How to Use LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing When There is a Complex Sale
Many social media experts and social selling professionals believe that volume is crucial to success on social networks like LinkedIn. Jonathan Crossfield, a Content Marketing Institute magazine contributor, compares this scattered “volume” approach to flyer marketing for realtors. He talks about how his mailbox is filled with at least one flyer from a real estate agent who announced that they had sold a home in his area. Jonathan is renting, so his landlord will probably have something to share about it. It’s sending the wrong message to bad people. The same happens if you don’t use a rifle approach to LinkedIn and instead focus on targeted audiences.
A shotgun approach might be more effective if you are looking for a low-cost product or solution. Generating as much revenue as possible from your social media investments would be best. If your programs are large and require a lot of sales effort, you must ensure that you’re targeting the right and relevant audiences. This is why a targeted, account-based approach to marketing is crucial.
A study by Alterra Group found that 97% of marketers believed that account-based marketing methods had the highest ROI.
ITSMA reports that 85% of marketers who measure ROI consider account-based marketing to be the best marketing strategy.
LinkedIn research shows that social selling professionals who adopt an account-based selling and marketing approach have 45% more opportunities.
Why don’t we use LinkedIn to market and sell account-based? These are some ways to increase your revenue with LinkedIn’s account-based marketing and selling approach.
Create an account-based marketing platform on LinkedIn.
Many business leaders in sales, marketing, and C-Suite have a LinkedIn profile based on a resume. It communicates little business value to prospects. They use LinkedIn to attract potential employers, not drive demand or create sales opportunities. If they discuss the business value of options, it’s just commodity messaging and generic benefits used to appeal to general audiences.
Fernando Leon, VP of Business Development at Single Point of Contact, used an account-based marketing approach to his profile. He attracted a sizeable real-estate management company in the San Francisco Bay Area that previously ignored all communications. Instead of focusing on IT costs and downtime, he talked about the problems faced by the oldest and most respected realty management firms in the US, their mistakes, and how he helped them reduce IT expenses. This information was precise and showed that Fernando and Single Point of Contact truly cared about their business and the unique challenges they faced.
The profile is just one part of building a LinkedIn account-based marketing foundation. Articles, case studies, and other content are essential to reach the targeted audiences. You must have the right capabilities to take advantage of LinkedIn’s account-based marketing approach.
Use LinkedIn to tailor your marketing efforts for relevancy
A top SAP digital marketing executive recently said that social selling is becoming another form of spam. This is because the content and messaging that sales and marketing push to prospects needs contextual and situational relevance.
Our client, a positioning and messaging company, created market assessments that evaluated the market leader positioning in CRM, CPM/BPM, and BI industries. These assessments revealed the weaknesses in messaging and positioning, highlighted how organizations engage in “me too,” and showed how market leaders fail to connect the value.
Our client then targeted specific companies on LinkedIn, especially those mentioned in the assessment, and provided challenger content explicit to their problems. Our client then used third-party content (a Forrester report) to show that even with significant branding overhauls, tech companies still struggle to make the value connection. He used his original content to show how the prospect’s current approach caused a disconnect and how their positioning affected their marketing efforts. (As our client discovered through his market research via LinkedIn, positioning is very low on the priority list).
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