Published 3 June 2021

How To Leverage ABM With The Help Of Social Media

In the post-pandemic era, marketers must refine their ABM strategies by combining innovative approaches and channels. Success lies in mastering the fundamentals and leveraging advanced techniques. ABM has proven effective for target accounts, with significant budget allocations. Insights from 10 marketing experts emphasize the power of social media in ABM campaigns, including following target accounts, using social listening, engaging decision-makers, leveraging employee networks, and building personalized relationships through relevant content and interactions"

Introduction

In this post-pandemic era, marketers must develop their ABM approaches to mix strategies and channels in new and creative ways to succeed. When it comes to advanced account-centric techniques, it’s important to remember that growth comes only once the fundamentals have been mastered.

In the year 2021 and beyond, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) will become increasingly serious. Marketers will need to learn how to use intent-based and AI-driven platforms, as well as how to combine marketing automation and inbound marketing to establish a highly conscientious sales funnel through their ABM efforts.

Account-based marketing success stats

Some 77% of B2B marketers believe account-based marketing has driven greater success for their target accounts.
According to the 2018 ABM Benchmark Study conducted by ITSMA and Demandbase, a quarter of marketing budgets are now dedicated to ABM programs.
According to the 2018 ABM Benchmark Study conducted by ITSMA and Demandbase, a quarter of marketing budgets are now dedicated to ABM programs.
Overall, 99% said they gain greater ROI from their program than any other type of marketing.
Plus, two-thirds also cited customer advocacy as a positive driver for ABM.

In this article, we’ve got together 10 Top Marketing Experts from across the globe who share their views and insights on How to leverage ABM with the help of social media.

Here’s Our Expert Panel

Jon Miller
Salvatore J Tringali
Ken McDonald
Courtney Kehl
Jon Miller
Matt Janaway
Mark Lennon
Mark Hunter
Jon Miller
Matt Janaway
Mark Lennon
Mark Hunter

#1 Jon Miller

There are five areas where social media and ABM come together:

Follow your target accounts and the decision-makers at those brands on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Add these accounts and decision-makers to your listening platform so that you’re able to understand the content that they’re developing and engaging with.
Utilize paid social to target key decision-makers, as well as the influencers of those decision-makers (e.g. Director+). Once these campaigns are launched, they should be measured and refined, such as testing at different days and times.
Monitor which profiles the key personas at your target accounts starts following to understand intent. For example, if they suddenly connect to a sales rep at one of your competitors, it’s a sign they may be in the market and looking to buy a solution.
A huge untapped area is your employees. Activate your employees, especially your sales team, with content for them to share with their social channels. Train them on following and engaging with their target accounts.

Author Bio

Jon Miller is the Chief Marketing and Product Officer of Demandbase. In his role, Miller is responsible for driving Demandbase’s account-based go-to-market and delivering on its mission of transforming how B2B companies market and sell. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

#2 Matt Janaway

Account-based marketing is all about building great relationships, which means joining the conversation, engaging with your target accounts, and making new connections – all of which can be achieved using social media.

You should utilize tools like social listening to get a better understanding of what your target accounts and their decision-makers are talking about and sharing via social media. This will enable you to make sure you are crafting and sharing relevant content that they will find interesting, as well as helpful. It will also help you track their latest posts, which you can share and comment on.

This engagement will help you build a relationship with key contacts in a meaningful way, as well as allow you to assess where the opportunities lie.

Author Bio

CEO of Marketing Labs – Experts in SEO, PPC, Conversion Optimisation, eCommerce Consulting, and Social Media Marketing. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

#3 Douglas Karr

For ABM, B2B prospecting and drip communication tools that leverage your LinkedIn network are a must to scaling and targeting decision-makers within those organizations. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Connected, Cleverly, and Salesflow are a few platforms that will help you scale and measure your impact.

Author Bio

Douglas Karr is a digital transformation consultant, CMO, author, podcaster, and founder of Martech Zone. He assists companies internationally with realizing their return on technology investment. You can connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

#4 Salvatore J Tringali

Positioning yourself as a helpful resource for your customers should be the main focus for using social media to help your ABM campaigns. Make use of your social media presence (especially LinkedIn and Twitter) to engage with the accounts you want to target – tactfully – while focusing on delivering relevant educational content at the right time.

Author Bio

Salvatore Tringali is a marketing and operations specialist who is passionate about helping businesses grow by strategizing and executing compelling marketing campaigns. He is a certified Project Manager, Six Sigma Black Belt Professional, Organizational Change Specialist, as well as with Google Ads. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

#5 Mark Lennon

LinkedIn is a great way to use social media with an ABM approach. Here are three ways LinkedIn can help.

1. Most B2B decision-makers are on LinkedIn. You can use LinkedIn to identify the buying committee for your product or service based on company name and job title. You can create lists in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tools. The list could be organized by the company, or by role.
2. You can use LinkedIn to reach out to the people identified in step 1. There are a couple of ways to reach out. You could request a connection. Once they accept, you can start a message them at no cost. Or, you could purchase emails from LinkedIn. These provide a way to reach out to people who are not connected with you.
3. We recommend trying to establish a relationship with the new connection. Build rapport. Try to bring value to the relationship. Earn the right to suggest a live conversation. Don’t just connect and start selling.

