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5 Steps for Running Successful ABM Campaigns

B2B marketers meticulously craft content plans to include an attractive landing page, a remarkable eBook, and paid ads for maximum engagement. They write the slickest nurture emails, supporting blogs, and over-the-top articles. Nearly tens of thousands of dollars and a couple of months go into the campaign creation, but it stops abruptly.

Why?

How can this be? The data collected for the eBook was filled with insights that made them shudder. The strategy was executed to perfection but didn't make any sense!

Does this situation sound familiar to you as well? You must have faced the same! It often happens in B2B companies when sales and marketing are not fully aligned on their goals, messaging, and targeting audience. When you spread a wide net for lead generation, most of the leads may not be relevant. So, what should we do?

Here comes the protagonist of the B2B marketing story:

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

ABM curtails the time spent on irrelevant accounts while decreasing overall money spending. In addition, as businesses, after the pandemic, are starting to realize the potential of personalized campaigns, ABM is rapidly becoming the go-to strategy for B2B tech companies. As a result, they are aiming to improve their marketing and sales alignment.

Importantly, ABM demands sales and marketing alignment. It ends those hair-tearing, soul-destroying arguments on which leads to focus on. Now both teams have to keep the hyper-targeted focus on specific accounts, which will result in time-saving, the flow of quality leads, and, thus, your ROI will be up.

But before going about creating effective ABM campaigns, let's quickly read the factors to consider while implementing ABM.

Factors to Consider to Implement ABM


Get your Sales & Marketing teams to work together

To create an effective ABM campaign, marketing and sales teams must converge and act following a shared strategy. Furthermore, to expect excellent results, teams involved in the campaign should use the same data from diverse sources. Thus, it creates a data-inspired ideal customer profile (ICP).

To Identify Accounts

For defining target accounts, consider these factors:

Revenue potential:  Your target audience should fall into your product or service's price line. 

Best fit accounts: Find accounts and individual buyers who are aligned with your marketing personas. 

Importance of Strategy: Aim for accounts that match your company's business strategy. Identify if they are your ideal customer or not. 

Product requirements: Start with the low-hanging fruit, which means identifying accounts that can make precise use of the solution you're offering.

To Establish KPIs

To know whether you are rocking with your ABM campaigns, it's crucial to decide your KPIs. You can consider the following to confirm it:
  • How many companies match your customer personas?
  • Account and role-specific conversion KPIs such as booked meetings created deals, and purchases completed.
  • The accounts that visit your website or engage with the content types.
Thus, you'll have to track KPIs at every stage of your ABM funnel to determine the success of your campaign.

Prepare Multi-Channel Content

Relevant and engaging content is the root of every marketing campaign. Still, marketers should personalize ABM content so that they can timely reach each target. So, it's essential to keep the process of messaging focused on the account's pain points, budget restraints, and additional demands.

It is because your campaigns are hyper-targeted, where you'll need to spread them across multiple content channels to offer numerous opportunities. Doing so will help to gain engagement, and then you can calculate budgets for clicks and channels. In addition, blend touchpoints such as paid ads, blogs, personalized email, text messaging, and multi-touch SDR strategies will help create effective ABM campaigns.

Here are effective steps to execute an effective ABM campaign.

5 Steps to Create Effective ABM Campaigns


Build your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

As Account-based marketing is more like spearfishing, you need to be conscientious about who you target. It is because this type of marketing revolves entirely around who you reach out to. So, it is imperative that you pick companies that would benefit the most from your product or services and be your top-tier customers if they get converted to purchase your service. Hence, the first and most foundational thing for an effective ABM campaign is knowing who you need to target.

Many companies enjoy massive audiences. Therefore, they can increase revenue if they successfully reach them. However, with B2B SaaS companies in marketing, when they try to please everyone, they usually end up pleasing no one. It is because they produce standard messaging that doesn't speak to any group of people. So here, it becomes vital to build your IPC before creating an ABM campaign strategy.

