Hire a Virtual Marketing Officer (VMO) to Set up Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy
Dec 30, 2020
10 min read
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has very quickly evolved from the “new thing” in marketing to the need of the hour for all businesses. Its rapid growth can be credited to the fact that it expedites your marketing initiatives and makes good use of the company’s data, time, and resources. The structure of ABM is such that it can help businesses navigate through complicated deals with ease. The factor of providing the right value to each customer stands true in lieu of ABM.
Patience and persistence are the words to go by for incorporating ABM in your marketing plan. However, a Virtual Marketing Officer (VMO) comes equipped with tools that can cut the strain off of the discipline and rigor it takes to target the right accounts. By working per the needs of sales teams, VMOs are able to determine the scope of growth for existing accounts and can also help them target new ones.
Personalized content is the core of ABM and in order to develop an aesthetically right message, it is imperative to utilize the data sales teams have at hand. Here we have a list of components VMOs use to accelerate the implementation of ABM in your marketing plans-
Align sales and marketing
A key aspect of the implementation of ABM is to create alignment between the sales and marketing teams. VMOs overcomes the challenges of mapping and managing effective communication between the teams by creating a strategic channel at the account level. Now, if you look at it from a macro perspective, you will realize that this strategy enables segmentation and communication with greater ease without having to overburden the teams into diverting their flow of communication.
Tying up of territory-level sales activities with your marketing strategy can effectively reduce the time and effort required to reach a goal. This can only be achieved when the sales and marketing teams are perfectly aligned and in sync with each other. Some activities that can bring in this alignment are hosting shared training sessions, collaborative meetings, and such.
Segmentation of accounts
ABM works towards targeting the right audience with the help of strategically devised tactics. Segmentation of accounts enables you to significantly improve your campaign results and increase personalization. It is imperative to have a definitive framework to segment your database in such a way that it complements your marketing strategy. By focusing your delivery value largely on activities and messages targeted to specific segments, you can achieve effective results. Some of the basis of segmentation include categorization based on-
- Classification of company
- Size of the organization
- Annual revenue
- Current spend
- Projected spend
- Products bought
- Opportunities that are open or closed
- Geography
Segmentation of your accounts ensures effective messaging and helps in simplifying execution at all levels. ABM can only help you if your audience is resonating with your content and segmentation can help you in refining your approach. Most VMOs have automation tools that can help with the segregation based on uniquely defined account-related information.
Automation plays
ABM programs yield effective results only if the coordination between sales activities and marketing plays is in place. VMOs target to achieve measurable results and automation is what helps them align their efforts. Automation tools guarantee efficient workflows at all levels be it program, campaign, or territory. They can provide palpable insights into the effectiveness of our strategies with flow-based alerts, follow-ups that are pre-programmed, alignment of tasks, and such.
Not just these, automation in ABM enables-
- Definition of ABM strategy
- Alignment between targeting audience, creating messaging, and execution
- Tracking results
- Continuous and rigorous optimization
A comprehensive marketing strategy can struggle to take root because it requires additional planning and execution which can be strenuous for the already overworked sales and marketing teams. This is where a VMO steps in and helps organizations in developing the tools required to automate the process and take control of core ABM strategies.
Evolve per needs
The final component to drive an ABM campaign is constant evolution and optimization of the marketing approach. Taking up consistent review sessions and measuring the performance bi-weekly or monthly is what VMOs suggest. This way they ensure the delivery of your campaign is efficient and the experience of targeted accounts is on point. Working in sync with the sales team allows VMOs to utilize the data of different segments and create a thorough segmentation system. The data collected by the sales team also helps in focusing the efforts per the needs of the audience.
Source-Unsplash
Now, with the key components in check, let’s move on to growing your ABM strategy. Here’s what VMOs recommend to help you-
ABM- Strategy, not tool
Adoption of ABM is not like any other marketing tool, it requires precision and changes on the organizational level. Thoughtful planning and effective use of data are the two components that can ensure you are targeting the right accounts. The process starts off with your sales team categorically dividing the accounts based on their territorial knowledge. Then comes the task of data utilization; by working in line with the sales teams you can analyze the customer trends and then strategize on the ways to target them and build a rapport.
Then comes the usage of automation; you can simply use marketing tools to brush through details of your latest mega deals, be it a success or not. These details will then help you in analyzing the wins and losses from a microscopic perspective. Once you are through with the comparison, you will have a proper analysis of the factors of dos and don’ts.
ABM allows you to optimize your messaging and build better relationships with your clients. It acts as a channel between sales and marketing and allows both teams to fully explore its potential.
Identifying key customer profile
Another significant aspect of your ABM strategy must be to build a kay customer profile. Now, these accounts to you may feel like the ones that will get on board the earliest. Well no, these are the ones that have the most likelihood for staying the longest with you.
The development of key customer profiles is another process altogether, it requires you to analyze your alpha clients and map them for similarities. The data mapped will be on the basis of industry, size of the company, region, technology, and such. Once you are able to determine the similarities, it will get easier for you to target the right accounts. High-relationship clients are invested in their customer relationship and this is what can help you in making more strategic decisions about them. You can start by analyzing the needs of their customers and work towards making them more efficient in terms of reaching their goals. If you’re successfully able to evaluate the client and their customer profile, you will easily be able to nail your key customer profile as well.
Internal engagement
The alignment of sales, marketing, and other departments of an organization is of utmost importance- this is one fact that simply cannot be stressed enough. However, implementation of such an effective channel of communication requires persistence and constant management and that can be extremely difficult to achieve especially in larger corporations where the data flow is abundant.
Internal engagement can be increased by laying focus on complementary training sessions for divisions that are to work together, seminars that showcase the importance of such a channel of communication, and activities that help both the teams in seeing the benefit of complementing each other. The fact that humans can be extremely competitive especially in a professional environment simply cannot be overlooked in a scenario such as this. And, this is why it is encouraged to instil the benefits of team-work and alignment in the organization.
The future of marketing is ABM. It may evolve just like everything else but the core values that ABM brings in focus towards a wholesome approach that incorporates finding new accounts, engaging with them interactively, winning them over with your strategies, and driving mutual growth. This never-ending process is what will help your organization scale to the heights you have always dreamed of. Reach out to us today to know how VMO can help you with a tailor-made marketing plan and ABM strategy.
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Four Consumer Trends to Help Drive Your Brand Voice in 2022 and Beyond!
The dynamic nature of the business world does not only depend on the transactions, but the consumers who are driving it. It is important for brands to know their consumer base and feed the information and products according to them! In recent years, consumers have witnessed a huge change in the behaviour, preference, and buying pattern. This is backed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has induced several changes in consumer’s lives. Here we are listing some of the major trends among consumers, which would provide your brand with key growth prospects: 1. Evolution of Customer Centricity Customer Centricity refers to an approach in which consumers' situation, perception and emotions are kept at the core while making a company's strategy. In the last few years, companies are widely adopting this concept and are using this approach for better customer experience and consumer satisfaction. Now, people are becoming smarter and they are aware of their importance in the business world. They are acting as the driver for the business. Thus, one of the highly popular concepts, on which organisations are significantly working is customer centricity. It is of utmost importance to know your target audience well, after all they are bringing you more business opportunities. Using past data and sales patterns, one can easily draw out trends, which prevails among the customers. For example, if a company wants to know at what time their products are majorly searched, then they can use that time for the launch of their new product or solution. There are many companies that are increasingly using solutions like customer data management tools, which help them to evaluate and frame strategies for better brand value. Imagine, knowing what would be the possible next step of the customers you are serving. This would let any company imagine their brand value and customer retention rate. Drawing a pattern out of the data extracted from various sources can help a company to make different strategies. So, it is important to make customers’ the core aspect of your business along with understanding and observing their patterns through historic data. Timings play a crucial role in determining whether a customer would opt for your services or move to your competitors. Hence, you should identify at what time, customers would probably need your assistance and then, show up at that time. Plan for the path, you want them to choose, at the time when they need it! It is that simple, right? 