To break through to your target audience, you need to constantly innovate your ABM tactics.
The world of account-based marketing is always expanding. As adoption rises, more players get into the technology game – and innovation becomes more important than ever. Gone are the days where we can slap a prospect’s logo on an ad and call it ABM, so we’ve compiled a list of our favorite account-based marketing tactics to help your programs truly break through.
ABM Tactic #1: Use Intent Data Whenever, and Wherever, Possible
Intent data is one of the most-talked about topics in B2B marketing over the last few years, and it’s clear to see why. This is an incredibly powerful tool to have in your arsenal, providing insight about buyers who are less and less likely to provide that information outright. With much of the buyers’ journey happening before a prospect reaches out to sales, any insight into their needs and priorities is critical to optimizing your account-based marketing tactics.There are a number of intent data providers out there, and the number is growing by the day. Almost all ABM platforms have some form of intent data built in. Companies like Bombora specialize in it. Even some publishers are getting into the intent game, using their own first-party data. A mix of intent sources can help create a more full picture of where a company is at in their journey – use anything you can get your hands on!
We could probably write a whole post on this topic alone, but at a high level, here are some of the ways our clients are using intent data today:
- Prioritizing spend against accounts
- Personalizing content to what is being researched
- Personalizing content to level of intent/predicted buying stage
- Alerting sales when a key account is showing activity
ABM Tactic #2: Create a Custom 1:1 Landing Page for Key Accounts
Ripping a page right out of our own internal ABM tactics playbook, building bespoke experiences for top-tier prospects can really help drive a connection focused on that company’s specific needs.
Go further than just putting a company’s logo on your landing page. Think about how their needs might be different: Are certain products or services a better fit? Showcase content that meets those needs to drive engagement. Have you done great work for similar companies? Showcase those case studies.
Tie this into a unique ad experience for maximum impact – if they can’t get to the landing page, it’s useless. Scale can be a challenge depending on the size of the accounts for channels like LinkedIn, but it’s always worth checking before completely ruling out certain channels. Others, like ABM platform display, have less strict rules about audience size, which can be good to fill in the gaps.
ABM Tactic #3: Personalize Your Content, While Being Realistic About Resources
1:1 ABM tactics are fantastic. But they take a lot of resources. For broader account lists, you’ll need to toe the line between creating personalized experiences and completely burning through your resources and spending more than you’re getting out of the program.One of the key points of ABM is to focus on the needs of the companies you’re selling to. Aligning your content and messaging to shared characteristics of groups of accounts can really help you scale. While the most common way to do this is to focus on verticalizing content, which we’ve seen great success with, there are other ways to think about it that may be worth testing:
- Pain points and product alignment
- Geographic location
- Company size/growth stage
- Level of intent
- Technographics/install base
If you want to test a few of these, but don’t have the resources to completely customize your landing pages, you can use your ad text and images to personalize on the front end, to test which iterations of messaging resonate best, before investing in a full account-based marketing content strategy.
ABM Tactic #4: Get to Know Your Audience. REALLY Get to Know Them.
After waves of sales interviews, customer feedback, prospect research, closed/won analysis, and other in-the-weeds work, you’ve finally developed your ideal customer profile (ICP). (Yay!) You know (or have a pretty good reason to want to test) what verticals these companies are in. You know the geographic regions that these companies are largely based in. You’ve talked to similar prospects and gotten to know their pain points. But how much do you know about the individuals at these companies? Chances are, aside from broad assumptions based on their roles, very little.We’re not saying you go full stalking-your-best-friend’s-Tinder-date deep here – don’t make it weird. But to really break through to your top-tier prospects, especially senior execs, you’ll need to do more than blast out an Amazon gift card offer in exchange for meetings with everyone on your target account list (TAL). Some thought starters to getting to know the individuals at your top-tier accounts:
- Check out their LinkedIn page. Do they volunteer with an organization that you could offer to make a donation to? Are they hitting a work anniversary you could shout out?
- Keep an eye out for company happenings. Set up Google Alerts for your key prospect companies, as well as target individuals’ names, so you’ll know if their name pops up in the news.
- Is there a bio for the individual on their company’s website? Check for called-out interests, etc.
While this list is by no means exhaustive, it should give you a few new ideas for winning account-based marketing tactics. The bottom line is that by driving a better understanding of your target companies and the individuals within them, you can create a better buying experience.