Antara Agarwal is a full time marketing consultant at Outgrow, an interactive marketing platform. She can be found packing her bags for her next trip, often to the mountains. And in one of those bags, you will always find a half finished book she’s been struggling with for months.
Just in case you missed the news: ABM is quickly becoming the norm. In fact, it’s kind of just becoming “good marketing” at this point. And we wanted to share a few tips to help you boost your ABM efforts with something that you should already know like the back of your hand as a marketing whiz: content.
For first timers, ABM or Account Based Marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on offering personalized solutions to customers. It is a process wherein your sales and marketing teams work together to focus their efforts on high-value accounts in order to get maximum returns. ABM aims to maximize customer satisfaction by tailoring experiences according to the user.
Now that we’ve already talked about how ABM offers ‘personalized solutions’, interactive content is the next obvious step (You know we’re huge fans). Interactive content such as calculators, quizzes, assessments and more are a great way of attracting customers through value based content and customized solutions. And this blog is all about how you can boost ABM using this interactive content. But before we move on to that, let’s see why you should invest in ABM in the first place!
Why Invest in Account Based Marketing?
Today almost 67% of brands leverage the benefits of Account Based Marketing. Let’s see what they are:
1. Personalized Solutions
Tailored solutions always trump generic information. And we choose to live by that maxim.
Account Based Marketing gives you the opportunity to concentrate your efforts. Your sales and marketing teams work together to focus on some key contacts in your target accounts. This allows them to redirect their efforts and resources in making their experience more personalized.
Improving customer satisfaction is all about delivering the right content to the right person. And ABM is a great way to do that.
2. Thinking Differently About Leads
A majority of the leads that you collect don’t end up converting. It’s sad, we know. But the good news is that not every lead needs to matter. Account Based Marketing focuses on weeding out the leads that will not only give you the maximum returns, but also suit your needs the best. It is all about building strong relationships with more valuable customers – quality, not just quantity.
There’s no doubt that you should be a suitable service provider for your customers. But it is also important to see that the lead that you focus your efforts on is the kind of audience that you want to target. Depending on the needs, style, preference, budget, etc. of a lead, you can qualify them as important and not as important. This is a huge part of ABM and helps you generate better customers and save time and resources.
3. Shorter Sales Cycle
Almost 80% of marketers say that ABM has improved their customer lifetime values. Having more relevant customers in your bag also allows you to serve them better. You are able to add more value to them and make their journey smoother. You can streamline their onboarding, offer them more relevant suggestions and be more prompt in your service to them. This not only improves their experience, but also shortens their sales cycle. 76% marketers say that ABM delivers higher ROI than traditional go-to-market strategies.
By using Account Based Marketing, you focus on different accounts separately and equip them better with your company and your product/service.
4. Alignment of Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing teams should not exist in silos. They need to work in sync in order to provide customers with the best experience they can get. Account Based Marketing ensures that your teams streamline their efforts to track a customer’s journey. This avoids duplicity of effort. It also ensures that each customer receives the right information at the right time. Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams experience 36% higher customer retention rates.
Depending upon which stage the sales team is at with a certain customer, the marketing team should focus on sending the relevant information. The tone of communication, the brand message and the ultimate content should be in sync. This ensures consistency and makes the customer comfortable with your service.
These are few of the very many reasons why you should go for Account Based Marketing. In fact, 41% of B2B marketers worldwide said they would increase spending on ABM. We’d try to convince you further but we think what’s coming up next will do the trick!
How to Use Interactive Content for Account Based Marketing
ABM is already a boon for marketing around the world. But when mixed with interactive content, it even trumps our love for mac and cheese (and that’s saying something!)
So let’s have a look at how you can use interactive content to boost your ABM strategy.
1. Data Collection
To be able to determine which of your leads have a higher value, you need to have better data! And interactive content will help you get that.
Interactive content like quizzes, calculators, assessments, and surveys focus on gathering user input in order to offer personalized results. You can not only use those results, but also the input data to accelerate your ABM process. 86% of marketers surveyed believe that predictive analytics is central to account-based marketing success.
For example, take a look at this mortgage calculator by Nerdwallet. This calculator gives you your monthly mortgage payment. It takes inputs such as home price, down payment, taxes, insurance, etc. It also takes into consideration your location and the specific interest rates.
Now the company can use this information to identify clients with higher probability of investing. They can retarget them with offers, relevant blog posts, credit card purchases and much more. This will offer these customers more specific information and rev up their chances of conversion.
2. Personalization
Personalization is the key to building relationships, and good relationships are the key to a good ABM strategy. And what better way to personalize than with interactive content. Interactive content aims to offer customized, user friendly suggestions and answers based on each user. Once you have identified your key target accounts, you can use interactive content like quizzes to personalize your users’ experiences…let’s see how!
Here is an example of Golf Avenue, a brand from Canada. Golf Avenue is one of the biggest online retailers of pre-owned and new golfing equipment through different selling platforms around the world. They created an assessment to calculate the handicap of their users based on their performance and skill. Now not only is this information personalized, but also helps the company understand each user’s needs better.
They can send golf club recommendations, newsletters, golfing tips, offers, etc. that are more suited to a player of a certain handicap. This personalized the user’s experience and increases their purchase intent.
3. Customer Education
Educating your users is a huge step in converting them into paying customers. And Account Based Marketing focuses on providing your key accounts with a well-rounded experience. You can use calculators, quizzes, etc. to educate your customers and provide them with valuable information. You can educate them about their interests, needs, or about your services too! And, well, who would want to learn that in a boring PDF when you can use interactive content instead!
Suppose you are an automobile dealership for TESLA cars. And you want to educate your potentially viable customers on the cost benefits of buying a Tesla. Well, we’ve got you covered!
Have a look at this calculator for ‘How much can you save by buying a Tesla?’. The calculator takes into account the kind of car you want to buy, the features you want with it, the accessories, colour variant and much more. And finally using its pre-fixed formula, it gives you an answer. Now isn’t that great? It also gives you a breakdown of your savings.
This kind of proactive and relevant information would definitely impress a customer and develop a healthy brand image for you as well.
4. Develop a Better Brand Image
The best part about interactive content is that it can be used for any stage of the funnel. It’s like a guide for a user that stays throughout their sales cycle. You can customize your content based on which stage they’re at – Awareness, Consideration or Decision. Using relevant content gives your key accounts the idea that you are involved with them. And that you are a company that educates itself about its audience.
Using surveys and chatbots in order to get feedback is a great way to retain a customer. It makes users feel that they have not only been provided a service, but are also a part of your fraternity. They feel that they are being heard (and who doesn’t like that, huh?) No matter which industry you belong to, you can always use interactive content to gain feedback from your audience!
And what’s better is that you can use this feedback to identify your customer pain points and work on that!
Here’s an example by Hyatt –
Conclusion
Wasn’t that fun? We sure had a great time talking about how you can boost your ABM strategy using interactive content! Have more ideas on how you can do that? Create your own interactive experience today!
