Account Based Marketing is a tactic for specifically targeting and engaging the companies that can generate a lot of revenue for your business. Unlike traditional methods aimed at your usual targets, ABM focuses on attracting and retaining specific accounts. In sales prospecting, “key accounts” are the prospect companies.
LinkedIn is the platform of choice for running an effective ABM strategy, because it makes it easy to reach decision-makers at your target companies thanks to its rich professional data and advanced targeting tools. It also lets you deliver tailored content, aligned with the specific needs and challenges of your target accounts.
LinkedIn is also a valuable ally for measuring and refining your ABM strategy, giving you performance indicators and insights that will help you optimize your actions.
This article will guide you through the steps to succeed with ABM on LinkedIn:
- Understand the importance of ABM and why it works on LinkedIn
- Identify the right companies
- Engage effectively with personalized content
- Understand the advantage of LinkedIn advertising for ABM
- Measure and continuously improve your ABM strategy on LinkedIn
Ready to improve your B2B marketing with ABM on LinkedIn? Follow our advice to get there!
Understanding ABM and why it matters on LinkedIn
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
Account-Based Marketing is a targeted marketing tactic aimed specifically at high-value accounts or companies rather than a broad, undifferentiated audience. This method prioritizes attracting and retaining specific accounts, which changes the way you approach marketing.
By concentrating on the accounts that matter most to your business, ABM allows you to personalize your messages and offers much further. As a result, your chances of conversion improve. This personalized approach strengthens the quality of the customer relationship and shows a fine understanding of the needs and challenges of your target accounts.
ABM relies on multiplying the points of contact within the same target company. Reaching out directly to decision-makers is not enough for these companies, which are often highly organized and large (over 500 employees). To maximize your chances of getting a meeting with the decision-maker, you should not neglect the people around them.
Typically, we will therefore contact:
- Operational staff
- Managers / heads of
- Directors
- The decision-maker
Why use LinkedIn for your ABM strategy?
LinkedIn is the platform of choice for running an effective ABM strategy. It connects you directly to everyone at your target companies thanks to its advanced search tools: with Sales Navigator, you can easily isolate the different job titles that match the 4 categories above.
LinkedIn also encourages the creation of personalized content tailored to the specific needs of your prospects.
On top of that, LinkedIn is a valuable ally for measuring the effectiveness of your ABM, offering performance indicators and useful feedback for optimizing your actions.
Choosing LinkedIn for your ABM brings considerable advantages:
- Access to a network of over 900 million professionals, 93 million of whom are decision-makers.
- The ability to find your accounts precisely using varied criteria such as company name, size, industry, location and more.
- The flexibility to create advertising campaigns aligned with your specific objectives, whether awareness, engagement or lead generation.
- The ability to analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and adjust your techniques for optimal results.
Identifying and targeting the right companies
Analyze your target market
Before starting your ABM campaign on LinkedIn, you need to define your ideal customer profile (ICP), in other words the type of company that would benefit most from what you have to offer, that would value your unique selling proposition and that would help you reach your business goals. To build your ICP, consider criteria such as:
- Industry
- Company size
- Revenue
- Geographic location
- Needs and challenges
- Growth opportunities
Also review your current customers to identify the most profitable, the most satisfied and the most loyal. And don’t forget a factor that is too often overlooked but essential: accessibility. Instead of wasting time on prospects that are almost impossible to sign, build your reputation by signing smaller customers. This will help you identify common characteristics and specific problems you can use to refine your ICP.
Use LinkedIn’s targeting tools
Once your ICP is well defined, LinkedIn’s tools will let you identify and reach the matching companies. LinkedIn makes it easy to target your accounts based on professional criteria such as:
- Company name
- Company size
- Industry
- Location
- Job title
- Skills
- Groups
- Etc.
You can also import lists of target companies from sources such as your CRM, your prospects, partners or competitors, and LinkedIn will serve your content to those companies. This option is only available to users with Sales Navigator Advanced. Find out everything about LinkedIn subscriptions.
Build a list of target companies
After using LinkedIn’s targeting tools, you will have a directory of potential companies to include in your ABM tactic. But it’s not just about selecting every company that matches your ICP. You need to assess each company’s potential and prioritize it according to its level of interest, its maturity and its probability of conversion.
