Cogo Strategy Blog

How customers interact with business is always changing, and this holds true whether you are a B2C company or B2B. As such, it’s important to update your campaign strategy to adapt to these changes in the market.

One of the creative Account-Based Marketing (ABM) tactics that we discussed already in a previous blog talked about how to create ABM personas. Personas are an essential part of understanding your buyer or the key stakeholders in an account. However, just as the market changes, your personas will need to change as well.

If you don’t update your ABM personas to reflect changes in buyer behaviors, then all of the content that you base on those personas will become outdated and irrelevant. In other words, it won’t be as effective anymore.

Creative ABM Tactics: Changing Your Personas Over Time

Your ABM personas are an essential part of achieving success with your marketing campaigns as they enable you to tailor your messaging and strategy to speak directly to your target audience. If your target audience changes with the market, then your personas need to be updated to align with those changes.

It’s common for the key buyers and decision-makers to change how they behave and take action from one period to the next. What once influenced them to take action and buy a product might no longer work as their interests, goals, and pain points evolve.

This could be because the needs of their company have changed, perhaps because they are growing or shifting their focus. It could be the result of new trends in the market, and they are changing to adapt to those trends. It could also be that old stakeholders and decision-makers are being replaced with new ones. No matter the reason, it’s important to understand that your buyers will change and you will need to change your creative ABM tactics with them.

Tips for Updating Your ABM Personas

1. Gather New Data

If you find that your messaging and content are no longer as effective as they once were, then it’s time to gather new data to understand why this is happening. In many cases, it happens because there has been a shift in the market and buyer behaviors.

You can start by gathering new information about the market or industry you are working with. Once you know how the market has changed, it can offer you insights into why the key decision-makers in the account have also changed.

2. Align Personas with Evolving Objectives

Your personas should be updated over time to align with evolving business objectives, both yours and the objectives of the account you are working with. If your personas stay stagnant while business objectives change and grow, then the content and messaging based on those personas will fail to help you or your customer address their changing needs.

3. Understand How Channels of Communication Have Changed

As technology changes, so do the channels we use to interact and communicate. For example, email campaigns might have once been the preferred method for the key stakeholders you were targeting, but now they might prefer certain social media channels. So it’s important to make sure that as part of updating your personas, you are paying attention to how preferred methods of communication have changed. Otherwise, you could end up wasting money on the wrong traffic.

4. Audit Existing Content

Part of updating your personas should include auditing your current content and messaging to determine what is still working and what isn’t. Changes in the market don’t necessarily mean that your entire campaign and content need to be scrapped and redone.

If you regularly keep up with changes in the market, then you might only need to make small changes here and there to your content as you go. However, if you wait a long time to review how things have changed, then you might find you have to do a lot more updating all at once.

This is why it’s best to regularly audit your content so you can catch changes and adapt accordingly, making smaller adjustments over time.

5. Assess Changes in the Buyer Journey

In some cases, there might be a shift in the buyer journey that is impacting the effectiveness of your marketing. There are generally three main stages in the buyer journey:

1. Awareness: Realization of a problem
2. Consideration: Defining the problem and researching options to solve it
3. Decision: Choosing a solution

With ABM strategies, your marketing is meant to target your buyers at every stage of the journey. If the way they make decisions has evolved or any other part of their journey has changed, then your messaging will need to change as well. When updating your personas, pay attention to how the buyer journey might have shifted.

Successful Marketing Campaigns With Creative ABM Tactics

Regularly revisiting your content and your ABM personas is essential if you want to keep pace with an ever-evolving market. It’s helpful to remember that your buyers’ needs, interests, goals, and pain points will naturally change over time. You’ll need to regularly update your marketing tactics to align with those evolutions.

At Cogo & Co., we specialize in empowering our clients to maintain a robust pipeline through the implementation of strategic account-based marketing plans.

Ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing strategies? Begin by assessing your current approach with our Growth Readiness Scorecard. This personalized tool will highlight areas for rapid improvement, guiding you through quick and effective enhancements to supercharge your results.

Take control of your growth journey and initiate a transformative process by scheduling a free consultation with us today. Let's collaboratively reshape your sales and marketing landscape for lasting success.