Account-based marketing for manufacturers: A complete guide

B2B manufacturers deal with challenges such as long sales cycles and limited market data with definite numbers of potential customers.  

ABM enables you to allocate your resources smartly by focusing on nurturing high-value prospects and thus reducing the impact of long sales cycles. 

Moreover, by adopting an account-based marketing strategy, you can focus only on targeted accounts and deliver personalized interaction to help you win the deal more efficiently and faster. 

Stat reveals that 91% of businesses that leverage account-based marketing has seen their average deal size increase.  

Moreover, 86% of marketers report that ABM improves its win rate. 

This blog can be a detailed guide to uplift your marketing results with AMB. Let’s begin learning!

What is account-based marketing?  

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach focusing on targeting specific accounts within the ideal target market following a more personalized approach.  

To be precise, account-based marketing mainly targets high-value accounts and existing customers, ensuring winning the deal on solid relationships.  

ABM can help you leverage business opportunities in new departments.

For instance, suppose an XYZ Manufacturing company supplies ceramic as raw materials to a toy-making company. Now the manufacturing company is expanding its business by opening a logistic facility.   

So, they can contact the same company but different contact (those involved in taking care of the toy’s logistics) for a new business opportunity here.   

In such a scenario, the toy company will consider the manufacturing business proposal as they are already in a good equation for other businesses.  

ABM for manufacturers is beneficial in many ways. Let’s find out how.

How is account-based marketing for manufacturers beneficial?  

Like other modern marketing approaches, ABM effectively boosts personalized customer experiences, improves sales and marketing alignment, and complements your sales process.   

However, there are three core areas of your manufacturing business that ABM impact positively; you can call them the 3R’s of ABM for manufacturers:  

1. Reputation: ABM focuses on improving your credibility and trust among your targeted accounts.  
2. Relationship: ABM enables you to build strong relationships with key stakeholders by identifying and engaging with them.  
3. Revenue: ABM helps you to grow your wealth by generating highly interested prospects for your pipeline to get the deal faster. 

Are you ready to implement account-based marketing for your manufacturing business?  

You must have been overwhelmed with the ABM approach and its benefits.   

However, before adopting this, determine if your manufacturing business is ready to implement this or whether ABM is the right fit for you.

Begin answering the following questions to see what the necessity to get started with account-based marketing:  

1. Do you have a list of high-potential accounts?   

You need the right accounts to deliver personalized interaction for winning high-value stakeholders.  

2. Is your customer data up to date?   

Accurate and clear data ensures effective targeting and personalized touchpoints.  

3. Is your sales and marketing team aligned?  

Alignment is necessary throughout the process, from identifying the right accounts to effective nurturing and building deeper relationships.  

4. Does your tech stack facilitate account-based marketing?   

The right technology support will let you facilitate your marketing effectively by organizing the data, preventing duplication, and delivering a seamless customer experience.  

The below framework will ease your efforts in adopting account-based marketing for your manufacturing business. Let’s dive into the steps. 

4 Steps ABM framework for manufacturers 

Step 1: Identify the right accounts 

Identifying the right accounts is the foundation for unlocking more business opportunities using an ABM approach. But how do you do it? 

• Conduct proper research on prospects 

Building a solid ABM process begins by identifying the most valuable prospects that fit your business. You must identify your ideal market and then your ICP. Your ICP is the definition of the best fit for your product.   

Factors that affect your ideal ICP (top accounts) could be geography, revenue, organization size, budget, and technology your target accounts use.  

Basically, any characteristic of a customer account that can be deemed profitable in the long run must be included.  

List the topmost valuable accounts you think are the ideal fit for your manufactured product. That’s the first step to account-based marketing. This list is called a target account list (TAL).  

Building a TAL is crucial for an effective account-based marketing strategy. It includes the top customer accounts that you wish to market to.  

Depending on your company’s criteria, methods, and resource allocations, it can include anywhere from the top 100 to 1000 accounts that fit your ideal ICP.  

• Segment by revenue, growth trajectory, spending patterns, and more 

Segmenting your target accounts will help you identify the most likely to become valuable customers for your manufacturing firm. 

This involves analyzing data on each account’s revenue, growth trajectory, spending patterns, industry, job profile, etc. 

For instance, you may want to focus on the kinds of accounts experiencing high revenue growth. These companies will have the purchasing power and willingness to be more likely to buy from you. 

Also, targeting accounts with high spending patterns that align with your company’s offerings indicates a higher likelihood of potential interest and purchase. 

While targeting competitor accounts, ensure you don’t spend your resources on accounts loyal to your competitors. Instead, avoid these accounts and focus on more promising ones to convert. 

Step 2: Map out your customer journey to identify key touchpoints

Mapping out the journey for each account can help manufacturers identify key touchpoints and create tailored content for those accounts. 

The buyer’s journey consists of 4 stages: awareness, conversion, consideration, and decision.  

At any stage, if you notice your content seems irrelevant to the subject and not engaging, you have to work on it to improve it.  

Basically, you need to identify content gaps and analyze where you’re lacking to improve or optimize.  

This may seem like an inbound content marketing strategy, but ABM requires it will drive those prospects who are ready to convert by your sales reps.

Related read: Customer Journey Mapping: How does it boost ROI? 

Step 3: Plan a tailored account-based marketing approach 

Once you have TAL (target account list) in your hand and are done with customer journey mapping, the next step is to plan a tailored approach that speaks to the needs and challenges of each account.  

