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Harness the Power of Community in Account Based Marketing: A Synergistic Strategy

In this weeks newsletter, we explore the potential of integrating community building into your Account Based Marketing strategy. Discover how fostering a strong community around your high-value accounts can enhance your ABM efforts and drive outstanding results.

What is Account Based Marketing (ABM)?
Account Based Marketing is a targeted approach that focuses on engaging specific, high-value accounts rather than casting a wide net across numerous prospects. The primary goal of ABM is to deliver personalized experiences tailored to the needs and challenges of each target account, ultimately fostering deeper connections, and driving revenue growth.

Why is community essential in ABM?
Incorporating community building into your ABM strategy can provide numerous benefits, including:

1. Strengthening customer relationships: Building a community around your target accounts fosters a sense of belonging and encourages peer-to-peer connections. This results in stronger customer relationships and increased loyalty.

2. Increasing customer lifetime value: A community-centric ABM approach allows you to better understand your customers' needs and pain points, enabling you to provide customized solutions that increase satisfaction and, ultimately, customer lifetime value.

3. Shortening sales cycles: A strong community can help reduce the time it takes to close deals by providing a platform for prospects to engage with existing customers, learn about your offerings, and address any concerns.

4. Improving collaboration: Integrating community-building into your ABM strategy encourages collaboration among marketing, sales, customer success, and product teams, working together to deliver a seamless customer experience.

How to integrate community into your ABM strategy
Define your target accounts: Begin by identifying your ideal customer profile and compiling a list of high-value target accounts that fit the criteria. These accounts should have strong potential for long-term, profitable business relationships.

1. Develop a community-focused ABM strategy: Create a strategy that encompasses your community's goals, the value proposition for your target accounts, and the ways you will engage with them throughout their customer journey. This strategy should include tailored content, events, and engagement opportunities specific to your target accounts.

2. Utilize technology: Employ community-building platforms and tools that help you manage and engage with your target accounts. These tools should enable you to track customer behavior, analyze engagement data, and automate personalized messaging.

3. Invite and engage target accounts: Reach out to your target accounts with personalized invitations to join your community. Once they are part of your community, actively engage them with relevant content, discussions, and events designed to cater to their needs and interests.

4. Measure and optimize: Continuously monitor the performance of your community-integrated ABM strategy using key performance indicators (KPIs) such as customer engagement, retention, and revenue growth. Utilize these insights to refine your strategy and drive better results.

Integrating community building into your Account Based Marketing strategy offers a unique opportunity to create lasting, meaningful relationships with your most valuable customers. By building a community around your target accounts, you can drive growth, shorten sales cycles, and increase customer lifetime value. Don't miss out on this powerful combination - start incorporating community into your ABM strategy today!

Stay tuned for more ABM and Community insights, tips, and success stories in our upcoming newsletters!

Check out some past blog posts on the subject:

Maximizing Impact: Merging ABM and Online Community Strategies

Online Communities: The Missing Ingredient in Your ABM Strategy

The Role of Online Communities in Your ABX Journey

Chris

Your Guide to Building Successful Communities: Metrics, Storytelling & More

I hope this email finds you well! I am excited to share with you some latest insights on building successful communities. In this newsletter, we'll dive into the importance of metrics, storytelling, and capturing moments in community building. Read more here. Let's get started!

Metrics in Community Building
Understanding the story you're trying to tell is the key to measuring the impact of community building. Metrics represent more than just numbers; they convey an overarching community narrative to members and stakeholders. Start by monitoring basic metrics like Registrations, Page Views, and Organic SEO to assess your community's health and guide day-to-day tasks. Remember, understanding your community's goals and challenges is essential to track metrics that will significantly influence your community-building endeavors.

Selecting Metrics for Executives
Choosing the right metrics is crucial for businesses to gauge whether they're progressing or lagging. Establish a collaborative process involving different teams and identify each team's goals. Keep in mind that communities impact nearly every part of an organization, so understanding how this affects metric selection is key. Create a metric dashboard that includes essential information, covering the Who, What, and Why of each metric. This approach will aid executives in understanding community stories, leading to a narrative that resonates with them.

Best Practices for Capturing Community Moments
As a community manager, capturing and showcasing magical moments within your community is a vital part of your role. Here are some best practices for capturing community moments:

1. Identify the moments that matter
2. Plan ahead for events
3. Be present and engaged
4. Ask for feedback
5. Leverage social media

By adhering to these best practices, you can capture and showcase the moments that matter, further building a successful community.

