Account based marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that focuses marketing efforts on targeted accounts rather than taking a broad, mass marketing approach. The goal of ABM is to personalize messaging and customize campaigns for key accounts that offer the greatest potential value.
LinkedIn can be a powerful platform for implementing an ABM strategy due to its professional network and wealth of account and contact level insights. Brands can leverage LinkedIn data to identify and segment priority accounts, target key decision makers, and execute personalized outreach at scale.
Some key ways LinkedIn enables an account based approach include:
- Identifying target accounts and contacts – LinkedIn provides data on company size, industry, technologies used, and more that can be used to build targeted account lists and contact databases.
- Profiling accounts – Detailed company pages showcase useful info like associated employees, followers, recent updates, and news mentions to deeply understand target accounts.
- Engaging accounts – Sponsored content, InMail, customized connection requests, and other tools allow personalized relationship-building with key accounts.
- Tracking engagement – Analytics tools like conversion tracking pixels make it possible to see what content target accounts are engaging with.
In this post, we’ll explore specific strategies and best practices for executing account based marketing programs on LinkedIn to increase engagement, leads and pipeline from your priority accounts.
How to Identify Target Accounts
The first step for any successful ABM program is identifying the right accounts to target. With over 30 million companies on LinkedIn, marketers need an effective process for narrowing down to the accounts with the greatest revenue potential. Here are some proven approaches to defining your LinkedIn target account list:
Use firmographic data
Firmographic data refers to B2B demographic data such as company size, industry, location, technologies used, and more. LinkedIn offers robust firmographic filters and search functionality to quickly drill down to accounts that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP). For example, you can search for all companies in the telecom industry with 500-1000 employees located in the Northeast region. Build target account lists based on the firmographic attributes of your best customers.
Analyze past customers
Review the firmographic data of your current customers to identify common attributes and patterns you can use to find similar high-value accounts. Upload your customer list into LinkedIn Sales Navigator and leverage the “Search by Account” function. See which firmographic filters best narrow down your past customers to identify your ICP.
Connect with sales
Collaborate with your sales team to understand what types of accounts they want to target. Your sales reps will have insight into which companies present significant opportunities or may be a good fit for your solutions. Connect with sales leadership and reps to get their account targeting input based on their pipeline experience.
Evaluate lead/inquiry data
Analyze the profile data of your most promising leads and inquiries to uncover any company attributes or titles that may indicate fit. Use this insight to locate similar profiles and accounts to target.
Prioritize by account potential
Once you’ve identified target accounts, rank them based on revenue potential to pinpoint those most aligned to your ABM strategy. Factors like company size, industry ranking, and tech budget can indicate opportunity size. Work with sales to estimate deal size for the accounts on your list.
Conduct Account Research
With your initial target account list identified, the next step is conducting detailed research on each company within your list. Thorough account research enables personalized messaging and helps you identify the right contacts to engage.
Visit their LinkedIn company page
Spend time on each target account’s LinkedIn company page to better understand their business, associated employees, news mentions, job postings, and recent content shares. This info can all provide valuable insights to customize your outreach. Follow their company page to stay up to date.
Profile ideal contacts
Based on your research into an account’s pain points and initiatives, create ideal contact profiles specifying the job titles, functions, seniority levels, and responsibilities of your best-fit contacts. Use LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator to search for and identify those matching contacts.
Evaluate their content shares
Look at the type of content your accounts are sharing on LinkedIn to gain insights into what topics, themes, and thought leadership resonate most. This can inform the content you create and share as part of your ABM program.
Identify likely buying group
Business purchases typically involve multiple stakeholders. Use your research to map out who would likely be involved in a buying decision based on their role. Make sure to target all key players in the buying group at each target account.
Assess their tech stack
Understanding the technology, tools, and solutions a company uses can help you tailor messaging and positioning. Identify the elements of their martech and sales tech stack that are most relevant to your offering.
Define Account-Based Personas
Once you’ve researched your accounts, the next step is defining “account-based personas” – essentially, detailed buyer profiles focused specifically on your target accounts, rather than generic personas.
Group accounts by attributes
Identify patterns among your accounts, such as common pain points, goals, or company attributes, and group accounts accordingly. Create 2-3 account groups maximum to keep things focused.
Design detailed personas
Build a highly specific persona for each account grouping centered around common pains, goals, and characteristics. Include demographic details, content consumption behaviors, role responsibilities, and quotes based on social media activity.
Get stakeholder input
Incorporate feedback from sales, customer success, marketing, and leadership stakeholders on the account personas to ensure alignment across teams.
