Account based marketing is the new it thing for marketers to latch on to. Before it was social media, and it turned into content marketing.
Now, account based marketing has taken center stage as the latest buzzword. What’s so special about account based marketing? It works.
It’s been shown to generate a higher return on investment than traditional marketing and customers get a much better experience in terms of sales and service.
How can you jump on the bandwagon? It starts with choosing the right account based marketing software.
Read on to learn more about account based marketing and how you can choose the right software to get started.
What is Account Based Marketing?
Let’s start with the core principles of marketing and sales. People buy based on emotion. They also buy from people that they know, like and trust.
To get people to know, like and trust you and your business, you have to make your audience feel heard and understood. You also have to make your business relate to your prospects.
That’s at the heart of account based marketing (ABM). It allows your sales and marketing teams to identify your top prospects and accounts and nurture them with personalized advertising and messaging.
This type of marketing is so focused that your prospects and customers feel like you’re addressing their main issues. That level of personalization is impressive because it shows them that you care about their needs and they’re likely to buy from you.
ABM vs. The Funnel
In a standard marketing funnel, you go for a very wide reach with your advertising messages and hope that it resonates with someone. After that, maybe they’ll buy from you.
A high number of people will be aware of your business. At some point, there will be an interest in your product, which turns into a desire. After spending a ton of resources getting prospects this far down the funnel, a small percentage of them will buy. This doesn’t work as well as it used to.
What ABM does is essentially reverse the funnel. You’re looking at the bottom of a traditional funnel and identifying your likely prospects with your sales team.
Your sales and marketing teams are actually working together to create a unified sales and marketing plan for these specific accounts.
The result is that you have a highly targeted advertising campaign that relies on a few very good shots, rather than looking for a needle in a haystack.
How to Choose Account Based Marketing Software?
One of the reasons why ABM is so successful is because it’s driven by technology. That technology helps large and small companies become more efficient and deliver personalized content to specific accounts.
Since so much of your success relies on choosing the right software, these are the things you need to look for when choosing account based marketing software.
1. Account Level Targeting
The most important piece to account based marketing is that you can create highly tailored messages for specific accounts.
Your account based marketing software needs to help your teams identify those accounts to help build your tiers of accounts from most important to least important.
2. Integrates with Your Current Systems
The software can do quite a bit out of the box, but in order to get the most out of it, it needs to play well with other tools you have.
That could be with a CRM or with mobile apps you already use for business.
3. Multi-Channel, Highly Targeted Advertising
If you’re focusing on fewer, highly targeted accounts, you need to know where you can reach them. Not only that, but your account based marketing software should also be able to reach them.
For example, can your software integrate with email, or can you retarget your advertising campaign through multiple channels? That’s something you need to know before you buy.
4. Real-Time Data
Account based marketing software needs to be able to provide account level targeting, but also data.
Data will be used to drive many key decisions for sales and marketing teams, and your software should be able to provide detailed reporting in real time.
You also want to check to see if the tool can pull data from other sources to help you create a broad picture of your prospects.
5. Automation Capabilities
One of the things that makes ABM software so attractive is that you can automate a lot of the tasks or it integrates with some of the existing tools.
You want to look at what can be fully automated by the software or can be integrated with what you already have.
6. Predictive Analytics
Can you predict the future? No, but some account based marketing software can.
Predictive analytics analyzes data to predict consumer behavior. As you target fewer specific accounts, this data will be a vital part of your decision making process.
Predictive analytics is a must-have component of any account based marketing software you choose.
7. How Does Your Company Make this System Work?
Finally, you want to make sure your company is aware of the investment required to make the software work for both your sales and marketing teams.
For example, there will be some parts of the system that aren’t fully automated. You’ll need to know in advance who will be responsible for what tasks to make the system succeed.
If you want to know more about what account based marketing can do for your business, read more here.
Choose the Right ABM Software for Your Business
Account based marketing has officially arrived as the next big thing in the world of marketing. With ABM, you can deliver highly targeted messages to key accounts, which means that your marketing efforts are very specific.
To generate a high return on your marketing investments, you want to be sure that you choose the right account based marketing software. That will help your marketing and sales teams identify your top accounts, target them through various marketing activities, and continue to work the account after you close the sale.
Want to know more about choosing the right tools for your business? Read this article to discover why product reviews should be read before making a buying decision.