Customer engagement drives B2B marketing success - but on whose terms? If you want a steady stream of qualified leads and customers who become lifelong advocates, you need to see the world through your customers' eyes and design an experience that's tailored to their needs.

Effective customer engagement is more than just connecting with people at key touchpoints. It is about creating positive and ongoing relationships with B2B buyers. Relationships that have the potential to go beyond transactions and that can turn customers into partners in growth.

But how do you choose the right engagement strategy to make this possible? The key is determining which strategies, or blend of strategies, will best resonate with your audience. This is where an "outside-in" perspective is critical. By gaining a deep understanding of your customers, their priorities, and challenges, you can engage prospects and address their needs on their terms.

Lead Based vs. Account Based Engagement

While some articles position lead-based and account-based strategies in opposition, or one over the other as a single path to successful customer engagement, the reality is more nuanced. Achieving meaningful customer engagement in today’s B2B landscape requires an integrated approach tailored to your unique buyers and business.

While lead-based engagement concentrates on individual prospects, account-based engagement focuses on key accounts and the members of a company’s purchasing committee. Both engagement approaches have their own merits and can contribute to B2B success. Both deliver personalised and targeted interactions with prospects and customers. However, the scope and execution differ for each.

A 2023 Adobe study found marketing leaders are more likely to use a blend of approaches. This makes sure their engagement strategies are flexible enough to handle the complexities of B2B relationships.

By understanding your buyers, you can select the right balance of tools and tactics for your business and audience's needs. Instead of following a single strategy by rote, you choose the methods that work best for each person and account, increasing marketing ROI and driving growth.

So, let's take a closer look at each of these engagement strategies and see how they can help with B2B success.

Lead Based Engagement

This customer engagement strategy is focused on finding and nurturing individual leads throughout their buyer's journey. There is an expectation of customised experiences, similar to what you'd see in B2C interactions.

Lead based engagement is easier to scale and requires less initial investment than account-based approaches. This often makes it the first port of call for new startups and businesses aiming for rapid growth and expansion. Casting a wider net helps brands reach a larger audience, tap into new market segments, and increase their market penetration.

Brands also have more flexibility to adapt their strategies and messaging based on individual lead preferences and behaviours. This agility enables marketers to experiment, optimise campaigns, and quickly respond to changing market dynamics.

Some important aspects of lead-based engagement include:

Lead Generation: Brands first home in on the attributes of their ideal buyer using tools like buyer personas, search intent research, and social listening. Then they implement content marketing, social media, and paid advertising campaigns designed to attract their attention and generate inbound leads.

Lead Scoring: Not all leads are created equal. So, marketers assign scores to potential leads to understand the level of interest and where to prioritise resources. 

This is an automated process. Scores are based on criteria gathered from lead generation forms (e.g. industry sector and firmographics), and dynamic behavioural data (e.g. level of engagement). For instance, a score can increase when a prospect downloads a specific piece of content or visits a key page.

Lead Nurturing: Nurturing is the process of using one-to-one tactics like drip email marketing and social outreach to build deeper connections with leads. The goal here is personalisation and relevance. Brands must understand how customers feel, build trust, address their concerns, and guide them towards making a purchase decision.

Sales Handoff: Marketing passes ‘marketing qualified leads’ (MQLs) on to sales for follow-up and cultivation. Marketing and sales must be aligned to ensure a seamless transition. 

Marketing needs to understand what sales regards as strong purchase intent. Meanwhile, sales reps need full visibility of every interaction a lead has with the brand. For instance, what marketing content they're reading on the site, what questions they’ve asked on social and the answers they've received. There should be no awkward rehashing.

Account Based Engagement

Account based engagement (ABE) strategy is a newer approach related to account based marketing strategy (ABM).

Where ABM strategy focuses on sales and marketing activities, ABE operates across the entire customer journey. It concentrates your team’s efforts on the accounts with the highest potential for revenue generation. 

The goal is more than just closing sales. Rather, it is to grow customer lifetime value by increasing customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. It does this by fostering deeper and more meaningful relationships with key accounts, understanding how the company works, and helping brands position themselves as trusted advisors.

Account based engagement recognises that the B2B buying process often involves multiple decision makers. Also, that the composition of purchase groups may change. That is why ABE targets entire accounts or companies rather than individual leads. Focusing on the account level helps brands maintain the relationship even if a specific decision maker leaves the company.

Key components of account based engagement are:

Account Selection: Brands first identify high-value accounts that align with their ideal customer profile. This involves analysing factors such as firmographics, industry relevance, revenue potential, and strategic fit.

Account Research and Insights: ABE teams conduct thorough research on target accounts to understand their pain points, needs, goals, and key decision-makers. This knowledge enables marketers to tailor their messaging and engagement strategies to align with the specific objectives of each account.

