’s essential at the outset to have proactive collaboration between the sales & marketing teams. This is where we see the most disconnect when briefed to develop ABM strategies. Working together is how you gather insight & relevant information about the market & key target accounts. If Sales & Marketing do not work in unison, then you’re setting yourself up to fail from the outset.
The 5 Tenets for ABM Success
Conduct your due dilligence
Together with the sales team conduct your due diligence. Define which prospects you want to target. Choose the high-value accounts that best fit your solution, or that show intent. Conduct a SWOT for each. Investigate their agenda, their priorities, preferences & information needs. Understand the buyer personas, their company culture, values & market presence. Identify any specific issues they have that your solution can help with. Map all sales’ existing relationships, what’s their role in the buying process?
Plan Your Strategy
Now that you have a thorough understanding of your prospects, plan your campaign strategy. Plan a separate campaign for each client on your ABM list, otherwise it’s not ABM but general marketing. Identify which marketing channels will work best, the frequency of contact & how the campaign will develop. Be very clear from the get-go what you want to achieve, whether it’s sales generation, brand awareness or introducing a new product or service, or anything else. Define the campaign’s goals & KPIs.
Develop Bespoke Content
Whether you’re creating emails, blogs, social media posts or otherwise ensure that the researched intel from the sales team is shared with marketing to ensure assets being generated incorporate the correct messaging & narrative. The most important point to remember when creating the content is consistency. Make sure the campaign carries a consistent, strong message & that there are no conflicting messages across the assets you’re generating.
Build & Launch Your Campaign
Before executing create a playbook so those involved fully understand what’s involved in the roll-out. Include the objectives & KPIs. Now that the content is ready & you have a channel plan in place it’s time for deployment. Make sure the campaign is interesting, engaging & timely.
Measure, Monitor, Adjust & Nurture
Evaluate the impact of your campaign from the get-go. Analyse response, adjust where necessary, monitor. ABM is a long-term commitment requiring ongoing customer nurturing. Whilst you can conduct periodic campaign bursts with ABM you need to maintain/nurture the relationship between those campaigns. Whilst nurturing isn’t as intense it does need to be just as targeted & carefully considered, using research from Tenet No. 1.
In Conclusion
Do not give up if the campaign does not go your way the first time. The blissful point about online campaigns is that they can be adjusted on the fly. So, tweak where necessary, experiment & optimise. Business buying processes often take time.
And here’s an example of an ABM programme we’ve run for our client Gigamon:
