Blanketing your website with your company name can seem like an obvious strategy for driving sales. But it may be setting you up for a situation in which people contact you and tell you that they purchased your product without ever knowing who made it. In recent years, more companies have gone down the account based marketing route, instead of relying on cold calls, and it seems to be working quite well. But how do you know the differences between the two approaches? Here’s what you need to know.

It’s Not Just Email

Inbound content marketing encourages your audience to “come find you” and share information about your product and services. These emails are similar to those sent out by a company to its customers but they also can offer real value in exchange for the attention they demand. From product recommendations to specs on things that are already in your portfolio, email is a way to tap into your audience’s very real motivations.

However, if you run an account based marketing campaign, you are free to shift gears with just a few simple decisions, including making sure that your emails are tailored to every specific customer.

Your website is the best starting point for anyone who does want to contact you. Research what drives purchases by running your own user tests and focus groups. Then send an email asking for a sample or find out what drives a user to complete a purchase by clicking on a button. Your newsletter, online advertising, and affiliate programs are all effective ways to build loyalty and generate brand awareness.

Is Search Effective?

It may seem obvious that testing your customers’ search terms will result in the right keywords and phrases for you to use in your messaging. For instance, if someone searches for “measuring cylinders” instead of “machines”, there’s a good chance they want to buy a measuring cylinder.

A few clicks on Google may explain how your competitors view you. Or you may be using SEO and other methods to rank your site high in search results. Clearly, it helps to understand how your competitors are approaching this particular problem or product.

To quantify the importance of your website in search engine results, use Google Trends, which analyzes people’s search terms and trends that point to search activity. This can be used to understand what your competitors and consumers are looking for and how this information will apply to the advertising or content-sharing strategies you use.

Remember that this research is for point and is only a tool for determining how you plan to position your product. No matter how well you understand the audience or consumers and how you aim to approach their purchase, you will still need to be at the mercy of the marketing standards you’re required to follow by your competitors and other retailers.

A Strategy

There are many forms of account based marketing campaigns, but the one that marketers are growing most comfortable with is combined with new technologies like Inbound Marketing campaigns. When you use this style of communication, you will need to plan for a specific end goal and messaging that might have different purposes for the different parties involved.

At a recent Marketing Makeover event, I hosted a panel of senior marketing executives who commented on the evolving nature of account based marketing. They talked about how emailers were becoming a greater percentage of the marketing community as potential customers, while marketers were learning how to grow lead generation without reaching out to customers by cold calling.

An account based marketing strategy is relatively inexpensive compared to the cost of cold calling, yet it may not achieve that much immediate results. For instance, an online advertising campaign and social media outreach using Facebook or Twitter is an effective approach to sending your products or services to a large group of people without hitting them with a cross-promotional campaign. It will take some time for your message to connect with your target audience, and it’s important to remember that this same message might not work if you send out a similar message with a different subject.

Overall, account based marketing is a relatively inexpensive alternative to cold calling in terms of content, since the person receiving the email won’t realize that the messages are relevant to his or her interests. This makes it more likely that people will engage with the content and can easily open emails.

When you know these angles, you can begin to think about the next step in your account based marketing strategy to attract the right customer. Then you can either continue in the same direction or try something new. Every strategic move will help you test new ideas and find those that will work.