In recent years, account-based marketing (ABM) has emerged as a highly effective marketing strategy that allows businesses to tailor their marketing efforts to individual accounts or clients. ABM is quickly becoming the go-to marketing approach for businesses of all sizes, with many companies planning to implement it within the next year. The success of ABM lies in its ability to provide a more personalized approach to relationships with clients, which, in turn, allows companies to provide customized solutions that deliver the best results. It’s no surprise, then, that savvy event planning companies are also jumping on the ABM train.
The ability to personalize each event according to a client’s needs has always been crucial for event planners. However, taking an ABM-centric approach only helps to make the process more efficient. Instead of trying to appeal to a large audience, event planners can now focus their efforts on specific clients or accounts. This allows for a more tailored approach that is likely to be more effective in engaging clients and generating leads.
Account-based marketing is on the rise across industries – the majority of companies plan on implementing it within the next year, and for good reason.
It has proven to be immensely successful in almost all fields, as it allows taking a more personalized approach to relationships with clients and provide customized solutions that deliver the best results.
That’s why savvy event planning companies are also jumping on the account-based marketing train – the ability to personalize each event according to a client’s needs was already crucial for event planners, so taking an ABM-centric approach only helps to make the process more efficient.
But why does account-based marketing make sense for events?
Let’s look at some of the biggest benefits that it can offer below.
Personalize Your Targeting
Event marketing can be cutthroat competitive – the most coveted clients are often pursued by multiple corporate event management companies at once, which means that taking a one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t cut it.
Instead, to influence and persuade these clients, you will need to get to know them on a personal level and gain an understanding of what their company is all about, what their goals are, and how to position yourself to showcase what you have to offer.
Luckily, with the help of account-based marketing, these processes become much easier.
Instead of trying to appeal to a broad target audience that you want to reach, you would take the time to understand each client, engaging them personally, and figuring out the best plan of action for getting their attention, conveying your messages, and structuring a plan that will be appealing.
Prospective clients of event planning companies are looking for a partnership, someone who can take their basic vision and turn it into an event that generates the desired results, so usually, the company that can provide the most specific and relevant plan of action will come out on top.
Emphasize Your Unique Selling Proposition
When trying to land the best clients, it comes down to not only how well you can appeal to their unique needs, but also to how you can emphasize your qualities that matter to the client the most.
Each company has its strengths, but some of those strengths may be more relevant to individual clients, which is why account-based marketing works so well when you want to make sure that how you structure your USP has the biggest impact.
Instead of using the same approach, you can showcase your process and your plan in a way that aligns with their needs and makes your company a clear choice over everyone else.
Nurture Long-Term Relationships
While account-based marketing is crucial for acquiring new event clients, it is even more important for nurturing and growing relationships with your current ones.
Once you get to know a client and have worked with him on a project, you will gain a ton of insights about who they are, what they prefer, and how to organize events in a way that not only delivers the best results but also matches the vision and goals of the client.
What’s more, since you have such in-depth knowledge of their company, as well as have multiple relationships with key decision-makers, you will have more insights for making suggestions for further projects, providing you new opportunities to organize events and get your ideas realized.
Corporate event management companies know how difficult attracting new clients can sometimes be, so cultivating the relationships that you currently have and making sure that you position yourself to provide more services to your clientele is essential, and that’s exactly what account-based marketing can offer.
It’s Hyper Specific
For a long time, inbound marketing was considered the most innovative way to attract new clients and grow your events business.
If you could use targeted messages and broadcasts to get in front of the right people, you could get them to come to you, making your job of closing the deal much easier.
However, account-based marketing takes that to a whole new level, allowing you to pinpoint each specific client and focus your entire marketing and sales focus on them, hand-crafting your approach, your pitch, your plan of action, and every other part of the process.
ABM is Designed to Attract Big Clients
Although you may be thinking that taking an ABM-centric approach in your marketing is very time consuming, you shouldn’t be quick to dismiss it just because of it.
Sure, account-based marketing does take time and resources, but it’s also ideally suited for attracting the very best clients your events business could expect.
As you probably know from experience, not all clients are created equal, and some may be worth tens of times more than others simply because they are bigger, richer, and have more ambitious events that they want help in putting together.
So, even if it would take a long time to close such a company, the effort is well worth it if that means that you could just have one or two clients instead of having to worry about dozens.
And you can be sure that the big clients have enough event companies trying to get them on board, so for your pitch to have any chance, using an ABM approach to position your offer against their needs is the only viable approach.
With account-based marketing, you may start by getting a smaller events project for a more prominent company, and then use the connections and relationships that you develop to get bigger projects and eventually become the leading event planner for that entire company.
This way, instead of scaling sideways by taking on new clients, you could scale upwards by growing your relationship with current clients, which is beneficial not only to you but for the clients that you’re working with as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, account-based marketing is on the rise across industries, and event planning companies are no exception. By taking an ABM-centric approach, event planners can build deeper, more meaningful relationships with clients, identify high-value prospects more easily, improve their ROI, and differentiate themselves from their competitors. As such, ABM is quickly becoming a must-have strategy for event planning companies that want to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment.
Author Bio
Sarah Hill is a content writer at Seven Events Ltd – leading venue finder in Birmingham offering event production, organizing conference and team building services in the UK. She started her career in the events industry almost a decade ago as time progressed she became an avid event blogger sharing her insight on corporate event planning.