Consider offering relevant content, news, or insights about their industry or company, or competition. Once you’ve demonstrated your value, then you can suggest a live conversation.

Author Bio

Mark Lennon is the CEO/Founder of Espresso B2B Marketing, located in San Francisco, California. Espresso helps its clients grow through content marketing and other B2B marketing strategies. You can connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

#6 Laura Rubinstein

Keep it personal, keep it real, and provide relevant value to build relationships. No one likes spam. Especially the social networks themselves. Do your research. Get to know your prospects, their responsibilities, and their challenges before contacting them. Understand more about the people in organizations you want to influence and what would make them pay attention to your campaign/content. A great attention grabber is a personalized video. You can send that via email and/or even LinkedIn. Also, you can have video engagement on your website. The more value you offer your prospective accounts, the greater chance of recurring revenue you will generate. To that end-use video also on your social accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Livestreaming can be your ally and YouTube is awesome for credibility. Be sure to put together binge-worthy playlists that solve problems, answer questions, and/or show results they want. Don’t use youtube to run commercials. Offer value, ask for engagement, listen and provide content they want. Your efforts on social media will make your sales team’s job so much easier. They will have resources to share with prospects and prospects will be warmed up before getting to sales.

Author Bio

Laura Rubinstein, Founder of Social Buzz Club, a gamified influencer marketing platform, is an award-winning digital media and marketing strategist. She has optimized marketing plans for over 1,000 small businesses through her boutique marketing firm Transform Today. Laura is the author of the #1 bestselling book, Social Media Myths BUSTED: The Small Business Guide To Online Revenue, and expert blog at TransformToday.com. You can connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

#7 Ken McDonald

It’s easy to get stuck in traditional ways of doing things, even if you’re not seeing the results you deserve. Many businesses aim to cast a wide net with their campaigns but have few conversions to show for them. That’s why forward-thinking businesses have been adopting an ABM approach in order to launch highly personalized, better results-generating campaigns.

Account-based marketing specifically targets the decision-makers within a single organization. So, your campaigns are personalized in order to resonate with their unique needs. When you market to a wider audience, it can be difficult to target the individual and make them feel as though your campaign speaks specifically to them. With ABM, you can take a more personalized approach, increasing your conversions. This is why social media is a great way to help your ABM strategies.

Using ABM with the help of social media can be highly effective if done right. By using these platforms to better understand the pain points of your target accounts you then have the ability to begin a conversation about how you have a solution. Understand what your audience needs puts you in the ideal situation where you can then pivot your strategies to better meet their needs and support your ABM targets.

Author Bio

An enthusiastic person with a love for technology, the outdoors, skiing, and hockey. Originally from St. Catharines, Canada now located in London, Canada. I have combined my love for marketing and technology by becoming the Marketing Manager at Visitor Queue and love every minute of it! You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

#8 Mark Hunter

Your reputation arrives before you do. Before we can use social media to source opportunities we have to make sure our own profile and what search engines say about us is relevant to the channel/industries we want to be selling into.

Author Bio

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter” is the author of multiple best-selling books including, High-Profit Prospecting and A Mind for Sales. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

#9 Kristina Jaramillo

We find that most ABM programs are campaign-based and they focus at the top of the funnel. ABM is about getting new accounts to revenue and existing accounts to greater revenue. In many cases, this requires a human connection between sales, marketing, and buyers. We you have profiles, content, and messaging that speak to the human buyers in target accounts, you can connect and engage directly with decision-makers and influencers that do not respond to campaigns. When you use LinkedIn in the middle of the buying journey, you can build meaningful connections across the organization to drive a buying consensus. Most ABM programs reinforce self-imposed needs and do not show account-specific gaps and team impacts.

While many are taking a tactical ABM to drive the pipeline, those that are successful are integrating social, email, and live conversations to deliver the experience that prospects deserve. They are focused on the interaction and how the interactions move accounts to revenue. Social is one piece of that puzzle but an important piece that enables sales and marketing to create a meaningful connection directly with buyers.

Author Bio

Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM) has a reputation for building account-based social programs that drive sales cycles and revenue. In fact. she’s featured in LinkedIn’s own “Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn” and her articles can be found on Forbes.com, MarketingProfs, Salesforce.com, CMO Council and she’s a key instructor for MarketingProfs ABM courses.

You can learn more about Kristina and her personal, social account-based approach to sales and marketing at personalabm.com. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

#10 Courtney Kehl

Target Companies and Buyers within those companies/accounts across Mulitple Social Channels with Various Forms of Engagement (such as posts, likes, shares, tags, messages, etc) over the course of several weeks.

Author Bio

Courtney Kehl is a seasoned marketing leader whose career has been built on helping high-growth businesses serve their customers better through leading-edge marketing strategies that utilize the latest technologies. She is President and Owner of Expert Marketing Advisors (eMa), a strategic, growth marketing agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area that offers complete marketing solutions to their clients specializing in B2B technology. You can connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.