Account Based Engagement- to win more & bigger deals!
(But before we dive in, tell me- Why does the B2B marketing band only have backup vocals? – Common! give it a thought and you shall get an answer by the end of this article)
A quick glance at ABM-
Account-based marketing has been around for years and is being used as a silver bullet in B2B marketing. While prioritizing ideal accounts, we often use demographics, technographics, or firmographics for segmentation to redefine or align our target audience.
We know the best way to execute an ABM strategy is through Intent marketing & strategic alignment between sales and marketing that leads to notable achievements.
Learn more about Best Account-Based Marketing Tactics To Boost Your Buyer Engagement
But what is ABE?
Account based engagement is a sure-fire process to deliver highly personalized and integrated customer journeys and customer experiences.
ABE is a hyper-focused approach and demands a tighter alignment and integration between marketing, sales, and service, as the accounts interact with the businesses through various departments and at multiple levels, enclosing all the aspects of customer engagement from getting accounts to accelerating pipelines, retain customers, and develop sales.
In ABE we develop a close relationship with the focused accounts along with all the members of the buying center involved in it, including all the customer-facing teams- making it H2H (Human-to-Human) marketing instead of B2B marketing.
H2H marketing helps you build trust & maintain a real relationship with your ICs (ideal customers). Forrester calls this being “customer obsessed.”
Types of ABE- Strategic ABE & Scaled ABE
Strategic ABE is focused on the alliance between the company & its largest and most strategic customers, which goes beyond sales to bolster mutually beneficial engagement between the company and its key customers.
Strategic ABE is a one-to-one approach and is more sales-led while Scaled ABE, is a one-to-many or one-to-few account- approach led by the marketing team.
ABE micro segmentation-
Before you start marketing to our set of focused accounts, you need to spend a week or two researching their market, and their competitors, commenting on their social channels, and generally following them digitally.
After analyzing, we look at the accounts (like Chandler looks at Monica) with the perspective of “A real, valuable and successful relationship” with combining Intent marketing & optimizing intent data, we execute hyper-focus content syndication programs through various channels.
This helps marketing and sales to be in the same orbit which enables us to engage with the customers effectively. We closely navigate the decision-makers and influencers to capture their intent through behavioral activities on multiple levels.
Manlitics uses a mix of intent data & H+ MAAS (human+ machine as a service) to target a broader range of account sizes. It requires, not only to be customer-focused but to aim at ultra-personalization and zealous content, be it from the ‘top of the funnel’ to the ‘bottom of the funnel’ and even after!
Accelerating from ABM to ABE-
This acceleration is fuelled by the amalgamation of various departments and their processes with being executed as one solidarity approach for successful-focused targeting and personalized nurturing which again comes back to customer experience and customer retention.
The more narrowly you focus, the better, which is counterintuitive to how marketers these days should approach ABE.
At the end of the day ‘numbers talk’ for themselves but appropriate engagement is important, realign your divulgatory perspective: ABE will yield results through insights, and insights come only when you pay attention to the details.
For example- monitor if they hit a “like” on LinkedIn, share their thoughts on Twitter, publish an article, comment on blogs, and so on.
The prospects you want to connect with are making their needs known- all loud and clear but only to those who are ready to listen, empathize and help with their real challenges.
Manlitics H+ MAAS is your key to success-
We believe that it’s time, we reconsider and understand our customer’s needs which are now evolved, with time. Manish (CEO- of Manalytics) shared- ‘this is the time we focus on solving real customer challenges (for instance- how the buyer can get the most value, rather than on how our products or services are the most valuable) while also understanding the business strategy which will ensure that we are enriching while benefiting both- our customers and our businesses at the same time!’
The blend of ABE & Analytics H+ MAAS right up front is your surest path to success. We help you build empathic account relationships with your customers and use personalization to capture their intention and orchestrate the interactions.
Manlitics engages with hundreds of prospects in 1-to-1 conversations while trying to understand their pain points and offer a valuable solution molded to suffice their business needs. That’s true personalization!
Let’s define success together! After all, Innovation needs collaboration!
(Oh… I almost forgot to answer- Why does the B2B marketing band only have backup vocals? Because they have trouble getting “qualified leads”)
Author- Shivani Zade