Account-based marketing (ABM) and strategic content creation and distribution mesh perfectly.
Fact: To run successful ABM campaigns, there are certain challenges you need to deal with, such as pcleaersonalization, engagement, and conversion issues.
However, strategic content creation and distribution are great solutions to these challenges. B2B companies have greatly succeeded in enhancing the effectiveness of their ABM campaigns through careful content planning, creation, and distribution.
In this guide, we share practical content-related advice and examples that you can use to resolve specific ABM challenges, ultimately increasing the efficiency of your marketing campaigns.
Overview of ABM and Common Challenges
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a marketing strategy that B2B companies use to attract a select group of high-value customers. It is the polar opposite of running generic, one-size-fits-all marketing campaigns. Marketers often encounter the challenges below because of the specificity needed in ABM.
Identifying ABM Pain Points
Even when articulating pain points, specificity is clearly seen in ABM compared to generic marketing campaigns.
For example, “hungry,” can be considered a generic pain point. When articulated in ABM campaigns, the pain point “hungry” transforms into something more specific, such as “Hungry health-conscious employees who work in corporate offices that are looking for a quick snack from 2 pm to 3 pm.”
As the pain points are niched several levels deep, challenges occur.
Personalization challenges
Successful ABM campaigns depend on personalized communication tailored to each prospect’s specific needs. This goes beyond understanding content topics and the search intent behind each keyword.
To incorporate personalization into ABM, take personalization further by:
- Mentioning terminologies they’re familiar with. If you’re promoting to law firms, consider replacing “lead generation” with “client development” and “landing pages” with “practice area pages.”
- Providing relatable, real-world examples. Share examples pertaining to situations and problems your prospects already know.
- Sharing relevant data points and case studies. Spruce up your content with verifiable data to make your message more believable.
Engagement and conversion issues
Don’t rely on generic conversion funnels. Rather, understand where each customer stands in the buying cycle and reach out to them with the right type of content.
You can invest in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to track and score each lead’s interactions accordingly. Map out where they are in your funnel and decide the best content to push them to the next step.
Sales and marketing alignment
Maintaining a clear and efficient communication line between your marketing and sales teams in ABM takes a lot of work. Things are more complicated when targeting high-value accounts with multiple decision-makers in the buying process.
To ensure your marketing and sales teams are up to the task, you need a holistic approach focusing on data access, collaboration, and technology that constantly keeps team members on the same page.
Now that you better understand the pain points in ABM, let’s look at the role of content — the most valuable marketing personalization asset — and how to use it.
Role of Content in Alleviating ABM Pain Points
The success of your ABM campaign banks on the quality and relevance of your marketing content. Factors like sales enablement and CRM work behind the scenes, carving a clear path to winning highly valuable accounts. But without the right content, setting your ABM plans in motion is impossible.
Content as a tool for personalization
Personalized content pieces are the bread and butter of digital ABM. They fulfill a handful of functions, like:
- Proving to prospects that you’re in touch with their challenges, needs, and goals
- Educating leads on how they can move forward from their current situation
- Showing that you have produced desirable results for previous clients
Here’s how to make personalized content marketing work for your ABM campaign:
Using content to boost engagement
ABM prospects are proven to respond better to hyper-personalized content.
In one particular case study, Dynamic Yield embedded content personalization into key touchpoints to boost engagement:
- Lifted demo requests by 111 percent
- Supercharged goal completions through personalized display ads by 800 percent
- Increased newsletter subscriptions by 275 percent
During their campaign, Dynamic Yield injected personalization into every facet of their content marketing. This includes logos, landing page variations, and notification bars.
Such attention to detail is important for creating hyper-personalized content for ABM.
Content strategies for sales alignment
Customer-oriented content can help prepare prospects for more aggressive sales techniques and offers. Remember, it’s all about aligning content with the account’s specific needs.
If they’re still in the discovery phase, get to know them better by tracking their content engagements and activities. You can tell a lot from a prospect’s purchase readiness by looking at the resources they access: webinars, white papers, newsletters, or landing pages.
