Account based advertising aka company targeted advertising allows a marketer to place advertising in front of a specific company on any website that takes advertising – be it the Financial Times, ESPN, HR magazine or in their LinkedIn newsfeed.
A useful ability for any B2B marketer.
This is increasingly required today, as ensuring key accounts are aware of you in a world swamped with content marketing means that standing out is harder. Account based advertising makes you more likely to be considered at the earliest stages when a prospect is trying to solve a problem.
Previously, direct relationships with key publishers helped to increase brand awareness within a target industry but this typically reached a much broader audience than was required. Account based advertising targets specific companies using programmatic advertising networks.
But programmatic advertising networks alone, can require significant budget to obtain the required frequency and reach to drive results. This makes it a route only available to those with the largest budgets. Combining the programmatic networks with the ability to target only the companies you need, for example those showing intent, or who are your primary targets reduces overall ad spend, while increasing the performance of your advertising campaigns and driving an uplift both in opportunities and across your other channels.
Standing out with account based advertising
Increasingly and rather unsurprisingly, generic messages in advertising fails to connect with prospects. The account based advertising approach allows you to tailor messaging right down to the department at your target company.
This allows you to follow an account based marketing strategy, tailoring the message to a specific account. Usually your largest prospects. This integrates into your sales development teams to start building a relationship earlier.
Even so, customising content to each account is an expensive proposition. Selecting groups of companies is therefore often the most popular approach. This can be a similar industry, pain point or something else. Regardless, it allows you to build broader brand awareness with your ideal customers quickly.
The invisible barrier
It is rare that sales has access to all stakeholders involved in the buying process. Research from Harvard Business Review suggests that the average number of stakeholders involved in the buying process has grown to on average of 6.8.
With account based advertising and specific messaging, a company’s key strengths can communicate to these invisible stakeholders influencing their opinions and helping to accelerate pipeline.
Channels for account based advertising
Today account based advertising campaigns can be delivered via Display networks and Linkedin.
Designing account based advertising campaigns
As a result, we often see multiple types of account based advertising campaigns running on the Radiate B2B advertising platform.
They reach:
1. Strategically important prospects
2. Combine with intent data to have an always on advertising campaign targeting companies inside your ideal customer profile
2. Target specific segments (by problem or industry for example)
3. Tailored campaigns based on their positions in the pipeline.
4. Targeting customers to reduce churn and expand existing agreements.
The Results
Typically we see 20-30% of companies engage each quarter, with an uplift of 2.5x reaching the website vs companies not targeted with advertising but the benefits continue through the pipeline, with a 2x increase in likelihood to take a demo and an increase in the average contract value of 2-5x.
Conclusion
Overall, account based advertising accelerates and maximises pipeline by reaching just the companies you want – reducing media spend wastage. Further narrowing of the targeting allows this advertising approach to reach just the geographies you want and the type of person you want to reach.
