There are 11 effective tactics to use with your account-based marketing strategy.
Develop prospect-specific offers
The key to account-based marketing is relevance and personalization. A typical account-based marketing program often uses a small number of targeted accounts, so campaigns and offers should generate high conversion rates.
One idea is to personalize your content marketing efforts by creating offers that target a specific target account. Most potential buyers find it necessary to open this special report because it is so valuable.
Develop offers designed to get meetings
99.9% of marketers make offers through webinars and whitepapers designed to generate leads. It helps customers convince prospects to agree to the event. For example, an enterprise social analytics company might offer an hour-long live research report that analyzes the company’s social media efforts relative to its competitors. Other examples include free technology assessments or conducted security audits.
Use retargeting to keep your brand in front of accounts
Retargeting is a great way to re-engage a specific account as its users consume content online. Some redesign innovations apply directly to account-based marketing programs.
The basis of prayer, for example. it offers account-based targeting and analysis that uses IP addresses to identify target host accounts when they browse the web. When these accounts visit a site in the network of properties that offer Demandbase ads, they receive vendor ads. Other B2B retargeting companies include Bizo and Retargeter.
Personalize the account’s experience on your website
Given the targeted nature of numbers-driven marketing, programs that deliver high conversion rates are essential. Customizing such pages is an effective tactic to do this. Marketers can create account-specific landing pages that display custom copy, images, offers, and forms based on the person or account visiting the landing page.
Privacy tactics can display the visitor’s name on the landing page – but beware, some prospects may find this too intrusive.
Create sales territories designed to convert
In the past, sales territories were often categorized based on price or similarities, but what if you could assign buyers to a territory based on how likely they are to close a deal? Social proximity territory planning is a process in which an organization assigns its representatives to specific accounts based on quality, quantity, and social connections. Other territory planning options may be based on previous sales relationships or past sales history.
Test direct mail with executives
With the popularity of digital marketing, direct mail was left for dead. However, direct mail is still a good option for reaching groups of executives. Why? Because many executives don’t sign up for webinars or white papers, don’t respond to solicited emails, and don’t follow companies and clients on Twitter. For example, before a major conference, one company sent empty iPad cases to senior management with a note to come to the event booth to receive the iPad. It worked – many recipients came to know the business.
Use social intelligence to understand what matters to prospects
Create marketing forecasts based on a core management account based on an account’s current activities and challenges. Businesses evolve quickly, so savvy providers monitor changes and use results in their target accounts.
One way is to subscribe to a public news service such as Google Alerts to understand what is happening at the enterprise level. Another tactic is to monitor social activity.
Unlike PR-based articles and press releases, social data is invaluable to the number-based marketing model. When implementing the program, organizations must be agile and redirect communications or when new information is discovered. Enterprise-class social intelligence sales applications are available in InsideView or LinkedIn.
Build a list of legitimate role-based contacts
There are providers that can create lists based on role or responsibility and will guarantee that the connection is still active. This type of listing allows computationally based models to seed the database with appropriate connections. Titles often don’t tell people enough, but with a list of roles, a company can ask for “person in charge of IT infrastructure.” Companies like Reachforce or Televerde can facilitate these types of listings.
Purchase white paper and webinar leads for target accounts
In the past, when a customer bought leads from a media company, they could only filter them by options such as company size, title or location. Recently, many online lead generation organizations allow businesses to filter their lead sales by company name. The cost per customer will be higher, but it’s definitely worth the price to support your account-based marketing efforts.
Create a one-to-one C-level campaign
Organizations can give employees responsibility for cultivating relationships with specific buyer personas in their target accounts. Spreading from C-level to C-level is a good thing here. The campaign might start with an email or direct mail from this person and then follow up with a phone call.
The disclosure should be personal and truthful and tell the business reason why these executives should meet. This organization should support all aspects of the process, including the writing of reports. An inside salesperson may follow up with a phone call to the directory manager to set up an appointment.
After assigning C-level executives, organizations can assign VPs, internal sales reps, and marketing leads to target accounts. The goal is to match relevant employees with relevant prospect employees.
Discover target account connections via non-sales employees
We often ignore the relationships that other employees in the organization have in the target accounts. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for example, has a feature called TeamLink that provides visibility into the connections other employees at your company have connections to in your target account. There is always a potential connection to leverage.
