Account Based content marketing b2b Marketing for Professional Services

With the help of account-based content marketing your marketing department as well as digital marketing agency can focus on a small number of clients or accounts. This allows you to create content that is highly personalized and is directly addressing their pain points and shows how your product can help them overcome their problems.

ABM content that is efficient must convey the right information to each stakeholder in the buyer center at the right time. This requires identifying the different types of people and their needs at various stages of their journey.

Targeting specific accounts

In contrast to traditional content strategies which are designed to draw strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing is focused on interacting with specific accounts in a highly personal way. Marketers can develop and distribute relevant content by knowing the decision makers in each account, their issues, and their objectives. This creates a more fruitful dialog with prospects and customers and ultimately results in greater business outcomes.

Once you've identified your desired accounts The next step is to design accounts plans for each one. This involves analyzing each account and determining which channels to utilize to reach the customers in the account should be engaging with, and what types of content are required to encourage engagement and conversions. This may include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies webinars, retargeting ads, webinars, personalized website experiences and other marketing techniques tailored to each account are all possible.

Account-based marketing can yield an even higher return on your investment than traditional strategies for content. 84% of B2B marketing professionals who have incorporated account based marketing into their strategies have higher ROI than any other marketing approach.

It takes more time and resources to nurture only a few target accounts, the benefits of a strong account-based approach to content marketing are crucial for companies that wish to increase their revenue across all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially applicable to professional services companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the amount of potential customers they could attract.

In addition, ABM is a great fit for businesses that want to expand their business with existing customers by building trusting relationships over time. Research shows that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than spending money to find and convert new customers.

Combining ABM with inbound marketing strategies can increase the effectiveness of content marketing. Marketers can make their content more relevant to buyers at every stage of the purchasing journey by using pillar content in conjunction with retargeting and landing pages for lead capture. This enables them to create additional revenue opportunities through acquisition as well as acceleration and expansion of their sales and market teams.

Create content that is hyper-personalized

ABM is one of the most popular trends in marketing, and it's important for marketers to understand how their existing content strategies can be integrated into this new strategy. But it can be difficult to understand how ABM works in practice. In a recent talk at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox gave a quick overview on ABM, explaining the key considerations and what to expect in a successful execution.

Understanding your ideal client's needs and challenges is the first step towards developing an effective ABM strategy. Making content that is in line with these objectives will allow you to provide a more personalized experience, which will ultimately improve conversions. The content you create must focus on the unique needs of each account. This is why it's essential to sketch out the user journeys within each of your accounts. By doing this you'll be able see what types of content (and even individual pages and items) are the most interesting for those who visit your site. This information can then be used to optimize the user experience on your website, displaying the most effective content to visitors who visit those accounts.

It can be difficult to create content that is hyper-personalized, however, it's a crucial step to increase the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of consumers are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more personalized experience.

AI processing of real-time data is one method to create hyper-personalized content. This will allow you to determine how your content marketing tools, about his, is presented, make suggestions for next steps, and respond to events immediately. This tool can improve the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It can't replace the need for multivariate testing or strategic planning.

Another way to personalize your content is to use the pillar and cluster structure. This allows you to create a an entire piece of content that describes the problem that your target accounts face, and then link to other pieces that focus on specific aspects of the problem. For example fitness trackers may have a variety of common goals and advantages however the way in which different types of people use it can vary significantly.

Aligning Marketing and Sales

Traditionally, professional service marketers focused on developing a linear sales funnel using broad marketing campaigns that targeted large numbers of people with the hope that a portion of them would convert. This strategy might have worked in the past when B2B marketing employed a more broadcast-based model, but it's not effective in the current Account Based Marketing strategy. Instead of trying to push all prospects through the same phases of the process, you should concentrate on prospects with high value. This can be achieved by providing them with experiences or content that are customized to their specific needs and challenges.

The first step to this is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This isn't as simple as establishing buyer personas as you must also take into account the types of solutions that customers are looking for and how they will be utilized.

Once you've identified your ICP and a strategy, you can create a plan for content that connects with each account across multiple channels. This could range from social media ads to email outreach.

It's crucial that your marketing and sales teams are on the same page as you implement your ABM strategy. This will ensure that all of your content is relevant to each account, so that you don't waste time and money attracting the wrong audience.

A key step to take is to use the data you have about your most successful clients. You can identify positive attributes that your clients share by studying their past data. For instance, they may all be in the financial services industry or have a similar business size. This information can then be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns to target similar prospects.

In addition to this, it's important to track the effectiveness of your ABM strategy and adjust it as needed. For instance, if you notice that your target account isn't responding to your content, it might be the right time to get in touch with them and see what is content in marketing else you can do to help them progress through the sales funnel. By taking these steps, you'll be able to get your ABM strategy and content strategies better aligned and ultimately aid in generating more conversions.

Measuring Success

Account-based content marketing is about creating content (videos reports, reports, blog posts and webinars) that are personalized and relevant to a specific account or persona. For instance when you're targeting healthcare businesses, your content needs to be focused on their issues and concerns. This personalization aspect isn't just important in ABM, but it's also a great way to build strong relationships with your prospects and customers.

ABM can be used at any stage of the sales funnel. In fact, it can be more efficient than traditional lead generation if utilized at the top of the funnel. This is because you can recognize and interact with a smaller number accounts that are more likely to convert than attempting to generate leads from an audience that may not be interested.

Although offline strategies like phone calls and meetings in person, or handwritten notes are still effective, today's buyers are more inclined to digital self-service and remote engagement. That's why it's vital to provide them with the appropriate content at the right time, on the channel that is most effective for them.

ABM is particularly effective for reaching out to C-suite executives who are difficult to reach who are typically skeptical of mass email campaigns but are more likely to engage with content marketing examples that addresses their requirements and use cases. ABM can also help you shorten your sales cycle by allowing engagement with prospects at crucial points in their journey, for instance when they are looking for solutions to solve specific business issues.

Although ABM hasn't been around for longer than traditional marketing and sales strategies, it's quickly becoming a top strategy for B2B organizations looking to increase their efficiency and generate higher revenue. In fact, 76% of marketers who have adopted the ABM approach say it improves ROI, while 81% report that it increases deal close rates and upselling/cross-selling rates.