Buyer Intent Data
Article | August 23, 2022
Uncover the foremost account-based marketing events of 2023 and embrace the opportunity to attend these essential events, meticulously curated to empower marketers and shape the trajectory of ABM.
Introduction
In the ever-evolving world of account-based marketing (ABM), staying ahead of the curve is paramount for businesses seeking to achieve marketing excellence and drive meaningful results. Attending industry events has become an essential strategy for professionals in the ABM realm to remain competitive and gain a competitive edge.
From thought-provoking conferences to collaborative summits, these carefully selected events offer a unique opportunity to gain invaluable insights, exchange ideas with industry leaders, and stay abreast of the latest trends and strategies in ABM. Businesses can position themselves at the forefront of ABM innovation by prioritizing their attendance at these industry-leading events, resulting in propelling marketing efforts toward unparalleled success.
Go-To-Market Made Simple Roadshow 2023 – Quarter 2
June 23, 2023 | Boston (USA)
The Go-To-Market Made Simple Roadshow 2023 – Quarter 2 presents a compelling opportunity for go-to-market leaders to gain valuable insights and strategies in an ever-evolving landscape. This event acknowledges the rapid evolution of go-to-market design, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach that encompasses sales, marketing, product, and customer success. With the emergence of trends such as product-led growth (PLG), ecosystem, and account-based marketing (ABM), alongside traditional inbound and outbound motions, revenue leaders are seeking a more holistic way to run their businesses. Additionally, this event offers a valuable networking platform, enabling go-to-market leaders to connect with their executive peers and collectively tackle the most pressing challenges in the dynamic business landscape.
Breakthrough 23
October 16–19 | Frisco (USA)
Breakthrough 23 is an exceptional event that brings together marketing and sales leaders to explore breakthrough strategies and techniques in intent-based advertising, prospecting, and accelerating sales. With a lineup of esteemed speakers including Jason Zintak, CEO of 6sense, Latane Conant, CMO of 6sense, and Dylan Schick, Senior Account Development Manager at Exabeam, attendees can expect insightful presentations and valuable insights. Topics covered range from revolutionizing intent-based advertising to leveraging advanced prospecting techniques with 6sense and driving pipeline growth through coordinated campaigns. This conference offers a unique opportunity for networking with over 1,100 industry leaders and features engaging product sessions to stay at the forefront of marketing and sales innovation.
Collision Conference
June 26–29, 2023 | Toronto (Canada)
Collision Conference, renowned as one of the largest global tech conferences, invites professionals to immerse themselves in an exceptional networking and learning experience. Attendees can anticipate engaging with thought leaders and industry experts, including Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services; Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction; and Dave Rogenmoser, Co-founder and CEO of Jasper, among others, to gain valuable insights and knowledge. With an impressive media presence, including over 1,200 journalists from renowned publications like Bloomberg, Financial Times, Forbes, CNBC, and the Wall Street Journal, Collision Conference provides unparalleled exposure for participants. By participating in the Collision Conference, professionals position themselves at the forefront of innovation, collaboration, and investment opportunities that shape the future of the tech and business landscape.
Inbound 2023
September 5–8 | Boston (USA)
A highly anticipated event, Inbound 2023, sets the stage for marketers to explore cutting-edge innovations, develop world-class content, and prepare their strategies for the upcoming AI boom. Embodying an incubator's energy and an accelerator's intelligence, Inbound propels the industry forward for the collective good. It serves as a launchpad for careers, a catalyst for business growth, and a catalyst for positive community transformation. With speakers, including Reese Witherspoon, Founder of Hello Sunshine; Morgan Debaun, Founder and CEO of Blavity Inc.; and Derek Jeter, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist, among others, on the deck, attendees can expect to be immersed in a transformative experience to elevate their marketing endeavors and forge meaningful connections. Inbound 2023 provides exclusive insights that assist marketers thrive, businesses scale, and the collective power of the community to drive positive change.