2. High presence of customers in the digital world The reason why the digital world is holding more prominence than the actual world, is its wide adoption among customers as well as companies. The COVID-19 pandemic compelled companies and consumers to shift to online platforms for any kind of interactions and transactions. In the current scenario, the high penetration of the internet and growing adoption of smart devices like laptops, smartphones, are compelling companies to have a decent footprint in the digital domain. Social media platforms like instagram are helping customers to carry out their shopping while scrolling for entertainment. Now, such platforms are not just limited to people’s personal accounts, but also have emerged as a medium for the companies to interact with their customers. For example, companies like Starbucks, Zomato, and Amazon have started sharing various posts on twitter and instagram in order to map their brand in customers’ minds. Since an average person spends a significant time on their phones, scrolling their social media handles, it is best for the companies to enter their domain and connect with them. Influencers on these platforms have a high capability to influence the audience, who generally look for the review before choosing a product. Thus, opting for such marketing tools can help product companies to improve their brand voice. Nobody can deny the fact that social media has the power to influence people. Any information can be spread like fire on social media. So, why can’t you make barbeque out of it? Customers are becoming advanced, they understand the deal and crack it! All you need to do is to present the deal before anyone else does. Apps are making customers’ lives easy and hence, they are opting for it, recently various apps gained popularity because of this. The main points to remember while launching any app for your company are: It should have easy user interface It should have the ’guiding’ factor It should be quick and attractive Considering these pointers can attract more customers towards it and hence, help you in gaining a brand value. So, chase for what you want to be chased for! 3. Growing awareness among customers about their health and environment Consumers across the globe are significantly changing their lifestyle, food habits and even ethics. There is a surge in the population who are opting for sustainability at the core of their living. It is due to the rising awareness among people about the importance of conserving resources and protecting the environment through every small step. Understanding how consumers are thinking and how changes in the environment and social culture are affecting their lives, is crucial. Many companies are highlighting sustainability in their products and processes in order to gain more buzz among consumers. Imagine a food company becoming completely vegan in order to stop cruelty on animals. In this case, people would definitely opt for it. The pandemic has significantly motivated consumers to opt for a clean diet and to be sensitive towards other beings. In a case study, Grubhub, an online food company, published a report in 2021, in which they mentioned that people are significantly opting for their plant-based dishes. Additionally, in comparison to 2020, vegan orders have surged by 17% and vegetarian orders surged by 55%. Similarly, many fashion brands are introducing sustainable clothing and accessories. This shows that consumers are significantly driving up the concept of sustainability due to the high awareness, which is further creating opportunities for the companies to gain momentum in the digital space. Knowing the level of awareness and information consumers have is important for the companies. Along with that, it is important for companies to respect the emotions of the consumers and also fulfil their environmental responsibility. ? 4. Interactive, Relatability and humour Today, the millennials and Gen Z are the most commonly targeted consumer base for the companies. They are the early adopters of various new products, technologies, solutions and services. This is why it is crucial to target and establish an interactive communication with them. Since these generations are not passive acceptors, it requires a lot to maintain a relationship with them. Adding relatability to the content you post on your business accounts can hold on to them. Millennials need companies to have interactive communication with the companies through various modes, especially social media. For that, companies should be very active on different platforms and always welcome the feedback they get from the audience. Also, it is highly important to understand the slangs and language they use and reflect that in your work. Anything cool and funny would always be in trend among the population. Thus, it is important to maintain the relativity and humour part while communicating to the millennials and Gen Z. Meme culture is at its peak, many organisations, no matter in which industry they deal in, are making memes as a fun way to communicate with their customers and engage them to elevate your brand voice. Word of mouth plays a crucial role in influencing and establishing a brand value among consumers. For example, a person wants to buy a television set, then, generally, they ask their known ones and then scroll online for review. In this case, companies need to build brand image among consumers, which builds trust on them and then, further help in expanding the customer base for the company. Building a healthy relationship with the younger generation with rising disposable income can be a boon for the companies. Be humorous, use their language and know their deals! This is all you need to make hustle among them! To Sum up… The relationship between consumers and businesses is not just limited to the trade of goods services with money. It has transformed to the exchange of ideas, emotions and values. Earlier, consumers were passive receivers of the content floated by the companies, which were limited to a few of the mediums only. But, now, it is a broad spectrum, which companies can utilise to boost their presence and strengthen their brand voice. So, after reading some major trends among consumers, now, you can have the idea of boosting your company’s brand value! Just focus on the concepts like Evaluate, Study, Create, Relate and Shoot your business sales! This mantra will give you a clear vision of your target audience and hence, help in creating your brand voice. ...
