account-based marketing content strategy Archives

We all know a good experience can make all the difference. An impressive customer service experience, a negative experience browsing a website — a good or bad experience can ultimately make or break someone’s purchasing decision. And as marketers, we’re in the business of experiences — it’s our job to make people feel heard, help them get educated, and pique their curiosity enough to want to know more about how we can help them solve their biggest challenges.

To create and generate demand, we need to invest in the experience. I know this can be daunting, and you might not even know where to start. But building remarkable experiences that drive your buyers to take action does not have to be difficult.

Our customer Mindtickle has made the commitment to invest in its experience and we have seen it firsthand pay off big. Below are 7 examples of ways their marketing teams is using digital experiences to educate buyers, generate pipeline, and close revenue.

Build a resource center that updates based on your buyer’s browsing behaviors and interests

Create a resource center (Content Hub) mapped to your solution areas and content pillars to drive organic traffic. Then layer in first party and intent data to customize the experience for target accounts. Mindtickle is using Demandbase to serve the right content based on factors like stage of the journey, industry, and intent.

2. Create event experiences to leverage on-site and as part of the follow-up experience

There is a lot that goes into events and they are typically a large investment. Mindtickle develops custom event destinations to leverage at every stage of the event lifecycle.

Pre-Event	During Event	Post-Event
Develop an experience with content and ‘know before you go’ details. Make sure there is a way for someone to book a meeting.	Instead a carrying around a bunch of collateral with you or sharing a bunch of links you can build a digital experience. Not only will it make it easier for buyers to learn about your brand with everything in one place. You can also track exactly what they are looking at.	Once the event is over, curate follow-upmaterials and provide an opportunity to book a meeting. Set up notifications for you sales team if target accounts are engaging with the experience post-event.

Pro tip! Make sure to add a chatbot to the event
experience so you can chat with prospects in real-time.

3. Turn your email nurture programs into an experience

Curating email nurture destinations is an amazing way to drive content consumption and accelerate the buyer’s journey. Content is at the center of every nurture so it only makes sense to package up it all and curate it into a digital destination where your prospects can binge.

You can serve up tailored content recommendations, and provide the option to request a demo if they are loving what they are seeing.

4. Get personal with your ABM programs in a scalable way

Technology really is a wonderful thing! Mindtickle uses Hushly to build ABM pages to engage target accounts at scale. They could easily swap in account logos, headline, descriptions, videos, and even the sales reps headshot and content information.

Then as accounts visit the experience they dynamically swap out content and copy based on variables such as segment, buying stage, industry, country, etc. They even added a chatbot on the page so their sales reps can speak to prospects when they hit the page.

5. Level up your website experience with content recommendations that change as your buyers engage

Leveraging Hushly’s content embeds Mindtickle placed content across all their key website and landing pages to ensure their buyer’s always found the information they were looking for.

The best part! The content would dynamically swap in and out based on custom account segments they built in Demandbase based on buying stage, industry, and page topic. Once they added this functionality they noticed the velocity across buying stages accelerated by approximately 20% (Read MIndtickle case study).

6. Accelerate opportunities with buyer’s toolkit that adapts to their needs

Last but not least (this one is our favorite). The marketing team was asked to help sales educate and accelerate opportunities that were getting stuck in the sales process. The team came up with the idea to build out what they call the buyer’s toolkit to support pipeline acceleration.

They curated solution overviews, datasheets, case studies, product videos, and more, to ensure buyer’s had all the information they needed to make a decision.

As soon as someone entered the sales process, the experience would automatically begin to distribute across the right channels. They serve it up across sales reps email signatures, on LinkedIn, and in display ads.

Experience drives demand. Period.

Hopefully, these examples of ABM and demand experiences have gotten your gears turning about how you can switch things up to better personalize and scale your marketing programs. It’s time to get creative and build experiences throughout the buyer’s journey that not only engage your buyers but also help you drive demand and sell your product.

Content is an essential component of every successful account-based marketing strategy.

You need ABM content marketing to:

Familiarize key accounts with your company, product/services, and culture.
Demonstrate your industry authority and expertise.
Empower leads to solve problems, research, and address pain points.
Help customers use your product/services and solve problems as they arise.

Since content is so vital to the ROI and success of your ABM strategy, it’s important to take your content marketing strategy seriously as well.

Less than half of B2Bs classify their content marketing as “sophisticated.” However, 92% of B2Bs say they’re running an ABM strategy. This implies that plenty of organizations are relying on generic, low-quality, or unfocused content to fuel their ABM – not good.