SaaStr Annual 2023
September 06–08 | San Francisco (USA)
SaaStr Annual 2023, one of the world's largest SaaS community events, unites over 12,500 SaaS executives, founders, and venture capitalists for an immersive experience. This three-day event features 100+ tactical sessions presented by renowned founders, emerging voices, and rising stars in the industry. With representation from 250+ speakers hailing from top SaaS companies worldwide, attendees can expect to gain actionable advice and insights to drive business growth from zero to $100M ARR with reduced stress and increased success. Sponsored by industry-leading organizations such as G2, Google Cloud, Greenhouse, and Vendr, among others, every session at the event will deliver practical insights and actionable strategies.
Outreach Unleash 2023
October 03–05 | Seattle (USA)
Outreach Unleash 2023 is an exclusive event centered around unleashing accelerated growth through a comprehensive RevOps approach. Emphasizing the importance of an abundance mindset, participants will explore how sales professionals can take ownership of their destiny and execute with the precision of a CEO, shaping a future of success. Renowned speakers and industry experts, including Em Falk, Director of Revenue Operations at Reylance.Ai; Donna Sanborn, Senior Leader of Digital Sales Effectiveness at Cisco; and Annie Lewis, Sr. Product Manager at Outreach, among others, share insights across a diverse range of topics, including metric myth-busting through data sharing between Outreach and Snowflake. This will enable attendees to harness the power of GenAI to achieve a competitive advantage. Furthermore, the event will delve into the strategies employed by top-performing sales professionals who approach their craft with passion and consistently provide solutions to executives' most pressing strategic challenges.
Product Marketing Summit
September 21 - 22, 2023 | Oakland (USA)
The Product Marketing Summit, organized by Product Marketing Alliance, brings together the world's largest community of product marketers in a collaborative gathering focused on sharing valuable insights. The industry leaders and experts, including Sudha Ranganathan, Director of Product Marketing at LinkedIn; Emma Stratton, Founder of Punchy; and Apoorva Sharma, Head of Global Cross-Product Solutions at Google, among others, will share valuable insights on navigating complex go-to-market strategies, optimizing product launches, establishing a strong market position, which will leverage ideal customer profiles and segmentation, and others. Product Marketing Summit promises to be a transformative experience, providing attendees with a clear roadmap for professional growth and enabling them to amplify the differentiated value of their products in today's competitive market.
MarketingProfs B2B Forum
October 04–06, 2023 | Boston (USA)
Discover the pinnacle of marketing events at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, where marketers gather to unlock the strategies that drive growth, elevate brand reputation, prove ROI, and navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape. B2B Forum is an ideal venue for marketers who want to improve their skills, grow their professional networks, and spark their imagination. It has a carefully chosen lineup of tactical sessions, inspiring keynotes, and memorable networking opportunities. With leading industry speakers on the deck, including Nilofer Merchant, Cofounder of The Intangible Labs; Moni Oloyede, Director of Marketing at Fidelis Cybersecurity; and Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group, among others, the B2B Forum will act as a catalyst for career development, idea generation, and celebration of the art of marketing. Attendees can expect to unlock valuable strategies, expand their professional networks, and be inspired by industry experts.
B2B Summit APAC 2023
September 19–20, 2023 | Singapore
B2B Summit APAC 2023 is the premier event dedicated to driving business growth and fueling the revenue engine in the Asia-Pacific region. With a focus on Forrester's B2B Customer-Obsessed Growth Engine, this summit delivers groundbreaking research, models, and frameworks tailored to meet the priorities of organizations. Marketing leaders can expect a comprehensive agenda featuring insightful breakouts, hands-on case studies, inspiring keynotes, and valuable peer connections. By attending B2B Summit APAC, Participants will gain the knowledge and strategies necessary to empower their marketing strategies and achieve results that surpass their goals.
B2B Marketing ABM Conference
November 02, 2023 | Austin (USA)
The B2B Marketing ABM Conference is an eagerly anticipated event dedicated exclusively to Account-Based Marketing (ABM). With a thoughtfully curated agenda spread across four stages, this conference offers a high-caliber program designed to cater to a wide range of marketing needs. Through hand-picking the big thinkers from hundreds of 'call for speakers' submissions, Stefano Lacono, Marketing Director of 6Sense; Ryan Almond, Global Vertical Marketing and ABM Director of Henkel; and Rebecca Powell, Senior ABM Marketing Manager at Showpad, among others, will provide attendees with actionable strategies and valuable insights to propel their ABM efforts forward, regardless of their current stage in the journey. From pinpointing areas of improvement to refining ABM strategies, participants will leave the conference armed with the knowledge and tools needed to unlock the true potential of ABM.
