How to Grow Your Business with Account-Based Marketing for Your Private Company
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategy that focuses on targeting and engaging specific accounts that are most likely to buy from you, rather than trying to reach a broad audience with generic messages. ABM can help you increase your revenue, improve your customer loyalty, and align your sales and marketing teams.
But how do you get started with ABM for your private company? And what are the challenges and complexities that you need to overcome to succeed with ABM?
In this blog post, we will answer these questions and show you how to implement ABM in five steps. We will also share some tips and best practices to help you optimize your ABM campaigns and achieve your goals.
But before we dive into the details, let's clarify what ABM is and why it matters for your private company.
What is ABM and why should you care?
ABM is a strategic approach that involves identifying, researching, and targeting a select group of high-value accounts that match your ideal customer profile. Instead of sending the same message to everyone, you tailor your content, campaigns, and offers to each account based on their specific needs, challenges, goals, and preferences.
ABM can help you:
- Increase your return on investment (ROI) by focusing your resources on the most profitable accounts.
- Build stronger relationships with your customers by providing them with personalized and relevant solutions.
- Stand out from your competitors by offering unique value propositions and experiences.
- Reduce your sales cycle and increase your conversion rates by aligning your sales and marketing efforts.
- Enhance your brand reputation and loyalty by delivering consistent and high-quality service.
ABM is especially beneficial for private companies that have:
- A niche market or a limited number of potential customers.
- A complex or high-value product or service that requires a long sales cycle or multiple decision-makers.
- A high customer lifetime value (CLV) or a low churn rate.
- A need to differentiate themselves from their competitors or disrupt their industry.
If this sounds like your private company, then ABM might be the perfect strategy for you. But how do you get started with ABM? Here are five steps to follow:
Step 1: Define your goals and metrics
The first step in any marketing strategy is to define what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. For ABM, you need to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that align with your business objectives.
Some examples of ABM goals are:
- Increase revenue from existing accounts by X% in Y months.
- Acquire Z new accounts in Y months.
- Improve customer satisfaction by X% in Y months.
- Reduce churn rate by X% in Y months.
Once you have your goals, you need to choose the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track your progress and evaluate your results. Some examples of ABM KPIs are:
- Account engagement: the level of interaction and interest that an account shows towards your brand, such as website visits, email opens, social media mentions.
- Pipeline velocity: the speed at which an account moves through the sales funnel, from awareness to purchase.
- Deal size: the average value of the contracts or orders that an account signs with you.
- Customer satisfaction: the degree of satisfaction that an account expresses with your product or service, such as ratings, reviews, referrals.
Step 2: Identify and prioritize your target accounts
The next step in ABM is to identify and prioritize the accounts that you want to target with your marketing campaigns. To do this, you need to create an ideal customer profile (ICP), which is a description of the characteristics and attributes of your ideal customer.
An ICP can include:
- Demographic information: such as industry, size, location, revenue.
- Firmographic information: such as structure, culture, values, goals, challenges.
- Psychographic information: such as personality, preferences, motivations, pain points.
- Behavioral information: such as buying patterns, decision-making process, online activity.
To create an ICP, you can use various sources of data and information, such as:
- Your existing customers: analyze their profiles and feedback to understand what makes them loyal and satisfied with your product or service.
- Your competitors' customers: research their profiles and behavior to identify their needs and gaps that you can fill with your product or service.
- Your market research: conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. to gather insights and opinions from potential customers in your target market.
- Your online analytics: use tools such as Google Analytics , HubSpot , or Drift to track and measure the online behavior and activity of your website visitors and leads.
Once you have your ICP, you can use it to identify and prioritize the accounts that match your criteria. You can use various tools and methods to do this, such as:
- Your CRM system: use your customer relationship management (CRM) system to segment and filter your existing contacts and accounts based on your ICP attributes.
- Your ABM software: use your account-based marketing (ABM) software to find and rank new accounts based on their fit, intent, and engagement with your brand.
- Your social media platforms: use your social media platforms to monitor and engage with relevant accounts that show interest or influence in your industry or niche.
- Your sales team: collaborate with your sales team to leverage their insights and connections with potential accounts.
When prioritizing your target accounts, you can use a scoring system or a tiered approach to rank them based on their value and potential. For example, you can assign each account a score from 1 to 100 based on their fit, intent, and engagement, and then group them into tiers such as:
- Tier 1: high-value accounts that have a strong fit, high intent, and high engagement. These accounts require the most personalized and dedicated attention from your marketing and sales teams.
- Tier 2: medium-value accounts that have a good fit, moderate intent, and moderate engagement. These accounts require some personalized and customized attention from your marketing and sales teams.
- Tier 3: low-value accounts that have a low fit, low intent, and low engagement. These accounts require minimal or no personalized attention from your marketing and sales teams.
Step 3: Develop your content and campaigns
The third step in ABM is to develop your content and campaigns that will attract, engage, and convert your target accounts. To do this, you need to create buyer personas , which are fictional representations of the key decision-makers and influencers within each account.