Invest in the Right Account-Based Marketing Tools

To create successful account-based marketing (ABM) campaign, you need to have the right tools to help your team effortlessly execute your ABM strategy and monitor its progress simultaneously. Here are some of the best tools that you can use effectively:
  • ZoomInfo
Using a platform like ZoomInfo helps you quickly search companies based on their industry, number of employees, and current services. Then, you can easily set ABM campaigns based on information collected through ZoomInfo and proceed further to target.
  • SalesIntel
SalesIntel is a sales intelligence platform. It provides your sales team with verified numbers of the target account. Using this platform, your team can evade gatekeepers and increase the chances of securing a targeting process.
  • Everstring
Everstring's platform enables your ABM team to develop a predictive behavior model where target accounts can be identified and be more likely to convert into sales.

Create Relevant Content

Now, you have your ICP and personas penned down; it's time to communicate. But how do you make sure that you are effectively communicating with each account? And how to properly showcase the value that your solution provides to drive for their companies?

The secret lies in applying information gathered in each stage in the customer journey: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

For an effective account-based marketing campaign, create content for each of these stages—general product & company information for Awareness, technical details for Consideration, and urgency for Conversion. Every piece of content in each step should be designed to appropriately educate prospects on their buying journey and push them to the next phase.

Here are some content types for the most successful ABM campaigns:
  • Emails to each persona (includes initial outreach, follow-ups, responses, and more)
  • Landing pages that provide information and facilitate actions
  • Thought leadership blog and articles for the Awareness stage
  • Product-specific pages for consideration
  • Testimonials for the Conversion stage
Organizing your content in such a framework enables you to find and fill content gaps while creating a comprehensive plan to address each persona in the customer journey.

Include Messaging Channels

You can use many avenues to engross prospects in an ABM campaign. Any medium that you use to communicate directly can be effectively utilized.

So, it's essential to focus on the most popular ABM channels like LinkedIn, Email, and telecommunication. Each method has its benefits and effectiveness to get your message to the right people in the right way. Here, you will understand how to go with it these channels:

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most utilized channel for ABM campaigns because of its messaging capability and enrichment abilities. It consents you to send messages for free. Additionally, you promptly gain all of their professional information when you connect with a contact, including roles and email ids.

However, the best part of LinkedIn outreach is you are considered as a person, not a bot, when you reach out to contacts. In addition, you have a profile and a resume, which humanizes you. Due to these factors, LinkedIn is one of the most accurate and up-to-date B2B outreach platforms available, as everyone constantly updates their LinkedIn profile with professional milestone information.

Having being beneficial, keep in mind that there are some limitations with LinkedIn—you can send approximately a hundred connections per week. This being said, you can use this channel for the most important contacts on your list.

Email
Email's largest advantage is that it doesn't have a character limit on initial outreach messages. Thus, you can write as much as you want. However, some trade-offs go along with that freedom.

As email being cheap, automatable, easy to use, and can reach thousands of contacts at a time, it's utilized by almost every B2B marketer. But, at the same time, this results in the clogged inbox situation, creating spam filters due to high levels of outreach competition. In addition, this makes consumers suspicious of emails received from unrecognized senders.

But the good news is that you can purchase email tools to help manage your email outreach campaigns. These can automate email message sending to ensure that you're constantly optimizing your outreach to prospects. Emails are a must-have for an effective email outreach campaign, which will exponentially surge your reach, make you smarter with analytics, and create an effective ABM campaign.

Telecommunication
Phone outreach is the most effective channel to outreach. It also gives you a chance to really get to know your prospective customer and their fears and dreams so that you can:
  • Figure out if your product would be a good fit for the customer.
  • Know how to quickly and effectively communicate the value of your product to that customer.

Retarget

Once you set up accounts with the proper channels that you plan to push people to with your ABM outreach, you can create simple retargeting ads that guide them further through the customer journey. These ads will result in Calls to Action that offer case studies or white paper resources on your solution or industry to give your prospects market insights and real-world examples of how your solution can benefit companies.

On top of it, when getting your logo and message in front of prospects again, retargeting ads perform splendidly compared to traditional methods. For example, a recent MarketLand article explained that retargeting ads often have Click-Through-Rates of "0.30%-0.95%, which is 3-10x costlier than the industry average."