Conclusion
Attending account-based marketing events is an essential step in staying ahead of the curve and refining your ABM strategies in today's dynamic marketing landscape. These events provide unparalleled opportunities to gain insights from industry experts, discover emerging trends, and network with like-minded professionals.
By participating in these conferences, marketers can equip themselves with the knowledge, strategies, and tools needed to drive successful ABM campaigns, engage key accounts, and achieve remarkable results. Businesses must capitalize on and be part of these transformative events that are shaping the future of account-based marketing.
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Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
There’s a new business world evolving—a digital-only marketplace driven by the recent global pandemic. It impacted every company, forced them to change the way they operate, market, and sell. Proven best marketing practices, such as Account-Based Marketing (ABM), are commonplace for B2B marketers. That said, the new reality and new normal is forcing companies to rethink how they can optimize their strategy to be more accurate and direct with a one-to-many engagement model.
As COVID-19 continues to be spreading, B2b marketers (you) should take advantage of the downtime to assess and scale your business in the evolving digital-only marketplace. This is because once you exit from this crisis, businesses would be ordinary.
So, one of the most effective ways to keep your marketing strategy dynamic is to look for fresh ideas, tactical approaches, get creative with adding personalization, and include some empathy in messages to help customers during this period of uncertainty.
With account-based marketing, set a relatively new concept of marketing strategies to scale your business. Understanding this, you can better deliver the right solution to your targeted and potential customers.
As you are defining and refining your ABM marketing strategy, how can you help customers more with solutions precisely? It’s time to explore new ways to communicate and engage more and more accounts.
Get Creative with Your ABM Strategy
ABM may not be a new concept in the B2B space. Still, there’s always an opportunity to freshen up your strategy and get creative with different aspects. The most influential and budding trend of being creative is personalization. Yes! Personalization will let you focus on your target audience and achieve brand recognition and higher conversions.
Identify a List of Ideal Target Audience
As ABM is about tailoring campaigns to specific accounts, the first thing you need to do is to identify a list of important accounts for your campaign. The easiest way to begin is by asking your sales team to pick accounts from the existing customer data.
Finding companies matching your ideal target customer helps narrow down your focus for a longer period. Once you have a list of companies, use the same social media strategies to search their profile pages and find similar companies. But, sometimes, there might be some companies on social media that do not match your ideal customer profile. In such cases, you can research for each of the “similar” accounts you find.
Want to know how to proceed? Read further.
Research Each Account
Unlike research for personas, ABM is not about targeting an individual. Instead, it requires proper account-based research! So, what information you need to get initially and collect to start your research? It’s recommended to start with the following:
Market-wise: Includes industry, company size, and competitors
Company-wise: Marketing share, revenue, and past revenue records
Client/Audience wise: Buying power, designation, influencers, and management
In most cases, this information will be visible on the company website, press releases, social media pages, or annual reports. One of the most critical aspects of the research phase is identifying and getting access to key decision-makers. The more you identify them, the more successful will be your ABM campaign. It is because, today, the number of people involved in decision-making is growing. According to Gartner, in a typical firm with 100-500 employees, approximately 7-8 people stay engaged in the buying decisions. But you need to convince. How? Good content plays a crucial role here.
Content? How? Read the next point to understand.
Use Dynamic Content
Creating dynamic content is a great way to have personalized communications with your target accounts. Whether emails, newsletters, subscriptions, websites, blogs, and videos, among others, are the best ways to initiate personalization in your marketing strategy when doing ABM.
Demand Gen Report’s survey found that 95% of B2B buyers choose a solution provider through content. This helps them navigate each stage of the buying process. Here are ABM’s most effective content-based marketing tactics:
Personalized content: 78%
Emails: 68%
Social media: 57%
Targeted display ads: 50%
Search engines: 50%
Mobile ad: 48%
To understand how dynamic content plays a key role, hop to the next level.
Generate Relevant Content
What kind of content engages B2B buyers? It is relevant and informational content because such contents are more attractive, which interests a buyer is to engage with you. Also, in terms of the most effective ABM strategies, personalized content ranks number one!
