Despite how well optimized your Account-Based Marketing strategy might be, you’re likely missing out on one of the most effective ways to provide ‘air cover’ to your sales team.
Your tech stack might include software to predict buying intent, map your prospect’s org chart and identify key decision makers, deliver personalized emails, personalized landing pages, and personalized direct mail, all while automatically orchestrating a multi-channel, multiplayer outbound process, but how are you leveraging the account-based opportunities within LinkedIn?
You may be taking advantage of LinkedIn advertising to broadcast a few generic ads at a targeted group of individuals, but you’re likely using this channel to simply increase awareness (raise your hand if you’re seeing CTR’s higher than 0.9%), or are hoping for a few random leads to convert so you can hand them over to get nurtured.
When you advertise on LinkedIn in this fashion, you get what you get. That’s not ABM, that’s FCM (Fingers Crossed Marketing).
It is not widely known but it is possible to create account-based ads for account-based audiences on LinkedIn, and there are several benefits in doing so:
1). Your CTR’s will get a shot of adrenaline. The most valuable offering you can give to your prospects is to let them know that they’re in the right place. When you visit most websites, before you even try to figure out what they do, you want to know if what they do is something that can help you. A site that starts with a statement like “the best way to X for companies who do Y” is a good example.
Your LinkedIn ads are no different. Don’t make your audience guess if there is value to them in clicking your ad, assure them that there is. In fact, LinkedIn allows you to call them out by name… “The best way to X for Company Y”.
2). You know which accounts are worth chasing. Let’s say you’re crushing it in the CTR department. Can you tell me who is clicking? Exactly. With an account-based advertising strategy, every click is associated with the account that the ad was meant for. Every time that ad gets clicked, you know where the click came from.
This will help to streamline your outbound efforts. If you’re running 50 ads for 50 accounts, your team can prioritize their efforts around the accounts who are showing the most interest. From an ‘air cover’ perspective, this is a great way to enhance the effectiveness of your other efforts (phone calls, emails, etc.). By getting all around an account and providing value to them regardless of the channel, the likelihood of connecting is significantly improved.
Using a solution like Outreach simplifies and standardizes the orchestration of all your multi-channel efforts.
3). Your ads can adjust to match your sales stages. You might initially get some interest (and even a few meetings) based on your first round of ads, but perhaps you’re told that no decision will be made for the next few months.
Your first ad may have pointed to some general interest content, maybe some light literature to create the need for your solution, but now that they’ve seen the light, you need to ensure that when the time comes to make a decision, that their only logical choice is you.
During the time in between, you’ll obviously want to stay in touch but the 2-way communication during this stage is usually on their terms, not yours. You can email your internal champion with some more in depth collateral, but you can’t rely on this being shared around.
By making some later-stage collateral available in your later-stage account-based ads, you’ll be giving others at the account an opportunity to learn more about your solution without relying on your internal champion (or stepping on their toes).
We learned early on that not everyone is ready to implement the complete strategy associated with account-based ads on LinkedIn. Some of our clients chose to focus on getting more lead conversions from their ads (which they got) but were not taking advantage of the account-based insights in order to focus their sales efforts on their high priority accounts. The good news is that they can build towards this over time. Like many of the best practices for ABM, it is wise to take a “crawl, walk, run” approach.
There is no silver bullet with ABM. Success is derived from a carefully planned and optimized schedule of strategic touch points with a consistent cadence. Launching an account-based ad in isolation and expecting replicable results is like leaving a single voicemail and expecting the same.
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