Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services

With account-based content marketing your marketing department and digital marketing strategy content agency can concentrate on a small number of clients or accounts. This allows you to create content that is highly personalized and speaks directly to their issues and demonstrates how your product can assist them in solving them.

ABM content that is efficient must convey the right information to each stakeholder in the buyer's centre at the right time. This means identifying the needs of each persona at different phases of their journey.

Targeting Accounts with Specific Goals

In contrast to traditional content strategies which seek to attract and convert strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing focuses on interacting with targeted accounts in a highly customized method. By identifying the top decision makers at each account and identifying their issues and goals, marketers are able to create and distribute content that is targeted to the specific accounts. This helps to create a more fruitful dialog with customers and prospects that ultimately drives greater business outcomes for the company.

After identifying your target accounts You must then create accounts plans for each. This involves analyzing each account and determining the marketing channels that should be utilized, the buyers within each account to engage, and what type of content is needed to encourage engagement. This may include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, webinars) Retargeting ads, personalized experiences on websites and other marketing tactics that are customized to each customer.

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.

While it requires more resources and time to cultivate a smaller number of accounts, the rewards are significant for businesses who seek to increase their revenues at all stages of the funnel. This is especially applicable to professional service companies where the quality of their customers or prospects is more important than how many people they are able to attract.

ABM is an excellent option for businesses who want to grow their business with existing customers over time, by establishing trusting relationships. Research has shown that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than spending money to find and convert new customers.

Combining ABM with inbound marketing techniques can increase the effectiveness of content marketing. Through an array of pillar content, retargeting and lead capture landing pages, marketers can give more value to potential customers at all stages of the buying process. This enables them to create more acquisition, acceleration, and expansion revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.

Create hyper-personalized content

ABM is a rage in marketing. It's important that marketers know how to adapt their strategies for content to this new approach. However, it can be a challenge to get your head around how ABM is actually used in practice. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert, and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave an overview of ABM in a recent talk. They explained the key aspects to consider, and what content marketing to expect for an effective implementation.

The most effective ABM content strategy begins with understanding the needs of your ideal customer and goals. Content that is geared towards these goals allows you to provide more personalized service and increase conversions. The content you create should be tailored to the specific needs of each account. This is why it is essential to sketch out the journey of people within your accounts. This will allow you to determine the content marketing type of content (and individual items and pages) is most engaging for your intended audience. This information can be used to optimize journeys on your website, and show the most popular content to users who visit those accounts.

It can be difficult to create hyper-personalized content but it's an important step to increase the impact of ABM. According to State of Marketing, 2023 83% of customers are willing to exchange their personal information to receive better-customized experiences.

One method to create hyper-personalized content is by using AI processing on real-time data. This can help you manage the way your content is presented and make suggestions for the next steps and respond to events instantly. While it's not a replacement for multivariate testing or strategic planning, this is a great tool for improving the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.

The cluster and pillar structure is another way to hyper-personalize content marketing agency. This allows you to create a full piece that describes the problem that your accounts' target users are facing and connect it to additional pieces which address specific aspects of that problem. Fitness trackers, for instance are able to provide a range of common benefits and goals but the method in which individuals use them may be very different.

Getting Sales and Marketing Aligned

Professional service marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel using broad marketing campaigns to appeal to large groups in the hope that a few of them would become converts. This strategy may have served its purpose in the past when B2B marketing was more of a broadcast model but it's no longer effective with the modern Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. Instead of trying to push all leads through the same steps of the process, you should concentrate on high-value prospects. This can be achieved by providing them with content or experiences specifically tailored to meet their specific requirements and issues.

The first step is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This isn't as simple as establishing buyer personas since you need to consider the kinds of solutions that customers are seeking and how they will be utilized.

Once you know your ICP the next step is to design a content strategy that connects with each of these accounts across several channels. This could range from social media ads, to email outreach.

It's essential that your marketing and sales teams are on the same page as you implement your ABM strategy. This will ensure that your content is relevant to each account and ensure that you don't waste time or resources on the wrong audience.

Another crucial step is to make use of the data that you have on your most successful clients. Through analyzing your client data, you can discover the positive traits they have in common, like being in the financial services sector or being within a certain size. This data can be used to create targeted campaigns targeting similar prospects.

In addition, it's important to track the performance of your ABM strategy and make adjustments as needed. For instance, if your target account isn't responding to your content marketing strategy, it could be time to contact them and see what else you can do to help them move along the sales funnel. You can integrate your ABM strategy with your content strategies by following these steps.

Measuring the success

Account based content marketing is about creating content (videos reports, reports, blog posts, and webinars) that are tailored and relevant to a specific account or persona. For instance when you're targeting healthcare businesses, your content needs to be geared towards their pain points and challenges. This personalization aspect isn't just important in ABM however, it's an excellent method to establish strong relationships with your prospects and customers.

ABM can be used at any stage of the sales funnel. It can be even more effective than traditional lead generation at the top of the funnel. This is because you can identify and interact with a smaller number accounts that are more likely to convert rather than trying generate leads from a group of people who may not be interested.

Although offline strategies like phone calls and meetings in person or handwritten notes are efficient, today's buyers prefer online self-service and remote interaction. That's why it's so critical to provide them with the right content at the right time, on the channel that is most effective for them.

ABM is particularly effective at engaging executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach. They often ignore mass email campaigns however, they are more likely to respond to content that is relevant to their needs and use cases. ABM can also help accelerate sales by allowing you to engage with prospects at key stages in their journey, like when they are researching solutions to address specific business challenges.

ABM isn't as old-fashioned as traditional selling and marketing strategies, but it's quickly becoming a top choice for B2B companies looking to improve 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.