Here are a few methods to do that:
- Scoring, which rates companies according to how well they match your ICP and their level of interaction.
- Grading, which ranks companies according to their revenue potential, their sales cycle and their acquisition cost.
- Fit, which measures how closely the companies’ needs match your solutions.
Using these criteria, build your directory of companies and segment it into categories, such as strategic accounts, key accounts and high-potential accounts. This will help you adjust your level of personalization and your budget for each segment.
Starting the conversation with personalized content and AI-assisted prospecting messages
Create content tailored to each company
For your ABM strategy on LinkedIn to bear fruit, it is essential to develop content that precisely addresses the specific needs, challenges and objectives of each target company. It’s not about generalizing your message, but about personalizing it according to the unique characteristics and expectations of each one. This requires in-depth knowledge of your audience, including its problems, motivations, obstacles and decision criteria.
You can enrich this knowledge from various sources, including your CRM, your sales interactions and your market research. Here, A/B testing and, more generally, testing and customer discovery are key.
It is then crucial to adjust your posts and shares to each stage of the customer journey, taking into account each company’s level of maturity and interest. Your content must captivate, educate, convince and encourage action. It will then be useful to track, in your CRM, how each prospect progresses on the path to becoming a lead.
Several formats are available for this: blog articles, infographics, white papers and webinars to build awareness and credibility; case studies, testimonials, demos and comparisons to generate engagement and trust; personalized offers, free trials, audits and quotes to drive conversion and loyalty.
Create content tailored to each type of person within a company
Focusing on the company as a whole is only part of the equation. It is also essential to consider the different profiles involved in the decision-making process within each organization. LinkedIn research indicates that an average of 6.8 decision-makers take part in a B2B purchasing process.
This means identifying the personas that play a key role in buying your solution and adapting your content to their specific requirements, roles and preferences. These personas include: the initiator, who perceives the need; the influencer, who guides the choices; the decision-maker, who finalizes the purchase; and the user, who evaluates the solution on a daily basis.
For each of them, it is vital to design relevant messages that bring value, present the benefits of your solution and anticipate their objections. The choice of format and distribution channel must also match the persona’s consumption habits: videos, podcasts and newsletters to attract attention; guides, checklists and practical sheets to inform; invitations, forms and polls to encourage interaction and feedback.
Maximize engagement by multiplying your LinkedIn prospecting accounts
To optimize the involvement of your targets on LinkedIn, an effective method is to vary your points of contact and distribution channels. Beyond simply posting on your company page or through advertising campaigns, it is about actively involving your employees, your MirrorProfiles accounts and your partners to extend your reach and strengthen your credibility.
Techniques such as employee advocacy, which encourages your employees to share your posts on their LinkedIn profiles to reach their networks and build trust in your brand; influencer marketing, which calls on experts and leaders to promote your content within their communities; and co-marketing, which involves collaborating with complementary companies to create and share valuable content, are particularly effective.
And so is multiplying your LinkedIn prospecting accounts. With several dedicated MirrorProfiles accounts, run from your automation tool, your team can test several angles of approach with the same target company, each account staying within its own limits.
Using LinkedIn advertising for ABM
The different types of LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats, ideal for supporting your ABM strategy. Depending on your objectives, your budget and your target audience, you can choose from these options:
- Text ads: Visible at the top or on the side of the LinkedIn home page, they drive traffic to your website or company page.
- Sponsored content: Integrated into the LinkedIn feed, it distributes your content (articles, videos, infographics) to your target audience.
- Sponsored InMail: Delivered in the LinkedIn inbox, it lets you send personalized messages directly to your prospects.
- Dynamic ads: Displayed on the right-hand side of the LinkedIn home page, they personalize your message according to the prospect’s profile (name, photo, company).
- Video ads: They captivate your audience in the feed with short, memorable videos.
- Carousel ads: They let you present several products, services or testimonials in a single ad in the feed.
- Display ads: Visible on third-party sites partnered with LinkedIn, they extend your reach beyond the platform.
Create targeted advertising campaigns
To run effective advertising campaigns on LinkedIn, follow these steps:
- Go to LinkedIn Campaign Manager, create an ad account and define your campaign objective (awareness, consideration or conversion).