Building a successful community involves tracking the right metrics, telling a story that resonates with executives, and capturing community moments. Remember, understanding your unique community story is crucial for successful community building.

I hope you found these insights valuable, and we look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months. As always, we appreciate your support and dedication to building stronger communities. If you have any questions or need additional guidance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Wishing you continued success in your community-building journey!

Warm regards,
Chris Detzel

Other reading material:
Online Communities: The Missing Ingredient in Your ABM Strategy
Building a Support Community: Strategies for Impactful Engagement

Maximizing Customer Engagement: Best Practices for Customer Advisory Boards and Member Recruitment 

As business leaders, you understand the importance of engaging with customers at a deeper level to build loyalty, gain insights, improve product development, elevate satisfaction, and fortify relationships. One powerful way to achieve these goals is through Customer Advisory Boards (CABs).

In the blog "The Benefits and Best Practices of Customer Advisory Boards" we learn that CABs can offer numerous benefits, including gaining valuable feedback and insights, fostering customer loyalty, improving product development, and deepening relationships with key customers. By implementing best practices for CABs, such as having clear objectives, selecting the right members, and facilitating engaging meetings, you can maximize the impact of your CAB.

In the blog "Best Practices for Recruiting Customer Advisory Board Members," I provide practical tips on how to identify and recruit the right members for your CAB. One effective approach is to tap into existing relationships, such as your customer base or partners, to leverage their interest in your company's success and established relationship with your brand. You can also engage your social media followers, website visitors, or email list subscribers to gauge their interest in joining your CAB. In addition, involving your internal stakeholders, such as Customer Success Managers, Account Executives, and executives, can help you identify potential CAB members who have a deep understanding of your company and its goals.

By incorporating the insights and best practices from these blogs, you can create a successful CAB that engages your most important customers and delivers real business value.

Thank you for your continued interest in customer executive engagement and CABs. I hope this newsletter has provided you with valuable insights and practical tips for building stronger customer relationships.

Chris

I have been doing a lot of work around helping the Community Management space through blog writing, podcasts and one on one conversations. The positive about the community space is that it is exploding with a ton of Community Management and leadership jobs out there. The downside is that there is not enough experienced professionals out there to do the job. I believe it is up to us to try to help them get there.

I had a conversation with a young lady last week, and she has been a social media for B2C expert for companies in the past, but now she is the only and first Community Manager for a B2B company. She inherited a SFDC closed community w/ 4k members in the marketing department. The opportunity she has is huge, but she is overwhelmed. Her boss and others in her organization have said to her “We trust in you, go make it great”. She is the only “expert” in her organization around Community Management. I talked to her and gave some advice, people to follow and places to go to get help when needed. She is not setup to succeed and she is overwhelmed. She really had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Let's get the word out! I hope some of this content below is helpful.

Online B2B SaaS Community Q&A - In this blog, my partner in crime helps to answer some common questions that employees have about opening a new online B2B Community. From our podcast, Peers Over Beers, we answer four questions that are commonly asked. I took these from real life employees!

• How do you get Partners to engage with your B2B Online SaaS Community?
• When the community opens, will there be an Expert type of area or are we purely relying on everyone contributing their fair share of content?
• What is the plan to open up a community for customers currently in implementation to see progress and status updates?
• How does the brand gain brand awareness with communities?

Online Community Platform Vendor Selection - You have got to select a vendor to build the platform. I cover my initial foray into building a community once I arrived at Imperva here, but let us get into more of the nut and bolts. By the way, I am at a new company called Reltio and building their first Online Community from scratch.

Podcast: Peers Over Beers - 20 year Digital Experience and B2B Community Expert Michael Sandoval and 20 year Relationship Manager and B2B Community Strategist Chris Detzel are your hosts for this fun and straight shooting podcast for enterprise community managers and social media professionals. With their easy and natural inquisitive banter, your hosts will tackle hard issues facing community managers in their day-to-day struggles, and yes, over a beer. From starting new communities, digitally transforming enterprise culture, moderation, and globalization techniques are all up for discussion.

Visit my website to get all the updates and make sure you subscribe to get blog updates!

Chris Detzel