Have you heard of account-based marketing, or ABM? This new style of marketing to your clients has big benefits- for the right SaaS company. Not everyone will benefit from ABM; its effectiveness depends on your ideal clients, and for some companies, it’s just too specific. But ABM for the right SaaS provider can give your company’s marketing and sales a big boost.
Here’s the long and short of it: inbound marketing is like going fishing. You could fish from a specific pond, with a specific fish in mind, but at the end of the day, you’re casting your line into the lake waiting for the fish to come to you. ABM marketing is like golf. You’re out on the driving range with multiple balls, aiming for one specific target.
With account-based marketing, you’re using multiple strategies to target specific accounts. You’re not waiting for leads to come to you. Instead, you’re out there going to them.
Target a Well-Defined Audience
Does your company have a few large accounts that are key to your business? Or a multitude of accounts? If you said option A, a few key accounts, then account-based marketing is for you. To clarify, account-based marketing works for a specific niche audience. For example, your product is geared specifically towards IT decision-makers who work for the government. There are only so many branches of government and only so many IT departments for the government out there. Your audience is much narrower than someone whose product is geared towards retailer, for example.
If this is the case for you, then ABM for SaaS providers is a great option.
With account-based marketing, you can market directly to those few key decision-makers with a wide variety of tools. For example, you can launch a direct mail campaign, a social campaign, and a Google Adwords campaign that is targeting your specific list of contacts. You’re out there going to these individuals through a multitude of channels to get them to work with you. No longer are you stuck with campaigns that are too broad, targeting an entire geographic area and some keywords. You know you’re reaching your customers because you’re targeting specific contacts.
Clear Data to Build From
With such a well-defined audience, ABM for SaaS offers you clear-cut data that lays a foundation for the campaigns of the future. For example, maybe your targets are responding much better to the LinkedIn campaign than to the Google Ads. Now you know exactly how to reach your target audience. Without account-based marketing, you could see that the LinkedIn campaign performed better than Google Adwords, but you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was targeting your exact customers- only that it was targeting IT professionals. For all you know, your LinkedIn campaign got so many clicks because Joe Schmoe the computer guy really enjoyed the image. Maybe his boss (your buyer) never saw it.
Collecting such clear-cut data puts you at an advantage against competitors, too. Too often the power of data is underestimated. Through an ABM campaign, you could discover that the content of your website isn’t on target. It needs to be re-written to be more like the messaging of the LinkedIn campaign. Data collected through an ABM campaign could change your entire marketing program for the better.
Opportunity to Personalize Marketing Content
Have you ever gone to a website where, instead of seeing a generic home page, you’re greeted with a line that is personalized to your company? For example, instead of “The Microsoft Solutions Provider You Need” you see “Microsoft Solutions to Increase [insert target company’s name here] Efficiency.”
The difference is astounding. All of a sudden, the customer’s interest is piqued. This company is here for them, working to solve their problems. An ABM campaign for SaaS providers allows you to personalize your marketing content down to the company level. Because you’re targeting specific known contacts, you can redesign your content to display personalized messages to the people within your email list.
ABM’s personalized touch adds humanity back into digital marketing. You’re working with people again— not the world wide web.
Integrate Seamlessly with Your Sales Team
Now’s your chance to integrate your marketing directly with your company’s sales team. After all, who knows these contacts better than your sales team? They should be familiar with the companies, the position, and the industry. While marketing should also have knowledge of this, working together will provide you with more information to go off of.
Your marketing team should be able to work closely with the sales team to map out goals, remain aware of any ongoing sales initiatives, and identify what contacts they’re currently working or have worked with in the past. Collaboration is essential in order for the marketing and sales teams to present a unified message.
Black-and-White Goal Setting
Going into your ABM campaign, you should have set goals. How many leads would make this campaign a success? Is there one company that’s more important than another? What’s the time frame for the campaign?
With an ABM for SaaS campaign, you’re not trying to grow your email list or explore new industries, your goal should be to bring in new leads for large accounts and close them. The small set of target accounts allows you to more easily track how many leads originated from which account and which channel they came from. ABM campaigns should be relatively black and white. You either hit your goals or you didn’t. With great data to pull from, you’ll be able to track what went wrong and why.
New North is proud to offer ABM to our SaaS clients. We can provide multiple channels to reach your targets and the data and analytics experience to back it up. Looking to learn more about ABM? Check out our services page here.
