What is Account-Based Marketing? An Inside Look at How to Get High-Ticket Clients

Instead of sending email blasts and then segmenting those users based on their actions, you segment before sending the emails. It allows you to truly personalize your messaging, offers, and content for each account to better resonate with their needs. 75% of customers want more personalized offers and messaging. It allows marketers to focus their efforts directly on marketing offers that are specially-designed for their target customers. Simply create a new ad on the Facebook Business Manager and target your audience to a specific segment: This helps you narrow your audiences even further. This isn’t as specific as individual account targeting, but it’s a perfect start to onboarding leads and customers. Now that your target audiences are specific, it’s time to create a content plan. Instead of just looking at popular content, look at who is sharing that content. Content marketers? Targeting specific content to each account or segmenting using ads is key.

The average click-through rate for emails is less than 3%.

Why is it so low? These emails often lack personalization and segmentation.

Not to mention, there’s typically a lack of customer research before sending the email blast.

Sending the same, generic content to your massive email list doesn’t work today.

You only get a few percent clicking through to your shared content.

The rest? They don’t care and they likely never will.

In other words, there’s no personalization. The content doesn’t resonate. It doesn’t solve their problem.

Personalized emails can actually deliver 6x more transactions.

Still not convinced you should personalize your content? Well, 75% of website visitors get frustrated when they see irrelevant content.

And you can’t afford to annoy your massive email list that took you months or years to grow.

Losing customers isn’t an option!

That’s where account-based marketing comes in.

Account-based marketing helps you segment audiences so you can better refine your approach.

Instead of sending email blasts and then segmenting those users based on their actions, you segment before sending the emails.

You narrow down your lists and personalize the experience from start to finish.

Here’s an inside look on how to use account-based marketing to land those high-ticket clients.

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account-based marketing has become another buzzword. It sounds like a gimmick or a trick.

In reality, it’s anything but.

This official definition from Wikipedia that shows up in a Google search probably doesn’t help the matter:

Okay, that’s a mouthful.

Let me break it down for you. The key part of that sentence that we want to focus on is this:

…in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospects or customer accounts as markets of one.

Emphasis mine.

Essentially, you need to treat every single customer, account, or prospect as a personalized account.

That means that you tailor content perfectly to them and only them. You don’t send out to a ‘segmented’ list of 10,000.

ABM is basically a strategic form of personalized marketing. You identify prospects ahead of time, just as your sales team might, and then tailor all messages to their needs.

Here’s a basic comparison of typical lead-generation strategies versus account-based marketing:

Account-based marketing focuses on a single account or prospect. The “spear” reference refers to how you’re going after one prospect with one unified tool.

Lead generation does the opposite.

It might start with a database of leads. However, it tosses out content like a fishing net and hopes to land a few.

High-level sales companies have ordinarily used ABM. But the B2B presence is growing fast.

On top of that, marketing budgets are steadily increasing:

The growing need to focus on personalization and different marketing tactics is paving the way for account-based marketing.

Not to mention that the results ABM is pulling in are pretty impressive.

The benefits of account-based marketing

ABM goes far beyond narrowing your target audience or segmenting prospects into their own marketing channels.

It allows you to truly personalize your messaging, offers, and content for each account to better resonate with their needs.

For example, check out this personalized message from Unbounce:

Now, this email makes sense. It’s the context surrounding the message that makes it useful.

75% of customers want more personalized offers and messaging.

It’s no secret that personalized offers work better than a cold pitch.

More fine-tuned targeting will produce more engagement every single time.

If you can help a customer or prospect solve their problem with a piece of specially-crafted content, they’ll be much more likely to return.

Amazon knows this.

That’s why they constantly recommend products that might solve your problems based on your browsing history.

And since account-based marketing is extremely personal, you’re much more likely to have a happy first experience with this brand.

“Happy experiences” are great and all. But let’s not get too mushy with this.

At the end of the day, you need to see more sales as a result of this approach.

Thankfully, ABM doesn’t drop the ball. ABM is all about targeting.

It allows marketers to focus their efforts directly on marketing offers that are specially-designed for their target customers.

And this laser-focused marketing delivers big rewards.

Companies that use account-based marketing actually generate 208% more revenue for their marketing efforts.

It’s no wonder that companies using ABM are finding better returns on their marketing investment, as well.

Generic email campaigns or even segmented email campaigns can’t compete. The personalization of account-based marketing blows them away.

Taking personalization to a one-on-one level drives sales and increases ROI.

However, it’s not as simple as signing up for a new tool you let do the heavy-lifting.

There aren’t that many ABM SaaS apps out there just yet.

Terminus is one option, just off the top of my head. But otherwise, you’re usually piecing together other tools.

Instead, the key is in the approach and the process.

So here are six steps to creating an ABM system for your company.

How to use account-based marketing to get more sales

The key to finding success with account-based marketing is to sell without selling.

You can’t force your products on the account that you’re targeting. At least, not at the beginning.

Instead, you need to focus on communicating value and building a personal relationship first.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of selling without selling, here’s an example from CNET:

They are selling you a router without actually selling it.

Instead, they hook you in by identifying common problems and offering to show you how to fix them.

Here are a few ways you can get your feet wet with account-based marketing successfully and start landing bigger, better clients for your business today.

Step #1. Start by selecting who to target.