Buyer personas can include:
- Demographic information: such as name, age, gender, role.
- Professional information: such as goals, challenges, pain points.
- Personal information: such as values, motivations, preferences.
- Buying information: such as budget, authority, timeline.
To create buyer personas , you can use various sources of data and information, such as:
- Your existing customers: interview or survey them to understand their needs, wants, expectations, and feedback.
- Your target accounts: research their profiles and behavior to identify their interests, concerns, questions, and objections.
- Your sales team: collaborate with them to leverage their insights and interactions with the buyers.
Once you have your buyer personas , you can use them to create content and campaigns that will resonate with each buyer at each stage of the buyer's journey . The buyer's journey is the process that buyers go through from becoming aware of their problem to choosing a solution.
The buyer's journey consists of three stages:
- Awareness stage: the buyer realizes that they have a problem or a need that requires a solution.
- Consideration stage: the buyer researches and evaluates different options or alternatives to solve their problem or meet their need.
- Decision stage: the buyer selects the best option or alternative for their situation.
For each stage of the buyer's journey , you need to create content and campaigns that will:
- Educate the buyer about their problem or need and how your product or service can help them.
- Engage the buyer with relevant and valuable information that will build trust and credibility with your brand.
- Convert the buyer into a lead or a customer by providing them with compelling offers or calls-to-action (CTAs).
Some examples of content and campaigns for each stage of the buyer's journey are:
- Awareness stage: blog posts , ebooks , whitepapers , webinars , podcasts , infographics that address the buyer's pain points or challenges.
- Consideration stage: case studies , testimonials , videos , demos , free trials , etc. that showcase the benefits and features of your product or service.
- Decision stage: proposals , quotes , discounts , coupons , etc. that persuade the buyer to choose your product or service over others.
When creating content and campaigns for ABM , you need to:
- Personalize them to each account and each buyer based on their profile, behavior, preferences.
- Customize them to each channel and platform that you use to reach your target accounts, such as email , social media , website.
- Optimize them for search engines (SEO) and user experience (UX) to ensure that they are visible and accessible to your target accounts.
- Test and measure them to evaluate their performance and effectiveness.
Step 4: Execute and coordinate your ABM campaigns
The fourth step in ABM is to execute and coordinate your ABM campaigns across different channels and platforms. To do this, you need to:
- Align your marketing and sales teams: ensure that your marketing and sales teams have a clear and shared understanding of your goals, strategies, tactics, roles, and responsibilities. Use a CRM system or an ABM software to manage and track your contacts, accounts, activities, and results.
- Segment and target your accounts: use your CRM system or your ABM software to segment and target your accounts based on their tier, stage, behavior, etc. Use automation tools or features to send personalized and timely messages and offers to each account.
- Engage and nurture your accounts: use a variety of channels and platforms to engage and nurture your accounts throughout the buyer's journey. Use email , social media , website , chatbots , etc. to provide relevant and valuable content and interactions. Use retargeting or remarketing tools or features to re-engage accounts that have shown interest or intent.
- Convert and close your accounts: use a strong value proposition and a clear CTA to convert your accounts into leads or customers. Use email , phone , video , etc. to follow up and close the deal. Use proposals , quotes, contracts to finalize the agreement.
Step 5: Analyze and optimize your ABM campaigns
The fifth and final step in ABM is to analyze and optimize your ABM campaigns based on your goals and metrics. To do this, you need to:
- Collect and analyze your data: use your CRM system , your ABM software , or other analytics tools to collect and analyze your data from different sources, such as website , email , social media , etc. Use dashboards or reports to visualize and summarize your data.
- Evaluate and report your results: use your KPIs to evaluate and report your results against your goals. Use charts or graphs to compare and contrast your results across different accounts, segments, channels.
- Identify and implement improvements: use your data and results to identify what works well and what needs improvement. Use A/B testing or experiments to test different variations of your content, campaigns, offers. Implement the changes that lead to better outcomes.
Conclusion
ABM is a powerful strategy that can help you grow your private company by targeting and engaging the most valuable accounts in your market. However, ABM can also be complex and challenging to implement successfully.
That's why you need a partner who can help you with ABM . A partner who has the expertise, experience, and tools to help you plan, execute, and optimize your ABM campaigns. A partner who can help you achieve your goals faster and easier.
That partner is BluePrint CPAs.
We are a consulting firm that specializes in ABM for private companies. We can help you:
- Define your goals and metrics for ABM
- Identify and prioritize your target accounts for ABM
- Develop your content and campaigns for ABM
- Execute and coordinate your ABM campaigns across different channels and platforms
- Analyze and optimize your ABM campaigns based on your goals and metrics
If you want to learn more about how we can help you with ABM , we invite you to book a free consultation with us today . We will discuss your needs, challenges, opportunities, and expectations for ABM . We will also show you how we can help you achieve them.
Don't miss this opportunity to take your private company to the next level with ABM . Book your free consultation with us today .
