Landing high-paying clients takes effort. It means doing your homework to understand their particular needs and pain points, plus concentrating your efforts around targeting them better.

Account-based marketing (ABM) has grown to become a popular marketing strategy for agencies looking to reach high-value clients. By focusing resources on a set of target accounts and driving personalized campaigns designed to engage each account respectively, agencies can base their messaging around the specific attributes of each prospective client.

To do so, account-based marketing requires the alignment of sales and marketing teams. For ABM to work, both teams need to identify high-value prospects (sales through prospecting, marketing through lead-gen), then create appropriate messaging and content tailored to them. Think: creating ad content for a single person.

Rather than casting a wide net or creating generic messaging for a large audience, ABM focuses on an account's unique characteristics and tailors the right message to them. Some benefits of putting in the effort. You can:

• Maximize your business relevance among high-value accounts

• Streamline your sales cycle

• Deliver consistent customer experiences

• Optimize your marketing ROI

• Expand your agency through account relationships

How to create an account-based marketing strategy

Understanding the B2B buying cycle is critical to developing an account-based strategy. Ultimately the B2B buying process is complex and often involves many decision makers deliberating on multiple pieces of content accessed across many different touchpoints. It can take months or even years to close a high-ticket deal.

To create an effective account-based marketing strategy, you need to define the goals of your ABM efforts and begin aligning internal teams, management and systems. Here are a few tips to get started:

01. Ensure sales and marketing are aligned

ABM requires finely tuned alignment between sales and marketing to make sure account-level targeting is accurate and effective. A pod model is beneficial for tuning in to the needs of each specific account. It's also helpful to have regular meetings as you establish revenue goals, assign roles and responsibilities, and onboard the technology needed to facilitate this approach.

02. Identify the best target accounts

To accurately target prospects, you’ll need to define your ideal account profiles and build customer personas to help visualize who you're selling to. Analyzing customer data will help you identify key account characteristics such as size of the account, industry, geographic location, and revenue potential.

Take the time to identify each account's needs, preferences, decision makers and other relevant information. This will be the blueprint you need to begin creating personalized content and identifying tactics that resonate with each account.

03. Map the customer journey

Map out each account's customer journey to better understand how they interact with your business. Review existing accounts to identify the content types, channels and formats your customers engage with throughout the buying process.

You should also research new trends in how B2B buyers identify and select vendors. A key takeaway from DemandGen’s 2022’s B2B buyer behavior report is that buyers often reach out to peers and existing users when evaluating a new solution. But the truth is, the B2B buying journey often isn’t linear. Buyers use multiple touchpoints, interactions and content types along a given journey, often circling back before bringing information to the buying group.

04. Leverage account-based marketing tactics

Once you have an account-level understanding of who you’re targeting, there are a number of account-based marketing tactics you can use to engage prospects and increase conversions.

These include developing account-specific content like whitepapers, webinars and video demos. You can also use paid media and targeted marketing campaigns such as sending personalized emails, running account specific ads and social media advertising.

05. Leverage automation to deliver relevant content

Marketers are increasingly using intent data to automate and personalize account-based marketing activities. You can use this data to identify accounts that are researching topics related to your product or service and target them with relevant content. Automation tools also allow you to send personalized messages at the right time based on account activity, such as website visits, white paper downloads or account registrations.

06. Measure and analyze your ABM results

Account-based marketing requires testing and experimentation to be successful. To optimize your account-based strategy, you need to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as account engagement, account penetration, account growth and account retention.

By tracking and analyzing account-based metrics, you’ll have an accurate measure of your account-based marketing program’s success and can make data-driven decisions to improve your approach. Analyzing account engagement will also help you understand what content and campaigns work best for each account so that you can fine tune your strategy.

Secure organizational ABM alignment

For ABM to work, it must be embraced and supported by everyone in your organization, up to and including your executive team. It often involves a culture shift, merging disciplines and skills from different teams and aligning efforts to achieve an organizational goal.

Account-based marketing is not a quick fix; it requires dedication and commitment to a long-term strategy. But when done right, ABM is an incredibly effective way to reach high-value prospects and increase conversions.