ABM focuses on your company’s most profitable prospects, but who’s on the list is only the start. It’s also critical that your company creates meaningful outreach with offers relevant to each prospect’s specific pain points. And that means developing a hyper-targeted content plan for the entire sales cycle.
Here are some things to keep in mind.
- First, if your company hasn’t outlined the prospect journey and a story arc, complete it before you kick off ABM. Look at your objectives (meetings, sales, etc.) and then starting from the first communication until closed/won, think through what a prospect needs to hear from day one all the way until the day they sign the deal.
- Once the story arc is complete, develop content that meets each stage. For top of funnel prospects, you probably want to start with educational content. Later, once the prospect understands the benefit, your content can focus on how to get started, find a solution and get executive buy in.
- Offers and content built in a vacuum or sent because they’re easy to write won’t feel personal. So, don’t be tempted to use sales materials or just recycle what you have on hand because account-based experiences will fail.
- Stumped? Visit your competitors’ sites for inspiration. You can’t copy their content and you won’t be able to pull metrics on what works, but reviewing their content usually inspires some ideas of what to write (and maybe what doesn’t make sense).
- Here’s my usual list of content to get you inspired:
- 2 minute Video – a quick intro into what problems your company solves. This is particularly useful on your website and in your intro email.
- Introduction to X – a guide to what the pain point is that your product addresses and the impact on companies like your prospects
- Dollars and Sense – an asset that covers the cost of the problem your product addresses and what the ROI is of solving it
- A Definitive Guide – a full explanation of the problems your product addresses and best practices to solve those problems. This is a good piece on its own and later can be broken into one topic cheat sheets.
- Selling to the C-Suite – an asset that tells how to make the business case for your product
- Case Studies – videos, PDFs or blogs that cover how your customers are using your product and the return they are getting.
- Pilot Guide or Implementation Checklist – If implementing your product can be intimidating, a guide can show customers how to prepare and why it’s easier than they think
- And once you have your content developed, don’t forget to track engagement especially on how it moves score up or closes deals. Check out this blog on how to set objectives.
Authors:
Diptii Tiiku, Senior Director of Marketing, Ridecell
Jackie Walts, Principal, Jackie Walts Consulting