- Select the ad format suited to your objective, budget and audience.
- Identify your audience using LinkedIn’s criteria (company, industry, job title, skills, etc.) or import your list through the Account Targeting feature.
- Design your ad: punchy copy, a relevant image or video, and a clear call to action.
- Set your budget and schedule, choosing the billing model (cost per click, per impression, per send) and the duration of the campaign.
- Launch your campaign and monitor its performance via LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
Measure the success of your ads
To evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns on LinkedIn, refer to the following key performance indicators (KPIs), available in Campaign Manager:
- Number of impressions: How many times your ad was seen.
- Number of clicks: How many times your ad was clicked.
- Click-through rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks to impressions.
- Cost per click (CPC): The average cost of each click.
- Number of conversions: The number of desired actions completed thanks to your ad.
- Conversion rate: The ratio of conversions to clicks.
- Cost per conversion: The average cost of each desired action completed.
- Return on investment (ROI): The profit generated compared with the cost of the campaign.
These KPIs will let you measure precisely the impact of your LinkedIn ads and adjust your ABM strategy to maximize your results.
Measuring and optimizing your ABM strategy on LinkedIn
Use LinkedIn Analytics to track your performance
Make use of the platform’s analytics tools. They let you track the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your marketing and sales initiatives. LinkedIn Analytics is accessible from your company page, your ad account or your personal profile, and lets you collect valuable information such as:
- Traffic, number of followers, engagement and recommendations on your company page.
- Impressions, clicks, conversions and leads obtained through your advertising campaigns.
- Views, reactions, comments and shares on your organic or sponsored posts.
- Connection requests, messages, recommendations and skill endorsements on your personal profile.
- The profile and volume of visitors to your company page, your campaigns and your profile.
By analyzing this data, you will be able to judge the effectiveness of your ABM strategy on LinkedIn and determine what needs improving.
Techniques for optimizing your ABM strategy
To perfect your strategy, it is essential to take action based on the results obtained. Here are a few techniques to do so:
- Adjust your targeting based on interactions with your target accounts, setting aside those that show no interest or are not relevant.
- Adapt your content to the needs and objectives of your target accounts, experimenting with different formats, messages and calls to action.
- Strengthen your relationship with your target accounts by bringing them added value, building loyalty and encouraging them to become ambassadors.
- Work together with your marketing and sales teams for a coherent and complementary approach, while sharing successes and learnings.
- Using LinkedIn Smart Links can be a considerable asset when used well.
The importance of A/B testing
A/B testing is crucial for optimizing your strategy. This method involves comparing two versions of a marketing action with a segment of your audience to measure their effectiveness. A/B testing helps you to:
- Detect the elements that most influence the performance of your actions, such as the headline, the image, the content or the call-to-action button.
- Choose the most effective option in terms of clicks, conversions, leads and more.
- Refine your understanding of your audience by identifying its preferences and motivations.
To carry out an A/B test successfully, follow these steps:
- Determine your objective and the performance indicator to observe.
- Create two versions of your action by changing a single element.
- Serve these versions to a representative sample of your audience, with an identical budget and duration.
- Analyze the results and choose the best-performing option.
- Apply the winning version to your entire audience.
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a targeted method aimed at attracting and engaging high-value companies or accounts, rather than reaching out to a broad audience. LinkedIn is the ideal ground for running your ABM strategy effectively. The platform lets you reach the decision-makers of your target companies directly, thanks to the richness of its professional data and its advanced targeting capabilities.
LinkedIn also equips you to design tailored, relevant content, specifically addressed to the needs and challenges of your target accounts. What’s more, LinkedIn is a valuable ally for evaluating and refining your ABM strategy, giving you performance indicators and feedback.
To succeed with ABM on LinkedIn, make sure you follow these steps:
- Understand the importance of ABM and how to implement it on LinkedIn
- Identify and pinpoint the right companies
- Initiate interactions with tailored content
- Amplify your strategy by multiplying your prospecting accounts with MirrorProfiles
- Support your method with LinkedIn advertising
- Analyze and improve your approach on LinkedIn
Adopting these practices will let you strengthen your B2B marketing through ABM on LinkedIn, building lasting and rewarding relationships with your key accounts. Don’t wait any longer, get started!
