Account-based marketing is a core strategy for B2B businesses; designed to deliver growth and awareness with high-value accounts. Lots of people are still on the fence about ABM because of the challenges and obstacles they may have to overcome.
Identifying these issues and acting accordingly to solve them will help your colleagues stay focused on successes. So how can you overcome these hindrances? This blog will explain some of the challenges you may come across and give you some tips.
1. Knowing what content to use
You need to be able to deliver good content experience that will keep people in your target account engaged and hold their attention throughout the buying journey.
The challenge:
Being able to deliver a content experience with the right content is critical. Start off with one account-personalized asset before moving on to the next.
What can be done?
Presenting a series of personalized account content to match each buying stage is wise because it offers more personal experience for the reader. Technology can really help to serve the next stage content, based on what the reader is looking for by providing a unique content experience for each individual.
2. Knowing how to choose target accounts
The challenge:
You need to develop a manageable process that will identify the right account for your efforts. ABM will only work if you focus on the right opportunities.
What can be done?
If you are already carrying out inbound activities, it is advisable to use your inbound leads to identify the best fit opportunities for ABM. This process will ensure you are focusing and nurturing the right accounts and ensure you have the right amount to scale your activities.
3. Delivering a personalized customer experience
The challenge:
ABM marketing is all about personalization and B2B marketers need to find way to connect with consumers through offering compelling and relevant information.
What can be done?
To market to individuals, you need to build distinctive and relevant messages. The messages should focus on the individual’s pain points and provide solutions. Personalization is part of an ABM strategy and the better the personalization, the better the experience.
4. Having an account-focused website experience
The challenge:
A company’s website is key for ABM. With the right website experience, you should see better engagement.
What can be done?
You should examine how people are visiting the site and what content do they engage with. A few tips to help with site experience might be:
– Personalize CTA’s for the individual’s position in the buyer’s journey
– Create personalized imagery/video content
– Test and measure results to see what works best
5. Marketing and Sales
The challenge:
Sales and marketing come together. You need to be able to measure contribution and consider their joint impact.
What can be done?
For both departments, they need to understand the goals and metrics to drive the best approach. ABM is a full funnel activity so tracking and measuring every aspect of an ABM campaign is important.
6. Creating a scalable strategy
The challenge:
Using technology can help to scale aspects of your ABM. Having an ABM process that is repeated will help to make the most of your resources. Having said that, you should consider people’s judgements and unique account engagement – balancing both will help to be more account focussed.
What can be done?
Knowing the best approach for your campaign will help to create processes and identify the right technology to scale, for the right accounts. In a 1-1 campaign you will want individuals to receive highly personalized content or maybe further down the line, personalizing by company.
7. Leads interested in your content but not speaking to sales
The challenge:
Prospective buyers are wary of speaking to sales teams until they are at the point of making a decision. They don’t want to make a decision where they may lack in context and want to know the ‘ins and outs’ of everything.
What can be done?
A way of encouraging prospects to communicate is to train your sales team to understand a prospect’s pain points and business opportunities. We should kill off the negative mindset of ‘they aren’t ready to speak to us so they’re no good’. We need to start conversations expecting to act as a helpful resource and be able to help those prospects at different stages of the buying process.