What is ABM?

Account based marketing is the new buzzword for SMARKETING people. It is another way of doing marketing campaigns, but this time it is online and super targeted. It is really the same way you do your massive online marketing campaigns but this one is really micro, and it focuses on specific accounts to target ( number of people/businesses). Let’s take the example of a consulting and management training firm. Instead of targeting all the HR, Sales, Marketing, and Quality management professionals, they have decided that they will only target HR managers in Dubai of Banking industry. With this they narrowed the targeted audience to 15-20 people, and they objectives are very clear. They aim to convert 2-3 of them to bring their employees to the Workplace Etiquette and Communication courses; That has to happen before Q1 of next year.

So with this it is small and crisp idea that is controllable. What they are going to do now is profile the audience based on their current database of HR managers in this specific industry. and start building content ideas to take them through the funnel step by step. Choose the best channel, set the KPIs in the measurement framework, and start the campaign. They will monitor, measure and optimize continuously, as it needs a super focused effort to make it work. Because you have a small audience, any deviation from the journeys you have drawn in the beginning, will impact the campaign outcome.

As easy and cool as it sounds, it needs a very careful thinking of how to create the best content ideas to allure the targeted accounts. so maybe it is 15 people we are targeting, they are on twitter , linkedin and youtube. what content types and formats will convince them to move the next step in your funnel, and how can you assist them through that, do you need to drip feed them, or some other tactic. Are there any patterns that you need to pay attention to? All these ideas are valid and will happen at any point in time through their purchase and conversion journey.

You can start testing this now following these steps 

1- Define objectives 
2- define the audience and (map them very well against your findings)

3- define the channels and how to measure.

4- Create and publish your content then launch the campaign.

5- Measure and optimize all the way till you score your goals.