So, how you make relevant content? The standard approach in ABM for B2B marketers is to create tailored content for a specific industry. But you can also customize content for particular accounts. It is an excellent practice to review the existing content before you customize content for any specific account. It will give you more ideas and insights.
For example, blog posts, case studies, white papers, and e-books are the most considered relevant content for your ideal target account. Then, categorize by stage in the sales funnel. Whether they fall under the top of the funnel (includes blogs, articles, videos, and infographics), middle of the funnel (includes eBooks, case studies, white papers, and video tutorials), and bottom of the funnel (includes free blogs, blog samples, quotes, etc.). This way, you know accurately the type of content (a relevant one) that needs to be sent to a buyer based on the funnel stage.
However, if you have no content that rings with your ideal customer, interview existing customers that match their profile to understand their top business challenges. This becomes extremely powerful and results in attracting more and more potential customers in the future.
In this context, only 42% of marketers communicate with their customers as part of their content research phase. Without interviewing existing customers, the content created might not be relevant. Thus, it becomes one primary reason buyers don’t engage with brands.
Use Personalized Content
Today, content personalization is playing a pivotal role in the new digital marketing landscape. It is working on customizing the content-based interests of audiences and their challenges. It can help you target your specific market segments more accurately and enable more chances of conversion. Personalization of content aims to ultimately understand how the businesses will benefit from your products and services.
To increase the size of your marketing net through ABM strategy, it is vital to be sure that your target accounts resonate with your content across the following touch-points:
Use personalized content on social media platforms to gain maximum outreach
Utilize advanced programmatic ads to communicate directly to your target accounts
Develop landing pages precisely to one target account or multiple accounts that have similar needs within a similar industry
Tell your Story to Connect
If you want to stand out from the crowd, your ABM strategy must be unique instead of being cut and dry. Storytelling is a perfect opportunity to be creative in showcasing your business (brand). Such an approach gives a broad perspective to your audiences. Hence, they learn more about your brand, the solutions you provide, and the benefits they might gain from the collaboration.
Storytelling in your content-based ABM strategy can take on many forms, such as:
Combine product videos with case-studies related to the target account’s needs.
In case-studies, use relevant success stories during targeting. Allow them to see themselves as the business in the case study.
Highlight the past customer experience to the target account.
Share your company culture and milestones.
These points attribute holistically to create proper storytelling— one of the most critical aspects of content-based ABM strategy for marketing.
Personalize Your Website
Creating a dynamically personalized and highly relevant website is extremely important to target accounts. Based on their behavior, location, profile, and other attributes, a website provides a different experience to your targeted accounts. Imagine browsing a website and seeing your industry on its homepage—wouldn’t you be intrigued to browse further? This is how a part of personalization works. So, personalize your website by tailoring content, gathering events, webinars, discussion forums, and collaboration with your industry leaders. These attributes help personalization become more powerful, as you gain the ability to catch target account’s interest the moment they click on your website.
To create a personalized website, remember these points:
Diversify your content through blog posts, infographics, video or slide presentations, etc.
Your website’s structural flow should accommodate a straightforward user experience.
Easy navigation of the website to encourage leads
Perform testing on keywords, pricing info, placement of CTAs, layout, images, landing pages, and contact forms.
Boost the quality of your content for accuracy, coherence, and tone.
Distribute Content to the Right Person
The foremost goal of ABM strategy to scale your business is to reach the right person at the right account. It is necessary so that you can engage, nurture, and build a strong connection.
What’s the most effective way to create content to reach the right person?
It’s an Email. Emails still work efficiently than any other content form when it comes to campaigns. The content for it needs to be highly relevant to contact a single account or a group of accounts that match your ideal customer’s profile.
E-mail is not just limited to marketers. Sales representatives can use email too! 92% of businesses pay attention to emails even if it’s sent from a company that they have never done business with. They read an email that contains ideas that might be relevant to their business. Also, 78% of decision-makers have taken appointments or attended an event inspired by cold emails.
So, do not be mistaken with email marketing dead just yet!
To understand it more, know-how a direct mail can be effective:
80% of mail gets attention and opened.
56% of buyers initiate contact with the help of direct mail.
59% of buyers enjoy receiving direct mail from brands they like.
The average ROI for mail campaigns is between 18-20%.
