There have been recent personalization improvements in the marketing process. This has dramatically increased the value of account-based marketing.
The more targeted you can get in your campaigns, the higher the percentage of leads. Closing on leads gauges how much money your business will generate. The challenge comes in selecting the account-based approach to take, which will help you keep costs down to maintain a high ROI.
Success in account-based marketing has become a skill, just like any other type of digital marketing. Therefore, you have to be willing to learn and improve. Here are seven skills, specifically, that will help your account-based marketing abilities:
1. Understand the technology that exists.
One of the greatest parts of account-based marketing today versus five years ago is the opportunity for high-level personalization. It took significantly more time and creativity to find ways to reach your targeted audience in the past.
For example, you can now use tools to identify a visitor by their company once they reach your site (with a reverse-IP lookup). You can display a particular page to them, accordingly which will open many doors.
It might require some engineering help, but the payoff is worthwhile. Reading up on the best-in-class account-based marketing will spark ideas and introduce you to tools that can dramatically help your business.
2. Create empathy towards your target markets.
It often gets underemphasized, but you need to live in the shoes of your target market. Understand where they are spending their time, what content they enjoy and what their pain points are.
This will enable you to craft personalized messaging across the right channels to attract them to your product. It is easy to imagine being your target customer and trying to think about their needs. Instead, though, go talk to them.
Reach out to current customers that fit the market you are pursuing, and figure out why they bought your service. Having a deep understanding of your audience will prevent you from guessing all the time when making channel and content decisions.
3. Do more research on the industry.
Beyond individual customers, the more knowledge you have about your industry and surrounding industries, the more you will understand your company’s role within them. This allows you to hone in on the best customers to target. Plus, industries are rapidly evolving.
Therefore, awareness of what changes are taking place and being ready to capitalize on those opportunities will be a tremendous advantage.
4. Spend time on creativity.
Any idea that comes to mind immediately is one that also came to mind for your competitors. Some of those ideas are low hanging fruit worth pursuing. It is typically not those ideas, though, that are going to differentiate your marketing approach.
What is going to propel the success of your account-based marketing campaigns is your capacity for creativity. This creativity comes in two forms. The first is determining your target audiences and how to reach them. Spending time thinking about who is interested in your product and segmenting in creative ways can be a major competitive advantage.
For example, think about what types of other products your target customers are using. What communities they are a part of might be more difficult to find initially.
After finding your target audience, you can get creative with the site personalization that you do. Just because someone visits your site does not mean that you have them wanting to come back yet.
This personalization is what differentiates the best account-based marketers. Personalization examples include custom images on landing pages based on the company that is visiting your site.
You could include specific customer testimonials based on who your visitor is or the industry that they are in. You could also send custom chatbot messages to certain visitors. The options for personalization are endless, but being creative about them is critical.
5. Know your competitors.
Following your competitors can spark ideas and keep you up-to-date with the landscape. You can appeal to their current customers and mimic effective strategies that they are using. On the one hand, marketing has been made more difficult recently.
It is easy for a competitor to pose as a fake customer to learn your process and use your ideas. On the other side, though, there is an opportunity for you to gain insight from their effective strategies.
6. Try many approaches.
All of the research and ideas above are helpful, but you also need to try different channels and strategies. You will not know what works and does not until you get started. By throwing a lot of darts, you can see what sticks and double down on those efforts.
When you are hesitant about a few different options, just test them out. There is no need to debate messaging or an image for a significant time when you can just A/B test.
7. Relentless data tracking and optimization.
This is an absolute must for the account-based marketing equation. You have to be relentless about the data that you are collecting. The better that you understand what works and does not, the more you will be able to cater to your efforts. You can start with a wider range of channels, target markets, and ideas.
As you collect data, though, you will be able to pinpoint what works best and throw more into those efforts. Without this data, you are as good as guessing what will be effective. It can be difficult to put this data together, but doing so is well worth it.