Resultantly, you must pay close attention to who your audience is that you're serving these ads to, as well as where and how often you're delivering them. It may seem overwhelming at first, but it'll get easier over time. A properly executed account-based campaign will provide the results you want. Doing this will allow you to reap the enormous rewards that retargeting can bestow upon your ABM campaign.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an ABM marketing campaign?

Account-based marketing (ABM) strategy concentrates resources on a set of target accounts within a market. The campaigns designed are to engage each account, basing the marketing message on the specific attributes and needs of the account.

How do I make an ABM campaign?

Follow these steps to make an effective ABM campaign:
  • Create a team that is dedicated to ABM only
  • Clear your goals and then make a strategy
  • Find your technology
  • Identify the right accounts
  • Pick the right channels
  • Execute your campaigns
  • Measure everything
  • Choose messaging platform
  • Spread relevant content (messages)

Why is ABM important?

ABM supports structure marketing efforts and resources on your key accounts to drive the most revenue. Doing ABM will maximize the efficiency of your B2B marketing resources. It will also help build the communication channel with sales to have an aligned sales and marketing organization.

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How to Organize ABM Content Effectively?

Article | June 6, 2022

High-value content plays a key role in account-based marketing. Account-based marketing uses content to nurture leads and address their pain points throughout the sales process. A perfect ABM strategy is one that provides relevant content to the right prospects at the right time. ABM content needs to be personal and highly relevant to create an impact on the stakeholders of your target account. In an interview with Media 7, Stuart Sumner, Editorial Director at Incisive Media, talked about the importance of content in marketing strategy. “The best way to win the content war is to have better, more valuable, and more timely content than your competitors. You need to offer audiences a regular supply of high-quality, in-depth content, which they can’t get elsewhere.” The need for effective content is all-encompassing across industries, demographics, and niche domains. It helps businesses seek solutions to their critical business challenges. Reading through the opinions of other thought leaders from the industry influences their purchase decisions. So, good quality, reliable content can convince a business that you are the ideal choice for a B2B association. How Should ABM Content Be Organized? Creating effective content is the need of the hour, but it can be challenging if done without a direction or goal in mind. Your ABM content should build brand awareness, and engage the readers while also presenting value to them. It should also be personalized enough to convey your involvement and dedication to your target account. To organize ABM content effectively, follow these steps: Conduct Stringent Research Stringently researching your target audience can help to create a content framework that can capture the solutions to their problems, their needs, and their interests. When you investigate the target accounts in-depth, you will know what aspects you can leverage to capture their attention and interest. Then you can organize the content to engage them. Another interesting approach is to directly ask your audience about the kind of content they enjoy and their preferred formats. These insights can help you personalize the content better because 80% of consumers prefer shopping with brands that provide a personalized experience. You might also be able to leverage content for more than one account. Maintain a Content Inventory The research-based content that was created before you developed your ABM strategy can be repurposed to target the accounts in your focus. Creating a content library and mapping the intent of your content can help you with repurposing the correct content. The more detailed your content library, the easier it gets to reuse it. Consider organizing your content library with dates, extra information, highlights, and formats so you can start using the content without much ado. The content you develop should complement your ABM strategy. As a part of your ABM strategy, it should add value to your marketing effort. Create a Content Matrix Create a content matrix that lists out the target accounts in your focus. It is a tool to organize your data to meet your marketing objectives. Based on your objectives, you can carry out content mapping to influence purchase decisions for these accounts. This can help you decide on the purpose of your content strategy. Do you want to create awareness or incite action from your readers? By figuring out what you want, you can use your content matrix to understand the scope to personalize the content in line with your ABM goals. Analyze Your Performance Experiment with different formats, visuals, and messages while creating your content. Measure the success of your content strategy like you measure the success of your ABM strategy using KPIs. Gauge how your audience reacts to different formats and visuals to know what to focus more on. Revise, retest, repurpose the content till you get the best output. It all boils down to how well you organize your ABM content. ABM Content Best Practices Best practices should be followed when creating content to achieve sales and marketing alignment, drive ROI, and target key accounts. Periodically engaging in website content mapping and content research to see how your content is doing is vital. Here are the ABM content best practices you should follow to organize ABM content: 1. Personalize the content to suit your target account’s needs. 2. Conduct regular SEO and content audits to find any flaws or unresponsive content. 3. Optimize your content to meet search engine optimization needs. 4. Repurpose your content regularly to make the most of it. 5. Support your content with good design. 6. Focus on creating interactive ABM content. 7. Your content should build trust in the minds of your target accounts. How Coca-Cola’s Fanbase on Facebook Increased by 39% Because of Organized Content Coca-Cola’s famous ‘Share a Coke’ campaign targeted Australian millennials to improve their sales numbers in the summer of 2011. Under this campaign, Coca-Cola offered name-branded coke bottles to the customers. Through stringent research, understanding their audiences’ preferred formats (TV commercials, newspapers, bus ads, and social media), and implementing strong CTAs in their ads, Coca-Cola gained a 39% increase in its Facebook fanbase. Key Takeaway The way you formulate and organize ABM content plays a key role in driving results from your ABM strategy. It is crucial that you dedicate time and resources to creating, personalizing, organizing, presenting, and analyzing the content you offer to your target accounts. You can drive a higher ROI from your ABM and content strategy only when your approach to content is as focused as your ABM strategy. FAQ What is a content matrix? A content matrix is a tool that a marketer can use to plan and offer the right content in the right format and on the right platform to the target audience. How can you use old content in your ABM strategy? You can use your old content by repurposing it to better target your key accounts.