Therefore, with mails, you can target a particular account and tailor the content particularly for them. Also, you can tailor the content to include personal details such as company logo, names, and job titles. Because this helps clients remember your company details than of others on top of their minds.
Explore Experimental Marketing
Experiential marketing in ABM strategy can combine real-world and virtual touch-points to promote higher campaign engagement. Refining your ABM campaigns around the tenants of experiential marketing can increase the likelihood of a conversion and strengthen your brand loyalty with target accounts.
To do experiential marketing in your ABM strategy program, keep the focus on the following tactics:
Create new content messaging to connect to the new focused target audience.
Create a client value proposition on an account-by-account, including content marketing tricks.
Focusing on an emotional connection between the target account and your brand to give solutions is essential
Apply your content marketing strategies to a digital and real-world customer experience framework.
Include all of your standard digital marketing channels, in-person events, and one-on-one meetings
Lastly, Re-think Everything
While the COVID-19 pandemic has left a wake of loss and misfortune in the B2B business world, the new digital-only reality will accelerate digital transformation across every B2B enterprise. More importantly, this will catalyze to resolve puzzling technology, skills, and organizational challenges that have prevented marketing teams from fully delivering a rich customer experience through their ABM programs. So, you should re-think everything at this time, including your tech stack, to increase the number of marketing technology.
Leveraging a one-size-fits-all approach to ABM does not work, especially in a COVID-19 affected world. Now, more than ever, you need to include and demonstrate empathy and engage target accounts with the right content and message in your ABM strategy. By this, marketing organizations can quickly understand which accounts are in a buy-cycle and contribute to the virility of your campaigns within your accounts to expand coverage and conversion results.
Frequently Asked Questions
How effective is ABM?
ABM helps companies to align their sales and marketing functions with increasing revenue. 60% of them using ABM have increased revenue by 10% in a year. Also, other companies have seen a 30% and more increase in business revenue. Therefore, by implementing account-based marketing, B2B marketers will have a technology stack that can scale their new business.
How does personalization help ABM strategy to scale?
If you have included personalization, here are ways that help your ABM strategy to scale:
Create a strategic design, including creating empathy maps for each target audience segment or customer personas.
Create proprietary datasets according to patterns of customer profiles, get insight, and include personalization messages, content on social media platforms, blogs, websites, and more.
Use Tech integrations such as voice recognition and augmented reality, which is mobile-friendly, to reduce the cost of managing millions of data points.
Automate process: Campaign creation, content creation through emails, and more.
How to prepare ABM strategies?
Follow these steps to prepare ABM strategies:
Build the sales bridge to establish alignment between sales and marketing leadership.
Define your segments.
Align marketing and sales processes.
Empower sales and marketing, including technology stacks like artificial intelligence, machine learning, chatbots, VR, and AR.
Host consistent planning sessions with territory-level managers.
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Programmatic ABM
Article | June 9, 2022
In any company, there is a sales function and a marketing function. They are supposed to work together to help the organization secure business, earn revenue, and facilitate growth.
Oftentimes, because of the nature of their business, sales and marketing work at cross purposes and they lose focus on their ultimate objective of identifying, creating, and retaining customers.
In this article, we will discuss how sales and marketing can work together to form an effective B2B sales funnel.
But first, let’s explore the roles of sales and marketing within an organization.
Sales are the function of driving revenue with salespeople who follow a defined sales process. A typical sales process involves a research phase to ensure that the intended customer is a good fit to the company’s Ideal Customer Profile, a discovery phase where the salesperson gets to know the customer, understand their needs, and see where their solution can help solve the customer’s problem, a demonstration phase where the seller lets the buyer envision how their solution for a product or service can satisfy the buyer’s need.
A proposal phase is proactive and where the seller provides the customer with an outline of the work they will undertake and at what price. Sometimes a seller will instead be responding to a buyer’s request for a proposal (RFP). Up until this point in the sales process, prospective customers are referred to as “suspects,” meaning that they may be a good fit, but they have not expressed any interest in the company’s solutions and the company has not proposed any ways in which it could be of service. However, once a salesperson provides the prospective customer with a proposal, that prospective customer becomes known as a “prospect.”
