After years of industry-wide skepticism, account-based marketing is finally legit:
- Last year, 70% of marketers reported using ABM (up 15% from 2020)
- Nearly 90% said ABM outperforms other marketing activities
- Another 90% said ABM increases their average deal size
ABM digital advertising contributes significantly to those success metrics, and revenue teams are taking note — and investing accordingly. B2B organizations spent more than $10 billion on digital advertising last year, a 25% increase from 2020.
If you’re a newcomer to ABM, you might not know how to kickstart your organization’s digital ad program. You’re not alone. Marketers say the three biggest challenges of implementing ABM are, in fact, the differentiators of ABM:
- Providing personalized customer experiences
- Properly selecting target accounts, and
- Leveraging the right content
Here are four ways to address those challenges and craft effective B2B digital advertising campaigns.
Identifying Intent Signals and Ideal In-Market Customers
You can’t craft an effective targeting strategy if you don’t know what your potential accounts are looking for. That’s why successful B2B digital advertising campaigns are built on a foundation of robust buyer-intent signal analysis and business conditions. Let’s take a closer look.
Technographics
Understanding an account’s technographics enables you to identify whether it uses solutions compatible with your product — or if they even have the technological infrastructure to support the implementation of your product. This is a critical sales qualifier.
Market Forces
These are external events that might impact a company’s need and ability to make a purchase. These signals might include regulatory changes, economic downturns or even the entry of new competitors in a market.
Organizational Performance
A prospect organization must also have the right set of resources or business conditions that enable — or even require — them to make purchases.
Psychographics
A relatively new intent signal for B2B marketers, psychographics examine the values, motivations and interests of target accounts and their buyers. They help inform resonant engagement strategies.
Ideal In-Market Customer Profile
Most B2B revenue organizations develop ICPs — or Ideal Customer Profiles — to inform their outreach and sales strategies. Having an ICP hones your team’s efforts toward specific kinds of companies with specific characteristics. But ICPs do not take into account a critical element of the sales process: when those accounts are most likely to buy.
Crafting an Ideal In-Market Customer Profile — or IICP — is a smarter play. This approach further focuses your team’s attention on the accounts that really matter: the ones that are most interested in buying your solution right now.
By limiting the scope of your addressable market from likely buyers to highly interested buyers, your revenue team can reliably dedicate the right kind of money, effort and resources to the accounts that are always most likely to convert.
Develop Relevant Content
Once you know who you are targeting and how to reach them, it’s time to create content that’s highly relevant to their interests. Remember that ABM, by its very nature, requires personalization, which means prioritizing the creation of content that speaks to:
- The needs of your ideal accounts
- The concerns of your accounts’ personas
- The personas’ / accounts’ current stage in the buying journey
Don’t underestimate — or under-invest in — the power of great content. In a Forrester study, 56% of marketers “strongly agree” that personalized content is vital to the success of ABM programs.
One common type of content is buyer-specific messaging. Knowing who’s viewing your content empowers you to present them with content specific to their roles. This embodies the important ethos of ABM — to provide a bespoke customer experience for buyers across all channels.
Develop a Targeting Strategy
Be flexible when it comes to creating your targeting for advertising campaigns. One effective strategy is using buyer-based segmentation to identify who you are targeting. This enables you to, for example, use a buyer’s job title to create targeted campaigns.
By clearly understanding your target accounts, you can develop buyer-based segmentation strategies that will help you better reach and engage them.
The most commonly used strategies for targeting prospective accounts are:
- Geographic-based
- Industry-based
- Company size-based
Before you finalize a strategy, make sure it aligns with your other campaigns to avoid confusion among your target audience. Figure out which accounts fit your IICP and then create segmentation strategies for reaching them.
Define Metrics for Measuring Success
ABM requires a different mindset from traditional B2B digital advertising. You’re probably used to measuring success by campaign or channel. But with ABM, success is defined on the account level.
When evaluating your campaign’s performance, look for interactions or sales engagement rates. These metrics can give you a good idea of how well your efforts resonate with the right organizations. Look at specific accounts, too, so you can see which ones are more active or engaged.
While you can’t put a specific value on engagement rates, knowing that they’re increasing over time is a good sign that your campaigns are working.
Here are some important metrics to track:
Engagement
This measures whether your target account is taking any kind of action with your ad campaign, such as clicks, downloads, and so on. By tracking this metric, you can see if your content can effectively motivate the accounts you’re targeting.
Revenue
If you can see how much revenue is generated from your campaign, you can determine if it’s worth continued investment. Tracking revenue provides specific data that can inform strategies for future ABM initiatives.
Return on Investment
Tracking the overall ROI of your ABM campaigns will help you determine how effective your ads are at driving revenue.
How We Can Help
6sense provides an account-based revenue platform that empowers you to craft the best approach for your business’ and industry’s unique needs — including your digital ad strategy.
Our patented, time-based predictions provide insights into your customer buyer journey. You can also see when you need to engage with them to meet their needs and achieve your business goals.
Ready to start your ABM digital advertising campaign? Book a demo today to see how 6sense can help. Also, check out our webinars for more resources on implementing ABM for your B2B marketing campaigns.
