Account Based Content Marketing for Professional ServicesWith the help of account-based content marketing, your marketing department and digital marketing agency can focus on a specific group of accounts or clients. This allows you create hyper-personalized, targeted content that speaks directly to their needs and describes how your product can solve them.ABM content that is successful must provide the correct information to each stakeholder in the buyer's centre at the right time. This involves identifying the needs of each person at different stages of their journey.Targeting specific accountsUnlike traditional content strategies that aim to attract and convert strangers into leads using broad marketing campaigns, account-based content marketing focuses on interacting with specific accounts in a highly personal way. Marketers can create and present relevant content by identifying and understanding the key decision makers in each account, their issues and goals. This can lead to a more productive dialogue with customers and prospects, which ultimately leads to better business results.After identifying your accounts of interest You must then develop account plans for each one. This involves analyzing each account and determining the marketing channels that should be utilized and the customers within each account to engage, and what type of content is required to drive engagement. This may include thought leadership content (e.g. whitepapers webinars, case studies, or whitepapers), retargeting ads, personalized experiences on websites and other marketing strategies that are customized to each customer.In the end, account based content marketing is able to provide a much better ROI than traditional content marketing strategies. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers who have incorporated account-based marketing in their strategy report higher returns on investment than any other marketing effort.While it takes more time and resources to nurture only a few target accounts but the advantages of an account-based content marketing approach are vital for businesses that want to grow revenue throughout all stages of the sales funnel. This is especially true for professional service businesses in which the quality of their customers or prospects is more important than the number of people they can draw.In addition, ABM is a great choice for companies that wish to grow their business with existing customers by building trusting relationships over time. Research has proven that it's far more cost effective to invest in retaining existing customers than to spend money trying to locate and convert new ones.Combining ABM with inbound marketing methods can maximize the impact on content marketing. Marketers can make their content more relevant to potential customers at every stage of the buying process by using pillar content in conjunction with retargeting and landing pages to facilitate lead capture. This enables them to create more acquisition, acceleration, and expansion revenue opportunities for their marketing and sales teams.Create Hyper-Personalized ContentABM is among the hottest trends in marketing, and it's important for marketers to know how their current content strategies fit into this new approach. It can be hard to comprehend how ABM actually is working. In a recent talk at ContentTECH, Jenny Magic and Jennalee Reiff of Convince & Convert and Springbox gave a quick overview on ABM and explained the most important aspects to consider and what to expect from a successful execution.Understanding your ideal client's goals and issues is the first step to developing an effective ABM strategy. Producing content that aligns with these objectives will allow you to provide a personalized experience, which will ultimately improve conversions. The content you create must be tailored to the specific requirements of each account. This is why it is important to map out the journey of people in each of your accounts. By doing this, you'll be able determine what kinds of content (and even specific pages and items) are most popular with these people. This data can be used to optimize the user experience on your site, showing the most popular content to users who visit these accounts.Making content that is hyper-personalized isn't easy but it's an essential step to increase the effectiveness of your ABM efforts. According to State of Marketing 2023, 83% of people are willing to provide their personal information in exchange for a more personalised experience.One method to create hyper-personalized content is to use AI processing of real-time data. This can help you control the way your content is distributed and make suggestions for the next steps and respond to events immediately. While it cannot replace your multivariate testing or strategic planning, this is a great instrument to improve the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns.Another method to personalize your content is to utilize the pillar and cluster content structure. This lets you create a full piece that explains the issue your targeted accounts face, and then connect it to additional pieces that address specific aspects of that problem. Fitness trackers, for instance can have a variety of common goals and benefits, but the way that different people use them could be very different.Getting Sales and Marketing AlignedProfessional services marketers have traditionally focused on creating a linear sales channel using broad marketing campaigns to draw large numbers of people in the hopes that a portion of them would become converts. This strategy might have worked in the past when B2B marketing employed a more broadcast-based model, but it's no longer effective in today's Account Based Marketing strategy. Instead of trying to force all leads through the same stage of the process, it's important to concentrate on attracting high-value prospects and provide them with experiences and content that are tailored to their individual needs and challenges.The first step is to establish your ideal client profile. This isn't as simple as creating buyer personas since you need to take into account the types of solutions that customers are seeking and how they will be utilized.Once you have identified your ICP then, create a strategy for content that can be linked with each account across several channels. This could range from social media ads to email outreach.When you are beginning to implement your ABM strategy, it's essential to keep your marketing and sales teams on the same page. This will help ensure that your content is relevant to each account, so that you don't spend time and resources attracting the wrong audience.One of the most important steps to take is to utilize the information you have on your best-performing clients. You can identify positive attributes that your customers have in common by analyzing their historical data. For example, they may all belong to the financial services industry or have a similar company size. This information can be used to design targeted marketing campaigns for similar prospects.It's also important to track your ABM strategy's performance and make any necessary changes. If your targeted account doesn't respond to your content, you might need to reach out to see what you can do to move them down the sales funnel. If you take these steps you'll be able to improve your ABM strategy and content strategies better aligned, which will ultimately aid in generating more conversions.Measuring the successAccount-based content marketing is about creating content, such as blogs, videos, reports, and webinars, that are relevant and tailored for a specific persona or account. If content marketing funnel aiming to reach healthcare businesses, for example your content must be centered around their pain points and issues. This level of personalization is not just essential in ABM however, it's a great way to build strong relationships with your prospects and customers.The greatest benefit of ABM is that it can be used throughout the sales funnel. It can be even more efficient than traditional lead generation at the top of a funnel. This is because you can identify and engage with a small number accounts that are more likely to convert than trying generate leads from an audience that may not be interested.Although there is still a need for offline relationships-building strategies like in-person meetings, phone calls and handwritten notes, most customers nowadays prefer digital self-service and remote engagement. It's essential to provide the right content at the right moment and using the channel they prefer.ABM is particularly effective at engaging executives in the C-suite who are difficult to reach. They tend to ignore mass email campaigns, but are more likely respond to content that speaks to their requirements and uses instances. In addition, ABM can help you accelerate sales by enabling you to connect with prospects and keep them engaged at crucial points in their journey, for instance, when they're looking into solutions to address a specific business problem.ABM isn't as old as traditional selling and marketing strategies, but it's quickly becoming a top strategy for B2B companies looking to boost performance and increase revenue. In fact, 76% of marketers who have adopted the ABM approach say it improves ROI, while 81% report that it increases deal close rates and upselling/cross-selling rates.