Account-based marketing plays a critical role in the growth of many businesses across a variety of industries. However, many marketers often rely on ABM when it may not be the best fit. In addition, what worked for account-based marketing even just a few months ago, may not be the most optimal strategy for marketing today.

In this article, we’ll explore how account-based marketing has changed over the years and whether or not it should be your focus. We’ll also explore in detail the many factors you need to consider to do ABM right.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) isn’t new

While reading a book called “No Forms, No Cold Calls & No Spam” by Latané Conant, I came to the realization that many vendors try to position ABM as a $40,000 technology stack problem.

The book dedicates quite a few pages to the ‘customer-centric stack’ and argues that because you’re now able to know when someone is in the market for a solution like yours [via IP lookup or 1st or 3rd party intent data], you don’t need to “spam” them.

Here’s the irony though— even though potential customers may be in the market for a solution like yours, you still need to deploy the traditional sales/marketing strategies to convince them to make a purchase.

While it is true that technology has enabled us to create more personalized & relevant experiences for prospects & allowed us to target people in very specific ways, it can also quickly approach the point of diminishing returns.

The marketing industry, like most industries, like to invent new terms to recycle old concepts. And in the case ABM, that’s exactly what has happened. Account-Based Marketing has in fact been around since the 1940s. When sales made a list of logos they wanted to sell, or the list of ‘dream customers’ to close. In those days we just called it sales.

If a content strategist leads a conversation with “I think this will work,” or “I like this topic,” you must stop them right there before any content is actually created. Content based on gut instinct isn’t going to cut it in an account-based marking (ABM) campaign. The digital marketing strategy relies on data and analytics in order to effectively nurture high-value prospects. On the other hand, if a content strategist begins a sentence with “I’m writing this because the intent data is showing us…,” listen closely; their content plan of action is not only informed, it has a much better chance of engaging target accounts and helping push your campaign toward its end goal.

Lead generation, the process of identifying and nurturing potential customers, continues to be a major challenge for marketers in 2021.

The biggest reason behind it is that competition in every field is growing every day, and to get a significant number of leads, a business needs to stand out from the crowd.

But here's a fact: lead generation isn't about finding a "secret sauce" to help in the generation of tons of leads. Instead, it's about exploring the tried and tested methodologies to create the most practical combination of strategies based on the objectives and target industry. And determining the most appropriate methods can massively transform your overall revenue.

What is B2B Lead Generation?

In a nutshell, lead generation is the art of attracting and capturing your target audience's interest in a product or service for developing a sales pipeline. Lead generation lies in the second stage of inbound marketing. The inbound marketing process goes like this:

Attract → Convert → Close → Delight

Lead generation occurs in the second stage after your target audience has been attracted to your brand, and you're ready to convert them into your customers. For example, if a social media post attracted someone to visit your website, and then your website's content influenced the person to provide their email to you, that person would be considered a lead. And once you have the email address, with a proper strategy, you may end up turning that lead into an actual customer.

In fact, our recent ‘Experiences Customers Want’ report found that 74% of businesses have accelerated their investment in online experiences as a result of the pandemic, with 76% claiming their online offerings saved their business. We expect these trends to continue in 2021.

High on the priority list when it comes to online is adaptable content that can be structured and organised to create customised and personalised experiences. In a world where marketers are constantly pivoting their strategies due to the ever-changing COVID-19 situation, they need to be able to surface new products and get to market quickly with relevant offers and having an agile content strategy in place is imperative to achieving this.

Defining ‘content agility’

The term content agility describes a brand or organisation’s capability to optimise the end-to-end process of delivering customer experiences at scale. To become more agile, brands must remove the technical bottlenecks often associated with delivering content at speed.

This will mean getting several things right – from having the right tools and technologies in place to building a great author experience, so that content authors and agencies can deliver and update online experiences fast.

Today's consumers have become very specific about how they want to engage and interact with companies. With the ever-changing digital environment eliminating human interaction from the sales process, all a consumer needs to become a loyal customer is conversation and personalisation, and B2B customers are no different to any other.

They want to interact in real-time with your business; they want to engage with the appropriate representative at their convenience; and they want to navigate a streamlined sales process without having to fill out a contact form or wait for feedback. Often, they cannot afford to delay the sales process any longer than need be –?time is money, after all.

