Delivering ABM strategy using LinkedIn marketing
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a term, which if you’re a marketeer, you will no doubt have come across. ABM enables you to evolve the role of marketing and create a stronger alignment with both customers and sales objectives, delivering better execution and ROI. It helps you:
- Concentrate on the best opportunities
- Support the sales reality, bridging the gap between marketing and sales
- Deliver customer centric highly personalised experiences
- Connect marketing programs to revenue, to see actual results.
There are many platforms available for you to use when it comes to ABM but making the decision on which tool to use can be a bit overwhelming. One of the key outcomes when using an ABM focused approach is how you set and measure your goals. You need to supply your teams with relevant data, showcasing details such as how many unique target accounts engaged and which content they digested. There are many ways to do this, but let us look at one platform today, LinkedIn marketing.
Why should you consider using LinkedIn in your ABM strategy?
Like many platforms, unless you are fully immersed in the LinkedIn marketing experience 24/7, it can take a while to catch up on all the latest additions. In this instance we are going to focus on the Company Targeting feature. Whilst it is not new, it is one you should consider adding to your B2B marketeer’s toolkit. If you have not yet looked at it yet, read on and we, your friendly LinkedIn marketing agency, will bring you up to speed.
We know that ABM excels under certain conditions, and LinkedIn marketing features lend themselves perfectly to helping you meet these:
- Effective identification of key accounts
- Detailed research into the profile of each account
- Tailored engagement of each account across multiple channels
- Tracking, analysis of data and adjustment
- Results fed into the mix for a few new cycle to begin.
Its Company Targeting option enables you to reach exactly who you need to, allowing you to match your target company account list against 850 million professional contacts available through LinkedIn Marketing. But that is not all it can do. Detailed research is easy due to the rich data it holds on accounts. Helping you to target accounts based on professional demographics, reaching those key people who actually make the buying decisions.
If you are planning a product launch, running an event, looking to rebrand or you are even only just starting to move to an ABM approach, LinkedIn marketing is an ideal platform for you.
What can you do with Company Targeting on LinkedIn?
The manual Company Targeting option is limited to 100 companies, but you can upload via a match tool up to 300,000 company names. Whilst your ABM list may not consist of this many companies, it does show the depth and breadth of reach LinkedIn can bring you. And you can ensure you are targeting the correct accounts by adding the website, industry, stock symbol and company country to your list upload.
How Company Targeting can help you
- LinkedIn marketing is particularly useful for B2B marketeers. We are sure you are more than aware of that, but feel it really is worth highlighting. Perhaps you are looking to promote whitepapers? Or an e-book? Or a webinar? LinkedIn marketing is a good place to start. Company Targeting enables you to drill down and focus on your ideal customer profile, ensuring you only spend your ad money and time on the right audience.
- Perhaps your product or service is of high-value and high-commitment. If that is the case, then you will only want to target a few select prospects. A scatter-gun approach is not what you need here. This is where Company Targeting comes into its own.
- Are you looking to find those LinkedIn users who may be using the same keyword to search for something not directly related to your offering? A good tool for you to entice a prospect like this is to use something containing useful information such as a white paper. The LinkedIn marketing Account Targeting feature makes this possible.
You should, however, keep in mind that the minimum number of contacts you can target with a campaign is 300. Whilst it’s not ideal for ABM, it is the best LinkedIn marketing has to offer now. A LinkedIn marketing agency should be able to advise you if it’s worth testing, based on the value of your product/service.
So, now we have identified why Company Targeting could help you, what are the next steps?
Identify your target accounts
Chances are if you are running ABM focused activity you are already aligned with your Sales team, or if you are just starting your ABM activity, then this will be one of your goals. They can help you build out the list of accounts to target. Once you have this list, you will need to make sure you have the correct companies, LinkedIn will try to match them, but it’s not 100% accurate. It will only be as successful as the data you put in at the start. Any LinkedIn marketing agency would recommend you put the effort in here at to make sure you have the right companies. You can also drill down further to the correct contacts by specifying areas such as job title, seniority, skills or even groups they are members of.
You can also exclude any audience members you do not want to engage with, such as a competitor, or existing customers. This way you can really tailor your campaigns to different customers and ensure one subset doesn’t see the campaign targeted at another.
Need some help?
Obviously, there are many different types of campaigns and many different goals. But with LinkedIn marketing Company Targeting, the more specific you can get, the better. If you have a list of dream customers, you want to get to an event or even just have a conversation with, we suggest starting with a LinkedIn marketing Company Targeting campaign. Perhaps ABM is new to you, or it’s the way you have always worked but you haven’t yet used any form of LinkedIn marketing in your activities. Or maybe you just don’t have the time or the resources to run it yourselves anymore. As an experienced LinkedIn marketing agency, we can help you build your ABM marketing activity through LinkedIn and measure the results. You can then provide your sales team with more qualified leads, which in turn helps you impact your company’s revenue goals. Get in touch now.