How one can use advertising automation for ABM

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Have you ever received a marketing email about a product you’ve already purchased? Or did you have to answer the same questions three times on a website before speaking to someone about a problem?

As a customer, it feels incredibly frustrating.

And yet, many companies treat their leads like this: each one is just another name on the list, worth sending an ad hoc email but not worthy of individual attention and attention.

The result is a sales process that seems lazy and ineffective. But when you only have a small sales team and hundreds of leads to contact, an impersonal approach seems like your only option.

Enter ABM.

Why Account Based Marketing?

Account based marketing is nothing new. Marketers have long recognized that their targets are entire accounts made up of multiple stakeholders and contacts, not just individual prospects. That’s not to say, however, that the people on the purchasing committees of these accounts don’t want their individual needs to be considered.

ABM is more effective because each targeted contact on an account is treated with individual care and attention. The salesperson can cater to the lead’s unique wants and needs and customize the sales process to focus on that. Because of this, ABM typically has a high success rate and therefore a higher ROI.

When using ABM, target the best and most relevant leads to the most relevant account. They are probably already looking for a provider like you; Because of this, ABM, when done right, can lead to some of the most profitable businesses.

There is only one downside: the nature of ABM means that it is resource intensive. It takes a lot of time and effort for a seller to educate themselves about every stakeholder in every company and build a meaningful relationship.

How is a rapidly growing company supposed to keep up with finite resources? With ABM automation.

Through workflows, segmentation, personalization, and reporting, ABM automation lets you give each target account the attention it deserves without impacting overall productivity.

How to automate your ABM efforts

1. Use workflows

Traditionally a one-to-one process, ABM requires a lot of manual, personalized effort from marketers and salespeople. But there are always ways to streamline your processes and make them more efficient!

Start by outlining your buyer’s journey from a new lead to a loyal customer and look for ways to introduce automation.

This can be especially helpful during the first interactions with a new lead. For example, after leads have completed a specific action (such as downloading a resource), you can automatically send nurturing emails that include the information they provided when filling out your signup form. Similarly, when a lead hits your pricing page, you can send a notification to the assigned salesperson letting them know it’s a good time to call.

With the right workflows in place, leads are always contacted at exactly the right moment and feel like they’re receiving personalized attention…without anyone having to oversee and trigger those actions.

2. Segment and manage your leads

A big part of staying on top of ABM efforts is managing each lead and balancing the needs of individual accounts.

With ABM automation, you have access to tools that automatically tag, segment, and score your leads based on the criteria that matter most to your business, be it demographics, online behavior, or something else.

This segmentation needs to happen in real-time as sales reps discover the right contacts and start converting those target companies.

Automatic tagging makes it easy to sort, prioritize, and keep track of leads. Sales reps always know which customers need attention and can use the data they collect to increase their likelihood of success by contacting each lead at the right time using the right method.

3. Personalize content

Treating prospects as individual buyers requires a lot of personalized marketing content. Everything about their interactions with you, from the emails they receive to the texts they read on your site, should be tailored to their unique situation as much as possible.

Again, ABM automation can provide this level of personal attention without requiring too much time-consuming manual effort.

ABM automation tools can customize emails, ads, and even landing pages for a single client. They pull in all the data they can find, including potential customers’ location, their past interactions with your business, and their knowledge of your brand. The tools then use this data to display customized messages or to customize a section of the website.

They’re still creating content at scale, but clients will feel like it was built just for them.

4. Monitor your progress

No sales process is complete without measuring and monitoring your performance. Which accounts were closed, which were lost, and what factors contributed to each?

It’s easier than ever to improve sales performance with automated reports and dashboards. With data retrieved and presented in an easy-to-understand manner, your team can check progress at any time. Your team members spend less time creating reports and more time analyzing them for opportunities so they can make more meaningful improvements over time.

Popular ABM automation tools

As ABM automation becomes more widespread, you have more and more great tools at your disposal:

• HubSpot. HubSpot is a complete CRM that can be used by sales, marketing, operations and more. It offers drag-and-drop workflows that can be customized with code, one of the most powerful lead databases, and intelligent content that adapts to individual users.
• Engage Marketo. Marketo Engage is a marketing automation platform built to simplify the customer journey. This platform specializes in automation and uses AI to focus your efforts. All your ABM efforts can take place within one app.
• LeanData. LeanData offers Salesforce-native products for marketing, operations, and most importantly, sales. Its platform enables lead matching and gives sales teams a holistic view of each account they can act on to be successful.

Of course, these are just a few of the countless tools out there. Consider your own business needs and do thorough research before choosing an ABM automation tool.

Using an ABM strategy will almost certainly increase your close rate and generate a higher ROI. But when done wrong, it can become a huge drain on your team.

With ABM automation, it is possible to give each lead the individual attention it needs without significantly increasing resources.

More resources on ABM automation

Three account-based tools B2B companies need now to increase revenue

Marketing Automation: Seven Machine Learning Use Cases

ABM: Balance between technology and human touch to maximize sales success