6 Reasons That Prove The Social Media Marketing Cost Is Worth It

Account Based Data

Article | August 19, 2022

Account-based marketing strategies prioritize intent data to maximize the effectiveness of their sales and marketing workflows. With the help of intent data, businesses can tailor their interactions with target accounts based on their needs and build valuable relationships with them. In an interview with Media 7, Gil Allouche, the Founder and CEO of Metadata.io, talked about the use of intent data for lead generation. “Without the right tools, companies don’t realize what campaigns have zero traction and what campaigns are attracting the most potential buyers, therefore, money is wasted on leads that won’t lead to revenue.” Intent data aids in the prioritization of a list of target accounts to be pursued for conversion. Additionally, some businesses create specialized groups and targeted lists to hyper-personalize their content offerings and influence purchase decisions. Importance of Buyer Intent Data To make the most of intent data, companies engage B2B buyer intent data tools provided by exclusive intent data providers or account-based marketing software providers. They use these tools for effective lead generation. According to Insights on Professionals, almost 40% of businesses spend more than half of their marketing budget on intent data, and 70% plan to increase spending on intent data. Intent data plays a big role in enhancing an ABM strategy. Below are some ways: It helps with target account selection With the help of intent data, you can define your ICP, understand the ICP’s intent, and gather relevant data from multiple intent data tools or platforms and collate it to amplify your target list. As a bonus, you can also divide your target list based on their intent. Finally, you can target the accounts with the help of all the insights that you gained from the B2B intent data. You can zero-in on the best messaging High-quality B2B buyer intent data includes insights like a prospect’s research history. You can uncover actionable prospect trends that you would have otherwise missed. Using this crucial information, you can optimize your messaging because it plays an important role in content marketing. Buyer intent data can enhance sales pitches by shedding light on the buyer’s interests and needs. It improves your sales outreach Prospects are now focused on doing their own research based on the suggestions their friends or acquaintances provide. With the help of intent signals that the buyer intent tools record, the movement of the prospect is revealed. Once your sales team knows the position of a prospect in the sales funnel, they can decide when to get in touch and work towards a conversion. It helps you retain customers If your customers are looking at your competitor’s products or services, intent data signals will alert you. This kind of information indicates that you need to evaluate your offerings. You can set up triggers to gather such instances and seek feedback from customers to understand their expectations. You can reach out to these customers and provide them with support and attention so you do not lose them. You can amplify your content Content personalization is a crucial component of an effective ABM strategy. Using first and third-party data, you can create impactful blog content, email marketing campaigns, and other relevant content pieces to appeal to your leads. Buyer intent data can help you target your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your marketing team can create content on topics your prospects are looking at and revamp old content to make it more effective. Why Are B2B Marketers Intent on Using Buyer Intent Data? ABM marketing is B2B marketing on steroids. For B2B marketers who want to run intent-based marketing campaigns, buyer intent data has become a go-to tool because it helps them understand their target accounts better. Their approach is focused, tailored, and relevant. Such an approach leads to more conversions, shorter sales cycles, and clearer ROI. Let us look at why B2B marketers are making it a point to use account-based marketing software with buyer intent data tools. Increases brand exposure through customized websites, landing pages, and social media pages to cater to a specific audience Aligns sales and marketing teams by bridging the communication gap between them and establishing shared business goals Facilitates hyper-targeted advertising by providing information on search intent, online behaviour, main interests through keyword searches, and propensity to make purchase Accurately predicts buyer behavior with the help of comprehensive datasets to forecast the buying patterns of prospects Enhances customer experience by providing insights into the prospects’ needs and expectations so the curated content resonates with them 3 Best Buyer Intent Data Tools You Should Know About Here is a list of the three best buyer intent data tools that can help you improve your account-based marketing strategy: Demandbase Demandbase’s ABX Cloud uses account intelligence to help its customers orchestrate sales and marketing moves. With the help of reliable and high-quality insights, you can create relevant content for every stage of the B2B buyer’s journey. ABX Cloud has an engagement platform that shows all of the information your marketing and sales teams have gathered in one place. This way, your teams can find opportunities faster, engage with them smartly, and close deals quickly, which will help your business grow. ABX Cloud also uses predictive analysis so your sales team knows when to approach a lead. It conveniently aligns the efforts of both your sales and marketing teams to create an actionable, measurable, and focused ABM approach. