TLDR:
While ABM has room to grow yet, marketers might be best served to pay attention to trends that emerge from it. These patterns include social selling, personalized video, custom e-mail signature marketing, more effective direct mail and in-person events, and relationship marketing.
ABM has been around for awhile. It’s had time to come into its own. While that’s true, it’s equally valid that a number of marketing tactics emerged from it. Some tactics are more successful than others, though. Compiled here are five of the most popular strategies to accelerate business growth with ABM.
Kicking off these trends is social selling.
Social selling has been on the upswing for B2B marketers lately. The reason why is a psychological method of persuasion known as the Principle of Social Proof. Simply put, we tend to follow the leader, or make purchasing decisions informed by the buying behaviors of others. Even 90% of high-level salespeople incorporate social media for this very reason—to observe habits.
Social selling is a long-term strategy, as observed with ABM. Marketers need time to develop those crucial relationships. In addition, it’s wise to use the appropriate tools when carrying out a social selling strategy, as well as copying what the masters do, especially for marketers new to this practice.
Just as social selling has elements of personalization to it, video efforts should also be personalized. Instead of using the same copy in emails as every other marketer, video can convey marketers’ messaging in a way that sticks out to prospects. It works especially well in programmatic ABM, whether it’s waking-the-dead or making sure that MQA is there to stay.
Speaking of email, email signatures can be utilized to get ahead of the competition by reducing a marketer’s workflow. Instead of spending a lot of time with new accounts, email signatures can be used to produce MQAs that are already familiar with a marketer’s company. This is similar to the land-and-expand ABM strategy, and it works well with any type of ABM.
Whether it’s email or direct mail, one thing is certain: they can’t be terribly executed. This goes double for in-person events. With direct mail and in-person gatherings, the whole point is to foster relationships via face-to-face meeting—mail being a more indirect method to do so.
Marketers should take advantage of the fact that prospects tend to buy from those they know over those they don’t. This gets at the heart of relationship marketing, and relationships are the foundation of ABM.
Original article from Business2Community on 2 April 2019.