In sales, the measurement of potential revenue and its progress towards realization is called a sales “funnel.” In a sales funnel, the probability of the salesperson closing the sale is now weighted with percentages demonstrating the likelihood of success. In the sales process, opportunities are weighted based on their probability of closing. This is called opportunity management and it looks something like this:
0% of the prospect is identified by researching the intended sales target company.
10% of the prospect is prequalified as a potential good fit in alignment with the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (I.D.C.).
25% of the prospect is qualified via a discovery call, and the opportunity is loaded into the sales funnel.
40% is when the buyer agrees to a demonstration, shows genuine buying interest, and is open to receiving a proposal.
50% is the assessment phase where the seller determines if the buyer has Budget, Authority, Need, and the Timeframe for implementation, (B.A.N.T.). Another component of the sale to be addressed at this phase is “why,” as in, “Why is the buyer making this purchase decision, why is my company being considered, and why is this timeframe for implementation important?”
60% is when a proposal is submitted to the buyer for consideration. (Pro tip: A good salesperson will have the boilerplate components of the contract pre-vetted by legal and IT when the proposal is initially submitted to the buyer so that the contract does not get held up at the bottom of the funnel by any issues not within the buyer’s control when it is ready to close).
75% is the negotiation phase where the buyer/decision-maker(s) asks clarifying questions that show an intent to purchase or express some objections that the seller will need to overcome to move the sale forward.
90% is when both parties agree to all the conditions of the purchase and the final contract is submitted for signature.
100% is when the sale is closed and the revenue can be recognized.
If the funnel can be trusted, and oftentimes that’s a big “if” because salespeople are not always disciplined in opportunity management, then revenue recognized can be forecasted beginning at 75% of probability.
At every phase of the sales funnel, sales are conducted by calling, emailing, texting, or other outreach to prospective and existing customers to guide them towards making a purchase. The process might be consultative, taking place over a long period and involving multiple decision-makers in which the salesperson learns about the customer and their pain points, and then helps them understand how their product or service offering can provide a solution.
Sales could also be tactical and a very short process involving just a single conversation with a salesperson before an agreement is finalized.
Although technology and social media have certainly influenced how sales are conducted, the essential steps of the sales process have pretty much remained the same.
Whereas sales are hands-on, marketing is a much more comprehensive process that does not generally interact with an individual customer but is designed to increase awareness of a brand or product to target customers as a group.
Unlike sales, the methods, tactics, and channels used by marketers have evolved tremendously over the last fifteen years. Marketing today is primarily digital and includes content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, organic website traffic, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and the use of influencers and brand ambassadors.
The objective of the marketing department is to generate leads for the sales department. These leads start as “marketing qualified leads” (MQLs) and although these prospective buyers are not yet ready to purchase, they have expressed interest in a company’s product. When properly nurtured by the marketing department, these prospects become “sales qualified leads” (SQL’s) and are handed off by the marketing team to the sales team when they are likely to make a purchase.
This nurturing can occur via social media, email distribution, or other communication from the marketing team to keep the prospective client interested and engaged.
It would seem so easy for marketing to cultivate leads and hand them off to the sales team. However, this is often not the case. Too frequently marketing and sales are simply misaligned.
Just consider these statistics:
According to Upland, 55% of marketers don’t know which collateral their sales colleagues are most likely to use.
LinkedIn reports that only 46% of marketers describe sales and marketing as “highly aligned” at their company.
The Precision Marketing Group states that 25% of businesses describe their sales and marketing as either “misaligned” or “rarely aligned”.
This lack of synchronization between marketing and sales causes poor execution and lost opportunities.
According to LinkedIn’s Art of Winning Report, an estimated $1 trillion a year is lost due to a lack of sales and marketing coordination in the US alone.
An industry survey by InsideView found that the six biggest obstacles to sales and marketing
working together were:
Lack of accurate/shared data on target accounts and prospects (43%)
Communication (43%)
Use of different metrics (41%)
Broken/flawed processes (37%)
Lack of accountability on both sides (25%)
Reporting challenges (21%)
Simply put, marketing and sales need to collaborate more effectively to better manage today’s sales funnel. But how?
According to digital marketing strategist, Sujan Patel, there are three levels of marketing alignment:
The Emotional Level: Your Sales and Marketing teams should be working cohesively together and supporting each other. They should not be working at cross-purposes.
