Account-based marketing content is a dominant strategy entering 2024, with 87% of marketers saying that ABM outperforms other initiatives. It only makes sense, then, to do whatever you can to up your game when it comes to ABM strategizing. But what’s the smartest way to do that? How can you make your content stand out while still staying true to your mission?
This guide will give you a quick refresher on the most important aspects of account-based marketing content strategy before showing off some best practices you can follow during implementation.
What we’ll cover in this guide
- The essential elements of ABM content strategy
- ABM content strategy best practices
- A way to create immersive account-based marketing content
Essential elements of account-based marketing content strategy
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to account-based marketing, which is why you should first check out our comprehensive guide to ABM.
From working with its time-intensive nature to creating your ICP to determining your most lucrative channels, ABM content strategy can be overwhelming. But to help you narrow your focus, let’s take a look at the most important aspects of a successful account-based marketing content strategy.
1. Clearly defined goals and KPIs
Launching an ABM campaign can inundate you with a lot more data than you’re used to, which can be overwhelming. That’s why setting clear goals and specific KPIs is so helpful. It can help you make sense of the data you’re taking in and gives you a measurable way to see your success.
Here are a few additional metrics to consider outside of the usual suspects such as CAC, CPA, and conversion:
- Engagement: This is how often your target accounts are opening your emails, heading to your landing pages, and interacting with the custom content you’ve created for them.
- Customer lifetime value: Because much of ABM is about long-term customer relationships, this measures all the revenue your customers provide throughout their relationship with you, not just in individual sales or specific quarters.
- Sales cycle length: Tracking how long it takes to close deals with target accounts can help you track your strategy’s effectiveness, allowing you to make tweaks to shorten this period.
2. Target account profiles and segmentation
Account-based marketing research shows that tailoring content to address targets’ specific needs is crucial, which means you need to have an organized way of collecting and sorting your targets.
Start by looking at your ideal customer profile and working out from there to see what potential customers might match it. Then, you can sort your targets into various categories based on priority. You can easily segment your targets this way, but it’s far from the only way to view your accounts.
There are four key variables to consider when segmenting your accounts: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral. Dividing your list of targets by shared needs, online behaviors, and so on will help make your strategies more efficient and ultimately more useful.
3. Buyer personas for account contacts
Buyer persona is different than an ICP because it’s all about describing people that should already exist within your target audience. The goal is to gather as much information as you can to accurately describe who your target audience really is so you can more accurately market toward them.
This means that, unlike your ICP, your buyer personas will evolve more quickly with time because a clearer picture of your buyer persona will emerge as you try new strategies and track what works and what doesn’t.
4. Personalized content plan and style guide
Armed with your buyer personas, you’ll also want to develop custom content plans for all of your targets, even when their buyer personas are similar. The point of ABM is to truly target down to the most specific level possible, so don’t start generalizing now! Consider what kind of content your targets seem most likely to respond to and build a testing strategy from there.
Creating separate, individual style guides will also ensure that all of your marketers understand what to do and what not to do. Your content will be more consistent and make the data you pull from its performance all the more clear.
5. Sales enablement software
Sales enablement software is all about making it easier for your team to grow and learn from their work. When your sales team can more effectively track their growth and pivot based on what they learn, they’ll be better at executing the high level of customization ABM requires.
Here are a few programs that can help make that process easier for you:
- Hubspot: HubSpot is a robust CRM platform that has a multitude of software solutions, integrations, and resources necessary to connect your teams.
- Zoomforth: Zoomforth is the perfect platform for creating customized content experiences for key decision-makers. You can create hubs of content that they can easily sift through, all personalized by your team to have the most impact. Plus, you’ll get a treasure trove of engagement metrics to look through.
- Formstack: Formstack is a productivity platform for businesses that helps organizations create digital workflows and automate processes, all without the need for coding.
Best practices for ABM content strategy
Now that you understand the elements of ABM content strategy, let’s go through some best practices that can turn that strategy into something truly amazing!
Personalization, personalization, personalization
Making great content means doing a lot of account-based marketing research for all of your key targets. Why? Because you’re going to use that research to eschew the broad messaging other campaigns employ and create highly personalized content! Your research into each target will give you insight into their specific concerns and issues. And that will position you to address them head-on.
If you use the same old landing pages, not only will it make data harder to track, but you’ll likely see a drop in conversion all around. After all, the page is no longer serving its intended purpose; you can’t be broad and personalized. If your content is all custom, then it follows that you should be hosting it on custom microsites, like those from Zoomforth, to easily track your target audience.
Collaboration between sales and marketing teams
More teams are involved on a more intricate level with account-based marketing. If your marketing and sales teams aren’t properly aligned with a free flow of information, it can lead to some major hiccups for your strategy.
On the flip side, according to a 2016 study, companies with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams can see 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales-win rates. That’s why it’s so important to make sure all parties, from marketing to sales reps and account managers, are aware of what’s going on at any given time.
Invest in immersive, interactive content experiences
While white papers and blog posts are great, you can really level up your ABM game by investing in immersive content experiences. These kinds of experiences go beyond what’s expected and can include everything from virtual tours of a space to interactive quizzes and more.
The goal is to find creative, tech-forward ways to bring your products or services to life for consumers. These experiences should still be just as customized as everything else in account-based marketing, and that’s easy to do with Zoomforth.
Create immersive account-based marketing content with Zoomforth
Now that you’ve got a handle on account-based marketing content strategy and are bursting with inspiration, why not use Zoomforth to get started? As a leader in microsite creation and hosting, it’s got the tools you need to get your ABM content off the ground.
Create, build, publish, and track the success of your ABM microsites with our easy-to-use platform. With real-time analytics, your sales data is right at your fingertips. As if that wasn’t enough, Zoomforth microsites are incredibly easy to build and maintain thanks to drag-and-drop tools and a user-friendly interface.
Don’t wait—request a demo today!
