Why Understanding your Customer’s Pain Point is Crucial in ABM Strategy?

 In my last post around account based marketing (#ABM), I talked about importance of content and how can one measure it. In this post, I intend to take a step back and discuss about how crucial understanding your customer’s or prospect’s pain points is for your ABM strategy.

For our messages to be relevant, it must literally shout out the solution to the pain points or problem statement that the respective account is facing. So, now the question is - How would you know the problem statements or pain points for your target accounts?

For existing accounts, talk to the customer success manager or account manager who interacts with the client on a timely basis. A good account manager would list down what’s bugging the client – it could be issue in the product or process or SLAs/ delay in service or cost etc. It’d also be wise to refer customer satisfaction survey reports too. If you were to cross-sell to an unhappy client, then know that any promise about the product might not go well with them unless you solve for existing issues.

For new accounts, this information is with sales, inside sales and marketing team who do prospecting, account mining and secondary research activities. They know what product/ solution that account is already using and for how long, issues that they might have faced with existing service provider. Social profiling of key decision makers in the account would reveal any issues that client was vocal about, it might also provide clues to key drivers for the decision makers in the account.

For practical ease, below template can help document things to create appropriate ABM strategy:

While some problem statements could be generic, some could be very unique. Solutions to unique problem statements can best be done in one on one conversation by one to one email, phone call, message etc.

Broad problem statements for all decision makers can be grouped at an account level and should be used in your account based marketing promotions and campaigns on appropriate channels for that respective account. Since you’re talking about solutions to your prospect’s pain points in your ads and content, it’s bound to do well as compared to generic messages. Why? Because they see you as a problem solver instead of a company that always talks about itself.

If you don’t know the customer’s pain points, then you’re missing a key aspect of ABM strategy and then you’re limited to traditional approach which is to advertise your product’s best features and problems it solves for in account based marketing campaigns.

Hope you find this post useful !

Importance of "Content" in Account Based Marketing & Why utm_content is NOT optional

#Content is undoubtedly the most under-rated area in #marketing. Its importance is felt very strongly in areas such as account based marketing or #ABM & search engine optimization or #SEO.

My post would be limited to #ABM.

During my learning days, I remember a statement by a wise man – ‘You need to write down the content strategy on a piece of paper, no matter how good your memory skills are’. And, it is so apt!

In Account based marketing where personalization is the key, we look for industry specific content to make our message more relevant. There could be 2 scenarios, either there’s too much content or there’s too little. Where we have too much content, we can decide on the basis of created date or past performance. In case of too little, we need to identify the gaps or areas that require content. In fact, in both cases, mapping the content with buying stage can help streamline & prioritize. A simple 2X2 grid can perhaps explain in a better way:

	Awareness	Consideration	Action
Industry 1 (eg. Healthcare)	Eg. Healthcare solution video; Healthcare solution infographic etc.	Eg. Healthcare Client case study1 (April 2019) Healthcare Client case study2 (Dec 2020)	Eg. Comparison sheet with other Healthcare solution providers; Personalized proposals / offers related etc.
Industry 2

It’s quite normal to have blank cells in above grid & the onus to fill blank cells is not just on content team, it’s equally divided between:

1. Solutions/ Product Team: Because they’re domain experts & know much more than anyone else, its strength/ weakness etc.
2. Sales Team: Because they understand the client like no one else does, they know client is not looking for rhetoric & most importantly any customized proposal going from them would have higher chances of deal closure.
3. Customer Success Team: Because they know what’s bugging a client and they’re your friends to get client approved customer testimonials and success stories.
4. Content Team: Because they’re the experts in how to write the content in the most impactful way
5. Digital Team: Because they know what type of content might work well across different channels
6. Design Team: Because they know how best can they complement a powerful message in such a way that it leaves an impact in the minds of the customer. A good content may go waste if not presented well!
7. PR/Communications Team: Because they’d help in the press releases around deal wins, new offerings and more branding around it.

Now that we know where it is difficult to push a personalized messaging in account based marketing, you identify what do I have. Again, it’s a 2X2 grid that can help:

FORMAT	Solution 1	Solution 2
Custom Proposal
Whitepaper	x
Case Study	x	x
Online Brochure	x
Physical Brochure
PowerPoint
Blog	x	x
Q&A	x
Article	x	x
Report	x
Email	x
Social Media Post	x	x
Video	x
Image Ad		x
Text Ad		x
Infographic	x	x
Website Landing Page
Webinar		x
Podcast		x

Note that depending upon the company & industry there could be more content format types too (eg. a whatsapp text/ 6-sec clip / .gif around product features and so on).

So far, we talked about checking content readiness but what if we’ve everything with us and we’re doing account based marketing campaigns. How do we track if it’s and what’s working?

The analytical side of my brain always wondered why do we usually not care about tracking a content performance. Is it difficult? Or Is it not necessary? When I learnt google analytics during early part of my career, I got fascinated by the fact that we’ve technologies that can track no. of times a page is viewed, which device & browser was used, what was the location and so on. Then later as I learnt I found that it is also possible to track the visit history of known (& opt in) prospects and have a timeline of what content was viewed, downloaded & shared. We can even score/ rate a prospect basis content. Finally, see how much money a content type has got us.

Yes, you CAN quantify a content performance!

utm_content is your #friend and it’s NOT optional. I prefer and highly recommend using utm_content in all URLs of the company’s website because then you can see which type of content lead to most business for your organization.

• Use web analytics tools such as Google analytics to see visit analytics. Social platforms such as LinkedIn also allow you to see how much viral a content is.
• Use your marketing automation platforms to see what content a #CIO or a #CFO clicked on before converting/ submitting the lead
• Use your CRM to see how much business a particular content has generated; whether videos gave more business or it was the physical brochure, you can track it all.

Yes, it’s that easy! But it requires a #disciplined approach. Quite often it gets missed because of either #urgency to post/ launch or a #lackadaisical attitude of people concerned. Rule of thumb is – whenever you’re loaded with work and there’s an urgency, just #pause for a moment and re-check all points in the checklist before you use that landing page link anywhere. Involving your marketing analytics colleague in the process would be a good idea too.

Hope you find this post useful !