How to Maximize the Success of Your ABM Advertising

Over the past couple of years, B2B marketers have adopted account-based marketing (ABM) programs in droves. In fact, 85% of the marketers surveyed by ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance have had their ABM efforts in place for less than two years. While the ABM approach of establishing a highly targeted set of accounts has been around for decades, new technology, like programmatic ABM display advertising has made discovering, reaching and nurturing account-based prospects much more achievable.

ABM advertising helps B2B marketers create awareness, influence and engage with their target list of accounts with the goal of generating pipeline and impacting revenue. To maximize the success of ABM advertising, B2B marketers must go beyond brand awareness and nurture-based advertising and employ a multi-channel approach.

Here are a few ways to boost full-funnel, cross-channel lead generation through ABM advertising:

Run content syndication and account-based advertising efforts in tandem

Many marketers use multiple third-party demand generation partners to host and distribute gated content marketing materials to their target audiences. Running programmatic ABM ads and content syndication in tandem helps marketers create brand awareness, educate audiences on competitive advantages and generate pipeline revenue at target accounts.

Some more benefits of aligning CPL campaigns and account-based advertising are:

• Differentiate which accounts are signaling the most interest
• Increase the number of demand channels used to reach target buyers
• Serve customized messaging and creative assets to targeted users based on interactions
• Enable sales to spark meaningful conversation with potential customers based on the content they engaged with
• Nurture existing prospects by retargeting and reframing messaging using prior engagement on display and content syndication channels

You can make your account-based demand generation efforts actionable by prioritizing leads that have shown content syndication conversion as well as shown engagement with a programmatic display ad. Leads who engage with both advertising types signal stronger intent and allow marketers to prioritize the best contacts for follow-up and to send to sales. Deploying account-targeted display advertising and content syndication in conjunction benefits nurture, creates awareness and signals prospect intent across the buying committee of an account.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can become an account-based marketing superstar, download Integrate’s Enterprise Playbook to Account-Based Demand Generation.

Personalize ads for a better user experience

Display advertising channels help you strategically amplify your top content (whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, etc.) to prospects who have previously shown interest in your company. However, buyers at your target accounts want to be treated like a human, and not just another a record in your marketing automation platform. In fact, according to a recent Salesforce report, 72% of business decision makers expect marketing to be personalized to fit their needs.

In order to cut through the noise, it’s important to distinguish your brand by reinforcing connections and personalizing display ad content:

• Design dynamic ads that are likely to catch the attention of potential customers
• Humanize your messaging
• Target contextually by use of keyword analysis
• Create engaging CTAs (call-to-actions)
• Use IP-address targeting to engage with buyers that align with your ICP
• Utilize real-time user data/behavior to deliver targeted messaging via landing pages, whitepapers, eBooks, etc., throughout your ideal customer’s path to purchase

After introducing your brand to a potential buyer during the awareness stage, use a sequenced approach to advance messaging toward a sales meeting.

Pro-Tip: Use your target accounts logo in your advertisement to personalize and gain their attention and vary content (text, images, buttons) for every individual who visits your website.

Measure and optimize account-based ads

Once you’ve implemented proper ABM advertising processes, it’s important to set up adequate measures to track how your campaigns are performing. Key performance indicators such as ad engagements (clicks), time on website and page views allow you to optimize your creative based on performance.

Use the Right Mix of Channels to maximize your ABM Advertising success

Invest in strategic account-based advertising and achieve enhanced performance on a variety of ABM channels.

Merge programmatic efforts across various channels to get your message in front of your ideal prospects, increase efficiency and optimize full-funnel conversion. Invest in a strategic display advertising partner and propel pipeline revenue across various ABM channels.