Why ABM and web personalization walk side by side
Following the rapid popularity of account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, some businesses have gradually moved away from the ”pray and spray” tactics of broad marketing. They now bet on a laser-focused approach, which in many cases leads to better sales outcomes and ROI.
ABM allows you to weed out companies that do not fit your ideal customer profile so you can sell to high-intent prospects and not waste time on unqualified leads. As the heart of ABM is personalization, it addresses the specific pain points, challenges, and goals of each target account or company.
This article will explore ABM in detail and help you come up with strategies to improve it with personalization in your next campaigns.
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What is ABM?
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that identifies and targets high-value accounts or companies rather than reaching a large audience. It is a B2B marketing strategy that focuses on creating personalized campaigns to engage with key decision-makers within those accounts.
ABM prioritizes quality over quantity. That means allocating marketing resources and efforts to specific, high-intent target accounts, understanding their needs, and delivering personalized content and experiences to engage with them effectively.
What makes ABM different from other marketing strategies?
With this strategy, you start at the bottom of the funnel — your target companies. Then you work backward to create content and campaigns for specific people in those organizations.
Instead of going out to all companies in your audience base, you decide who you want to target, research to find out what they're worried about, then offer your solution to that issue or pain point.
Think of traditional marketing as throwing a fishing net into the ocean; you catch whatever is in your path. By contrast, ABM is like throwing a hook with a specific bait you know your ideal fish will love.
Many marketers report that account-based marketing delivers higher ROI compared to other marketing strategies. That’s due to how this approach focuses on building close and long-lasting relationships with customers, besides a greater alignment between marketing and sales teams.
LinkedIn and ABM campaigns
LinkedIn is the ideal network for running clear ABM campaigns. With over 900 million members, it is a goldmine for professionals to connect, share content, and engage with each other.
LinkedIn ads platform provides precise targeting options, allowing you to narrow your audience by job title, company size, industry, location, and more. That means you can create highly-targeted campaigns and reach decision-makers.
So if you want to hone in on your segmentation and get more engagement from the contacts you're going after, LinkedIn Ads is the go-to platform.
ABM campaign strategies on LinkedIn
Now that you understand the importance of ABM and why LinkedIn is a powerful platform for these campaigns, let's explore some practical strategies to implement on LinkedIn:
Identify and prioritize target accounts
The first step in any ABM campaign is identifying and prioritizing your target accounts. Use LinkedIn's advanced search filters to identify accounts that align with your ideal customer profile. Look for the ones likely to convert into customers based on their size, industry, location, and other relevant factors.
Personalize your messaging
Once you have identified your target accounts, craft personalized messaging that resonates with them. Use LinkedIn's InMail feature to send personalized messages not forgetting to highlight how your product or service can address their pain points. Avoid generic templates by using the company’s name in your copy to come even closer to them.
Create engaging content
Create and share high-quality content that provides value to your target accounts. That could include articles, posts, videos, and other formats showcasing your thought leadership and expertise. Use data and insights to create relevant and timely material that show how your company can meet their needs. Make diagnosis, bring use cases from companies that are similar to them, or even address the strategy you would use to help them.
Web personalization and ABM campaigns
One of the main things that make ABM different is personalization. Personalization is a powerful way for brands to maintain a consistent message while tailoring their marketing efforts to their specific audience.
By tracking user interactions with marketing campaigns, you can gain insights into each account's interests and preferences and use this information to create a more meaningful and impactful user experience across all touch points.
Many companies that run ABM campaigns within LinkedIn Ads make a tremendous effort to create super-niched segments, such as targeting a given company staff and showing them ads.
But when the decision maker clicks the ads and enters the website, they see the same version of the page as everyone else. So part of that effort is lost or at least weakened.
Gain autonomy: create an effective personalization plan to increase conversions.
Web personalization strategies to strengthen ABM campaigns
Maximizing ad optimization to reach conversion goals is critical for any ABM ad campaign. To ensure that happens, you shouldn't stop your ABM ads at pre-click optimization — a series of activities between creating an ad and a target clicking it.
You should go as far as optimizing for post-click by improving the components of your website or landing page. Post-click optimization is everything that happens after the user clicks your ad. Both pre and post-click optimizations are necessary to run a successful campaign. That's because running an ad doesn't mean people will click it. And clicking an ad doesn't automatically translate to a conversion.
That's where web personalization comes in.
A user who clicks an ad wants to see the same offer on the landing page, not something different. So making the components of your website personalized to match the messaging on your ads can be the game-changer in your campaign performance.
Here are some strategies to help you implement better personalization in your ABM campaigns:
Segment audience based on account profiles
Segment your audience and create different versions of your landing page, home page, and website content based on your target accounts' profiles. But rather than building different URLs for each audience, you can use dynamic content to provide different versions of the same page in a single URL. That makes optimization easier and less expensive.
Use account-specific messaging
Craft your page's messaging to tailor it to each target account specifically. Reference their company name, industry, pain points, and challenges to show that you understand their unique needs. Use language that resonates with their organization and aligns with their goals.
With a personalization platform like ours, you can create slots to show personalized messages on specific website areas such as the announcement bar, landing page hero, banner section, or home banner.
Wrapping up
Learning which company a person works for based on the marketing campaign that impacted them can lead you to create a version of your website to focus on the specific pains of that organization.
Using Croct, you can create campaign variables that segment your traffic and show personalized content for high-value companies. That increases the chances of turning a huge account into a client.
Ready to boost your ABM personalization campaigns? Create your free account and start today.