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How Buyer Intent Data Gets You More Customers

Article | July 13, 2022

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In an interview with Media 7, Marc Laplante, CEO and Co-founder of Intentsify emphasized the importance of intent data. “In B2B marketing and sales, intent data is typically understood as a tool to identify or prioritize which accounts we should target for advertising, lead generation, and sales follow-up. These are undoubtedly powerful use cases. But they represent only part of the intent data’s value. You should also use intent data to convert those accounts down the funnel into customers and revenue. Intent data, if granular enough, will highlight your target accounts’ problems, interests, research into competitors, geographic location, and buying stage.” Let us take a look at what buyer intent data can do to bring you the sales numbers you want and how it can enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy. Buyer Intent Data Brings You Ready-to-buy Customers Every user has a unique online behaviour, which can be distinguished using behavioral signals that uncovers the topic, product, or service the person needs. This information gives insight into the perceived intent of your marketing ICP. As a marketer, this information will help you plan effective advertising campaigns. The sales team can use this data to design the right pitch tracks, demos, and collateral to convert members from your targeted buying group. Additionally, this data can also help your customer success teams identify existing accounts that showcase a churn risk or an upsell opportunity. It’s a win-win for three teams at once. B2B intent data uses website data, off-site activity, CRMs, social media data, and content consumption data from online content like infographics, blogs, product comparisons and reviews, discussion boards, case studies, and news to pinpoint buyer insights. Intent Data Improves the B2B Buyer Journey The B2B buyer journey is a combination of accounts navigating through early stage (awareness content to identify the problem), middle stage (exploring solutions), late stage (comparing vendors that offer solutions) and finally the last stage (purchase/upsell/churn). Between exploring solutions and comparing vendors, lie hidden opportunities that haven’t reached you. Intent data can bridge this gap for you. Intent data providers give you data that is tailored to keywords that are relevant to your business and use case. This data targets buying locations at the website level and aggregates signals across a corporate family. Deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) are used to screen the content to achieve relevancy and to map billions of unique online engagement events every week. Analytics pinpoint the accounts that are showing any kind of buying activity and correspond to your targeted keywords. All this actionable data can shorten your buyer’s journey towards conversion. Identifying early-stage prospects At this stage, intent data signals surge around the keywords or topics that relate to the general challenges and pain points of your prospects because they are looking at the cause of their problem. They will try to find a elementary solution and get to know more about the products and services different brands are offering. Identifying middle-stage prospects The intent data signals at this stage will show a higher level of activity around topics or keywords related to a precise product or service category because the prospects have already identified the root of their problem and the options they have to address it. Identifying prospects ready to purchase At this stage, the signals are mostly focused on topics related to your brand, your specific product names and features, and your competitors’ product names. These prospects are ready to spend and should be approached at the earliest to achieve conversion. Sources of Buyer Intent Data Intent data providers offer two types of intent data: 1. Internal Intent Data (First-party Data) This data is collected in-house through a marketing automation platform or through application logs if you have a web-based app. You can control what you collect and how you collect it and act on the data instantly. You can customize the purchase intent to your liking. 2. External Intent Data External intent data is third-party intent data and is collected outside of your business. It is sourced via IP lookups, cookies or specific websites. However, third-party cookies will be phased out soon. So, B2B marketers need to rely on first-party cookies, data points, contextual advertising, and tracking technologies to get information on their prospects. Read more about cookie-less ABM here. B2B Buyer Intent Behavioral Indicators Actions that prospects carry out on your website or the internet are compared with the behavioral data of prospects that become SQLs (sales qualified leads). Here are some behavioral indicators that show purchase intent: High intensity engagement with your brand’s social media posts Exploring your product or pricing pages Exploring product or service customer review page Reading articles about your product’s features on your blog The frequency of prospects’ website visits and the actions they take Content consumption, like downloading e-books, templates, or any other resources What Does Buyer Intent Data Do for You? While implementing account-based marketing techniques, you should prioritize intent data above everything else. Capitalize on the potential of intent data by incorporating it into your sales and marketing workflows. Adjust your interactions to match your prospects’ demands and establish meaningful connections with them. Primarily, intent