Want to make your ABM strategy more effective? Make use of video

ABM is also known as account-based marketing. (ABM) is a highly-targeted strategy for B2B marketing which is focused on the most important accounts, not market segments.

ABM used to be companies deciding on a limited set of potential customers to target and directing a large portion of their marketing and resource to closing sales. But tactics often involved scraping of data, high-cost and expensive events that were geared towards small groups, and cold sales outreach. They weren't always successful.

Today, ABM is a more than just a Sales-plus-Marketing strategy to attract customers. This is an important distinction as companies are moving away from the stereotype that B2B Sales and Marketing usually had a more antagonistic relationship.

If it is executed properly, it helps Marketing and Sales teams align with their key customers to help them win new business.

This document explains the basics of ABM is and the best way to leverage video in your account-based marketing campaigns--including customized outreach, ABM videos, and more.

What will you learn

1.    What is account-based marketing?
2.    The ABCs of ABM The fundamental elements of a winning ABM strategy
3.    What should you avoid doing with your account-based marketing strategies
4.    How to customize ABM programs for top-of-the-line clients
5.    Closing ideas

What is account-based marketing?

For a quick overview, account-based marketing (ABM) is a method where an organisation tailors their marketing activities to focus on specific customers rather than taking the general strategy.

When it comes to ABM, it's essential to gain a thorough understanding of your ideal customer. In this way, you'll be able to design targeted marketing campaigns that are which are more likely to appeal to those who make the decisions at your targeted accounts.

"How does account-based marketing differ from traditional marketing," you might ask?

In traditional methods of marketing the emphasis is usually on creating more leads than is feasible. With ABM, the focus is on the quality of leads over volume. That means that instead of trying reach as many people as possible it's about targeting the key decision makers in specific accounts that are most likely to make a change.

It is also crucial to remember the fact that ABM is a collaborative initiative. For success with ABM, Sales and Marketing need to be aligned in their actions and goals.

This alignment is essential in order to make sure that all employees are working toward the same goal: producing leads that are of good quality and turn into clients.

The day-to-day life of account-based marketers

On a day-to-day basis Here's how marketers who are based on accounts accomplish:

• They design and create specific customers' profiling.
• Then, they create personalized campaigns and content specifically designed for the target audience and businesses.
• Together with Sales, ABM teams publish and market these promotional materials on various channels (depending on accounts that are targeted).
• Finally, they monitor to measure and then optimize outcomes of their campaigns in order to refine and further refine their ABM strategy in the course of time.

So...why prioritize account-based marketing?

There are a few key motives for to consider ABM is a must at your company.

Firstly, by tailoring your marketing strategies specifically to each account, you can make custom content and experiences that are much more likely to connect with the people you want to reach. As a result, you will be able to build stronger relationships with your target accounts as well as close more deals and boost retention.

Through ABM it is possible to focus your efforts on accounts which will convert more frequently which means a greater return on investment for your company.

The second reason is that ABM aligns Sales and Marketing. With traditional marketing techniques, there can be some gap between what Marketing would like to achieve and the way that Marketing is doing. But with ABM the two departments are working toward closing deals for specific accounts.

In addition, the buyers of today -- B2B and B2C--are more informed and sophisticated than they have ever been. They're unlikely to respond effectively to general messages or campaigns that are universally applicable. ABM is a way to make sure that you can tailor your message and approach. ABM you are able to customize your message and approach to specific companies and individuals. The personalized approach is more likely to appeal to today's buyers and result in closing transactions.

Finally, ABM is trackable, perhaps more than conventional marketing and advertising. Because ABM is focused on quality rather than the quantity of information, it is possible to measure the results of your efforts and evaluate whether you're making a difference. The transparency of this process is essential to getting buy-in from leadership, refining your approach, and winning increasing numbers of customers in the process.

ABM's ABCs ABM: Core elements of a successful ABM strategy

Through ABM, you treat each account as its own market.

For a sustainable growth of your company, you need an airtight accounts-based marketing (ABM) approach. Here are the core elements to keep in mind if you're thinking about developing an ABM plan for your company.

1. Segmentation

The first step of developing the ABM plan is identifying and segmenting your target accounts. In order to do this, you must clearly understand your ideal customer profile (ICP).

The information in your ICP must include details on demographics (e.g., job title or company name, size of the business, and location) and psychographic information (e.g. the pain points, motivations, buying influence).

In order to gather these data to gather this information, conduct initial research by conducting surveys or interviews with former and current clients. Your persona can be augmented with additional research from trustworthy sources such as trade magazines and industry publications.

When you've got a good knowledge of your ideal client/company profile, you can start manually developing a list of target accounts. Additionally, you can use market intelligence tools to build a list of companies that match your criteria.