Custom Campaigns: Account based engagement relies heavily on hyper-personalised content that directly addresses the unique needs of the account and members of its buying committee. This may include creating account-specific landing pages, custom videos, bespoke case studies, and articles tailored to the interests, needs or objections of individuals within the account.

Cross-Department Collaboration: ABE requires close collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer success teams. They must work together across the customer journey to develop and deliver custom experiences to engage, convert, and delight high-value accounts.

The Best of Both Worlds: Hybrid Customer Engagement

Rather than being an either/or choice, lead and account-based strategies work together to engage customers. 

B2B organisations can benefit by integrating both approaches, giving them more flexibility. They can adjust their tactics based on what works best for each lead or account. If the market changes, teams can adapt their focus and resources to meet new demands. Being able to switch between strategies helps businesses stay agile and responsive.

By combining approaches, B2B brands provide a seamless and satisfying customer experience throughout the entire sales cycle. Lead based engagement creates awareness, generates interest, and nurtures individual leads throughout the buyer's journey. Account based engagement complements this by building stronger relationships with target accounts as a whole. Doing so helps ensure the partnership lasts beyond the tenure of a single decision-maker or point of contact.

For instance, lead-based engagement provides a steady stream of qualified leads for the sales team to investigate and engage. By nurturing individual relationships, businesses can gain knowledge that might help them identify new target accounts. They’ll also be cultivating a relationship with someone who could become a key internal ally, helping the account become a valuable customer. It also doesn’t hurt that nurturing relationships with individuals means your relationship carries over when that person moves firms.

Meanwhile, ABE can expand relationships with existing customers as well as create new partnerships. It allows brands to orchestrate opportunities across complex business ecosystems, for example, by running coordinated campaigns that target multiple accounts within a large international organisation. By deepening connections with entire accounts, the relationship is no longer dependent on a single brand advocate. It continues even when an individual champion moves on.

In short, by balancing lead and account-based approaches, organisations can gain valuable insights from both individual leads and target accounts. The data helps brands identify patterns, preferences, and trends to improve and optimise engagement tactics for better results.

Orchestrating Journey Excellence with Marketing Automation and Content Strategy

Happily, lead-based and account-based engagement strategies require many of the same marketing automationcapabilities for great journey orchestration.

Marketing automation is the linchpin that holds these strategies together, allowing brands to understand customer behaviour across multiple channels. It tracks prospects, dynamically scoring and routing leads at each interaction, and gathering data at an individual and account level. A holistic view helps companies make connections between individual leads, how they relate to each other, and to their account strategy.

Automation platforms can apply this data to map out personalised content campaigns that best engage with their audience. And by automating lead nurturing campaigns, brands can continuously connect with leads at each stage of the buyer's journey.

An integrated marketing automation solution also allows for seamless collaboration between marketing and sales teams. For instance, the system can automatically pass hot prospects to the appropriate sales representatives. This capability facilitates timely follow-ups and ensures that people receive the right information when they need it. It enhances engagement and reduces manual effort.

But successful customer engagement isn’t just about having an effective distribution and tracking mechanism in place. Without a strong content marketing strategy to create a valuable experience that will attract, engage, and retain leads, technology will get you nowhere.

Considering the often lengthy B2B buying cycle, a critical part of engagement is producing stage-specific content. It plays a huge role both in developing a relationship with the individual and in addressing the needs of an entire buying committee.

Well-crafted, relevant content sparks engagement and encourages interactions with your target audience. It invites comments, social media shares, and discussions. The more time customers spend engaging with content, the stronger the sense of community and connection. It creates ongoing engagement that builds relationships, strengthens brand affinity, and enhances customer loyalty.

Pairing marketing automation and content marketing provides businesses with a formidable toolkit for delivering personalised, relevant experiences to B2B customers at scale. Both are essential for a comprehensive B2B customer engagement strategy that caters to the unique needs and preferences of different audiences.

However, unlocking their full potential requires an astute, data-driven approach to planning and optimising campaigns. By leveraging their analytics, businesses can enjoy the fruits of lead-based and account-based engagement strategies alike.

Building Stronger Relationships with 1827 Marketing

When pursuing growth and engagement, remember: it's not just about how you see the world, but how your customers do. Understanding their terms, their needs, their challenges - therein lies the heart of truly effective B2B customer engagement.

The key to long-term growth lies in creating a hybrid engagement approach, blending lead-based and account-based strategies to cater to the unique needs of your audience. Marketing automation and content marketing are key facilitators in this journey, giving you the insight to orchestrate personalised experiences at scale.

The future of B2B marketing success hinges on this - transitioning from a one-size-fits-all approach to a nuanced, flexible, customer-centric, and data-driven strategy. By viewing customer engagement in this way, businesses can cultivate lasting partnerships with buyers, going beyond mere transactions to genuine, value-driven connections.

Reach out to 1827 Marketing today to learn more about blending automation and content to create a seamless customer engagement experience.