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) for account selection. As a result, your target list is based on intent signals, CRM data, and others, which will help you know your target accounts well enough to create effective messaging. ABX’s account-based analytics measure engagement across each account and track progress throughout pre-defined, unique account journeys. This is how Demandbase uses intent data for lead generation. Demandbase was named a leader in the first-ever 2022 Magic Quadrant for Account-based Marketing Platforms. It is the only company to get the best scores for all three use cases in the accompanying 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Account-based Marketing Platforms report. Demandbase Success Story: SilkRoad Technology, Inc. is a human resource capital management software company. It used Demandbase's ABM platform, which was equipped with intent data, and saw activity and engagement from their top accounts go from 20%–30% to 80%+ in just six months. Bombora Bombora proudly markets itself as a market leader in B2B intent data. It is one of the most popular intent-based marketing facilitators. It has the most comprehensive and privacy-compliant data cooperative on the web. In short, it provides clean, risk-free intent data. It collects data consensually from its proprietary data source that comprises of 4000+ top B2B sites on the internet. It provides the most accurate data on a buyer’s digital journey so you can understand their intent. It has named its intent data solution ‘Company Surge.’ Bombora’s data can be integrated with all major platforms across the ad, sales, and martech ecosystems. This added convenience means you do not have to onboard a new system to access Bombora’s data. You can set it up in your current workflow. Privacy compliance and ethically sourced intent data make Bombora a great choice amongst the tools. It gathers data from websites that are exclusive to Bombora. It has implemented industry-standard consent mechanisms so that all the data is compliant. Company Surge uses BERT-based machine learning to understand the intent behind the words on a webpage and gives you an accurate picture of your buyer’s interest, pain points, requirements, and intent. It also helps with resolving pre-purchase signals of buyers to 2.8 million businesses by using its patented method that fuses behavioral and IP2C (Internet Protocol to Company) data. This data is then amplified by firmographic and demographic data. Bombora detects how many users from a specific organization are researching particular topics, how frequently they visit certain webpages, and how deep their research goes as compared to their usual web activity. Based on this information, it can tell when an organization wants to make a purchase. Bombora Success Story: Hornbill, a global leader of cloud-based workflow application software for IT, HR, security, and customer service teams, integrated Bombora with its HubSpot database. It got net-new in-market accounts every week, which Hornbill prioritized for sales and marketing. In six months, Hornbill found 900+ new accounts that were already in the market, which led to new active sales opportunities. ZoomInfo ZoomInfo Intent helps identify and engage buyers in real-time when they research solutions that your company offers. You can discover ready-to-buy prospects, connect with ideal buyers, and integrate the data with the tools that are already a part of your platform. It is simple to map an ideal customer profile using the buying signals collected by ZoomInfo's database. You can uncover sales-ready leads that are looking at the products or solutions that your company offers. The intent engine triggers signals that are tracked by a network of 300,000 publisher domains. One trillion new keyword-to-device pairs are added to ZoomInfo every month from more than 90% of all the devices in the United States, which is a lot of devices. ZoomInfo can help you identify and understand entire buying teams based on what they research. You can reach decision makers over the phone, through digital marketing channels, and by email to start a meaningful conversation. You can create automated workflows to close more deals by incorporating contact and intent data into your CRM, marketing, and sales software. ZoomInfo Success Story: Speakap, an internal communications app, used ZoomInfo Intent and DiscoverOrg’s combined platform. Their bounce rates fell below 1%, their engagement rate increased by 25%, and their pipeline growth increased by more than 50%. Summing It Up Buyer intent data tools can enhance the way you do business, how efficiently your sales and marketing teams function, and how effectively you can run your ABM marketing campaigns. Choose your buyer intent data tools from trusted intent data providers based on their offerings, their privacy compliance, integration capabilities, transparent metrics, and overall functionality so that you can make the most of your account-based marketing strategy. This way, you can make the most of your marketing efforts. FAQ How can you get buyer intent data? Buyer intent data is collected by buyer intent data tools, which may be a part of your ABM platform or which you can integrate with your platform. They collect the data from website visits, CRM, social media data, content consumption and off-site activity. What are the benefits of buyer intent data tools? Buyer intent data tools provide insights on a customer’s intent to purchase. They do this by mapping the customer journey, performing predictive analysis, behavioral analysis, and tracking competitor data. How can you use buyer intent data to scale your business? By using buyer intent data, you can personalize your website, prioritize your inbound leads, nurture your leads, personalize your emails and identify potential customers who haven’t engaged with you yet. So, you can convert the leads into customers by offering them just what they want.

