How B2B Manufacturers Can Leverage ABM to Generate Leads

A large chunk of your sales depends on your high-value prospects and customers. ABM for B2B manufacturers is a vital marketing strategy that lets you identify target accounts that match your target demographics with personalized messaging and content through marketing and ad campaigns. 

Rather than throwing a wider net for outbound marketing lead generation efforts,  ABM should be utilized to work well with the sales team and look for critical prospects. The essential aspect of ABM is customizing messages and programs to the buying team within target accounts. 

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)? 

Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a crucial growth strategy wherein both marketing and sales teams work hand in hand to create personalization between departments and offer individualized buying experiences for high-value accounts that are well-selected. 

By having a strong ABM strategy, you can easily find high-value accounts and key stakeholders that can be targeted. As soon as you identify them, you can implement marketing strategies via different channels that attract and delight particular buyer personas. 

ABM seeks to give unique and personalized marketing to high-value accounts. Regardless, ABM isn’t easy, and it has its pain points. Check out these excellent abm campaign examples here. 

In this post, we’re going to discuss how B2B manufacturers can leverage ABM to generate the right leads: 

1. Research and identify key decision-makers

B2B buying decisions are usually dependent on one person or more. Therefore, building a relationship and convincing them to buy is essential. 

You must adopt a personalized approach to getting in touch with key decision-makers from ideal client firms. Ensure you attract them with the right infographics and emails and nurture relationships with them to close more deals. You can create personalized infographics for clients with an online infographics maker to strengthen your pitch.

Keep in mind that the conventional funnel model fewer influences most B2B businesses. Many companies engage by doing extensive research online to look for available options that fit their needs. 

2. Build strong relationships with the right accounts

We couldn’t stress this enough- in the manufacturing industry, relationships are significant. Creating lasting relationships is essential to building trust and increasing the time the customer spends with your business. 

One of the most effective ways you can be effective in ABM isn’t to choose a target account and start building relationships with random people. You have to be sure that you’re targeting accounts that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) and that you can offer a solution. 

3. Understand and address your target pain points

 You must also deliver content that speaks to your customer’s pain points. If you want more people to convert, your messaging has to be personalized and free from any salesy language that makes your content feel the force of pushy. 

If you’re upselling an account, you can utilize the information you got from your previous experiences to highlight where you might need any additional services or improvements in your products. 

You must also understand that identifying your target demographic is only half the work. It would help if you also came up with highly personalized campaigns, and these lead nurture tactics may take considerable time, effort, and creativity on your part. 

4. Create personalized marketing campaigns

ABM allows you to provide more personalized and individual messaging to specific prospects instead of delivering a one-size-fits-all messaging to a broader group. 

When you focus on a particular prospect, you need to know their pain points and spend time making relevant and actionable content that provides them value. 

Content marketing via ABM usually takes on a more personalized approach if you’re targeting key accounts. In the long run, you’ll see your conversion rates trend upwards. Personalization also helps build trust. Your prospects will feel like you’re speaking to them in ways that resonate with them the most. 

5. Keep your content and channels relevant

Your content can also lose value if it is in the wrong channel. So, make sure that you look for the best content where you can deliver relevant content to your prospects. This is to spark conversations that eventually end up in a conversion. 

Also, make sure to be unique in your content and delivery. It allows you to provide solutions and stand out from the rest of the pack. 

6. Encourage marketing and sales to work in alignment

For B2B manufacturers with long sales cycles and high-value products and services, it offers a unique opportunity to improve pipeline velocity and generate high-quality accounts with excellent revenue potential. 

ABM encourages both sales and marketing teams to work hand in hand. The marketing team reinforces the messaging sent by the sales team. In turn, the sales team delivers the marketing team’s promise to progress opportunities in the sales cycle much more quickly.

As long as these two work efficiently with one another, you’ll get a higher uptick in quality leads, conversions, and overall revenue. 

7. Emphasis on data collection and analysis

Data from ideal client profiles should be collected. This is to maximize the qualified leads. It’s also a lot easier to analyze the buying patterns of prospective clients. 

Strong insights can be gathered via ABM’s flipped funnel mentality. Look for successful buying patterns that have similarities with your existing clients. 

8. Make the most of your trade shows

If you’re a manufacturer struggling with tracking returns from trade shows, ABM is a great way to make the most out of your trade shows with: 

• Giving a deeper analytics and attribution report on trade show success. 
• Engages target demographics before, during, and after the show
• Get more people to your booth

9. Revenue is the ultimate goal

Finally, we talk about revenue. The goal of every manufacturer out there is to drive more revenue. ABM is a great way to optimize revenue and positively impact one’s bottom line. 

Companies that use ABM strategies experienced a 208% increase in revenue. 

Here are key metrics you should track for your ABM-powered revenue performance.

• Deal velocity
• Size of your pipeline
• Average deal size

You might be tracking these metrics already, but if you want to enhance your ABM, you need to focus more on revenue-driving activities because you’re focusing on the correct accounts at the right time.

Over to You

So there you have it. These are some of the practical ways B2B manufacturers can leverage ABM to generate leads. Account-based marketing strategies have helped manufacturers reach the proper accounts, boost their average deal size, and bring in more deals. 

So, following these best tactics and tracking the metrics needed will set you and your team up for success. It’s also easier to win more leads for your business. Good luck!