Identifying, reaching out to, and engaging your most high-value prospects on a more intimate level has long been considered the holy grail of marketing. Fortunately now, thanks to account-based marketing tactics (ABM) software, that goal can be attained with astonishing accuracy. Not only that, but ABM has transformed marketing as we know it.
It used to be that in marketing, the bigger the netcast, the better. Not anymore. After all, having a lot of leads means little if they aren’t good leads. This is where the account-based marketing strategy comes into play.
In today’s hyper-connected world, each prospect is a market of one. This gives marketers the ability to reach micro-segments of prospects and decide which approaches are most appropriate to each segment. This gives them the ability to reach the most valuable accounts with experiences that are most appropriate to them. In the simplest terms, you can do more with less.
As the idea of ABM has matured, savvy marketers have found that they can capitalize on it to the greatest extent possible for maximum revenue. The downside to this is that without the proper strategies in implementing an ABM its value is reduced. This article will examine how to use the top-performing ABM strategies to your maximum benefit.
Expand Marketing and Sales Alignment
How many times have you thought, “If we could just make marketing and sales work together!” Unfortunately, that’s the old way of thinking. Getting all of the parts of a company to work together. Now you’ve got something.
With a good ABM strategy, you can minimize missed sales opportunities by making sure you get the most out of your ABM opportunities by aligning sales and marketing with other departments of the organization. Not only does this approach cause a sales department to better serve VIP accounts, but it is a holistic approach to the whole organization.
Identify Optimal Accounts
It’s literally a matter of spending more time on more valuable accounts. It’s not ignoring accounts that might not be worth as much, but it is putting them in their proper perspective. An effective ABM strategy will allow you to gain serious traction with higher promise accounts. Better yet, you go from a gut-driven approach to a data-driving approach, minim sizing the chances for error and maximizing the power your data gives you.
In marketing, it’s often not a choice of what tools to use, but what tools to use to what extent and in what order. That’s the power of an ABM marketing system approach. An ABM system will allow you to synthesize data faster and more efficiently to allow you to focus on higher-yielding accounts.
Using Direct Mail
Many people believe that in this day and age, direct mail is dead. That’s not true. The truth is that there has never been a better time to infuse the use of direct mail into an effective marketing program. Further, including it into an ABM program has never known a better time. If you doubt this, just think of what you saw when you checked your email this morning. It was stuffed full, wasn’t it? The truth is that email remains a highly effective tool, but if you really want to deliver a message, you need to think outside of the box–the email box to be precise.
Its a sure bet that the best ABM marketers will be using direct mail to deliver the messages. How? With a highly personalized direct mail piece, of course. This might be a letter, a printed mailer, or any of a number of other tools, but it will be delivered with direct mail. Rest assured that a direct mail piece of this type will rock their world this year. Not only this, but a highly effective direct mail piece can reach virtually everyone on your prospect list, regardless of where they are on the client cycle.
If you do a direct mail piece right, it can become your strongest differentiator. The key is personalization. It might be true that not all direct mail will appeal to all recipients, but if it is personalized it will make a world of difference in reaching out to virtually everyone on your list. When you dig deeper into your customer’s lifecycle and their persona, chances are good that you can create a direct mail piece that will appeal to them stronger than any other method of promotion. To this, you could even add promotional items to help deliver your message.
Hosting Events for Key Clients
It might be an old story, but it’s worth repeating about advertising guru Jerry Della Femina, that after he had done everything he thought he could do to promote his new advertising agency in the 1960s, he was on the verge of losing everything he had. So what did he do? He threw a party. Advertising lore explains that he spent the last of his money to throw this party, which became the impetus for several new clients that signed with him and his associates that night.
It doesn’t matter whether you host an event that is for all of your prospective clients or just a few of the best, it should be done with literally no restraint. Regardless, the list of invitees should reflect your ABM goals. The clients should reflect on the opportunity for you to engage them at the highest levels. Make the event all about them in order to speed up the sales process. This is a lot of hard work, but truly worth your time and effort. If you don’t have the time to host an event, you could use your attendance at a trade show to have such an event.
There are a lot of ways to engage with your clients. A lot of the possible approaches might be thought of as old fashioned, but what is most important is the extent to which you do it, not the event itself. As long as those prospects who you meet are engaged to a meaningful extent will make the difference between a prospect and a client.