Buyer Intent Data

Article | March 6, 2023

Inconsistent language in B2B marketing is becoming a growing hurdle for collaboration. I attended a workshop recently that brought together members of different marketing functions to train them on ABM. The task was simple enough: Act as the agency and put together an ABM brief. We didn’t have any trouble understanding the assignment. We just couldn’t seem to speak the same language. We were discussing the same topics and working toward the same goal. But the variations in how each of us used established B2B marketing terms made collaboration harder. And so, it got me thinking. How often have you sat in a meeting and understood what someone has said but not what they’ve meant? Sure, you understand that impressions measure how many times someone’s seen your ad. But why does it matter? How does it contribute to revenue growth and the overall performance of the campaign? What does it mean to me? I was reminded of when we were learning a foreign language in school. You could try directly translating a sentence to English, but chances are it wouldn’t make much sense. A translation would only add up when you understood its grammatical and syntactical context. So, if we (no matter how humorously) consider B2B marketing a language of its own, why aren’t we as rigorous in policing our use of terminology? Growing pains In the past, B2B marketing departments were seen as single-focus, cost center arms of a business. Since then, the Marketing remit has grown considerably. Tools and technology allow us to work on everything from insights and analytics to bespoke, hyper-personalized 1:1 ABM programs. Sales and Marketing alignment is helping prove our contribution to the bottom line. And we’re finally becoming a revenue center. But I think there’s a catch. The same increased responsibilities that allow us to connect our marketing activity to revenue have made the language we use more inconsistent. Teams are more specialized than ever. And the size of the marketing department has expanded massively. There are even employees in the same functions who’ve never said a word to each other. This creates bubbles of intradepartmental dialects. Linguistic nuances that create collaborative hurdles between teams, departments, and even organizations. Time that should be spent planning, producing, and activating is lost to soul-destroying email chains and inane meetings clarifying points of uncertainty. Things I’m sure we’d all be happier without. The effects on business Then there are the impacts inconsistent language has on your business. Brief your teams unclearly and budget/resource that could be used more productively is squandered on multiple revisions. Chains of stakeholder questions that could have been easily avoided with greater context can result in strained working relationships. Levels of employee stress can increase out of fear of asking a question and sounding stupid. And perhaps the scariest of all – misunderstandings of key deliverables that find their way through to your final outputs. Standardizing our use of language can help alleviate these challenges. Key performance metrics will always differ between functions. KPIs like leads generated and engagement will be valuable to your Marketing or social teams, but not Sales whose sole focus is accelerating pipeline. But it’s context that helps tie everything together. It saves you questioning why everyone’s talking about split testing and not A/B testing (before realizing they’re the same thing an hour into the discussion). It clarifies why certain conversations are happening, sets clear expectations of what needs to be done and by whom, and breaks down siloes between departments. It stops important points of discussion from being lost in translation. Speaking the same language Driving revenue through a more unified marketing and sales function is becoming core to what we do. But we need to take a step back and evaluate our use of terminology. Before considering Sales and Marketing alignment, our marketing teams have to speak the same language. Collaboration is a product of good communication. But siloes across your marketing department can stand in the way of productivity. Making a concerted effort to convey the scope and role of specific marketing functions, core metrics necessary for success, and ways of working for each team helps promote a more collaborative work culture. It’s our responsibility to ensure we’re all on the same page before starting group projects or aligning with other branches of business. Recognizing the inconsistencies in our language and addressing them in advance helps reduce wasted time and resource. It sets us up for success by reducing the number of roadblocks in the way of our work and path to revenue growth. Marketing departments in B2B industries will likely continue to grow. And for organizations like B2B tech enterprises, the challenges associated with inconsistent language are only exacerbated by teams spread by geo, mother tongue, and culture. Creating clear and consistent rules for the language we use as B2B marketers can help overcome these barriers, allowing us to focus on creating exceptional marketing. Some ways forward So, how do we create guidelines for more consistent marketing language? I won’t say I have all the answers. But I do think there needs to be a shift in employee education and training with a view to standardizing nomenclature. Glossaries that include company-specific frameworks can be a great way to provide context and meaning to your business’ use of terminology. Pre-recorded video resources with your subject matter experts can be paired with an intranet site to offer a more interactive, always-on education and training solution. Or, better still, regular workshops across departments to promote cross-functional understanding of why terms are used at certain times. I’d also recommend reviewing your corporate team structures to see which stakeholders have a seat at the table. Changes in how your teams communicate can only come from the top down. And a reflection on how your use of language affects those you work with, through researching communication processes/best practices or otherwise, can be a step toward fostering a more collaborative work culture. Establishing clear definitions for common language allows us to work closer together. It breaks down barriers to collaboration and lets us focus on common business goals. If Marketing really wants to become a revenue center, we need to start speaking the same language.

