ABM for Niche Industries: Strategies for Specialized Markets
In life and in business, it’s important to find your niche: the one thing that you love and are great at, maybe even better than anyone else. But what if your niche is a little, well, niche? Whether it’s a product that has a very specific application or an industry that serves a small customer base, your niche doesn’t have to be a challenge to overcome but a key factor in your success. All you need is a marketing and sales strategy able to reach that smaller number of businesses that absolutely need what you provide. Account-Based Marketing is the answer, as it gives you the ability to dig into the needs of specific customers in a way that other marketing and sales methodologies don’t.
What Is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a powerful marketing strategy for specialized industries and niche markets that focuses on targeting a select group of qualified leads. With an ABM strategy, you’re not wasting time chasing every possible lead, but instead, giving all of your time and attention to a smaller number of high-potential-value accounts. ABM is a highly personalized strategy that aligns sales and marketing teams with the goal of defining a set of target companies and creating a targeted marketing and sales plan specific to their needs.
How ABM Works for Niche Industries
ABM offers a level of intense focus and personalization that make it perfect for businesses with a smaller customer base. Businesses serving the general public can afford to place ads far and wide to generate demand. When you’re serving a niche or specialized market, however, you have to focus your marketing efforts first on finding the right leads and then demonstrating in no uncertain terms that you have exactly what it takes to serve them. Here’s how you accomplish that with ABM for niche markets.
Focus on the Right Customers
An ABM strategy begins first by understanding what makes your business unique and identifying the ideal customer for your particular service. You then use this ideal customer profile (ICP) to identify real leads, known as a target account list (TAL), that you can target with your ABM strategy. Using an ideal customer profile to create a list of accounts that fit that profile means you’re going to end up with fewer leads than if you included every company even vaguely related to your own, but that smaller list is going to be much more beneficial to you in the long run than a longer list.
A related concept is business consultant Chet Holmes’s “Dream 100,” which he developed when he was in the business of selling newspaper ads. He found that of the two thousand leads he was given, about 100 were responsible for over 90% of sales. So rather than cold call 2,000 advertisers every week, he ended up selling far more ads by focusing intensely on about 100 of them with personalized pitches.
Some businesses might feel that a hundred customers is just not enough. But when you’re working in a specialized market, one hundred of the right customers is far more valuable to you than 500 leads who aren’t a good fit for you. Besides, most salespeople don’t have the capacity to focus on more than 100 leads at a time. Automated processes could be used to nurture a larger number, but succeeding in a niche is about building relationships, not bigger numbers.
Look at it this way: what is more valuable to you in your personal life, 2,000 Facebook friends who you’ve never met or spoken with in real life, or five close friends who will do anything for you, will answer any 3 AM emergency phone call, will lend you their pickup truck and help you load up that new refrigerator?
A sales methodology for niche markets, ABM will convert more leads and build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with customers than with a scattershot approach of trying to reach the largest number of leads possible but not really spending much time researching their needs and creating personalized marketing content just for them.
Be a Thought Leader
The leads on your TAL are all companies who need exactly what you have to offer. Your marketing strategy should involve identifying their specific pain points and how exactly your product or service addresses them. Thought leadership plays a role in all kinds of marketing strategies, but it’s a big part of ABM, where your focus is on why you are in the best position to serve a specific group of customers.
Thought leadership can take the form of content like blogs, white papers, articles in industry publications, videos, or podcasts. When you’re in a niche industry, it becomes an even more powerful strategy by adding value and demonstrating the specific kind of expertise that your leads are looking for.
Incorporate Technology
When your whole team is so intensely focused on a small group of leads, you need the right technological tools to keep everybody on the same page. A customer relationship management (CRM) system organizes all of your customer data in one place so that your marketing and sales teams can work seamlessly together. CRM also allows for efficient automation of tasks and helps keep a record of all interactions with leads.
B2B businesses in niche industries should also be gathering competitive intelligence and intent data. Competitive intelligence, which we cover in more detail here, helps you get a better sense of the market by analyzing your competitors so that you can further differentiate your service. Intent data is information that lets you know that leads are actively looking to buy, whether it’s through direct communication with your salespeople or website and social media analytics tracking data points such as landing page visits, newsletter subscriptions, and downloads. This type of information will let you know when leads are heating up or cooling off and will help you react accordingly. While not necessarily integral to an ABM strategy, competitive intelligence and intent data are both useful for delivering the kinds of personalized experiences that convert leads.
Reach Your Niche
Turn working in a sector or industry with fewer customers into an advantage. With the right ABM strategy supported by the right technology, you can differentiate your business, attract the right leads, and convert them with a relevant, personalized, and targeted marketing and sales strategy.