In fact, according to the Accenture, 73% of B2B buyers say they want a personalized, B2C-like customer experience. With this in mind, B2B companies running a successful sales process know that conversational marketing is integral to doing business online.

It’s all about talking to your prospects

Your sales reps need to capitalize on the traffic that your marketing team is driving to your site by engaging and conversing with consumers at their level. Good conversational marketing practice gives potential customers the option to reach out and get the information they need, when they need it, without feeling bombarded by sales pitches.

If you strike the balance just right, implementing a conversational marketing approach will optimise your sales process.

Content marketing is a tool that should be used to smooth every stage and touch point of the customer journey.

Account-based marketing presupposes that leads are not the goal of the program. After all, it’s not called lead-based marketing. Rather than hoping someone fills out a form, modern go-to-market teams today focus on creating awareness and traffic. This translates into signals (engagement data, intent data, etc.) that outbound and sales teams can then use to understand and prioritize their accounts as they progress to revenue opportunities. So if awareness and traffic is the goal, what’s the strategy? Brand.

As a reformed B2B demand gen marketer myself, I know how that might sound questionable. You need to be measured on numbers, and brand is notoriously unquantifiable. Our CEO (and a former badass CMO), Tim Kopp, explained how brand drives demand on an episode of The Roof.

The Power of Brand

If you didn’t watch the video, here’s the key sentence: “Think about the biggest traffic days on your website. It wasn’t advertising, it was a big announcement, product enhancement, etc.” Creating a magnetic brand is so much more important than just raw lead generation.

Are you supposed to give up leads? If we’re talking about leads as raw marketing performance, then yes, absolutely, get rid of ‘em. If we’re talking about leads as qualified inbound requests who know what you’re about and need help making a buying decision, then no. Here’s the thing though: If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably not a highly transactional, product-led solution that would benefit from a coordinated go-to-market strategy. 

It’s a common refrain: “We’re a B2B company. We can’t do the same things those B2C funsters get up to.” Another good one is, “Our product/industry/niche is just too serious and boring for content marketing.”

But it’s also worth pointing out that shedloads of content are published every day for which “boring” might be a polite description (“predictable” and “unnecessary” would be others.) I regularly come across reports, white papers, and articles that would require me to stab myself repeatedly in the leg with a fork simply to stay awake beyond the opening paragraphs.

I’m sure the marketers publishing this content wouldn’t say it’s boring. Perhaps they don’t always realize it is. Perhaps internal feedback convinced them the world really is desperate for an academic thesis on interlocking flanges … or something. Perhaps, as can be the case in B2B, the content was written to satisfy an internal audience – a C-suite eager for the brand to appear smarter than the competition on everything to do with flanges.

A good website is more than the sum of its parts. Certainly, you need logical navigation, clean graphic design, strong calls to action, and a robust internal linking strategy, among other considerations. And don’t forget about your written content! The written copy on your website is crucially important for educating and persuading customers, for gaining SEO traction, and for conveying the vision and values of your company.

Web content isn’t meant to last forever. On the contrary, it’s a good idea to revise your copywriting every two or three years. This gives you a chance to offer fresh content to the Google algorithms, and also to refine or update your company’s messaging.

Beyond that, there are a few telltale signs that your Web copy could stand an update… whether you rewrite it yourself, or enlist the expertise of Grammar Chic, Inc.

Signs You Need Fresh Web Copywriting

1) Your Google traction is slipping

One of the most important aspects of copywriting is that it signals to Google what your company is all about, and how your website should be categorized. If you’re not getting the kind of Google traffic you’d like, it’s possible that bad copy is to blame… and that a content refresh could put you back on Google’s radar.

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In this economic downturn, we have seen firsthand the impact of curbed purchasing decisions in the global business-to-business (B2B) marketplace. Where traditional acquisition marketing has struggled, brand storytelling is flourishing and has a direct impact on the marketing pipeline.

Robert McKee wrote that "Leaders use story to author the future." Why is this more important than ever? In these challenging times, your audience wants to be led through this downturn into the future that awaits them.

To better understand the key themes that inspire effective storytelling, let's look backward to look forward. Prior downturns have taught me there are six themes that are most relevant in brand storytelling during times of crisis: humor, nostalgia, optimism, patriotism, price and value, empowerment. But knowing these themes is not enough to create a story brand. To do that, we need to take a few more steps in our praxis.

So, how do you get B2B brand storytelling right? Here are a few guidelines that truly make a difference.

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