Knowing one's own target group precisely and taking this into account in marketing and sales is nothing less than decisive for success today. Personalized content and a personal approach offer enormous potential to convince (potential) customers of the quality of one's own company services. They contribute significantly to effective lead generation and corresponding lead nurturing and promote branding. Moreover, they can have a great SEO influence. Account-based marketing takes exactly these and other benefits, but transfers them to an even more specific level. Ideally, this leads to particularly effective results.
What is account-based marketing and how does it differ from inbound marketing as well as other marketing disciplines?
The basic intention of Account-Based Marketing can be very well illustrated by the following analogy: A fisherman who casts his net must be aware that he tends to catch many specimens by this method, but probably not only the best ones. The alternative is to point a spear directly at a particularly fat fish and then wait for the right moment to make the big catch. It's much the same in marketing. There are certainly advantages to addressing a broad mass via inbound marketing. However, wastage must be accepted here. Account-based marketing, on the other hand, is about convincing the few customers who are really interested in buying with a targeted approach. Account-based marketing focuses on specific customers, the so-called accounts. These are guided towards the purchase decision through targeted, personalised communication - in campaigns or directly. Account-based marketing treats individual companies as individual markets. Given the fact that in the B2B sector it is rarely just one person who makes the buying decision, this is unquestionably very sensible. Account-Based Marketing (ABM), then, looks at a target company holistically and addresses multiple people within that company. These target persons usually have an increased relevance in the decision-making process. This is not done in isolation at the person level - data and corresponding measures are summarized centrally per account.
This is what Account-Based Marketing can look like in practice
Personalized communication in modern account-based marketing is usually based on a specific repurposing of known marketing channels. The corporate website still plays an important role in this context. However, personal website content here is no longer only targeted - in the sense of content marketing - at a specific broader target group of individuals, but in parallel at one or more accounts. Using the approach of content recommendations, dynamically updated visitor data profiles can be used to play out content that corresponds precisely to the user's current challenges or needs. This actually happens in real time. In this way, this approach actually goes beyond account-based marketing, since not only a company, but even the individual persons of this unit are addressed with content in a targeted manner. In the future, however, even such personalized content will no longer be enough. Prospective customers will increasingly expect to be picked up on their customer journey in a more targeted manner. At the latest when the right provider has been found, decision-makers particularly appreciate direct personal contact. In the course of this, it is important to sound out the exact conditions, among other things. Particularly in the B2B sector, detailed questions in this regard cannot be adequately clarified via website content. The solution in the context of account-based marketing is personalized live dialogues in the chat. By linking account data and chatbots, website visitors can be addressed in a personalized, direct manner and at any time of day. The concerns that cannot be resolved by artificial intelligence are seamlessly taken over by the support team (during service hours).
What are the benefits of Account-Based Marketing?
Basically, there are five key benefits associated with account-based marketing:
Due to the usually small number of accounts, analysis and monitoring in account-based marketing are comparatively clear. Of course, there is still a lot of data to take into account and complex evaluations are the order of the day. However, these are on a smaller scale. The figures recorded here have shown an above-average ROI (return on investment) in comparisons.
In account-based marketing, communication is (at best) exclusively personalized. This applies to design and content on the website as well as to ads and emails. The chance of interaction and ultimately closing deals is significantly increased by a personal approach and the communication of a good understanding of the challenges or needs of (potential) customers.
Good account-based marketing ideally leads to strong business relationships through its highly personalized communication. It is incomparably precise to determine how the corporate website, ads or email marketing should adapt to the individual accounts and their target persons. The result is a highly positive customer experience. This, in turn, can have a beneficial impact on overall branding, lead generation and lead nurturing success, and even SEO relevance on a variety of levels.
The steps of an account-based marketing strategy
Of course, there is no such thing as an ABM strategy that fits every corporate context. The following facts merely form the absolute cornerstones of such a strategy.
First of all, the accounts with the greatest sales potential need to be identified. Collaboration between marketing and sales as well as the consolidation of relevant data are essential here. In particular, the customer challenges and needs must be defined for each account. In addition, it must be determined at which point in the decision-making process the individual companies are. This and other information forms the foundation of account-based marketing.
Taking account of the account analysis, an individual account-based marketing campaign is ideally developed for each target company. On the one hand, the suitable marketing channels and instruments must be determined centrally. These are, for example, personalized content through content recommendations, digital mailings and social media marketing. Secondly, the right content strategy must be developed. The content must be precisely adapted to the challenges or needs and the status of the customer journey of the addressees.
The personalized website content is finally played out to the individual accounts. Thereby, it is possible to find out exactly which marketing channels and tools are used for which content and which are not. Furthermore, it becomes clear which departments are active, how intensive the engagement with the individual topics is, who is less active and more. The insights thus obtained are of course ideal for adapting and optimizing content and channels accordingly.
Our support around the topic of content marketing:
- Together with you, we develop a custom-fitcontent marketing strategy. Everything revolves around your specific target group.
- We are also happy to take on thecreation of relevant and target group-compliant content along the entire costumer journey of your target group.
- Oursearch engine-compliant refinement ofthe content improves your ranking and thus your visibility among potential customers.
- If desired, we also take over theContent refinementin various content management systems and web applications such as apps or third-party platforms.
For holistic and successful online marketing, we are also happy to take care of the following topics:
Oliver Parrizas will be happy to answer any questions you may have on the subject. 
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