data helps prioritize a list of target accounts that need to be pursued. Once the sales and marketing teams are aware of a user's location in the sales cycle, they may focus on moving them along in the purchasing process with customized content. Let us look into what intent data can do for your business in detail: Efficient Prospecting According to a survey by HubSpot, 75% of businesses ranked being able to close more deals as their top sales priority. With intent data, a prospect that is in the market to buy is easier to find because of predictive analytics. You already have your ICP in marketing in place and when prospects match this list and are in the market to buy, buying intent data efficiently puts your brand in front of these leads. Apart from this, buyer intent also helps segment your target list based on the intensity of the purchase intent. Targeting accounts with high intent through email marketing, content marketing, advertising and direct mail becomes easier. Enhances Outbound Sales The higher the quality of leads, the easier it becomes for your sales team to convert them. Buyer intent data lets your sales team know the exact position of a lead in the buying cycle. Instead of wasting time emailing unqualified leads, your team can approach these prospects which match your ICP in marketing and start a meaningful conversation. Intent data also increases the ROI of your B2B content syndication efforts. Superior Lead Scoring Your marketing team can predict prospects’ purchase intent based on what they are researching. They can do lead scoring with precision and supplement your sales team’s efforts. They don’t have to rely on traditional lead scoring methods where they add points to a lead’s score when certain actions are performed. Intent data uncovers possible paths that your leads can take even when they are not on your website. Personalized and Targeted ABM campaigns Personalization is key for any B2B account-based marketing campaign to bring the results you expect. The most effective method to enhance your ABM strategy is to map out your buyer journey and sprinkle it with relevant content to influence leads. You can also use intent data to strategically personalize and rank your ABM demand generation campaigns, so that every touch point of your ABM campaign meets your prospects' expectations. Relevant Content Creating content that can catch the attention of your prospects while offering solutions and value is crucial to get the conversions you expect. Intent data will help you see the correlation between topics and the context of those topics with the solutions your prospects are looking for. If you are aware of the questions that your prospects have before they go to market, you can answer them through your content. Buying intent data offers you just that. Let intent data drive your content strategy to give your prospects just what they want. Intent Marketing Intent-based marketing is when you know just where to spend your time and budget. In intent marketing, the focus lies on analyzing the intent of your prospects and strategizing how to meet them. Spending less time trying to target and rank keywords with low or irrelevant intent can help you increase your ROI, make an ironclad content strategy and a streamlined lead generation process that results in conversion and revenue. Assessing Buyer Intent Understanding and calculating buyer intent is not an easy task. It depends on these three factors: Recency Buyer intent that reports how recently a prospect engaged with your content is valuable so that your sales team can approach leads who have visited your website. Frequency Frequency indicates the intensity of your prospects’ intent to buy a product or service to solve their problems. If they visit key pages that have information on pricing, case studies, customer stories, etc., your sales team can reach out to them immediately. Engagement When your sales and marketing teams score leads, one of the most important parameters on their scale is engagement. If a prospect is engaging with the content on your website, through a chatbot, or as a result of an email campaign, you know it’s a great time to reach out to them. Apart from these factors, buyer intent data tools also use variables like firmographics, technographics, account size, and job titles for accurate buyer intent mapping so that you can reach out to your marketing ICP with a personalized message in your intent-based marketing strategy. Metadata Sees 42% Dip in CPL with G2 Buyer Intent Metadata, a demand generation platform that runs paid campaign experiments and self-optimizes them to generate revenue, invested in G2 buyer intent. Their cost per lead (CPL) dipped 42%, their click-to-open rate for ads increased 114%, and their average deal size for ads spiked by 18%. Final Thoughts Buyer intent data changes the way you interact with your prospects and leads. Harness buyer intent data tools to have an edge over your competitors and get more conversions. FAQ What are the essential elements of an intent data strategy? Align your intent data strategy with your ABM strategy, get buy-in from the C-suite, begin with a small pilot, analyze performance metrics, and integrate your systems with intent data. How are B2B marketers leveraging B2B buyer intent data to boost revenue? B2B marketers use intent data to create effective content, identify buyer groups, improve lead qualification, boost team productivity, and increase customer retention to boost revenue. How does intent data enhance your lead scoring process? Predictive purchasing insights help you find prospects in the market so you can make a list of accounts that are close to making a purchase decision. This makes your lead scoring process easier and better.

