Understand Inbound To Account-Based Marketing For True Customer-Centricity

For B2B strategies to stand out, resonate with ideal buyers and deliver value, they must go beyond customer-focus to true customer obsession. Here’s how and why to achieve that marketing focus. 

How To Make Your Strategy Stand Out

It’s no secret that marketing and sales have changed dramatically over the last decade.

Accessibility of technology and information has played a key part; now, buyers are empowered to research, consider and decide on the best-fit solution for them well in advance of speaking with sales teams.

Equally, as marketing and sales teams now have the technology and insight to hone their strategies we’ve seen a move away from outbound, interruptive tactics and toward inbound, persona-considered strategies that put the buyer at the heart of all activity.

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Put simply, we’re now living in the age of the customer. Customer experience and relevancy to your specific persona has become today’s great business differentiator.

Yet, how can you win out competitively if every B2B organisation has this same relevant customer focus? What should your point of differentiation be?

The answer: If you want to win, keep and grow more business critical accounts, you have to go above and beyond just being customer focused and become truly customer obsessed.

86%* of B2B buyers say they see no real difference between suppliers (*e-marketer) However,  60%* say they are more likely to consider, purchase and even pay a premium for brands they feel a high connection to over a competitor.

In previous years, the focus for most organisations would have been around; 

• Brand and positioning
• Lead generation
• Brand communication

But, what’s really needed to succeed today is a focus on:

• Understanding buyers
• Marketing technology tools
• Market & competitor analysis

To achieve this focus, your marketing efforts must work to align your organisation’s strategy, value and vision with real customer needs and demands in order to maximise engagement, differentiate your position and make competitors less relevant.

And that’s precisely what an inbound to account-based marketing (ABM) approach can help to achieve.

Understand Inbound to Account-Based Marketing to Become Customer Obsessed

For those marketing in the enterprise space, inbound and account-based marketing are both important strategies consider. To become truly customer obsessed, you need to understand how to leverage both strategies at the right times.

Each approach plays a part at different stages of the customer journey; with inbound working to generate relevant leads and create a nurture pool of opportunities, from which to identify high-value high propensity accounts for ABM.

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Strategic IC is the UK’s first full-service Inbound to ABM agency. Our approach is engineered to make your marketing more relevant, customer focused and effective, and works by:

• Targeting customers with a laser like focus and a customer-first approach
• Delivering highly personalised customer content and experiences in the right place, at the right time in the buying cycle
• Targeting across the best fit mix of media and channels for your persona/account
• Building all activity on a foundation of deep customer insight

At Strategic IC, this is exactly what we are doing for our clients in the enterprise tech, professional service and pharmaceutical sectors - putting the customer at the centre of their marketing efforts. This is helping our clients to;

• Change their customer’s perception of their brand
• Improve reputation and relevance
• Increase quality of strategic buyer-led conversations
• Accelerate deal velocity
• Secure greater market share and larger revenue streams

Clearly, to gain the competitive advantage and secure relevant, helpful and in-depth relationships with your ideal buyers, adopting a customer obsessed strategy is the answer.

Is your business en route to a customer obsessed approach?