Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services

Your marketing department and digital agency could focus their efforts on a specific group of clients or accounts with account-based content marketing. This lets you create highly-personalized, targeted content that speaks directly to their issues and describes how your product can help the issues.

Effective ABM content should provide the right kind of information to every stakeholder at the right moment in the buyer's center. This means identifying the different types of people and their requirements at different stages of their journey.

Targeting specific accounts

In contrast to traditional content marketing in digital marketing strategies which are designed to draw people who are not leads through broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing focuses on interacting with specific accounts in a highly customized method. By identifying the most important decision makers for each account and understanding their pain points and objectives, marketers can create and provide content that is appropriate to the specific accounts. This creates a more fruitful interaction with customers and prospects and ultimately results in greater business outcomes.

After identifying your target accounts You must then create accounts plans for each. This requires analyzing every account and determining which marketing channels to be employed, the buyers within each account that should be engaged and what kind of content is needed to drive engagement. This could include thought leadership content (e.g. Whitepapers, case-studies, webinars, retargeting advertising personalized website experiences and other marketing strategy content techniques that are customized to each customer are all possible.

Account-based marketing can yield greater returns on your investment than traditional strategies for content. 84 percent of B2B marketing professionals who have incorporated account based marketing into their strategies report higher ROI than any other marketing approach.

Although it takes more effort and time to cultivate small groups of targeted accounts, the advantages are significant for companies who seek to increase their revenues throughout the funnel. This is particularly applicable to professional services companies where the quality of each prospect or customer is more important than the amount of customers they can draw.

Additionally, ABM is a great option for companies looking to grow their business with existing customers by establishing trusting relationships over time. Research has revealed that it's far more cost effective to invest in retaining existing customers than to spend money trying to find and convert new ones.

By combing ABM with traditional inbound marketing techniques businesses can maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. By utilizing a combination of pillar content, retargeting and lead capture landing pages, marketers can provide greater relevance to prospects throughout the buying process. This enables them to create more acquisition as well as acceleration and growth revenue opportunities for their sales and marketing teams.

Creating Hyper-Personalized Content

ABM is a hot trend in the field of marketing. It's important that marketers understand how to adapt their content marketing trends strategies to this new approach. It can be difficult to understand how ABM actually is working. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave an overview of ABM in a recent presentation. They explained the key aspects to consider, and what to expect for a successful implementation.

The most effective ABM content strategy starts with understanding the needs of your ideal customer and objectives. Creating content that aligns with these goals will enable you to provide a more personalized experience and ultimately increase conversions. The content you create should also be tailored to the specific requirements of each account. This is why it is important to map out the journey of people in each of your target accounts. By doing this, you'll be able to determine what kinds of content (and even individual items and pages) are most engaging for those who visit your site. This information can be used to optimize journeys for people using these accounts, displaying the best performing content.

The process of creating hyper-personalized content can be a challenge, but it is an important step to increasing the impact of your ABM efforts. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of people are willing to give their personal details in exchange for a more customized experience.

One way to create hyper-personalized content is through AI processing on real-time data. This can help you manage the way that your content is presented, provide suggestions for future steps, and react to events in real time. This tool can enhance the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It can't replace multivariate testing and strategic planning.

The cluster and pillar structure is another method to personalize content. This lets you create a comprehensive piece that addresses the issue your target accounts are facing and then connect it to additional pieces which address specific aspects of that issue. Fitness trackers, for example can have a variety of common goals and benefits, but the way that individuals use them may be very different.

Making sure that Marketing and Sales are aligned

Professional service marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel using broad marketing campaigns to reach large audiences in the hope that one or more of them would be converted. This strategy may have worked when B2B marketing followed a more broadcast model, but is not effective in the current Account Based Marketing strategy. Rather than trying to push all potential leads through the same phase of the process, it's more important to concentrate on attracting high-value prospects and provide them with content and experiences that are tailored to their specific requirements and needs.

The first step is to identify your ideal client profile (ICP). It's not as easy as creating buyer personas, since you need to consider the kinds of solutions that customers are looking for and how they will be utilized.

Once you have identified your ICP The next step is to develop a content strategy that connects with these accounts across multiple channels. This could be anything from social media content marketing media ads to email outreach.

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

The most important thing to do is to utilize the information you have about your most successful clients. You can find positive traits that your customers have in common by studying their past data. For example, they may all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar company size. This data can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns for prospects with similar characteristics.

Additionally it's crucial to monitor the performance of your ABM strategy and make changes when needed. If your target audience doesn't respond to your content, you might be able to contact them and find out what you can do to move them down the sales funnel. By taking these steps, you'll be able to get your ABM strategy and content efforts more in sync and ultimately aid in generating more conversions.

Measuring the success

Account based content marketing is all about creating resources (videos reports, blogs, posts and webinars) that are tailored and relevant to a particular account or persona. For example when you're targeting healthcare companies your content must be geared towards their issues and concerns. This type of personalization does not only help with ABM but also builds solid relationships with prospects and customers.

The most appealing aspect of ABM is that it can be used at any stage of the sales funnel. In fact, it can be more effective than traditional lead generation if utilized at the top of the funnel. This is due to the fact that you can identify and engage with a small number accounts that are more likely to convert than trying generate leads from a group of people who may not be interested.

While there's still a place for offline relationships-building strategies such as in-person meetings, phone calls, and handwritten notes, the majority of customers nowadays prefer digital self-service and remote engagement. It's crucial to provide the right content at the right moment and using the channel they prefer.

ABM is particularly effective in engaging hard-to-reach C-suite executives, who are often dismissive of mass-email campaigns, but are more likely to react to content that addresses their requirements and use cases. ABM can also help accelerate sales by enabling engagement with prospects at the most crucial stages in their journey, for instance when they are looking for solutions to address specific business challenges.

ABM isn't as old-fashioned as traditional marketing and selling strategies, but it's rapidly becoming a top strategy for B2B businesses looking to boost performance and increase 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.