After you've completed your homework, it's time to segment the accounts you have into various types of people. This will allow you to refine your messages and make sure you're targeting only the appropriate people within each account. For example, you might have a persona for decision-makers as well as one that targets influencers as well as one for the end-users.

2. Personalized messaging and outreach

After you've identified your desired peopleas and accounts Next stage is to design individualized messages and contents for each of them. Remember, with ABM, you're treating each account as a market for itself therefore it's crucial to tailor your content accordingly.

If you decide to utilize the same messages and information for all your target accounts but you'll not get what you're looking for. The best approach is to develop custom messages relevant to each account in your list. It can be difficult and heavy lift across teams, but it's well worth the effort--personalized messages have significantly better rate of response than generic messages.

It's equally important to align your go-to-market (GTM) strategy to that of the ABM strategy. It's about personalizing your messages and employing the correct mixture of channels that will reach your buyers where they're already using the internet. For example, LinkedIn would be a great channel to target when you're targeting executives at senior levels for large corporations.

Personalized messages help you build connections with the accounts you want to target. Today, people do business with the people they know, like and have confidence in. By sending personalized messages on relevant channels, it is possible to build those connections with the accounts you want to target which will make them more likely to work with your company when they're ready to make a purchase.

3. Alignment between marketing and sales

A third important aspect of a successful ABM strategy is the creation of cross-functional teams. It is a matter of creating teams that include individuals from multiple departments within your company, such as Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. A study conducted by Bombora revealed that firms typically have five teams who are dedicated to ABM.

They aim to bring everyone within the organization around the common goal of winning the customers of your targeted customers.

4. Customer lifecycle marketing

One crucial, yet often neglected element of a winning ABM strategy is the lifecycle of the customer marketing. This is about nurturing your relationships with key contacts in your targeted accounts. This can be done in several ways, such as sending personalized emails, offering them a call on their birthdays, or passing the recipient a list of useful resources. What ever you decide to do, be sure you're adding value and keeping them in mind.

Chances are, you'll need multiple people on a target account to sell your product or service to the one or two people at an account that you want to sell it to. Most likely, you'll require the involvement of several stakeholders from different organizations to help move a deal to the next level. This is the reason why creating specific content that can be utilized at different points of the buyer's journey and customer lifetime.

If you have a mix of high-of-the-funnel (TOFU) as well as middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) as well as bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) material that you can access, you'll have the ability to reach out to prospects at every stage of the sales process as well as after purchase.

5. ABM software

One of the key factors of any ABM strategy is having the right software in place. ABM software assists B2B marketers manage and automate their account-based marketing tasks. Popular platforms include HubSpot Sales, Terminus, Pardot Marketo, and Marketo.

ABM software will help you to track and assess engagement of your accounts, a key metric in every ABM software (as we'll be discussing in the following). Adjust your ABM strategy accordingly by understanding which accounts are engaging with your brand , and how. This can lead to increased account engagement over time, which can result in more closed contracts and more revenues.

ABM software also helps you automate repetitive tasks so that you can focus on more strategically ABM tactics. Automation also helps to run targeted campaigns more effectively in ensuring that the right contacts receive the right messages in the correct moment. This will make your ABM system more efficient and affordable over time.

Finally, ABM software can help increase your return on investment (ROI). It can help you generate more revenue for your business through increasing account engagement and campaign effectiveness. It means you'll be able to ensure that your ABM program will have more ROI. This is good for the financial results.

6. Evaluation of performance

Last but not least, you must measure your results. Similar to any other type of marketing strategy, it's crucial to track the progress in your ABM campaigns. For this to be done effectively be aware of and track the data that tells you the way each step in your ABM campaign was viewed by every decision-maker within each target account.

It is possible to get a clear idea of whether your ABM strategy is helping your business through monitoring key metrics such as:

• Traffic to websites from specific accounts
• The conversion rate from MQL to SQL
• The amount of meetings scheduled by Sales
• A variety of opportunities created
• Size of deal
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)

What you are not to consider when you are implementing a marketing plan based on accounts

We've discussed some core components of a successful ABM strategy. In this article, we'll go over some of the ABM mistakes to avoid once you begin.

Be careful not to employ scary, spammy ABM techniques

Ineffective ABM methods like purchasing numbers for cold calls as well as cold email are guaranteed to fail at account-based marketing. If your cold email isn't personalized or doesn't demonstrate worth (e.g. offering useful content or event invitations) is it unlikely that readers will respond or even book meetings.

Research has proven that cold outreach can work...if executed correctly. If you opt to conduct cold outreach as an element in your ABM strategy, make sure you encourage your employees to use the most effective methods:

• They must identify themselves. 79% of calls that are not identified go unanswered
• Use "we" statements--Successful cold calls include 65% more "we" statements
• Make the content relevant to every individual recipient. 57% from C-level purchasers would prefer to receive a call

Don'trely too heavily on scraped data

Account-based marketers need data to create their ideal client or corporate profiles. But using purchased or scraped data can result in ill-informed ICPs. Furthermore, it may cause your company to contact prospects without their consent this is detrimental to your the image of your brand and could result in prospects unsubscribing or report your messages as spam.

