9 channels B2B marketers should use for account based marketing

Your account based marketing (ABM) goals probably include:

• Generating quality leads for new opportunities
• Increasing ROI
• Launching a new product
• Upselling existing accounts
• Expanding into new markets
• For your ABM strategy to be successful, start with personalised messaging.

Use content that addresses the key pain points of your buyer personas. Alongside the content, you need the correct data set for your key accounts. Ultimately, good content and good data will underpin your success.

Once you’ve established where your audience ‘lives’, you can start to think about the channels that enable you to target by ‘company name’. So here is a list of 9 ABM channels you should use:

At 4,400% ROI, email marketing is considered the backbone channel of B2B marketing. Of course, there are some things you need to put in place. For example, personalising your email for each individual target account.

Imagine you want to target HSBC in the UK. First, research the top cyber security challenges facing HSBC’s CTO. Then expand to uncover challenges facing the industry (look at recent news articles).

Once you have this information, you can personalise your email copy accordingly. Your recipient will certainly appreciate the time and effort you put into this, and you should start seeing the results.

We recommend emailing to an individual or a small target audience, such as IT decision makers in one location. This helps keep your content ultra-relevant. Finally, make sure your website landing pages are personalised for each key account. The better the personalisation, the higher your conversion rates.

As far as account based marketing goes, telemarketing is one of the best ways to engage with a target account on a personal 1-to-1 basis.

Before you start calling, get answers to the following:

• Did the account engage with a recent email communication?
• Is the account active on social media?
• What are the account’s main challenges?
• Always take the angle of how can you help and add value to them. Timing is crucial here; contact them when they’ve just downloaded a report or whitepaper.

This is a common account based marketing method. Use it when you can segment your data based on criteria.

Then personalise your messaging and content to target a function or – even better – an individual. One tactic is creating a tailored infographic and sending it with a covering letter. Be clear and concise in what you are asking for. Whether that’s a meeting request, or just to send information to educate and help nurture through the buyer’s journey.

This is the B2B marketers’ go-to social media platform for targeting specific companies.

Take advantage of LinkedIn’s targeted audience criteria, so you can cherry-pick your target accounts and promote your content. You can target by ‘company name’ or ‘upload a list’ (where you can use your own data to target them with ads). The targeting functionality is shown below:

This terrific tool enables you to reach right into an individual’s inbox.

LinkedIn offers various subscriptions including Business, Sales, Hiring – each with an increasing amount of InMail credits (between 15-30 credits). Another option is to create your own list of contacts that you wish to target and try and connect with them personally through your LinkedIn account. Make sure to tailor your messaging for each contact. Once connected you are free to chat away if they respond.

Twitter doesn’t let you target by key accounts. However, there’s a workaround.

You can build ‘lists’ of individuals or companies within your target accounts. You do this by clicking ‘create new list’ from your Twitter account, then add the relevant Twitter handles to the list. Once the list has been created, you can select that list to target with your ads. Create multiple lists on an account level so your messaging resonates stronger.

Retargeting works by targeting website visitors (or look-a-like visitors) to your site with ads. However, there’s no effortless way to select a sub-set of target accounts.

That’s when you need retargeting platforms such as AdRoll. You can upload a list in Excel or sync directly to a list from your CRM of specially created target accounts.

Note: Your data must include the contact’s email address, otherwise it won’t work. You can then target them with your banner ads around the web.

But account based marketing isn’t exclusive to the web. Getting face-to-face with your target accounts is just as important. Get them all into one room – or on one screen – by running a live or virtual event. Breakfast briefings or evening networking experiences work well, where there’s a relaxed ambiance coupled with a strong theme. Your attendees can learn something new and also have fun – mixing business and pleasure is a sure way to get conversations flowing and to start meaningful relationships.