Social selling strategies come in many different forms. Many are akin to marketing strategies to get the most views and eyeballs on the right product to raise awareness. Account-based marketing follows a different approach and will help improve your selling methods.
What is Account Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing follows the simple attract, nurture and identify targeted interest and spins it on its head. Before attempting to attract anyone to the product or service account-based marketing identifies target companies first. This lets you know who you are trying to reach with your marketing content to develop conversions. Next comes the engagement and creating those conversations, leading you to build lasting relationships.
So, unlike inbound marketing where you attract people, nurture and identify you’re identifying in step one. No broad-reaching campaigns with high budget advertising, but specific audiences where your goal is to land their interest and business, then expand your offering.
Four ways ABM will improve your sales
- A Better Return on Investment
The RIO on account-based marketing, when implemented correctly, will be greater than any inbound marketing due to the quality of accounts you attract. Allowing you to attract corporate accounts over smaller businesses.
- Marketing and Sales Rolled into One
Most corporate sales teams work alongside their marketing team to deliver value to their prospective customers. But, that synergy needs to be developed and remain consistent throughout. This is tough when both are selling the product, not targeting an account. In account-based marketing, sales and marketing are both focused on certain target accounts and are working toward a common goal. This means all the assets, ideas and strategies have the same specific goal. Rather than an overarching one.
- You Won’t Churn and Burn
If you treat your leads list as kindling for a fire you’ll end up burning all your connections. Before you know it the list is getting smaller and smaller, leaving your team to fight over anything that comes in. Account-based marketing is a much greener approach to following leads. Less dependency on having a large data list and targeted action for the quality leads you’ve created.
- Upsell opportunities
After understanding the needs of your prospects and you’ve built a relationship with them, you can then sell the right product or service to them. What comes next is expanding your offering to them. If you have a series of products or services which complement each other or take the client from a basic subscription to a premium service, account-based marketing offers a simple pathway to achieve this. When you simply market a product you’ll fall into transactional, come and go, sales. These sales don’t offer an easy path for upselling or cross-selling.
Account-based marketing isn’t just a social selling technique, even though it works very well in this field, you can also implement it with advertising campaigns and email marketing materials. All you need is the ability to identify your target companies and the content to get them engaged. That way you can build up your relationships and sell more productively.