We recommend crafting your ICPs through primary research like surveys and customer interviews. In the event that you require, enhance your personas with research from reliable sources like magazines for trade or industry publications, or even software like Sparktoro.

Do not ignore the ROI

The process of calculating the ROI on your ABM investment ought to be simple Particularly if you focus on the metrics mentioned above and employ an ABM software to help.

While some ABM techniques (like occasions) can be more nebulous regarding ROI calculations, there's no excuse for using these strategies if there's absolutely no evidence to suggest they'll help move the needle or close deal.

Avoid the pitfalls of hosting expensive, large event and spending money on merchandise for "brand awareness" without knowing what the implications of these investment decisions are to your primary goal and objectives.

Do not avoid bad-fit accounts

Just because an account isn't suitable for your business or product does not mean that you have to ignore the account completely. Even if an account doesn't result in a sale it could have other benefits, such as exposure or insights from interactions with the account.

It is important not to be focused on results in the near-term, but instead, focus at the longer-term game of ABM.

How to customize ABM campaigns to your most prestigious clients

While ABM can be very effective but it's important to remember that there aren't all accounts created equal. Top-performing clients -- those that offer the greatest revenue for your business--deserve special attention.

When selecting the right accounts, it's important to make sure you focus to select high-value accounts offering the greatest growth opportunity.

Top-end clients have a tendency to getting the best of the best, so your website and your services should reflect the same quality. This doesn't mean that you'll need to break the bank--but it does mean investing the time and effort needed to create appealing, quality material that is sure to draw interest and yield outcomes.

Here are a few methods to tailor your ABM campaigns for your top-tier customers. (Hint: They include video!)

Account-based marketing videos

Account-based marketing videos present your brand's story with a clear and accessible manner, which is more than text-based message. Videos are an effective method to show your service or product as it is and provide prospective customers an understanding of its features and benefits.

How do they look on the job? In the beginning, when you're trying to break into a new company, it's useful to introduce the team through a video. It gives decision makers at the company a chance to give a face to the name, and start developing a rapport with the team.

The video you create doesn't have to be extravagant. A brief tour of your workspace and introductions from each team member will suffice. Make sure that it's concise and professional. It should also highlight what makes your company most suitable for the account.

Screen recordings that are personalized

Increase both engagement and the number of sales you can make by making personalized screen recordings. Instead of sending a customer-agnostic recording, you can take time to make a customized product demo with your ICP's issues and company information with your company's information in your mind.

Watching a custom recording is an easy way to delight your prospect. Through enhancing your end-user's experience, you build trust and increase the likelihood of them moving further into the funnel.

Video campaigns via email

Make use of account-based marketing videos for your nurture emails. Instead of sending a generic "Look what we can help us!" message, try creating your own emails using an engaging video that is that is relevant to the needs of your recipient.

Videos that highlight the pain aspects of your company and explain exactly how your product or service solves the problems of potential customers will be more effective.

It will allow you to stand out from the competition and demonstrate that you're prepared to go that extra mile to deliver quality. Videos that are high-quality and delivered through email could move potential customers further down the funnel and encourage them to book time with your sales team.

Virtual Events

Today's buyers are different--they do business with people whom they trust, love, and trust. One method to increase confidence and camaraderie with your target accounts is through curated virtual activities. One example is a virtual VIP workshop or experience for executives.

Avoid creating cookie-cutter services for your best clients. Instead, take time familiar with their requirements and issues so that you can develop tailored virtual events that offer pertinent solutions and connections to networks.

By putting in more effort early, you'll be able to position yourself as a trusted business partner that is committed to making their company successful in the in the long run.

Churn-reducing programs

ABM does not stop once you make the sale. Since your ICPs will be your "perfect" clients and you want to keep them engaged, it's best to keep in touch with them following buying.

Encourage Customer Success to touch the accounts you want to target every quarter or bi-annually, to ensure that their experience was positive. Participate in feedback loops so that you can gain important feedback and gain an understanding of what they are using the product for. It is possible to request that they take part in Beta testing groups to test the latest features, or in consulting roles for your Product team.

Treating your target accounts as important customers will reduce the rate of churn, and improve retention as well as the LTV of your customers.

Closing concepts

An effective account-based marketing strategy is a meticulously planned and executed strategy in a variety of dimensions and teams.

When you spend the time to understand your ideal customer and developing targeted campaigns and custom videos, you'll be able to build deeper relationships and close more transactions.

And since ABM can be tracked it is possible to measure the impact of your marketing efforts and map back new customers to your unique, original marketing efforts.