Core ABM

Article | June 20, 2023

Metrics, Analytics, and Insights in ABM It is a fact that ABM gives a higher ROI as compared to other marketing strategies. If you are a marketer who has painstakingly built an ABM strategy from scratch, you would understand the amount of time it takes to execute it and for it to show measurable results. How do you measure the success of your ABM strategy? You need to understand the metrics, analytics, and insights. Marketers use these terms interchangeably, but there is a difference between them. By using raw data points, metrics show you the incremental changes in how target accounts interact with your brand. Analytics compares the metrics over time to show you how your ABM strategy is performing. Metrics and analytics together help you gain insights into what is working and what isn’t. Insights help you take action to improve your ABM strategy. To measure the success of an ABM strategy, you need to use ABM Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) metrics. ABM KPIs track the performance of your strategy with respect to customer service, marketing, efficiency, revenue, and employment statistics. In an interview with Media 7, Abhi Yadav, Founder & CTO of Zylotech, talked about the importance of customer intelligence in marketing: Tracking every point of engagement is critical in delivering a holistic view of where buyers are actively engaged and what’s working. Defining ABM KPIs Use the SMART criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a KPI. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound. By identifying how well the KPI fits into these criteria, you can define it. Find answers to the following questions to define your KPI: Is your goal specific? Is your goal measurable? Is it attainable? Is it relevant to your business? Is the goal time-bound? A well-defined KPI should be a part of your marketing analytics strategy to accurately track the performance of your ABM strategy. KPIs You Should Measure to Track ABM Success Sales Funnel Metrics Measuring sales funnel metrics can quickly pinpoint where your ABM strategy has fallen out of alignment with your business goals. They can be classified into three types: Upper Funnel Metrics Upper funnel or top-of-funnel metrics track the engagement rate of the leads within your target accounts. They assess the time taken for a lead to complete specific actions like opening your emails, receiving, or responding to direct mail, visiting your website, and more. You can pinpoint which leads are closer to buying based on the increase in engagement. These metrics also help you know which accounts don’t know anything about your company. You can improve your strategy to capture these accounts. Is there a huge gap between the products and services your target accounts want and the ones you offer? This gap is the white space. Find your white space by identifying where you lack engagement within your accounts. Should you consider targeting different accounts? Eliminate the white space once you find the answers to these questions. Your goal should depend on the size of the company and the number of ICPs you are targeting. Middle-of-Funnel Metrics These metrics help measure the impact of your campaign on your top accounts. Are your target accounts having productive meetings and engagements with your sales team? Swiftly moving your leads to the sales team is an indicator of an effective ABM campaign. Also, you should measure the quality of the campaign based on how many leads move to the next stage of the funnel. Bottom-of-Funnel Metrics For the bottom-of-funnel metrics, measure average selling point (ASP) to gauge if you have targeted the right accounts with your campaign. If you have a higher close rate within your ABM accounts that means your campaign is performing well. As compared to other marketing strategies, ABM helps businesses increase their close rate. Customer Churn Rate The customer churn rate, also known as the attrition rate, is the number of accounts that have stopped doing business with you over a period. It should be as low as possible. It is a metric to measure the quality of the relationship you have with an account. ABM is a qualitative marketing strategy. If your churn rate is high, then reevaluate your products and services and confirm that you are targeting the right accounts. Understanding