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Lawyer Internet Marketing: 7 Trends Every Law Firm Should Follow! (Updated)
The internet is one of the essential tools for online businesses to reap a more significant ROI than conventional marketing methods. Today, attorneys look for the best lawyer internet marketing tactics that can help their practice grow more. The truth is that most individuals looking for legal assistance are using search engines to find a lawyer. Today, online legal services have garnered massive growth in terms of audiences. The market size of online legal services had reached $8.5 billion in 2020. In 2021, it is expected to grow further at a rate of 2.7%. According to a survey conducted in 2020 in the USA, 17% of the participants claimed that they use online search engines to find an attorney. Hence, legal professionals in the USA are investing their time and effort in online marketing. On average, lawyers spend 1.4 hours each day strategizing their networking tactics and referral techniques to attract new clients. Online users searching for skilled attorneys check online reviews, legal firm’s websites, testimonials, social media presence, and expertise. Due to this reason, every law firm needs robust law firm marketing strategies, especially in 2021 where more than 2 billion people rely on the internet for buying goods and services. Here are the top seven lawyer internet marketing that you must consider in 2021. Source: Unsplash 1. How To Market A Law Firm By Establishing Brand Authority? As a law firm, you have to establish your authority in the legal industry. Having a great brand authority over the internet helps you maximize submission forms, the number of queries, or calls. To achieve a higher brand authority, you can offer a detailed report or case study on your website to talk about your firm’s performance in the previous cases. Your website is the best place where you can showcase your expertise, success, and knowledge. Apart from case studies, you can also post informative blogs to educate your visitors about legal procedures or laws. Once you have a decent pool of case studies and blogs on your website, your visitors will look at your brand as a thought leader in the legal industry. In this way, you can win new clients and establish trust among them. Publishing good website content with relevant keywords will also help your law firm rank well on Google SERPs; therefore, it’ll also increase your brand presence. Source: Unsplash 2. Why Branding Is An Important Element Of law Firm Marketing Strategies? Many online legal firms overlook the significance of branding. In the era of digital marketing, branding has become one of the key ingredients behind a brand’s success over the internet. You must remember that over a billion searches every day on Google, 15% of these searches are fresh! Hence, to garner the top spot and attract relevant audiences, you have to brand yourself properly. When you invest in tools or services that uplift your brand presence over the internet, you tend to portray your strength and expertise. You must showcase the stellar results you have brought to your previous clients. It will allow you to build trust among new clients. Branding in the legal industry conveys the right message before your potential clients. It would be best to portray how the results would look when a client invests in your services. Make sure your branding is consistent across all social media platforms and search engines. If you haven’t set up your Google My Business Page, you must create one; it’ll help your local searchers find your business quickly! 3. The Significance Of Email Newsletters In Lawyer Internet Marketing Newsletters are pretty simple to produce; however, they effectively market your legal services to your audiences. You can use your weekly or monthly newsletters as a tool to stay in touch with your existing clients while offering them some unique or special information. You can also introduce new packages or services via your newsletter. E.g., one of our clients who has a professional law firm in California offers information about the recent changes in federal law in their state. You can produce newsletters that highlight how your clients can handle legal scenarios to avoid any further complications. Newsletters have a flexible format in which one can use engaging visuals or illustrations. However, your focus should be on providing relevant, helpful information that adds value. Source: Unsplash 4. Social Media Can Help Your Boost Your Growth. Social media is a great tool to empower your marketing efforts. According to a forecast, experts predict that there will be 3.43 billion active social media users by 2023. Therefore, you can understand how powerful social media can be. It gives marketers an enormous pool of audiences to which they can market their products and services. Online businesses can directly stay in touch with their customer base. They can post valuable and engaging content which can attract new audiences. One of the vital attributes of social media is providing a platform through which a brand can build a community. Your law firm can create a community of clients and lawyers with whom you can interact daily. For example, your law firm can create a Facebook group through which you can answer the most frequently asked questions. In this way, your law firm can cultivate the audience's trust and boost its credibility. 