Conversational Account-based Marketing (ABM)

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Account-based Marketing (ABM) Primer (21-slide PowerPoint presentation). Enterprise level sales organizations utilize Account-based Marketing (ABM), or Key Account Marketing, a conscious approach to Marketing based on selected accounts that are a good fit to buy an organization's products or services. Once a target account has been identified, ABM demands [read more]

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Traditional B2B Marketing typically involves communicating with scores of potential customers in the hopes of making a few of them to interact with your website and initiate conversation about an offering of their interest.

In contrast, Conversational Account-based Marketing (ABM) is a proactive, systematic approach to go about Marketing that leaves nothing on chance.  This approach demands from the marketers to take the initiative by commencing a dialogue with potential customers—utilizing conversational marketing platform, targeted bots or accounts-specific ads—right after they have been identified.

Conversational ABM enables creating a seamless experience for prospects, more opportunities, and underpinning the sales and marketing units’ alignment.  When potential customers visit a company’s website, dedicated teams:

• Are alerted through notifications and become aware of the accounts’ identity and browsing history.
• Greet them at the right moment when they are engaging with and showing interest in a specific product / webpage.
• Respond to their queries and win them over with exceptional Customer Experience and thorough and relevant content.

To put Conversational ABM into practice, marketers need to master the following 5-phase process that constitutes the approach:

1. Single out target accounts through third-party data and website analytics.
2. Segregate target accounts into appropriate segments.
3. Craft tailored advertisements for individual segments.
4. Emulate the context of tailored ads on your website.
5. Initiate conversation with target accounts by employing custom greeting messages.

Let’s delve deeper into the first 2 phases of Conversational ABM.

Phase 1 – Single Out Target Accounts through 3^rd-party Data and Website Analytics

The first phase of Conversational ABM stresses on close collaboration between Marketing and Sales teams to work out which accounts to aim at and rank them in the order of significance to the firm.  The selection of accounts (firms or potential individuals likely to buy your products) should be done on the basis of first-party data—gathered internally by the team or from website traffic monitoring—and third-party data gathered from external sources.

The two types of data facilitate in creating a clear description of the composition of your target accounts—i.e., the ideal customer profile for your products and services.  Marketers should discern the signals of intent to buy by the first instance of relevant internet research done by an account, which assists in contacting the potential customer (or firm) earlier than the rivals.

Phase 2 – Segregate Target Accounts into Appropriate Segments

The next phase involves categorizing the potential accounts into segments on the basis of similar characteristics.  This allows for creating a bespoke campaign for each segment, which is a lot simpler than having to create a separate campaign for each customer.   The 3 major methods to segment target accounts are:

• By industry – This type of segmentation helps in making inroads with new accounts—who are going to be contacted for the first time. Marketing campaigns that focus on confronting the account’s industry-specific issues influence new accounts and capture their attention.
• By sales stage – Segmentation by sales approach enables developing customized campaigns for the accounts and keeping in touch with the accounts that have already received a quote.
• By customer life-cycle – Such a segmentation allows for Marketing to continue exploring any up-selling opportunities with the accounts after deal closure to enhance their lifetime value (LTV).

Customer Segmentation facilitates in channeling the marketing budget, assigning resources, and focusing on accounts that generate a higher return on investment.

Interested in learning more about the specific phases of Conversational ABM ? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Conversational Account-based Marketing here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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