your target accounts better is the easiest way to decrease your churn rate. Content Engagement Content management is of paramount importance while running an ABM strategy. With this KPI, you can track the engagement each piece of content brings. The pieces that don’t perform well should be scrapped or improved to better suit the needs of your target accounts. Email open and click-through rates point towards ineffective subject lines, content, and CTAs. Form Fills Form fills are important for collecting data that helps with nurturing and engaging leads. Track your form fills to confirm if you are gathering information effectively. Adjust your campaign if you are not getting the expected results. Conversions during the Customer Journey A good way to show your customers that you care about them is to give them several opportunities to buy or sign up. It's important to keep track of the conversion rate for each CTA so that you can figure out where customers are losing interest in the sales process. Having this information will help you improve the customer journey. Phone Calls and Scheduled Demos Keeping a record of your phone calls and scheduled demonstrations is crucial to measuring your ABM success. You are creating a personal connection while interacting with the customer so they may take you closer to converting a deal. Conversion Rate Every ABM strategy’s aim is to drive sales and acquire new customers. As a metric, the B2B conversion rate is important because it helps you evaluate the success of your campaign and compare your performance to the previous year. Customer Retention Assess the health of your accounts by measuring customer satisfaction. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) can determine how satisfied your accounts are with your product or service. You can seek their feedback and use it to create better customer experiences and, in the future, design products and services to cater to their needs so you can retain your customers. Average Deal Size This KPI is primarily used by sales managers to understand how well they have utilized the opportunities that have come their way. It is calculated by dividing your total monetary amount of deals by the total number of deals that were converted. It can help the sales team understand what the average deal size is that they are looking at and what they can aim for. Popular ABM Analytics Tools The most popular and widely used ABM analytics tools are Microsoft Excel, LeanData, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Marketo, Engagio, DemandBase, and Terminus. How ServiceMax Saw a 300% Increase in Their Conversions Using DemandBase Using DemandBase’s Forms solution to collect user data, AI-powered DemandBase Site Optimization for data personalization, and DemandBase Analytics to understand traffic trends, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other critical website metrics, California-based Service Execution Management company ServiceMax, witnessed a 300 percent increase in their conversions, a 70 percent decrease in bounce rates, and a 100 percent increase in page views per session. Key Takeaways Measuring the success of your ABM strategy is crucial to understanding the strong and weak points of your strategy. A lot of trial and error goes into creating an effective ABM strategy. Define and measure your ABM KPIs to optimize your ABM strategy for better results. FAQ What are the most important ABM KPIs? Some of the most important KPIs are upper funnel metrics, customer churn rate, and conversion rate. What are some popular ABM analytics tools? Popular ABM analytics tools include Salesforce, Google Analytics, Marketo, Engagio, DemandBase, and Terminus.

Article | April 12, 2020

There is a New Marketing Landscape and it is critical for companies to rethink their marketing and sales strategy. This is a world of financial uncertainty for your prospects and customers, resulting in decreased budgets, longer sales cycles, and higher churn. It’s also a world of competing priorities. Key influencers and decision makers are drowning in priority issues, making it challenging to earn their attention. Given these new realities, Account Based Marketing/Sales/Customer Success (ABX) is top of mind for marketing and sales leaders given its proven efficiency and effectiveness in engaging and converting priority accounts.