Our clients are asking more often for Account-Based (Tele)Marketing. ABM is a term marketing and sales teams often hear in 2020. Along with marketing automation, it even seems to be an unstoppable force. More and more companies are preferring quality over quantity and thus prefer 10 well-selected leads instead of 50 leads gathered together.
Earlier we talked about the value of ABM to a company. Today we have listed four trends that can enrich your ABM strategy in 2020 and 2021.
Video
The longer you work with an Account-Based Marketing strategy, the more accurate the personalization becomes. B2C is already becoming more accurate in its personalization and B2B buyers are starting to expect the same personalized experience. We think we can all agree that personalization improves campaign results, but what is good personalization? Is it enough to address someone by their first name in an email? No it isn't! Customers will not be impressed. They won't feel special when they receive an email with their first name in the subject line. This is often automatic and inauthentic.
Personalization with video is a great way to grow. According to a Cisco study, by 2021, videos will account for 80% of all online traffic(Cisco). Prospects choose videos because it is a faster and more efficient way to get information. This, of course, has a huge impact on sales and lead generation. In fact, video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year (Aberdeen).
Moreover, you can be more personal with video than any other medium. You can't mimic personalization with video, either. Start by creating videos in which you first address your best-fit account with "hello [customer]." This immediately shifts the customer's attention to your video.
Combining Digital Marketing with Telemarketing
The next trend we have identified for ABM is to do digital marketing campaigns in conjunction with telemarketing. We're seeing that ad spend on digital campaigns is skyrocketing, especially on LinkedIn. When looking at what you're actually generating from your spend, it's important to ask if you can support your digital marketing efforts with telemarketing. Qualified calls for your best-fit accounts are a great complement to digital advertising. Especially when you only pay for the qualified appointments you feel confident about.
Follow-up tools
Another trend you may watch out for is the emergence of excellent evaluation and follow-up tools. Previously, Google Analytics only allowed you to see certain results of campaigns. But with the advent of new tools, you can also analyze the behavior of a particular company. Tools like Drift identify the IP address and connect the user to the company to which the IP address belongs. For example, it can identify how long this company has been on the site, the number of page views, the last visit, etc. Such tools can tell you exactly who is visiting your Web site and how to reach them.
When it comes to IP addresses, we see that retargeting is still a very effective way to convert leads. But when doing so, it is more important than ever to make sure that we remove or modify the ads for those who have already become customers. This is obvious, but surprisingly, many companies present their target audience with an ad for a product or service they are already using.
Unifying sales and marketing
What makes ABM successful is primarily the alignment between sales and marketing. This alignment must be strong because the entire sales and marketing process is evolving. Success used to be characterized by an overflowing sales pipeline, while marketing now wants to work with fewer prospects (quality for quantity). That seems risky. However, you cannot run successful ABM campaigns without the necessary input from the sales teams. Sales and marketing must pursue the same goal, which is to have valuable conversations with the best-fit accounts to generate more revenue.
ABM is becoming the most important marketing strategy for B2B companies. This makes it even more important that sales and marketing function as an aligned unit. The marketing team cannot create content without the right sales information. And Sales won't communicate well with prospects if marketing can't attract the very best prospects. Sales and marketing must work together and understand that they need each other to be successful.
Want to start an Account-based (Tele)Marketing campaign? Or maybe your current strategy needs a boost? Our consultants are ready for you and you can reach them effortlessly via the Calltraders bot at the bottom right.