5. Does Your Website Offer Live Chat Feature? Live chat is a feature that law firms often overlook. However, this feature is future-relevant; it isn't going away anytime soon! It provides a vast amount of utility on your website. How? When you have a live chat tool on your website, your customers can quickly get in touch with one of your representatives. These representatives can soon clear their doubts, and they can encourage them to take action. Even when new users ask basic questions, you must ensure that they get relevant answers. In this way, they'll get what they were looking for, which reduces the chances of visiting a competitor's website. Live chatbots are great features that can help you streamline your leads. Chatbots also provide 24x7 support, even when your visitors visit your website at odd hours. 6. Enhance Your Website’s User Experience. If your website doesn’t offer easy navigation and potential clients find your website interface problematic, then they won’t wait a single second to shift their preferences to your competitors’ websites. Don’t drive them away! If they drive away from your website then it will lead to a high bounce rate which is a key element in the Google Algorithm that decides the quality of your website’s content. If users leave your website quickly, your overall website rankings will fall. Hence, you should take care of things like website loading speed, images, CTA buttons, videos, etc. Bonus tip: you should always format your web pages in a way that offers the best search experiences on mobile devices. Source: Unsplash 7. Develop A Marketing Budget How to market a law firm effectively? Well, to answer this question, we have to consider your marketing game plan. Your marketing game plan must contain a well-structured marketing budget. A pre-determined marketing budget can prove to be a crucial component; it gives you the scope of figuring out law firm marketing initiatives in which you can invest. You must identify your business goals and determine what type of ROI you want to generate. There is no specific marketing budget because it may vary depending upon a law firm's expertise or business goals. To figure out your marketing spend, you need to do the groundwork. Are you a well-established law firm, or have you just begun your career in the market? Do you offer niche services, or do you provide a broad range of services? Ask such questions to yourself; once you do that, you will be able to create a marketing budget for yourself. Once you have created one, you need to stay within its limits! Takeaways When it comes to "lawyer internet marketing," we know it is a very competitive space. Each attorney or law firm over the internet in the legal industry wants to achieve maximum growth. However, to garner online success, a law firm needs to work hard on its marketing skills. They need to work actively on their strategies and devote a decent amount of time. To maximize success, every law firm needs to keep an eye on the current industry trends. According to Clio, 65% of law firms invest a large portion of their marketing budget on online marketing. Why? Because most of their clients are over the internet! Hence, law firms can develop a robust marketing plan to attract more clients to their websites. Our marketers at Saffron Edge can help you develop and implement premium, industry-proven legal marketing strategies that can grow your legal business. Contact us today to know more! ...
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What makes content marketing success ? Optimization! Know how?
Are you unable to attain the level of awareness, engagement, and reach, despite the continuous implementation of robust content marketing strategies? Has the traffic on your website stuck on a particular number? Do you see your competitors reaping benefits from the same content marketing technique? Do you somewhere feel that your content is the reason behind this? Maybe you are right! Maybe your content does need a makeover, or as they say in the technical term optimization for better ranking and driving more traffic. It is not necessary that the decline in traffic was because your content was not developed right or is not relevant to the needs of the visitors, but with time, content rapidly evolves. As the competitors start entering the marketing landscape, they are bringing fresh ideas for creating quality content, which flattens out your strategy. This is why content optimization or content refresh, as it is called in layman terms, should be an integral part of your internet marketing strategy. What is content optimization, you ask? Working on the content to make it more useful, relevant, and simultaneously improving the technical performance of the web page to transform it into appealing content to the search engines is content optimization. With the aim to create conversion-driven content that is also optimized for the search engines, the aesthetics and the performance aspects of the site which are crucial to add value to the targeted audience’s lives are improved through content editing, conversion optimization, user experience, on-page SEO, etc. What is the benefit of content optimization? Content optimization, when used along with other traditional marketing techniques, can help strengthen your authority and expertise in that niche on the large platform that is the internet. It will help search engines like Google better understand your intent, which will guide you towards creating quality content. While optimizing content for search engines is profitable and advised, optimizing the content for end-users is equally