How can Account Based Marketing help SaaS businesses generate more leads?
3rd July 2017
It’s very easy to spend large chunks of marketing budget on broad brush campaigns, which seem to generate brand awareness, but ultimately don’t convert into pipeline. To increase the ROI on campaigns, many SaaS businesses are turning to Account Based Marketing (ABM) as a more effective way to generate leads.
What is Account Based Marketing?
Something of a ‘buzzword’ in the marketing industry at the moment, ABM is a targeted approach to promotional campaigns. Instead of creating generic materials to send to a large number of prospects, Account Based Marketing focuses on sending personalised communications to one particular target company. So rather than targeting banks for example a campaign would just target HSBC. Typically, there would be many individual people within one company you would want to target.
The principles and techniques of SaaS ABM are the same as any other marketing campaign; however, the content and messaging is much more bespoke to the individual challenges and opportunities of the target business.
Some SaaS companies will launch an Account Based Marketing campaign from scratch, if there is a certain prospect or business they really want to target. Others will begin with a broader marketing campaign, before creating tailored content and communications for high engaging prospects.
Which SaaS products are best suited to Account Based Marketing?
Account Based Marketing is really a tool for targeting enterprise companies. Creating personalised content is a greater investment than general campaigns, both in terms of time and cost, and therefore the pay-off needs to be worth it. Any SaaS companies considering ABM should look to implement it when approaching a company that has a significant technology budget to invest.
Within enterprise companies, often there are multiple decision makers that can influence whether a new technology is chosen. Therefore, it is worth considering how personalised content can be shared with multiple personnel, and if the core message needs to be adapted, depending on their job title.
What does a successful Account Based Marketing campaign look like?
Typically, the ABM process begins by identifying a target company or companies, and the key personnel within that business that need to be influenced. It’s important to put careful research in at this stage, to gain a deep understanding not just of who these influencers are, but their daily challenges and priorities. This is what will make sure content resonates.
The next step is to create suitable content to communicate with those key targets. Each piece should be underpinned by detailed insight, and feel like it is offering real value to that particular prospect. With such a small list of targets, it is important to invest in good quality content, which is visually appealing to strike an immediate impact.
From there, SaaS companies need to develop a marketing communications plan, to ensure that content reaches the people it needs to, quickly and effectively. It may be worth launching campaigns across digital and physical channels, as some prospects will respond better to one method of communication and vice versa.
Finally, it is vitally important to measure the results of Account Based Marketing campaigns as they are being executed. This is carefully constructed, high stakes marketing, and therefore businesses need to track which activities are generating the most engagement to ensure ROI.
Launch your Account Based Marketing campaign with Xander Marketing
If ABM sounds like an appealing approach but you’re not confident about executing it in-house, Xander Marketing can help your business to reach valuable enterprise company prospects.
Our outsourced marketing packages support every level of maturity – from companies just starting out on a promotional journey, to organisations with great basic techniques and a need to turbocharge enterprise lead generation.
Book your free 30 minute consultation to find out more.
