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Worthy customer accounts are important, and businesses want to keep them, as they are a major source of revenue and loyal customers.
Of course, automation tools enhance the account-based marketing strategy.
Discover ABM and ABM automation technologies to ease the plan.
Learn in this blog
- How to Develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Create Key Accounts
- Synchronize ABM, Marketing Automation Software, and CRM
- Tailor Campaigns
- Individualize Content
- Customize Engagement
- Develop a Dashboard to Track Ongoing Efforts
Develop your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Given the importance of customer profiles, let’s look at how to create them step-by-step.
Know your audience
Understanding your target market entails seeing things from the buyer’s perspective.
That perspective must be considered after due research and reflection. Identifying the target market or the product’s destination is the initial step.
The target client is far more likely to respond to marketing based on customer profiles.
Who is your product’s target audience?
Choosing the right target market for a product is crucial.
Many variables should be considered when selecting the appropriate market:
- Which products compete in that market now?
- What are the obstacles, and how would your firm overcome them?
- How demographically broad is the market?
- What is the market’s average customer?
Finding the ideal target market is determined by the answers to these questions.
However, the answers may not be transparent due to the broad spectrum of customers occupying the market. Despite the diverse population, you can deal with this issue.
An analysis of the features of existing items in a market can often carve a path for significant market definition advances. As a result, you might stumble upon a goldmine of industry knowledge.
Read: Step By Step Guide to Creating Your Ideal Customer Profile
2. Review or create a customer journey map
Once the customer journey map is refined, you can sieve the customer’s wants and ambitions clearly.
Creating a customer journey map does not always mean using a customer profile.
These touchpoints may vary and the list may evolve. Change occurs as a result of constant innovation and growth.
Read: How to Create a Customer Journey Map.
3. Identify your target demographic
In order to create a profile that accurately describes your most significant consumers, you must first identify them.
As heterogeneous populations, some demographics are easier to describe, others may be more than a walk in the park.
An investigation here could shine light on the answers, but first, you need to ask questions that will help accumulate and scan the data.
We’ve put together a list of questions to help you with this.
- Is there a visible age range?
- Can the average consumer afford it?
- Does gender factor in as a variable affecting product interest?
- Interested in athletics, for example, do they have other things in common?
Read: 5 Tips for Identifying Your Target Market as a B2B Brand
4. Examine client feedback
Asking questions can reveal deep insights about the customer.
- How satisfied, or happy is the customer?
- Is he/ she likely to buy again?
- What does he/ she like and dislike?
This data is insightful and usable in addressing the target market.
If you’re seeking to build a client profile, surveys should be a continuous best practice.
Check out the questions you can ask in your survey: 28 Customer Feedback Questions for Customer Surveys.
5. Develop customer personas
A customer profile identifies the type of buyer to target.
The buyer persona is a portrait that mirrors the person who buys from your business. It is based on demographics, behaviors, and motivations.
A business using this technology will usually have more than one persona for a given product, or service.
It’s rarely ever one persona for an entire consumer base.
In fact the segmentation and persona definition is so powerful that it helped MetLife save $800 mn over 5 years.
MetLife is an insurance and employee benefits organisation that is well-known throughout the world. In 2015, MetLife used customer segmentation into all of its branding and customer acquisition initiatives, to reinvent the whole industry.
Until then,MetLife had always used simple categorization criteria for its corporate clients. They used a segmentation system based on the size of the organisation or the number of people in the organisation.
The company was able to gain a general understanding of its consumers based on these parameters, but they were unable to gain any specific insights into how they may be targeted.
MetLife then conducted interviews and surveys with more than 50,000 of its clients, including individuals and businesses, in order to gather buying information.
The segmentation was subsequently updated using sophisticated big data clustering techniques and machine learning algorithms to produce a more accurate representation of the data.
For the first time in its history, the company had an accurate image of who its consumers were and how the company’s resources needed to be allocated in order to attract the most qualified customers. Based on a combination of demographic, firmographic, behavioural, and needs-based criteria, the current segmentation model was developed.
The company saved up to $800 million in client acquisition costs over the course of five years by using this strategy.
MetLife’s segmentation technique proved to be so successful that the company went a step further and began educating its corporate clients on how to think about their personnel using a combination of demographic and psychographic information.
The company’s corporate services now include help for HR professionals to select benefits and adapt programs to meet the needs of a workforce with varied needs.
Update Customer Personas
As marketplaces change, you may need new customer profiles to supplement the old ones.
Once the customer journey begins, consumer personas will continue to evolve over time.
That’s why customer surveys should be ongoing. This allows you to update personas and embrace new data for analysis.
Purchase history, content preferences, affiliations, and attitudes should be updated regularly.
The final two are commonly gleaned from social media monitoring.
A Customer Persona Template you can use: Updated Empathy Map Canvas
Create your key accounts
While sales initiates vital account programs, implementing them effectively requires input from all levels of the organization.
As a key account, the program member may expect new functionality or faster service.