important so that you can create quality content that appeals to the search engines quickly. How not optimizing content might be hurting your business? The marketing landscape is getting aggressively competitive with content marketers coming up with new ways to tailor their content in a manner that directly hits the bullseye with the target audience. You can not risk your sales and revenue with content that no longer serves the relevant purpose, or the potential consumers have a more insightful pool of content and better-performing websites to choose from over yours. What are some of the practical content optimization strategies that you should implement for SEO, website, social media? EDUCATE THE VISITORS: Content is just information, and if it doesn't promote your visitors to make a purchase decision, then it is just a piece of information lying on a website serving no purpose. Devise the content in a manner that educates the visitors, increasing the chance of them converting into customers. The more they will know about what makes your products and services unique, the more they will be interested in knowing more, which will build and strengthen your relationship with them. This will increase the probability of conversion. CRAFT UNIQUE HEADLINES: We can not stress enough how the website bounce rate escalates with a generic headline. If you have invested so much time and energy researching and developing an informative and relevant piece of content, why would you let it go unnoticed because of a boring headline? When crafting a headline, keep these things in mind; the target audience, the USP of your content. This way, you will instantly capture the attention of your target audience. INCORPORATE KEYWORDS JUDICIOUSLY: Keyword stuffing would be a sin, but incorporating keywords in an article without making it look like it has been a force in it can be a difficult task. There are plenty of content optimization tools available to help you with it. These tools can help naturally integrate the keyword in the blog posts so that your content performs better, and the possibility of ranking higher in search results increases. RELEVANT KEYWORD FOR THE PAGE: Speaking of keywords, make sure you use the right keyword for the correct page. If you do not want your pages to rank poorly for the keywords, then incorporate essential and relevant keywords in the proper ratio in the title, meta description, heading, content body, images, and the internal links of the pages. CONTENT AUDIT: If despite all the efforts your blogs are not ranking as well as they should be, then there are undoubtedly some gaps in your content strategy, which is getting overlooked. Perform a profound content audit, as it will help you determine what needs to be kept, discarded, and improved. This newfound information, when used with the keywords you are planning to target, will help create quality content, ensuring it rank higher. What are the content optimization mistakes that you should avoid? After reading the strategies mentioned above you might think to yourself that now you can effectively optimize the content and get it on top of the search results, but in a hurry to do so do not make the following mistakes: Avoid duplicate content: While we often tend to write duplicate content within our website and forget about it, this confuses the search engine. They find it difficult to decide which page is significant and how to rank it. Make use of sitemaps to help them know which page is essential. Drop keyword Stuffing: You must have read it several times that keyword stuffing will get caught and might affect your page rank. We understand it is difficult to comprehend; optimizing for SEO and users but avoiding keyword stuffing, but you need to find the right balance, Take cure from search results on the first page of Google to understand the context behind it. Thoughtless link building: Link building is vital for gaining authority and ranking higher, but of late it has started to look like spam because of the way it is being placed. For example, leaving comments with links, spammy link exchanges, low-quality links on blogs will adversely impact your rank and audience base. How to not over-optimize your content? You might be over-optimizing your content, and you don't know it, but Google will notice it and filter it out, thereby affecting your rank in the search results. Backing helps with building authority, but a low-quality backlinking might do more harm than good to your content’s SERP. You are not supposed to place keywords in the footer. Keep it simple and at a navigable spot on the page. Stuffing the keyword with a footer will lead to over-optimizing it, leading to Google devaluing it. Your content should be built around the keyword and not specifically to the keyword. Make sure y0ur blog has a natural voice and does not have a bot or keyword-stuffed tone. Optimizing the content for profitable content marketing requires abundant knowledge, and industry experience, which is why consulting an agency for designing, planning, and implementing a successful content marketing strategy is advantageous in this era of cutting-edge competition to gain an edge over others. We, at Saffron Edge, an internet marketing company in New Jersey, have a dedicated team of Content Marketing Service Specialists that will guide you through content generation, audits, outreach, marketing in a manner that is aligned with your business's objective and help attain the goal. ...
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