Account-based marketing (ABM) – what does it mean for your organization? For some, it’s solely focusing on their target accounts. For others, it’s utilizing data to the maximum and executing things accordingly. The type of ABM you implement depends on the type of your organization and the organizational goals.
But when it comes to ABM, one thing is always key- personalization at scale. Personalization is a huge part of ABM and it sets ABM apart from all the other different marketing strategies. In this blog, we’re going to dive deeper into the subject of personalization at scale in ABM.
What is personalization at scale?
56% of marketers agree that personalized content is the key to ABM success. [Source: Forrester]
Personalization at scale in ABM is connecting with your target accounts on a personal level, launching campaigns that target their pain points, that speak to them, and basically creating an individual experience for them in the ABM journey. If done correctly, it is basically the balancing act of launching the right content at the right time for all your target accounts.
How do you achieve personalization at scale?
42% of organizations struggle to personalize at scale for target accounts. [Source: Linkedin]
Achieving personalization at scale can be tricky. While it might be easy to personalize your outreach efforts to a few of your target accounts, the challenge lies in scaling them, making your outreach efforts that can cater to many of your accounts but feel like they’re exclusively created for the few. So how do you do that? Here are some things you can do:
- Pay attention to your data
In order to launch personalized campaigns toward your target accounts, it’s important to gather data, pay attention to them, and look at what they reveal. Start gathering information on your target accounts from your first-party data and then formulate your personalization strategy accordingly. Ask questions like “What content are they engaging the most to?”, “What are their key challenges?”, and “How are they similar or different from their competitors?”. FIrst-party data are an important source of information because they easily reveal more about the target accounts. As a starting point, you can use the best quality data sets that you have already gathered to form meaningful hypotheses to test and learn from. The data thus gathered can be easily used by the sales team to incorporate personalization in their messaging.
- Insight matters
While first-party data is a great source to start understanding your target accounts better, insight gathered from desk research can be extremely useful too. First-party data won’t provide a deep-dive insight into your target accounts and that’s why insight matters. To achieve personalization at scale, Business Brainz provides brief insight reports on your target accounts that can help you understand them better and implement your outreach efforts accordingly. These aren’t full-fledged one-to-one account insight reports but rather a cluster insight on your similar target accounts. Learn more about our offerings here.
- Ensure a good flow of relevant content
After you gather a better understanding of your target accounts, you need to have relevant content that you can share with them. Create content that is related to the kind that they are consuming. These could be use cases, case studies, blogs, playbooks, etc. that can help the target accounts understand your solutions better and see if it aligns with what they are looking for. You can even go further than this by creating extremely personalized content for the account that is engaging with your content.
- Align your sales and marketing teams
Personalization at scale can’t always be achieved through marketing efforts alone. When it comes to ABM, an alignment between the sales team and the marketing team is crucial. While marketing touchpoints offer a lot of opportunities for personalization, it is the salespeople that have the most contact with the prospects. It is important for both teams to meet frequently and share whatever knowledge they have and the content they’ve created. Only then an alignment will be formed and it will be easier to achieve personalization at scale.
- Explore and personalize different channels
You’ve done your research. You’ve got your content sorted. Your teams are aligned as well. Now what? Just as important as these factors are, exploring and personalizing channels are also equally important. From email to paid ads to direct mail, there are multiple channels out there. In order to achieve personalization at scale, look into various channels, find where your target accounts are spending the most of their time, and promote the account experience you’re going to deliver through them.
Why do we need personalization at scale?
Personalization, when done well, may instantly generate influence and revenue while also improving consumer experiences. While immediate effects can be seen in a matter of months when adopting personalization at scale, it can definitely have a long-term positive impact on the business as well as your target account’s satisfaction. According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers react positively to personalized experiences. ABM is anything but a one-fits-all approach. Personalization at scale helps your outreach effort become more meaningful to your target accounts, creates a better engagement, and eventually expedites your selling process.
What are the different levels of personalization in ABM?
While ABM has been here for many years and evolved, it all started with the one-to-one ABM (strategic ABM). Then it evolved into one-to-few ABM (ABM Lite), and then one-to-many ABM (Programmatic ABM). When it comes to the level of personalization in ABM, it all depends on the type of ABM. A high level of personalization is required in one-to-one ABM whereas the level decreases with one-to-few and one-to-many respectively.
When it comes to Business Brainz’s offering, we offer bespoke, deep-dive, and highly detailed account and industry reports for one-to-one ABM and less detailed ones for one-to-few/ one-to-many (cluster) ABM. Our brief account insight profiles are extremely helpful in understanding your cluster target accounts and achieving personalization at scale.
Conclusion:
To sum up, striking the personalization chord in ABM is not as easy as it sounds. But with the right insight, it can be. To sum up, the level of personalization at scale varies according to the type of ABM you’re implementing. However, be it one-to-one, one-to-few, or even one-to-many ABM, there are always certain things to be mindful of. Pay attention to your data, gather accurate and fact-based insight, ensure a good flow of relevant content, align your sales and marketing teams, and explore and personalize different channels.
Are you looking to personalize your ABM at scale? Feel free to have a quick look at our reports to know how our insight can help you scale your ABM programs.