By now, most B2B marketers have made the transition from a traditional marketing strategy to a more personalized, account-based approach. If you’re not familiar, account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that requires sales and marketing to tailor outreach to a specific account’s pain points, goals, and motivators.
ABM’s rise in popularity has made lead volume less important and shifted the focus to revenue. The reason for this is simple, ABM produces more qualified leads, which in turn improves internal alignment and generates more revenue. It’s a no-brainer.
While it sounds easy enough, a successful ABM strategy isn’t something you can just throw together. To drive results, you’ll need to carefully examine and refocus all of your marketing efforts with an account-based mindset — including social media.
Social media and account-based marketing
Social media gives marketers unparalleled access to real-time customer and prospect feedback. This allows for a more personal connection to your target audience.
But for many B2B marketers, incorporating social media and ABM is still somewhat of a mystery. Today, we provide some clarity and show you three different ways social media can improve and support your ABM strategy.
1. Develop a comprehensive view of your prospects through social listening.
According to a recent study, the average B2B buying committee is made up of five people. For your ABM strategy to work, your team must be able to identify these key stakeholders and, more importantly, the pain points that motivate them to make a purchase.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy — or possible — to reach five different people to ask them about their pain points, interests, or motivations. So, what’s the solution? Social media, of course.
Social media offers marketers a vast array of data that’s often hard to collect and difficult to analyze. Track key accounts and decision makers across social channels to discover the conversations they’re having, the things they’re complaining about, and the products they love.
2. Tailor your content to speak to your best buyers.
The key to a successful ABM strategy lies within your ability to develop and deliver personalized content to your target audience. Consider the insights you gather by tracking influencers:
- What types of content do they share?
- What types of content do they post?
- Are there specific topics they gravitate toward?
- Do they seem to prefer visual posts? Text posts? Videos?
- What do they complain about?
- What are their customers saying?
Don’t be afraid to get personal! If a leader from your target account complains about a relevant issue, craft a whitepaper, blog post, or ebook explaining how your product solves their problem. Then, using social media, tag key leaders within the target company to make sure they see your content.
3. Develop meaningful relationships with your key accounts.
Personalized content is just a stepping stone in your ABM strategy. To really make the most of your efforts, focus on building real relationships with the key contacts for your target accounts. Fortunately, social media presents the perfect space for doing just that.
As we’ve already mentioned, a social media “follow” does not constitute a relationship. Focus more on engagement and interaction. Here are a few simple ideas to get the ball rolling:
Join in on their conversations. Are your prospects discussing a topic that your organization is particularly well-versed in? Don’t be afraid to share your input! It may seem odd at first, but if your response is helpful to your prospects, they’ll appreciate it. When possible, consider including links to relevant content along with your response, but remember, you don’t want your responses to sound like a sales pitch.
Engage with the content they share. Share, like, retweet, and comment on their posts. More often than not, prospects will feel inclined to do the same for your organization. Your brand will soon become a familiar face among the millions of strangers who use social media.
Ask for input. Partner with your prospects to grow your audience and reach new eyes. Consider asking your prospects to write a guest post for your blog or facilitate a question and answer session to be broadcast to both companies’ followers.
The benefits of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy are endless — think more leads, better brand awareness, and more revenue. This new way of marketing has caused a noticeable shift in the marketing landscape. If you’re not utilizing each of your channels to support your ABM efforts, you’re likely missing out.
Use these three best practices to tie your social strategy to your ABM campaigns. You’ll be surprised by the success you achieve.
Contributed by Krysta Williams, marketing content specialist at ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo offers the most accurate and actionable B2B data to help organizations accelerate growth and profitability. The continuously updated database enables sales and marketing teams to execute more effective marketing campaigns and improve sales prospecting efforts.