The Process Level: There need to be clear, measurable, sustainable, and repeatable processes in place to ensure that everyone within both the marketing and sales teams is pulling in the same direction and working in the same way.
The Feedback Loop Level: Marketing doesn’t always produce awesome leads. Sometimes they might suck. Nobody’s perfect. That’s why sales need to communicate back to marketing so there is a feedback loop between the two teams to either encourage good leads or stop wasting company resources on bad ones.
An effective partnership between sales and marketing is the #1 success factor attributed to achieving revenue goals. (Source: Heinz Marketing - Performance Management Report)
So, how can we get sales and marketing to work better together? It starts with having a project plan in place.
The first step is for sales and marketing to agree on what the ideal customer profile (I.D.C.) of a target customer should be. They need to agree on the characteristics that define the type of company (not the individual buyer or end-user) that will find the most value in their product or service offering. If done correctly, prospects that are aligned to the company’s IDC are most likely to become long-term customers who will give significant value back to the business in the form of possible subscription fees, upsells, and referrals. An easy way to identify the IDC of a company is to look at a list of their current best-performing customers and determine what attributes they have in common.
The next step is for sales to explain to marketing the steps of the sales funnel, how it works and what marketing resources are needed to migrate the prospective customer through it. Too often, marketing is concerned with branding and outreach, and they do not allocate sufficient resources to the sales team to give them the resources and collateral they need to expedite their sales.
Once sales and marketing are aligned regarding who the IDC of a company is and what marketing resources should be allocated to support the sales team, an organization can take its game up a level and begin to pursue account-based marketing (A.B.M.) opportunities.
Account-based marketing is when marketing and sales teams work together in a focused approach to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers. When done correctly, marketing and sales teams meld their expertise to locate, engage with, and close deals with high-value accounts that offer a high ROI to their company.
The primary components of account-based marketing include:
Reaching the right accounts
Engaging across marketing channels
Determining effective metrics and measurements
According to LinkedIn research, businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment are 67% more effective at closing deals, 58% more effective at retaining customers, and drive 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts.
So, whether an organization is pursuing a traditional marketing approach or a more targeted account-based marketing strategy, it is essential for marketing to work more closely with sales in vigorous and meaningful ways.
Today’s buyer is more knowledgeable and has access to more information about a prospective seller, their competition, and the marketplace than ever before. As a result, sales leaders need to demonstrate subject matter expertise in their area of commerce and leverage the content, tools, and resources that the marketing department can provide them to enhance their sales efforts.
Although good salespeople will find a way to close business, having the support of a well-synchronized marketing team behind them will help accelerate the sales process, increase revenue, boost profitability and facilitate greater customer satisfaction.
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Account Based Data
Article | April 29, 2022
In an interview with Media 7, Assaf Eisenstein, Co-Founder & President of Lusha, talked about the importance of buyer intent data for offering great customer service.
“The most important things B2B brands can do to establish themselves are to know their customers and match their strengths to the buyers they can best serve.”
B2B buyer intent data providers help companies resonate with their target audience in a sea of competitors. They can create timely campaigns to convert a prospect into a customer. According to Statista, about 70% of technology vendors rely on buyer intent data vendors for better prospecting. This puts B2B buyer intent data providers in the spotlight more than ever to come up with innovative solutions that can streamline marketing strategies and get more leads to the sales department.
Buyer Intent Data: What It Delivers
Businesses are sourcing intent data from B2B buyer intent data providers to maintain a competitive edge and grow. Here are a few of the key areas that buyer intent data can positively influence:
Your Prospecting
With the help of buyer intent data, your sales team can engage with a prospect with added accuracy at the right time (ZMoT) because it has the contextual information on the prospect. The team can prioritize good-fit leads and accounts.
Your Messaging
Identify any messaging gaps and create ideal, personalized, and precise messaging for your lead nurturing campaigns to increase engagement. Buyer intent data reveals your prospects’ interests and pain points, which you can capitalize on through your messaging.
Your Ad Targeting
Your ad campaigns can be more accurate thanks to B2B buyer intent data. They can target both known and unknown prospects who engage with your key topics with precise messaging.
Your ABM Campaign
In ABM marketing, B2B buyer intent data can tell you which of your target accounts are actively in the market looking for your product or services. It can also help you prioritize engagement and resource allocation and tailor messaging to address specific pain points that your target accounts are struggling with.