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How to Improve ABM Programs with Interactive Content

Article | January 11, 2022

Account-based marketing, also known as ABM, is an effective yet efficient way to seek out high-value leads and close sales. A B2B marketer can align his sales and marketing strategies to break into the industry. However, there’s one thing that needs all the attention from the marketing team- the content. The B2B marketers from around the world are shuffling their budgets to focus more on account-based marketing. As of now, 28% of the budgets were allocated to support account-based marketing. When considering ABM, marketers often jump to the execution part instead of planning, identifying, and targeting the target accounts. Therefore, they fail to understand the critical needs of the clientele. The whole process of connecting with the customers with their accounts goes into vain.

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In Focus: Account Mapping in ABM

Article | August 5, 2022

Account mapping is the process of identifying and structuring your target accounts, as well as the important individuals within them, for your ABM strategy. This stage comes after you've established the objective of your ABM strategy. After you've chosen and sorted your target accounts, you can develop a communication and engagement strategy to influence them. Account Mapping for B2B Marketing For B2B marketers like you, account mapping comes in handy to gain insights into the budget cycles of target accounts. This helps your marketing teams run their campaigns based on the time of year where customers are more likely to have the budget to spend on new solutions. Apart from this, once you identify target personas and buyer personas relevant to your ABM strategy, your marketing campaigns can precisely target these personas. As a result, your campaigns will be relevant and successful and can bring you the conversions you desire. Effective Account Mapping for ABM Success While mapping account for ABM strategy, you need to follow these four crucial steps: Identify the Target Account’s Key Decision-makers and Influencers Target accounts with department structures are usually complex and have multiple influencers. The larger the company and the account, the more difficult it is to identify the decision makers or the buying group committee that makes the purchase decisions. Collecting contacts, documenting details, and understanding the buyer roles and responsibilities of these decision makers is the first step. Once you get this information, create a visual map of the decision markers for your team and the sales teams so your targeting strategies align. Investigate Your Target Account’s Critical Pain Points Gather information on the key accounts and stakeholders in the target account. Determine their requirements, pain points, challenges, and frustration. Discovery calls, search intent, social listening, Google Alerts, and press releases are some ways to find out this information. You can also engage ABM platforms and solutions providers to get deep insights into the account and the group of decision-makers. You should closely collaborate with sales so they can share insights on the challenges customers and prospects share with them. Once you have all the data you need on the target account’s pain points, move to the next step: designing a content strategy to address these pain points with solid solutions. Develop Content and Messages that Appeal to Decision Makers Find the right channels to approach decision makers; determine what time of the day or what days of the week they prefer to connect; and when they are likely to consume content on a particular channel. After you find this information, you know when and where to connect with them and how to engage them in a productive conversation. Create Content and Messaging that Aligns with the Decision Makers Each person in the decision-making group (buying group committee) may consume content differently. You need to tailor your content to target each of the decision makers to influence their buying decisions. You might not need to create all the content from scratch. Repurposing existing content in a relevant way can save you time, money, and effort. However, you need to make sure that your content is convincing enough to influence the buying decisions of the buying committee members. Final Thoughts Account mapping is vital for ABM success and to maintain market competitiveness. It helps you determine who the decision makers are in your target account, so you can build the right communication plan and content to convert the account into a long-term customer.

