Step 3:
Creating bespoke content
Succeeding in ABM requires that you adopt a scalable and consistent process for producing engaging content bespoke for each account, each stage of the journey, and each specific challenge your prospects face.
This highly targeted approach can be labor intensive and a tremendous challenge to execute. If done improperly, it can lead to major content bottlenecks, poor quality, and content that doesn’t meet brand standards. Without a solid content strategy — and the technology to support it — your entire program will suffer.
Why your content platform is a crucial factor
Forrester Research reports that “B2B marketing content continues to underwhelm business consumers — most say vendors give them too much material and much of that material is useless.” This is a perfect prescription for losing prospects to the competition. This is why investing in the right technology for producing ABM content is crucial.
There are at least 4 key factors the right content platform can help you overcome:
1. Content overload
One of the main problems with content is that there’s just too much of it. Business people are overwhelmed with unsolicited emails that clog up inboxes and interrupt their work flow.
According to Statistica.com, over half of emails sent in 2020 were unwanted spam that was intrusive, irrelevant, inappropriate or all of the above. Even when email is sent legitimately, say to someone who has previously shown interest in the company, it can still be far off-base and not a good step in building a relationship.
As an ABM marketer, your challenge is to communicate with the prospect in a helpful way; ideally you have researched their needs so thoroughly that you can present exactly the customized content that will win their attention.
The right content platform will not only help you create content that’s personalized to your prospect, but will help you make it engaging enough to stand out.
B2B marketing content continues to underwhelm business consumers — most say vendors give them too much material and much of that material is useless.
The right content platform will not only help you create content that’s bespoke to your prospect, but will help you make it engaging enough to stand out.
2. Content bottlenecks
Marketing and sales teams can easily get bogged down in the race to create consistently fresh, original, and useful content while juggling limited resources. According to results of the 2019 Content Marketing For Demand Generation Survey, 63 percent of B2B respondents reported lacking enough content to meet demand.
Getting a blog post or eBook ready to go may require a time-consuming process: generating the idea, getting topic approval, writing the piece, getting edit approvals, designing the piece, and publishing the content online or in an email blast.
If each of these steps requires days or weeks of time, and many pieces of content are being generated simultaneously, you can just imagine the tie-ups that inevitably arise. These content bottlenecks can seriously derail your strategic content plan.
A good content platform can help alleviate these bottlenecks in a number of ways. The idea of content “empowerment” uses templates and role-based permissions to allow numerous individuals to work on aspects of your content simultaneously — allowing, for example, your salespeople to customize their message while keeping design and security choices in the hands of their respective owners.
“These content bottlenecks can seriously derail your strategic content plan”
The idea of content “empowerment” uses templates and role-based permissions to allow numerous individuals to work on aspects of your content simultaneously.
3. Inconsistent branding
In the race to keep up with content demands, it’s tempting to let your branding standards slip, leading to confusion about who you are and what your company stands for.
Consistent branding helps make a memorable impression on consumers and allows them to build trust in your company. Strong, recognizable branding helps distinguish your company from competitors and is, therefore, a critical component of every content piece your company delivers.
Modern content creation platforms solve this issue through centralized theme and brand controls that can only be modified by designated persons. This ensures that every piece of content, whether produced by your marketing department or by individual sales representatives, is always on-brand.
“Strong, recognizable branding helps distinguish your company from competitors”
“It’s no longer enough to send prospects PDFs or slide decks as neither of these formats can be measured”
4. Incomplete measurement
ABM strategies are meant to facilitate close tracking and feedback to easily measure outcomes. But this is only effective if ABM teams understand the importance of metrics and commit resources toward tracking and understanding them. Only with regular review and feedback can teams continue to create content that will connect with prospects and move them along the sales funnel.
It’s no longer enough to send prospects PDFs or slide decks as neither of these formats can be measured. Any advanced content creation technology you use should come with built-in measurement and reporting tools so that you know not only whether your prospect received your email, but whether they engaged with your content.