Look at the most effective ABM tactics for engaging with a decision-maker below: 

Additionally, you can implement the following best tactics to boost outcomes from your ABM efforts: 

• Create personalized content for each stage of the touchpoint 

One core concept of ABM is to create personalized experiences for each stage of the customer’s journey. A part of that is to create personalized content for each stage.  

Earlier, we saw suitable content types for each stage of the buyer’s journey; such content resources help in increasing account engagement and conversion rates. 

• Utilize multi-channel ABM campaigns 

It is an effective tactic to engage with high-value accounts. Rather than the typical blog posts on a website, multi-channel campaigns such as email, social media, and advertisements drive potential leads more effectively. 

• Find areas of friction and poor communication 

If your sales team has trouble connecting with key decision makers or reaching out to them, you may have to adjust your approach and create more personalized outreach efforts. 

• Retargeted ads  

It allows you to display ads to people who have already visited your website or engaged with your content. This keeps your brand on top of mind and encourages them to take action. 

For example, you can run a retargeted ad to someone who visits your website, enters their email, and forgets to return.  

• One-on-one meetings  

This gives sales professionals a better chance to identify their customers’ needs and challenges and can have a deeper discussion. You can leverage Meeting Scheduler for faster and smoother meeting scheduling. 

Later, you can collaborate with your sales team to identify the true characteristics of potential target accounts for your business.

• Personalized email campaigns  

With Smart Emails, you can instantly create emails tailored to each recipient’s interests and needs. Leverage the marketing automation platform to automate your email campaigns with just a few clicks. 

Step 4: Strengthen customer relationships 

One of the focuses of ABM is to build stronger relationships with customers. Otherwise, they will face difficulty in winning the deal. 

But successful business goes beyond just sales; it involves building a mutual relationship responsible for sustainable revenue growth.  

To strengthen those relationships, you must begin with customer success. That means ensuring your current customers benefit from your products or services.  

This will help you discover key areas of improvement and address them. 

Another method is to provide ongoing support by constantly communicating with your prospects and current clients to give an exceptional customer experience as a brand.

There are various notable ways to strengthen relationships for account-based marketing: 

• Introducing Live Chat support or a Chatbot system to your manufacturing business website can help you boost your customer web engagement and experience. 
• Set drip campaigns to share training material on your products, the latest manufacturing industry insights, eBooks, etc. 
• Host offline industry events or webinars to spread knowledge on relevant topics. Plus, indulge in trade shows and demonstrate your products well, as these are great events to give potential customers a first-hand experience of your product. 

Moreover, all the above efforts boost brand visibility and credibility among the massive potential audience.

Who knows? Someone could be the ideal decision-maker, aka your next opportunity!  

Note that smart technologies fused with an account-based marketing strategy can help you improve ROI and align your marketing and sales efforts to make more money.

For instance, investing in a CRM and automation platform offering tremendous value is brilliant. It can help you… 

• Store, organize, and manage customer data, plus provide auto-profile enrichment to get additional details. 
• Segment accounts based on demographics, revenue, growth trajectory, spending patterns, etc., to easily identify high-value accounts. 
• Nurture accounts with personalized campaigns through multiple channels (text and email). 
• Share your customer data, activities, and insights with your entire team and better align your sales and marketing teams. 
• Overview of all opportunities and deals within an account with sales pipeline management. 
• Save more time for revenue-generating tasks by automating your tedious and repetitive marketing and sales teams’ activities. 
• Manage your inventory and products and keep track of ongoing deals all in one place with product management. 
• Make data-driven decisions and get insights to generate higher quality opportunities with sales intelligence. Plus, improve your sales with better forecasting. 

Checklist: 9 best tips to build an effective AMB plan for manufacturers 

Concentrate on your high-value accounts by implementing these tips:

1. Develop a tailored plan for each target account list, including specific goals and tactics to implement and metrics to measure success.

2. Collaborate with your sales team to ensure that your account-based marketing efforts align with their sales objectives and strategies, resulting in a more cohesive approach. 

3. Create customized landing pages displaying tailored content and images that resonate with your target audience, increasing engagement and conversions.

4. Develop a personalized offer for your target audience, such as a free demo or trial of your product, to entice and engage prospects.

5. Utilize a mix of paid and organic campaign materials, including targeted display ads, personalized emails, educational content, events or webinars, and direct mail. 

6. Track the ROI of your account-based marketing campaigns by keeping track of the customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, providing insight into the success of each ABM campaign. 

7. Engage with your target accounts on social media platforms, with a focus on LinkedIn as the primary platform for manufacturing firms. 

8. Build strong, long-term relationships with high-value customers, prioritizing ongoing engagement rather than one-time deals. 

9. Use data and analytics to monitor the performance of your account-based marketing campaigns and make necessary adjustments to optimize results. 

Conclusion 

The total addressable market for a manufacturing business is finite, so ABM is a for them.

Account-based marketing is about researching your audiences and prioritizing the top prospects you want to target.

It’s a great approach that should be followed by any manufacturing firm looking to identify targeted accounts, boost its manufacturing marketing, shorten its notoriously long sales cycles, and double its significant revenue potential.

Moreover, ABM strategy highly focuses on building relationships, and a robust CRM platform can support you in achieving the same.

Frequently asked questions