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Article | June 6, 2022

High-value content plays a key role in account-based marketing. Account-based marketing uses content to nurture leads and address their pain points throughout the sales process. A perfect ABM strategy is one that provides relevant content to the right prospects at the right time. ABM content needs to be personal and highly relevant to create an impact on the stakeholders of your target account. In an interview with Media 7, Stuart Sumner, Editorial Director at Incisive Media, talked about the importance of content in marketing strategy. “The best way to win the content war is to have better, more valuable, and more timely content than your competitors. You need to offer audiences a regular supply of high-quality, in-depth content, which they can’t get elsewhere.” The need for effective content is all-encompassing across industries, demographics, and niche domains. It helps businesses seek solutions to their critical business challenges. Reading through the opinions of other thought leaders from the industry influences their purchase decisions. So, good quality, reliable content can convince a business that you are the ideal choice for a B2B association. How Should ABM Content Be Organized? Creating effective content is the need of the hour, but it can be challenging if done without a direction or goal in mind. Your ABM content should build brand awareness, and engage the readers while also presenting value to them. It should also be personalized enough to convey your involvement and dedication to your target account. To organize ABM content effectively, follow these steps: Conduct Stringent Research Stringently researching your target audience can help to create a content framework that can capture the solutions to their problems, their needs, and their interests. When you investigate the target accounts in-depth, you will know what aspects you can leverage to capture their attention and interest. Then you can organize the content to engage them. Another interesting approach is to directly ask your audience about the kind of content they enjoy and their preferred formats. These insights can help you personalize the content better because 80% of consumers prefer shopping with brands that provide a personalized experience. You might also be able to leverage content for more than one account. Maintain a Content Inventory The research-based content that was created before you developed your ABM strategy can be repurposed to target the accounts in your focus. Creating a content library and mapping the intent of your content can help you with repurposing the correct content. The more detailed your content library, the easier it gets to reuse it. Consider organizing your content library with dates, extra information, highlights, and formats so you can start using the content without much ado. The content you develop should complement your ABM strategy. As a part of your ABM strategy, it should add value to your marketing effort. Create a Content Matrix Create a content matrix that lists out the target accounts in your focus. It is a tool to organize your data to meet your marketing objectives. Based on your objectives, you can carry out content mapping to influence purchase decisions for these accounts. This can help you decide on the purpose of your content strategy. Do you want to create awareness or incite action from your readers? By figuring out what you want, you can use your content matrix to understand the scope to personalize the content in line with your ABM goals. Analyze Your Performance Experiment with different formats, visuals, and messages while creating your content. Measure the success of your content strategy like you measure the success of your ABM strategy using KPIs. Gauge how your audience reacts to different formats and visuals to know what to focus more on. Revise, retest, repurpose the content till you get the best output. It all boils down to how well you organize your ABM content. ABM Content Best Practices Best practices should be followed when creating content to achieve sales and marketing alignment, drive ROI, and target key accounts. Periodically engaging in website content mapping and content research to see how your content is doing is vital. Here are the ABM content best practices you should follow to organize ABM content: 1. Personalize the content to suit your target account’s needs. 2. Conduct regular SEO and content audits to find any flaws or unresponsive content. 3. Optimize your content to meet search engine optimization needs. 4. Repurpose your content regularly to make the most of it. 5. Support your content with good design. 6. Focus on creating interactive ABM content. 7. Your content should build trust in the minds of your target accounts. How Coca-Cola’s Fanbase on Facebook Increased by 39% Because of Organized Content Coca-Cola’s famous ‘Share a Coke’ campaign targeted Australian millennials to improve their sales numbers in the summer of 2011. Under this campaign, Coca-Cola offered name-branded coke bottles to the customers. Through stringent research, understanding their audiences’ preferred formats (TV commercials, newspapers, bus ads, and social media), and implementing strong CTAs in their ads, Coca-Cola gained a 39% increase in its Facebook fanbase. Key Takeaway The way you formulate and organize ABM content plays a key role in driving results from your ABM strategy. It is crucial that you dedicate time and resources to creating, personalizing, organizing, presenting, and analyzing the content you offer to your target accounts. You can drive a higher ROI from your ABM and content strategy only when your approach to content is as focused as your ABM strategy. FAQ What is a content matrix? A content matrix is a tool that a marketer can use to plan and offer the right content in the right format and on the right platform to the target audience. How can you use old content in your ABM strategy? You can use your old content by repurposing it to better target your key accounts.