B2B sales are moving away from a single buyer/account manager. Select buyers who want, or prefer a digital process.
Others make decisions by committee, with representatives meeting with sellers one-on-one.
Early collaboration assuages anxiety and ensures all counterparts communicate consistent messages and expectations.
How to Identify Key Accounts: A Quick Guide to Getting it Right
Synchronize your ABM with marketing automation and CRM
Account list sync with marketing automation
Instead of waiting until a lead has interacted with one of your offers, account based marketing platforms proactively identify and target accounts by tracking site visits using IP addresses.
You can do this using Visitor Identification Software.
Considering this: Many buyers complete 60% of the buying process before engaging vendors, early account identification can help you gain a competitive advantage. Add these accounts to your marketing automation tool and route them for additional follow-up, depending on their intent level. To begin, create the following logic:
Marketing automation syncs with new lists: Add target accounts to your marketing automation platform so you can start preparing campaigns for them.
Pre-qualifying high-intent accounts
Now route them to relevant actions across our tech stack with our target list in hand. To do so, create the logic below.
- Web intent check
- Then route high-intent accounts for follow-up
Use software such as Qualified Signals to check for intent.
If an account is not high intent, put it on a ‘cold’ list in your CRM.
There is no need to respond promptly, but keep an eye on them for future follow-ups.
If an account qualifies as high-intent, add it to your marketing automation platform’s high-intent list.
Then create targeted campaigns—techniques like targeting opt-in list building with paid ads that encourage them down the funnel.
Finally, update our CRM records and assign these accounts to a sales representative for follow-up.
Create your campaigns
You are now ready to join the club of companies that use account based marketing.
Word of advice: Begin small, with a pilot program.
Combine Sales & Marketing
Companies that use account based marketing require both Sales and Marketing to be on board and cohesive.
Promote ABM: Showing how ABM works can work wonders. While Sales teams may have fewer leads, they will be highly converting.
Having formed an ABM squadron, make sure everyone understands budgets, resources, goals, and KPIs.
Research
Have you got your ICP? Identified the right targets?
It’s time to do some old-fashioned research. Spot the whales in your account list: The ones who make decisions, who guard the gates.
Are there any objections?
Strategize Your Account Based Marketing
It’s time to put all your data and insights to use.
Build a strategy tailored to your target accounts based on the data you gathered.
Consider how you’ll personalize content and your account based marketing strategy.
Personalize your content
Personalization uses ‘primary’ customer data to tailor messages to multiple audiences.
In general, personalization relies on data like past purchases or user logins.
The data is put to use while segregating audiences. Individualization instead of segmentation communicates directly with each person. Messages can be shaped by data that is specific to them.
Individualization is a superior form of personalization—that requires additional data.
A segmented approach to individualization is required. Using two data streams allows you to speak directly to each consumer.
First, keep personalizing based on the user’s information. Second, collect as much user data as you can.
But you can’t collect and still use all of this data at once, can you?
Fortunately, we live in an era of advanced machine learning and AI systems, making these marketing fantasies a reality.
Read: The 12 Best Personalization Software Options for 2022
Customize your engagement
Collaboration with your sales is another component of your ABM approach since it enables them to adapt their engagement with target accounts.
Automation tools are an excellent approach to accomplish this. Yet another reason why your CRM and ABM applications must be integrated.
For instance, you may automate follow-up emails and tasks depending on a prospect’s behavior using HubSpot’s ABM platform and HubSpot’s Sales Hub.
There are of course, other ABM Platforms that you could use.
Bear in mind, though, that even if you’re focusing on automation at the moment, your sales outreach and content should remain individualized.
Create a dashboard to track your progress. Monitoring and measuring your efforts are the last steps in your ABM automation journey.
Develop a dashboard to track ongoing efforts
If your ABM software includes corporate scores, you should exploit it to your advantage.
This is analogous to lead scoring, in which a score is assigned depending on the properties of your software.
Additionally, while getting started with ABM automation, you should consider doing A/B testing to determine which messaging resonates with your ICP.
While ABM needs intense planning and seamless coordination, utilizing ABM software tools – especially those that interact with your CRM and marketing automation technologies—can assist you in automating and scaling your strategy.
Conclusion
While Account Based Marketing strategy is not a new concept in the B2B industry, there will always be room to improve your strategy through personalization to increase brand recognition and conversions.
Investigate your data, resource assets, and current trends in your target accounts’ industries to help you focus your efforts.
Keep in mind that, while account based marketing might be challenging to develop, launch, and monitor, the advantages often surpass the effort.
Accelerate your leads and sales today Digitalzone puts your B2B leads and sales on steroids.
Using a global B2B database of 71 million companies, we have created and managed 46,872 successful campaigns for companies based in the USA.
We help B2B companies, just like yours, with Account Based Marketing, Content Syndication, Intent Based Marketing, Lead Generation and List Building.
Get in touch with us today, to accelerate your sales.
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