Creating Impactful Content for ABM
Ready to reap the full benefits of expertly crafted, hyper-personalized content for ABM?
Remember these best practices:
Understanding your target accounts
When creating content for ABM, you need to look deep into your target accounts.
Go beyond generic customer personas. Untangle the network of decision-makers in those accounts, along with their pain points and preferred engagement channels. Use data from previous emails, inquiries, survey responses from cohorts, and other past interactions to help define your most profitable accounts.
Developing a tailored content strategy
Different content formats, from landing pages to emails, can be tailor-made to form deeper connections with key decision-makers. But first, you need to identify the content pieces you need to move ABM clients down the sales funnel.
Follow the steps below to help you develop a tailored content strategy for ABM:
- Leverage customer intelligence. Unload everything you can from customer personas, CRM data, and audience analytics reports to identify your top content types and distribution methods.
- Create personalized landing pages. Build personalized landing pages that feature dynamic content that resonates with high-value prospects.
- Showcase similar customer success stories. Let your results speak and build your brand for you — just be sure you use stories that match your prospect’s challenges and goals.
- Don’t abandon the self-service experience. Guide your prospects to plenty of resources, like blog posts, industry reports, interactive tools, and forums, that let them progress through the buying process independently.
Types of content that work in ABM
Diversify your content portfolio to keep prospects hooked at every stage.
Here are some of the best content types for ABM:
- Personalized landing pages
- Contact page
- FAQs
- Personalized emails
- Industry-specific reports, case studies, and eBooks
- Custom price quote pages
- Plan comparisons
- Thought leadership pieces
- Automated pop-up messages and forms
Innovative Content Distribution in ABM
Remember that crafting assets and resources for ABM requires a high degree of personalization and detail-orientedness. It’s also important to look at factors outside of the piece, such as your promotion strategy and timing.
Choosing the right channels
Finding the right content distribution channels for ABM is crucial for maximizing reach and impact. To do this, analyze your prospect’s content consumption habits. Where do they normally get their information, and what platforms do they trust?
Deeply invested prospects may research B2B businesses through webinars, client testimonials, and page reviews on LinkedIn. Others may dive into expert reviews on YouTube, Reddit posts, or white papers to make a purchase decision.
Timing and frequency of content delivery
In terms of your ABM content’s timing and frequency, the rule is simple: adapt to the account’s preferences.
You may automate content in certain touchpoints like email, landing pages, and social media. These interactions can be scheduled or executed immediately following an engagement action, like creating an account or booking a free consultation.
Handcrafted 1:1 interactions also work best in ABM campaigns. Companies like Snowflake attract more qualified ABM accounts and close significantly more opportunities through 1:1 interactions.
Measuring Content’s Impact on ABM
No ABM campaign is perfect at launch, so monitoring your data and turning them into improvement opportunities is critical.
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
Some of the KPIs needed in every ABM campaign are:
- Account engagement score
- Deal velocity
- Customer acquisition cost
- Win rate
- Customer lifetime value
- Revenue from target accounts
- Opportunity creation rate
- Average deal size
- Account churn rate
- Customer satisfaction/retention
Using analytics to refine content strategy
Tracking KPIs in your ABM campaign will determine whether or not your strategies are working. This will unlock opportunities to make corrections, scale working tactics, and continue to grow your ABM results.
Remember, there’s no room for guesswork in ABM.
Every move must be calculated and fine-tuned to target accounts. And, without using analytics, you leave the success of your ABM campaign to chance.
Equip Your ABM Campaign with Expert, Audience-Focused Content
As with other areas of digital marketing, content is the primary building block of a lucrative ABM campaign.
The effectiveness of your ABM strategies depends on the quality of your content, personalization, promotion, and absolute alignment with your business goals. To ensure that you get nothing but high-performing content, you need content creation experts with a proven track record in successful ABM campaigns.
Whether you need to start small or you want to be aggressive in your ABM campaigns, work with the best content creators. Connect with ClearVoice to speak with a content strategist today.
