What should marketers do to have a strong digital marketing strategy that targets specific accounts?

Tips to implement an effective account based marketing strategy.

Over the past few years, the concept of account-based marketing has gained popularity, and is by far the most effective B2B marketing strategy. To ensure businesses get long term benefits out of account-based marketing, top management must implement a few techniques when it comes to an effective strategy.

One of the primary reasons marketers prefer this strategy is because it is totally driven by content with clearly defined target markets and customer segmentation. The best part is that this approach is extremely effective in isolation and equally effective in a collaborative method with other marketing methods.

Here are some measures that marketers can take to ensure ABM works for them:

Define target accounts
In B2B marketing, a good account consists of various parameters such as the type of organization, revenue, and employee size. Also, look at who the key decision makers are in the target organization. Try to find out the business challenges that the target account could be facing and how your product or service provides the right solution.

Set up campaign objectives
Once the target account is defined, it is time to set up the campaign for your account and identify the key objectives that you will accomplish in the campaign. Define KPIs for the campaign and set up metrics for analysis.

Check your inventory
Ensure a complete check of your inventory that is comprised of all tools and technologies you plan to use during the campaign, whether it is a CRM system or an analytics tool to monitor campaign performance.

Create Authentic Content
The content that goes with your campaign must be authentic and relevant to your campaign agenda and to what you expect the target account to read. Segment and target the content for your account so you can market them through right channels.

Define the Go-to-Market strategy
How do you intend to target your account? Is it going to be through an IP address, cookies, or keywords? List the activities that will be a part of this strategy.

Strong Sales Follow up
Once the marketing campaign begins yielding results, the sales team should be on point to follow up target accounts and keep them engaged. The key is to build a strong relationship with the account and help them address their business challenges.

During this entire process of account-based marketing, the sales and marketing team should work in a cohesive manner and operate like a well-integrated unit. This can be done by scheduling regular review meetings where sales and marketing jointly participate to analyze the campaign outcomes.

ABM is a personalized approach and it is most effective when performance is constantly monitored and ROI is tracked. A review of ad spending, campaign analytics, and the sales cycle is critical to a successful B2B account based marketing strategy.