Your Revenue
The combined result of using buyer intent data tools is a spike in your revenue through lead nurturing campaign personalization, timely engagement, enhanced sales prioritization, and customer experience.
How is B2B Buyer Intent Data Driving Revenue?
For some time now, B2B buyer intent data has been a buzzword for B2B marketers because it is streamlining the conversion of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs) through multi-channel targeted advertising. It helps them focus more on engaging prospects with buyer interest than on their size to predict the actions of prospects. It considerably shortens sales cycles and assists in demand orchestration when integrated with the sales funnel.
Let us look at how B2B buyer intent data can benefit businesses:
Understanding the Customers’ Pain Points and Demands
Using TechTarget’s Priority Engine, a prospect-level intent data product, Zoom was able to solve three crucial challenges in their ABM marketing strategy: sorting their prospects, personalized messaging to engage these prospects, and the perfect time to get in touch with them. With the help of Priority Engine, Zoom’s sales representatives improved their efficiency and generated more qualified leads that were closer to conversion.
Optimizing Sales and Marketing Approaches
It is crucial to implement ABM marketing to build an enterprise pipeline. Tracking deal progression, account engagement, and sales and marketing alignment are important for any company to succeed. Dialpad, a cloud communications platform, leveraged Demandbase to optimize its sales and marketing approaches. The platform provided Dialpad with insights whenever a lead moved from marketing qualified to sales qualified, so its sales reps never missed an opportunity. In less than six months, Dialpad sales reps got 80% more MQLs for conversions, a 20% increase in target account penetration, and 15% more deals in the pipeline in a shorter timeline.
Creating a Targeted Content Strategy and Web Personalization
Companies can no longer rely only on search engine optimization while designing their content strategy. They need to focus on offering a solid customer experience through web personalization and targeted content that addresses the pain points of the customers through effective solutions. Dodge Data, a data analytics company, used buyer intent data from Triblio to create a content strategy, personalize their website, and execute targeted display advertising campaigns. Dodge Data re-engaged 30-40 visitors per day, approaching them right when they were warm, leading to more conversions than when they relied only on demand generation campaigns.
Customer Retention Through Insights
Post-sales experience is just as important for business growth as gaining new customers. With the help of Demandbase One, Equilar, a software and technology company, was able to retain their customers and serve them on time with the help of insights on product activity and engagement. The company received regular alerts on the accounts it was catering to so it could reach out to them and keep the existing clients happy.
Efficient Lead Scoring & Pipeline Growth
Pipeline growth is a criterion for success and synchronization between the sales and marketing departments, an important attribute of ABM. Buyer intent data helps business development representatives qualify prospects that show buyer intent so they can book meetings. Leoforce, an AI-based recruiting company, used buyer intent data from Slintel and saw a pipeline growth of 10%-20%.
Enhancing ABM Strategy
B2B buyer intent data enhances the ABM strategy by identifying key accounts ready to go in-market. If B2B companies do not have this data today, they will be far behind in the competition and won’t be able to monetize their ABM strategy. A great example of how a company can enhance its ABM strategy using B2B buyer intent data would be Arizent, a book and periodical publishing company that became a part of B2B buyer intent data provider Bombora’s Data Co-op. The company monetized its ABM strategy using the buyer intent data from Bombora by capitalizing on the accounts that showed purchase intent.
Wrapping It Up
By leveraging B2B buyer intent data, businesses can drive revenue through enhanced ABM strategy implementation, outstanding customer experience, and insights that can help them enhance their sales strategy and pipeline.
FAQ
How can buyer intent data providers help you increase your sales?
Intent-based marketing can help you streamline your prospecting pipeline, focus your marketing effort on accounts that show buyer intent, and understand the pain points of customers. This can help you increase your sales pipeline.
How can you enhance your ad campaigns using buyer intent data?
Intent data can help you make your ad campaigns more granular because it allows you to capitalize on leads that show buyer intent signals. As a result, the ads will target buyers who are close to making a purchase decision.
Who are some of the popular B2B buyer intent data providers?
Some of the popular B2B buyer intent data providers are Bombora, Slintel, Demandbase, and ZoomInfo.
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