By Steve Sullivan, National Sales Director

I’m hearing more and more buzz about ABM (Account Based Marketing) as a “new” idea in marketing. For those of you scratching your head, we can boil it down fairly simply—it is an approach that targets large prospects by targeting each buyer or person with influence.

When it comes to healthcare decision-making, this is already an entrenched way of life. Anyone who markets a product or service to healthcare providers will almost universally agree that multiple decision makers and groups must have buy-in before they will agree to invest in ways to solve a certain challenge (insert pain point here). When I first heard the term ABM, it sounded like it had its roots in the Miller Heiman approach—the good folks who brought us “Blue Sheets,” which most sales professionals will either gravitate to or roll their collective eyes. Without getting bogged down in detail, this is a sales process that approaches each person involved in the buying process and handles them individually since they each come from a different point of view.

On any given clinical or operational challenge, CMOs, CIOs and CFOs (just to name a few) will all have different points of view and consider a problem from their own lens. So trying to address all of these stakeholders with a blanket content message is likely to get thrown out by most of them—risking that message getting missed by most of your customers. Understanding your audiences and how to help each of them solve a challenge takes a lot of work, insight and strategy.

Takeaway: If you are developing a content strategy and execution plan with a one-size-fits-all approach, you may want to consider who is involved in the decision, how they consume information and how they view the challenge you help them solve. Then show each of them you understand it from their viewpoint to build trust and demonstrate your ability to help.

Image Credit | iStock



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