Leveraging Social Media With Your Account-Based Marketing

In previous weeks, we’ve touched on the importance of social media in regards to account-based marketing (ABM.) Business2Community contributor Lauren Frye agrees, specifically with the idea that LinkedIn is the best resource for B2B marketing. That’s not only because it comprises more than 380 million tech-savvy professionals, but also due to its ability to deliver a variety of demographic and skills-based data.
This capability allows B2B marketers to not only target by job title and demographics, it also enables ABMers to target specific decision-makers within that account based on their skillsets, which further increases efficiencies.
AJ Wilcox, a LinkedIn ads expert, offers an example: “Let’s say you’re trying to reach users of Salesforce – simply target that skill and show your ads only to users who’ve self-selected that skill. There’s no fussing with whether you’re showing ads to a massive group of irrelevant marketers or salespeople, and it leaves you with your exact target. No wasted impressions on irrelevant eyes.”
Social media is also highly valuable for customizing your message to each account. As there might be varying levels of awareness among decision-makers and influencers at each account, social media, especially LinkedIn, is a great way to provide “blanket” awareness coverage for each target account, and then hone specific messaging to each account and each target therein based. That message is often both based on insight gathered from social media, and also distributed via social media to facilitate the more 1-1, or human-to-human, engagement that most customers prefer.
Too many B2B marketers still focus on broad channel coverage and semi-obsolete metrics when what really matters is engaging key decision-makers at the accounts you really care about.  Who cares if you have amassed millions of clicks and page views if the majority are coming from prospects or accounts that will ultimately never result in revenue?
Social media lends itself to ABM because ABM is all about the same kind of individualized communication and authentic relationship building that occurs on social networks. Focusing on the right consumer and an optimal experience for that consumer, which pretty much includes social media by default these days, is a vital element of ABM success.  This allows marketers to forget about chasing all of the other minor metrics and focus specifically on the one that matters: revenue generated from key accounts.
Image via Jason Howie