How can you use segmentation and targeting for account-based marketing?

Segmentation is critial to ABM success. Start by categorizing target accounts into smaller groups based on shared attributes - industry, size, location, revenue, technographics, or psychographics. This process is essential for prioritizing accounts by their value, fit, and buying readiness. It enables the creation of tailored messaging, content, and channel strategies for each segment, addressing their unique needs and preferences. Segmentation can be manual or tech-assisted, utilizing data and AI to identify and score accounts. To make sure your segmentation is successful, do it in partnership with sales. Adopt a test and learn mentality and refine your ABM segmentation model regularly, especially as the number of accounts grows.

Segmentation and targeting play crucial roles in ABM's success. It should start with outlining the characteristics of ideal customers, such as industry, company and employee size, and geography. Once done, the next step is tailoring messaging to address the specific needs and challenges of each target account and persona. One should also use marketing automation tools to streamline and personalize campaigns. Establishing feedback loops between marketing and sales teams to continuously refine is also essential. ABM is an iterative process. Analyze the results of your campaigns, gather feedback, and adjust your segmentation and targeting strategies as needed.

Segmenting you audience is very important for account based marketing(ABM). You can use tools like Apollo, Zoominfo, or LeadIQ to build lists of information to push into your different target audiences. There are key data points like company size, company industry, company location, and company funding that can be relevant to a specific segment. My recommendation is to do a deep analysis of your customer base and build a detailed ideal customer profile(ICP). With this information you should have a group of companies to select groupings of similar characteristics to either target a 1 to many, or 1 to few campaign. It could even get as deep as 1 to 1 if you were targeting a large enterprise. Once you understand all of this you can execute.

You can't have account-based marketing without segmentation. Its the crucial first step because you need to define and qualify/prioritise who to target, why, the potential value, with what message(s). This should be much easier to do if you have clear brand and product positioning. You can then go further and create more, highly-focused campaigns and sales motions based on your company's structure and resources, product offering and your customer segmentation results.

Essentially, segmentation is about boxes. You look at your audience and then decide to divide them into certain categories based upon various attributes. It is a tried-and-tested method and one that is seldom questioned. Having a clear ideas as to whom you are speaking makes sense. However, putting people into boxes in this fashion can have its drawbacks: 1) It can be reductionist 2) It may not take overlap between segments into account 3) It can blind you to new trends 4) The assumptions upon which your segmentation are based may be be unsound. In which case, you may dismiss strategies and techniques which may have the desired effect. 5) It can reinforce stereotypes This is not to say that it remains a valuable technique

Some ways to get started: 1. Do you have any reliable data to look at? Start with your customer data and see if there is a larger majority of customers that all look similar. From there you can develop your ideal customer profile. Can you gleam differences from groupings based on size, industry, geo-location, or titles? 2. You have zero good data to work with? Start with your sales team or account managers and ask them what type of characteristics they like to see the most when they have new prospects pop up. Who do they target when they have to reach out to someone themselves? 3. The best scenario is blending quantitative data with the qualitative experience of salespeople. This will give you better direction on how to prioritize.

If you aren't prioritizing your ABM efforts off of your segmentation, your ABM becomes less valuable. Focusing your marketing resources on segments that are proven to be the most likely to convert or close means you are increasing the chances of reaching your goals sooner through ABM. Optimizing your ABM strategy is similar to any other marketing program or funnel. Segmentation and targeting are also helpful because through this strategy companies are able to show how they offer real value to the buyer. Creating a win - win scenario.

Segmentation optimization is no different than any marketing program. How do you continually drive improvement in your marketing strategy. Continue to review the data, pay attention to when the data shifts and what that means for your current segments and targets. How are you speaking to this segment clearly and offering them value, setting up advertising mediums or channels that match to the way this segment's buyers want to purchase, and you tailor their experience to that buyer. Understand where in your ABM program and testing there is breakdown in conversion, why is it breaking down, how can you look to solve for that.

Segmentation and targeting are fundamentals of a solid ABM strategy or framework. - you must segment your accounts based on various criteria that make sense to your business -you must identify goals for each segmented group of accounts - you must have a targeting strategy that often times focuses on 1:1 outreach to the best fit customer segment as well as 1:few and 1:many for the remaining tiers - ABM is fundamentally about moving key accounts towards very specific goals that vary from account to account or tier to tier - once you’ve segmented you can identify how best to target with as tailored messaging as possible - tailoring also extends to delivery vehicles that the segmented accounts prefer

To develop a robust ICP, consider the following steps: 1. Analyze Customer Data: Gather and analyze data from your CRM, website analytics, surveys, and third-party sources to identify patterns and insights. 2. Define Customer Segments: Divide your customer base into segments based on common characteristics, such as industry, company size, pain points, and purchase behavior. 3. Identify Key Characteristics: Determine the essential attributes that distinguish your most profitable and valuable customers. 4. Quantify ICP Criteria: Assign specific values to the ICP criteria to make them actionable and measurable. 5. Review and Adapt: Regularly review and refine your ICP based on market changes, customer feedback, and campaign performance.

In account-based marketing: - Segmentation: Identify ideal customer profiles, use firmographics, and consider behavior. - Targeting: Choose high-value accounts, personalize messaging, and create customized content. - Data-Driven Insights: Utilize analytics to refine strategies and maintain dynamic segmentation. - Collaboration: Ensure close alignment between sales and marketing, establish a feedback loop for continuous improvement.