1. What are the customer groups you’re trying to reach?
   Every good marketing campaign starts with a clear understanding of the customers and their unique needs and terminology. For example, are you just trying to reach C-Suite executives? Are you looking for plant engineers? Are you looking for heads of maintenance? Can you target more than one group? Using third-party business prospecting or data enrichment services, such as the ones we mentioned above, can be a great first step for companies that don’t have large customer databases. This is especially the case if you’re planning to use e-mail-based, targeted pay-per-click campaigns through LinkedIn, where you must have at least a minimum of 300 individuals in the campaign to proceed, and in most cases only 40 to 60% of your list will be accepted. So, plan ahead and be smart!
2. What’s the best way to reach those customers?
   A growing majority of customers are under the age of 40 and get most of their information through social media platforms, and that often means video of a certain format, visual themes, graphics, etc. However, younger customers still use e-mail. On the other hand, older demographic groups will leverage e-mail extensively for communications but also utilize trade publications and traditional media. In one recent ABM campaign, TECH B2B Marketing started with a series of customer personas, leveraged our databases to find prospects, conducted short e-mail and personal connection campaigns on social media, and concluded with a two-day mailing of a video message on a disposable video screen that can easily be purchased through Amazon and other marketplaces. We found mailing them a disposable video screen for $60.00 was much more effective than a branded power bank, T-shirt, or stress ball.
3. What are your customers’ specific needs?
   Once you have an idea about who your customer groups are and the best way to reach them, you need to identify the specific needs of each group. An executive-level customer is going to be more interested in operational savings and capital expenditures, for instance, while a plant manager or plant engineer might be more interested in total cost of ownership. At this point, you’ll need to develop content and messaging specific to each customer group. Remember in every case: keep it simple, keep it short, and don’t forget the call to action.
4. What messages best address those specific customer needs?
   For older audiences concerned about enterprise operations, white papers or presentations that outline key performance indicators (KPIs) both before and after adopting your solution might be the best approach. For younger engineers, descriptive videos, TikToks, animation, or online events, such as lunch and learns through LinkedIn Live, might be a better approach.
5. How do you measure success?
   Every ABM campaign is unique, but if you have your marketing automation platform set up properly, you can measure every engagement — from PDF downloads and email clicks to social post engagements and which combination of text and keywords resulted in the best Google Ads performance. In most ABM campaigns, the critical goal is getting the target audience to contact the company to start a sales discussion. Each one of those data points will give you insights into how your messaging contributes to that goal on different platforms against each customer group. This makes future efforts more successful while reducing marketing costs.
6. Finally, be smart! How do you get the most from your campaign?
   Most ABM campaigns are limited in scope, targeting a few individuals at a given company. The content generated for that single outreach can be reused and adjusted to apply to the majority of the core messaging for other companies in that industry or even other industries. You should also make sure your goal is manageable. If your campaign’s final step is to enable individual salespeople to reach out by telephone or social media connection, it’s important that the total prospect list is manageable given the sales team’s time and availability. You can do this by increasing or decreasing the required number of engagements to qualify for sales outreach. It doesn’t do any good to generate 1000 leads if you can only engage with 50 over the next 30 days.

With these six tips in mind, you’re ready to start building your first ABM campaign. If you need help, TECH B2B Marketing’s team of business-to-business marketing experts have experience developing successful campaigns for our clients. Contact us today to start planning yours.

Whatever your marketing goals may be, TECH B2B Marketing can help with them all. To learn more about how we can help with your next account-based marketing campaign, contact us today.