Smart marketers today realize that simply delivering basic contact information to their sales team is a wasted effort. If the quality of information isn’t there, those leads will end up costing more in sales follow-up than they’ll ever return in conversion.

Marketers need to know how likely a prospect is to become a customer before involving sales and investing their company’s time and money. Short of having a crystal ball, there are proven account-based marketing tactics you can rely on to get better leads that deliver the results you desire.

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a highly-customized B2B approach that aligns the sales and marketing process to build relationships with very specific and targeted accounts. Stop chasing fruitless leads and explore these five effective Account Based Marketing tactics designed to drive your marketing machine down the road to success.

1. Be Insightful

The richer the intelligence, the richer the rewards. Most analytic systems track searches that offer limited information. To capitalize on ABM, marketers want technology that delivers smarter intelligence customized to their specifics. Innovative platforms like InsightBASE™ utilize technology that collects B2B intent data by tracking the buyer’s journey in its early stages via social analytics and connecting that vital information to domains, company locations and the names of key decision makers. With that rich insight available, your leads are more accurately targeted and therefore more actionable.

2. Get Personal

As quality trumps quantity in a typical ABM campaign, there is likely to be a smaller number of prized accounts that need to deliver higher rates of conversion. And since today’s prospects are self-educated and savvy, the pressure is on marketers to produce programs that are both relevant and personal to a specific targeted account. When reaching out to your key accounts, send them something personal, valuable and compelling. Creating account-specific landing pages displaying custom copy, images, offers and forms further personalizes the account’s experience. Once your business is perceived as a trusted and reliable source of relevant information, the account becomes actively engaged.

3. Secure A Meeting

While the greater percentage of B2B marketers create offers designed to generate leads from webinars and whitepapers, the successful ones seal the deal by getting prospects to agree to a meeting. Provide a free service designed to get your foot in the door or vital information that tells them something about their business they don’t already know. It’s all about delivering more than the client is expecting, in ways that matter to them. With this ABM tactic, you’re apt to gain a new account and possibly lock in some serious customer loyalty.

4. Go Directly To the Top

Take a trip back in time and think direct mail. Since a company’s top executives rarely register for webinars or white papers, respond to unsolicited emails or follow companies or sales folks on social media, the once-popular direct marketing approach could be the way to go. A highly-innovative campaign designed to impress the key decision-makers in your prospective accounts may move them to action and succeed where other tactics have failed.

5. Mine Your Employees For Connections

Potential relationships employees outside of sales may have with your target accounts are often overlooked. Whether it’s a former college chum or relative through marriage, you might find an ‘in’ no one realized was there and an introduction can be made. Having that personal connection can make it far easier for your sales team to turn a prospect into a prized account.

Whatever your definition of a lead may be or your strategy for acquiring them, taking advantage of these ABM tactics will help you identify the best leads — and that will lead to more business.