People often tell me that they’re finding it trickier than ever to reach their preferred companies. Thanks to online content overload, it’s so easy to get lost in the noise these days. It can be disheartening to see campaigns you’ve spent lots of time and energy on underperform — especially when the same methods worked well in the past. But luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way.
We can now identify companies in real time. The capability has been around for years, but only recently has it become accurate enough to make it a worthwhile investment for small and medium businesses. We can detect whether one of your prospects is on a publisher’s website. If they are, it will place an advert to draw them to your own content. This is the basic principle behind ‘account-based advertising’ (ABA).
Our ABA platform can even identify the personas at the companies you want to reach, making it low cost to target specific groups at even the largest of organisations.
While interest in account based advertising is growing, few organisations are actually taking advantage of it right now. But if you’re happy to get ahead of the curve, you could see really impressive results within a matter of weeks.
Recently, I’ve seen companies who use ABA drive around 30% of target organisations to their websites within three months. One campaign was so successful that 80% of prospects appeared within eight weeks. There’s no reason why you can’t achieve these numbers too. But first, let’s explore why account based advertising can be so effective.
Command attention with account-based advertising (aba)
In the past, if you wanted to reach key stakeholders, you’d have to pick up the phone, send an email or visit them in person. But as most people have inboxes full to bursting and limited time to pick up the phone, it takes far longer (and more attempts) to properly reach someone than it once did.
And these days, there are more people than ever involved in a typical deal. According to Gartner, the decision-making committee for a B2B solution usually consists of at least eight to ten colleagues. You’re never going to be able to reach all of them during your sales pitch. But if you want a light-touch, low-cost way of making them all more aware of your brand (and its credibility and values), account based advertising is something you might like to look into.
The problem with reactive advertising
If your targeted advertising campaigns aren’t performing as well as you’d like, you’re not alone. Our traditional, familiar tools, such as CRM and Google Ads, are limited to the people who search for the keywords you’re targeting or those who end up on your website in the first place. It’s not surprising that display advertising rates can be paltry. The average click-through rate (CTR) is 0.05% according to Smart Insights. While these approaches do still hold value, ABA can give you much more powerful conversion rates.
If you’re looking to increase your brand exposure, it’s a good idea to think about shared market voice. Research by LinkedIn found that’s because there’s a correlation between a brand’s share of voice and its rate of growth. All you really want is a target company to look at you instead of one of your competitors. Account based advertising helps this audience notice you by giving you a larger share of market voice than the competition.
Crafting your message counts
One note of caution: account based advertising can give you tremendous benefits but technology is just a tool. Automation may increase your success rates, but a ‘throwing dirt at the wall’ approach isn’t the best way here.
You still need to think as carefully about your audience as you always have done. A compelling message is vital to attract the prospects you want. Once you’ve caught their attention, make sure you have a robust follow-up programme in place.
Harness the power of account-based advertising (aba)
Include account-based advertising in your marketing strategy to surround your prospects with relevant messaging wherever they go online. This approach can increase brand awareness, shorten the typical sales cycle and even help you get more business from your current clients. If you’re interested in more meaningful connections this year, ABA is well worth exploring.