Account-based marketing and content marketing are regularly part of modern marketing conversations and for good reason. They both serve as methods to help grow business through more personalized, focused communications. The golden age of advertising was marked by flashy campaigns and catchy taglines that would get as much attention as possible. Modern marketing is more focused and concentrates on identifying the audience or market that are more relevant and receptive to that product or service. This kind of marketing – more focused, personalized, and relevant – has proven to be a successful tactic in growing long-term, loyal customer relationships.
Integration of Account-based marketing and content marketing
Account-based marketing and content marketing go well together for a few reasons, the main one being that they focus on creating custom content for particular audiences.
According to marketing guru Sujan Patel, account-based marketing “shifts your focus from a wide pool of people to specific “accounts” – i.e. people or organizations – that are a precise fit for your product. Instead of implementing tactics designed to get in front of as many potential prospects as possible, you’re trying to get the attention of a handful of people or companies.” Relatedly, content marketing is defined by the Content Marketing Institute experts as, “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Though content marketing and account-based marketing are targeting different parts of the marketing funnel, they are both working to reach more specific audiences and the best B2B businesses use both techniques – crafting the best content to work with the most important accounts.
Use account-based content marketing tactics to grow your business
Why it makes sense to use account-based content marketing strategies in B2B marketing
The biggest benefits of using account-based content marketing strategies are the ones that help to bring your message to the most relevant audience for the highest engagement and biggest impact.
1. Personalized messaging
The reason that so many businesses are investing in account-based content marketing is that they focus on personalizing messaging and outreach. This kind of personalized content engages customers much better – without some kind of personalized tailoring, it’s impossible for customers to believe that your brand can understand or help them, making it much easier to dismiss you. One advertising firm noted, “Account-based marketing takes personalized marketing to a new level by developing content those key decision-makers want and need to move them through the buyer’s journey.”
2. Streamlined and efficient marketing processes
Account-based marketing offers more structure to your marketing department. A more narrow focus helps to drive more efficient work. When your marketing approach is to communicate at a higher level with fewer accounts, as opposed to trying everything for everyone across all channels, resources are much more organized and time is better managed.
3. Better ROI
By and large, ABM and content marketing are both higher ROI marketing tactics. While there is often a greater cost of both money and effort upfront – for research, content development, technology investments – it’s linked to better buy-in and higher engagement from customers. Where some businesses are happy to simply grow sales or transactions, ABM-focused businesses want to increase the value of each account.
4. Better reporting
The audience that’s targeted by ABM is highly specific – this makes tracking the success of the marketing efforts equally streamlined. In some marketing teams, creative and brand managers work together to develop digital display ads, social media ads, print ads, whitepapers, and other campaign elements for months before everything is deployed and published – and they might not see any data on the success of the campaign for another few months. ABM gives insights into the success of outreach much closer to real-time and allows for adjustments to be made to that outreach much faster.
5. Sales and marketing alignment
Your sales and marketing teams likely both have an idea of what the business goals are and what their role is in supporting it, but while both groups may have input and direction from leadership, there is often a lack of communication between each other. ABM brings greater alignment between the sales and marketing teams and strategies. Both groups work to define what groups are of the highest value and need to be targeted, as well as work to discover the particular assets and approaches that will work for their defined account audiences. Both teams working towards the same goals with the same information not only creates considerably better and more effective campaigns but also improves the working experience for every team member.
Account-based marketing has helped many B2B organizations convert more customers and gain traction with their desired audiences. It has also helped them redefine and organize their marketing and sales endeavors in a way that’s helpful to both their business and their customer. If you’re looking to position yourself as a resource or bespoke solution for a potential customer audience or account, personalized marketing like ABM can help. ABM isn’t a great fit for every B2B business, but it’s something to consider as you look to develop and strengthen your B2B marketing tactics.