7 Mistakes Holding Back Your ABM Content Marketing Results

Ten years ago, ABM wasn’t available to small startups and mid-size companies. Most companies have only had ABM strategies in place for less than five years.

Five years is nowhere near enough time to structure, launch, and fully optimize your ABM content marketing. Even tech giants like Microsoft still adjusts, changes, and updates to their ABM strategies and tactics.

1. No Coherent and Scalable Strategy

Only 21% of B2Bs with the least successful content marketing have a documented strategy. However, 60% of B2Bs with high-performing content definitely do.

A documented strategy is crucial for ABM content marketing success because so much hinges on research. Specifically, your strategy must explain in detail who you’re targeting, keywords, pain points, promotion channels, and more.

An editorial calendar is essential for bringing your content marketing strategy to life. Only half of B2Bs with low-success content marketing use an editorial calendar but a whopping 80% of high-performers do.

Your editorial calendar puts your content strategy into action.

Make sure your content marketing strategy is scalable too. Once you publish content and track your ABM results, you’ll need to pivot and adapt. Certain accounts and roles will require more attention, others less.

2. Unclear ABM Content Marketing Goals

You should already have goals mapped out for your general ABM strategy. However, you can’t just transfer them over to content marketing and hope to deliver ROI.

Everyone wants more leads and sales. Those goals aren’t specific enough to drive a successful ABM content marketing strategy.

Consider your distinct goals for each account, stage of the journey, and role when you create every piece of content. What action do you want the reader/viewer/listener to take after consuming each piece of content?

3. Creating the Wrong Types of Content for Each Segment

Even within each account, different roles need specific types of content at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Unfortunately, 66% of buyers say companies already provide too much content and most of it is totally useless.

Buyers need content that empowers them. They definitely don’t want product promotions, long-form content, and sales pitches.

Instead, focus on product comparisons, podcasts, videos, and concise eBooks. Do your research though. Figure out who you’re targeting within each account and what type of content they’d prefer.

Your goal is to make their job easier through content.

4. Neglecting Pain Points in Your ABM Content Marketing

How can you show accounts that your organization is capable of solving their problems? ABM content marketing solves their problems.

68% of buyers say they’d like to see content organized by pain point on your website so it’s easy to find exactly what they need seamlessly.

Use your content to give away your expertise and advice. Every organization has individual experts in certain fields. Put their experience and skill into your content.

Keyword research is useful for identifying pain points and problems. Long-tail keywords are especially handy for understanding the context behind each search.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and other forum-type websites – especially anonymous ones – offer a glimpse into the mind of your target audience segments. Look for ways to apply the research to your ABM content.

5. No Personalized and Interactive Interface

Your accounts simply don’t have time for generic and unengaging content.

Leads don’t want to search through your blog and landing pages for something relevant. They know the technology exists to create a hyper-personalized content recommendation experience and they expect you to deliver it.

It’s no surprise that nearly 70% of B2Bs say they expect an Amazon-like experience from business websites.

Your content experience should offer personalized content recommendations based on browsing behavior and intent data. Interactive elements are important too for encouraging engagement and spending more time on your site.

6. Untargeted and Generic Landing Pages

Traditional landing pages just don’t work for ABM: They’re static and purposely generic to appeal to a wide audience.

Instead, use dynamic technology to offer a personalized experience. Hushly’s special ABM tool, for example, lets you design hyper-personalized landing pages for each account complete with their logo, branding, content, and unique offers.

Artificial intelligence detects which account each visitor belongs to and provides them a personalized landing page.

7. Gating All Your ABM Content Marketing

When you fully gate all your content, everything you’ve invested into your ABM content marketing goes to waste.

Not everyone is prepared to hand over their email address the first time they interact with your brand. They need some convincing first if you want to earn a spot in their valuable inbox real estate.

How can they learn to trust your business if they can’t consume any of your content?

Instead, either allow your visitors to consume all your content freely or offer decent samples so they can see what they’re getting before they commit. You can still collect emails but with much smaller (and smarter) microforms and your leads won’t feel bribed into providing their contact info.

Give Each Account the Personalized Web Experience They Expect

When accounts arrive at your website, what type of experience do you provide? Do you offer dynamic content personalized for every account or generic content for different industries?

Hushly’s platform accelerates your ABM content marketing with a hyper-personalized and interactive experience for each visitor. Instead of traditional landing pages, Hushly pages detect the specific company of each visitor to provide personalized branding, content marketing, promotions, and other tools.

Learn how Hushly’s innovative ABM-specific dynamic landing pages work.