Account Based Content Marketing for Professional Services

With account-based content marketing your marketing department and digital marketing agency can concentrate on a select group of clients or accounts. This lets you create highly-personalized targeted content that talks directly to their issues and explains how your product can solve them.

Effective ABM content should deliver the appropriate information to each stakeholder at the appropriate time in the buyer's center. This involves identifying the needs of each individual at various stages in their journey.

Targeting Accounts with Specific Goals

Contrary to traditional content strategies that are designed to draw strangers into leads with broad marketing campaigns, account based content marketing focuses on interacting with targeted accounts in a highly customized method. Marketers can develop and distribute relevant content by identifying and understanding the key decision makers in each account, their pain points, and their objectives. This helps to create more productive conversation with customers and prospects that ultimately drives better business results for the company.

Once you've identified your desired accounts The next step is to design accounts plans for each one. This involves analyzing each account, determining which marketing channels to use and which customers within the account should be engaging with, and what types of content are needed to drive engagement and conversions. This could include thought-provoking content, such as whitepapers or case studies. Whitepapers, case studies webinars, retargeting ads, webinars personalized website experiences and other marketing content planner strategies that are specific to each client are all possible.

As a result, account-based content marketing is able to yield a higher return on investment than traditional content marketing techniques. In fact 84% of B2B marketers who have incorporated account-based marketing in their strategy report higher returns on investment than any other type of marketing campaign.

It takes more time and resources to cultivate the small number of targeted accounts, the advantages of an account-based content marketing strategy are significant for businesses that want to grow revenue across all stages of the sales funnel. This is particularly relevant for professional service companies, where the quality of their prospects or customers is more important than the number of people they can draw.

ABM is also a great option for businesses who want to grow their business with existing customers over time by developing trusting relationships. Research shows that investing in existing customers is more cost-effective than investing money to find and convert new customers.

Combining ABM with inbound marketing strategies can increase the effectiveness of content marketing. Marketers can improve the relevance of their content to potential customers at every stage of their buying journey by using pillar content in conjunction with the retargeting technique and landing pages for lead capture. This allows them to create additional revenue opportunities through acquisition, acceleration and expansion for their sales and marketing teams.

Create content that is hyper-personalized

ABM is a hot topic in the field of marketing. It's crucial that marketers understand how to adapt their content strategies to the new method. It can be difficult to understand how ABM actually operates. Jenny Magic of Convince & Convert and Jennalee Reiff from Springbox gave a crash-course on ABM in a recent presentation. They discussed the most important factors to consider, as well as what to expect for the success of implementation.

Understanding your ideal customer's goals and issues is the first step to creating an effective ABM strategy. Content that is in line with these goals will allow you to provide a more personal service and boost conversions. Content should be tailored to the requirements of each account. This is why it is crucial to outline the path of users within each of your target accounts. By doing this you'll be able to see what types of content (and even individual pages and items) are most popular with the people who are on them. This data can be used to optimize the user experience on your website, and show the most effective content to visitors from these accounts.

It's not easy to create hyper-personalized content however, it's a crucial step to boost the effectiveness of ABM. According to State of marketing content planner, 2023, 83% of consumers are willing to exchange their personal data for an experience that is more personalized.

One way to create hyper-personalized content is through AI processing of real-time data. This can help you determine how your content is presented, make suggestions for next steps, and respond to events in a flash. This tool can enhance the effectiveness of ABM campaigns. It can't replace multivariate testing and strategic planning.

Another method to personalize your content is by leveraging the pillar and cluster structure. This allows you to create a an entire piece of content that describes the issues that your target accounts are facing, and then link to other pieces that address specific aspects of the issue. Fitness trackers, for instance are able to provide a range of common benefits and goals but the method in which different people use them can be quite different.

Aligning Marketing and Sales

Professional services marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel, using broad marketing campaigns that appeal to large groups in the hope that a few of them would convert. This approach may have worked in the past when B2B marketing employed a more broadcast model, but is not as effective today with the Account Based Marketing strategy. Instead of attempting to push all leads through the same stages of the process, you should concentrate on the most valuable leads. You can accomplish this by providing them with content or experiences that are customized to meet their specific requirements and issues.

The first step to this is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). This is not as simple as creating buyer profiles because you must also think about the kinds of solutions each customer is looking for and how to use them.

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

When you are beginning to implement your ABM strategy, it's important to keep your sales and marketing teams on the same page. This will help ensure that your content is relevant to each account, ensuring that you don't waste time and money attracting the wrong audience.

The most important thing to do is to use the data you have on your best-performing clients. You can find positive traits that your clients share by looking at their historical data. For example, they may all be in the financial services industry or have a similar business size. This information can be used to create targeted campaigns targeting similar prospects.

It's also crucial to monitor your ABM strategy content marketing's performance and make any necessary adjustments. For example, if 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 marketing else you can do to help them progress through the sales funnel. You can make sure that you align your ABM strategy with your content strategy by following these steps.

Measuring the success

Account based content marketing is about creating content (videos reports, blogs, posts, and webinars) that are personalized and relevant to a specific persona or account. If you're looking to target healthcare organizations for instance your content should be focused on their pain points and issues. This kind of personalization is not just essential in ABM but also an excellent method to establish solid relationships with your prospects and customers.

The best part about ABM is that it can be used throughout the sales funnel. In fact, it can be even more effective than traditional lead generation when used at the top of the funnel. This is because it can help you to identify and engage only a few accounts that are likely to convert, instead of trying to generate leads from a large audience that may not be interested in your product or service.

Although offline strategies like in-person meetings, phone calls, or handwritten notes remain effective, today's buyers are more inclined to remote and digital self-service. It's important to deliver the right content at the right time, and on the channel they prefer.

ABM is particularly effective in reaching out to C-suite executives who are difficult to reach, who are often dismissive of mass-email campaigns, but are more likely to engage with content that addresses their needs and use cases. ABM can also help you shorten your sales cycle by enabling engagement with prospects at key stages in their journey, for instance when they are looking for solutions to solve specific business challenges.

ABM isn't as old as traditional marketing and selling strategies, but it's fast becoming a top strategy for B2B companies seeking 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.