Marketing, whether B2C or B2B, is all about the buyer persona and how to focus lead generation, conversions, and prospects into those that are most likely to buy a product or service. A good question to ask is how much of your total customer-base – potential or realized – does the buyer persona represent for your product or brand. By definition, a buyer persona is a blend of the best attributes of your best customers. What about the other customers who don’t meet that outline of traits? They are still customers or leads. Traditional marketing may not address them. The strategy of marketing tends to focus on the “highest potential.” That is where Account-Based Marketing comes into the picture.
What Is Account-based Marketing or #ABM?
#Account-basedMarketing or ABM is a newer trend in marketing that focuses all the marketing efforts on a single target. Generally, this is a B2B strategy that becomes the end-all for a single company. It requires the blending of sales and marketing teams into a single entity where products, marketing, and outreach singles out those empowered to make decisions about purchasing within that company. The process is complicated.
ABM Outside of B2B
Many companies focus on B2C marketing, and if you strip back ABM, there is potential that it can help reach those outlying customers outside of the focus group made up of those with buyer persona traits. We are talking about the many potential customers who have some buyer persona traits but not a majority of those traits. Those prospects are still viable but may go unnoticed due to targeting only those prospects most likely to buy. In short, you are looking at doing a little more work to bring in the outliers. The benefit of doing this is not just a few more sales, but the diversification of your buying community, which gives you more options to sell.
How Does ABM Change with B2C?
ABM with B2B is about one company, but with B2C, it is about one person or one group of people. So, the traits of the buyer persona for this person or group of people become relatively narrow. Maybe it is just a single keyword and why that keyword is essential to the people who use it. What is happening here is the deconstruction of marketing while the entire marketing process flips to look through the lens from the potential buyer perspective.
You are asking hard questions and making assumptions. Remember that part of the SERP results is user intention. The search engines are not only looking at what the searcher looks for but also their intention behind the words they type into the search box. That insight is golden and that is what your goal is when you switch ABM from B2B to B2C. The single company in B2B becomes a single person or a group. To market to that person or group, the aspect of the buyer persona change. We are no using the characteristics of the best buyers, but a group of people and the intention behind their Keyword Searches.
What Remains the Same with ABM for B2C?
The heart of ABM is the focus on the target. With B2C, that focus remains. There is still the pairing between marketing and sales, but the traits of the persona involved at this level are not as crisp. Generally, for ABM in B2C to be profitable, we are talking about a group of people. If your main buyer person is females aged 40-65, with an income above $100K, and located in the US, with 2.3 kids and a professional position, then the persona for a group of people would be different in B2C. It may be men and women aged 30 or under who make $45K annually, and who are connected not just by physical traits, but also by keyword usage and intent.
Putting ABM to Work in B2C
With ABM, you have to care about your prospect because you need to go a little further. We are talking about content for a limited audience. ABM for B2B is an audience of one. With ABM for B2C, it is a larger audience but still limited. That audience may only have one of the main characteristics of your primary buyer persona, but that is all you need. The process is a blending of marketing and keyword domination. It is 100 percent about content and content strategy because it deals with a small audience throughout all three levels of the buyer’s journey. Smart, targeted, powerful – are three words that describe this process.
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David S. is an experienced writer with a focus on small- and medium-sized businesses. He primarily creates SEO and marketing content for regular clients. He writes for web page designers, marketing companies, outdoor living clients, and pest control companies. His private clients include homestead/prepper magazines, marketing agencies, pest control companies, healthcare affiliates, outdoor living and construction companies, and gardening/nursery companies.