Map personas to accounts
Identify which persona applies to each individual account. This enables personalized communication at each account based on their profile.
Share across departments
Socialize the finished account-based personas across sales, marketing, customer success and support teams.ALIGNMENT
Identify Engagement Channels
With your personas mapped to target accounts, the next phase is determining how best to engage each account through tailored messaging and content experiences. Be strategic in selecting channels that align to how your accounts and contacts consume information.
Website personalization
Monitor what pages and content on your website resonate most with account contacts. Use this intel to deliver personalized website experiences featuring relevant content.
Retargeting ads
Serve targeted display and social ads to your account contacts based on their engagement with your website and content downloads. Retarget key contacts until they convert.
Direct mail touches
Send personalized, high-value direct mail packages like custom magazines or info kits with content that resonates with specific contacts at each account.
Targeted email nurturing
Craft targeted email nurturing streams for each account-based persona focused on their unique pains, goals, and challenges.
Strategic social posts
Share and comment on social content from each account and contact to establish connections on their preferred platforms. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are likely to have the highest engagement.
Relevant webinars
Hold customized webinars on topics each target persona finds most helpful for their role. Make sure to promote the events directly to your personas through multiple channels.
Engage with Personalized Outreach
Combining the insights gathered on each target account with a multi-channel engagement strategy sets the table for personalized outreach to convert contacts into marketing qualified leads. Here are some best practices for one-to-one account based outreach.
Tailor connection requests
Personalize each LinkedIn connection request to the recipient with a custom message referencing shared connections, groups, or interests.
Leverage LinkedIn ads
Run highly targeted Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail campaigns to serve relevant messages and offers directly to account contacts.
Craft value-focused emails
Customize emails with insights on the recipient’s role and pains, and include relevant guides, collateral, or other high-value resources as call-to-actions.
Integrate direct mail
Mail personalized info kits or custom packages with account-specific messaging and make sure digital and social efforts reference the direct mail piece.
Coordinate sales calls
Have sales team members conduct tailored calls referencing your customized content and offers. Ensure marketing and sales are aligned on messaging.
Promote events
Spotlight account-specific webinars,lunch and learns, and regional events through multiple channels as invite-only opportunities.
Measure Account Engagement
A key advantage of an account-based approach on LinkedIn is the ability to closely track engagement and optimize efforts based on account-level response across channels. Analyze marketing and sales data at the account level to improve strategy.
Monitor content engagement
See what content each target account is viewing, downloading, and sharing to double down on those content types and topics.
Track website activity
Implement conversion pixels to monitor account contact visits to key web pages and take action like triggering targeted emails.
Watch LinkedIn analytics
Follow LinkedIn campaign analytics at the account level to see engagement rates by persona for sponsored content and InMail.
Analyze CLV
Track customer lifetime value metrics by account to see which accounts convert and deliver the most value post-sale.
Check sales insights
Communicate with sales to see which messaging, features, and resources resonate most with their prospect calls and demos for key accounts.
Review win/loss data
Do a deep dive on why you win or lose deals with accounts to continuously refine targeting and engagement strategies.
Optimize Efforts
The final step is taking all your account level insights to continually refine and optimize your ABM program for maximum results. Evaluate the data to double down on what’s working and shift away from ineffective tactics.
Share key findings
Distribute reports on highest converting messaging, content, offers, and channels by persona to sales, marketing and support teams.
Enhance target account lists
Based on conversion rates, expand or narrow account criteria and personas to focus on your best segment opportunities.
Strengthen personas
Use insights from content engagement, campaign response, and sales discussions to add richer, more relevant detail to account-based personas.
Personalize even more
Take personalization further by versioning content offers and emails for each individual company and contact rather than just broader personas.
Invest in top channels
Double down on the one or two channels driving the most account engagement and pipeline while phasing out underperforming channels.
Refine campaigns
Evolve campaign messaging, offers, and creative to reflect learnings on subject lines, CTAs, images, calls-to-action that performed best by persona.
Conclusion
Succeeding with account-based marketing requires doing the advanced work to truly understand your target accounts and contacts and leverage those insights to craft highly relevant, personalized messaging and experiences.
When executed effectively, an ABM approach on LinkedIn can break through the noise of competing marketing efforts and forge real connections with your best-fit accounts. This drives greater engagement, lead quality, and ultimately revenue growth from those high-value accounts worth focusing your time and resources on.
Continuously monitoring performance at the account level and optimizing based on data enables your ABM program on LinkedIn to become more and more effective over time. The deeper the personalization and coordination across sales, marketing and customer success, the greater the impact on your bottom line.