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ABM Accounts

Increasing ABM Engagement through Sales Empowerment

Article | July 13, 2022

Getting the attention of the target audience at the right time is the aim of every B2B marketing strategy. Most consumers research products and services before making a purchasing decision. B2B companies are no different. This means potential accounts are always on the lookout for a solution to a problem they are facing in their business. These are prospects that will convert into approachable leads and eventually customers if you offer them just what they are looking for, just when they are looking for it. To find these lucrative prospects, marketers like you need to harness B2B buyer intent data. B2B intent data gives you deep insights into your marketing ICP’s behaviour, pain points, and requirements. With this important data, you can give your sales team promising leads they can follow up on. In an interview with Media 7, Marc Laplante, CEO and Co-founder of Intentsify emphasized the importance of intent data. “In B2B marketing and sales, intent data is typically understood as a tool to identify or prioritize which accounts we should target for advertising, lead generation, and sales follow-up. These are undoubtedly powerful use cases. But they represent only part of the intent data’s value. You should also use intent data to convert those accounts down the funnel into customers and revenue. Intent data, if granular enough, will highlight your target accounts’ problems, interests, research into competitors, geographic location, and buying stage.” Let us take a look at what buyer intent data can do to bring you the sales numbers you want and how it can enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy. Buyer Intent Data Brings You Ready-to-buy Customers Every user has a unique online behaviour, which can be distinguished using behavioral signals that uncovers the topic, product, or service the person needs. This information gives insight into the perceived intent of your marketing ICP. As a marketer, this information will help you plan effective advertising campaigns. The sales team can use this data to design the right pitch tracks, demos, and collateral to convert members from your targeted buying group. Additionally, this data can also help your customer success teams identify existing accounts that showcase a churn risk or an upsell opportunity. It’s a win-win for three teams at once. B2B intent data uses website data, off-site activity, CRMs, social media data, and content consumption data from online content like infographics, blogs, product comparisons and reviews, discussion boards, case studies, and news to pinpoint buyer insights. Intent Data Improves the B2B Buyer Journey The B2B buyer journey is a combination of accounts navigating through early stage (awareness content to identify the problem), middle stage (exploring solutions), late stage (comparing vendors that offer solutions) and finally the last stage (purchase/upsell/churn). Between exploring solutions and comparing vendors, lie hidden opportunities that haven’t reached you. Intent data can bridge this gap for you. Intent data providers give you data that is tailored to keywords that are relevant to your business and use case. This data targets buying locations at the website level and aggregates signals across a corporate family. Deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) are used to screen the content to achieve relevancy and to map billions of unique online engagement events every week. Analytics pinpoint the accounts that are showing any kind of buying activity and correspond to your targeted keywords. All this actionable data can shorten your buyer’s journey towards conversion. Identifying early-stage prospects At this stage, intent data signals surge around the keywords or topics that relate to the general challenges and pain points of your prospects because they are looking at the cause of their problem. They will try to find a elementary solution and get to know more about the products and services different brands are offering. Identifying middle-stage prospects The intent data signals at this stage will show a higher level of activity around topics or keywords related to a precise product or service category because the prospects have already identified the root of their problem and the options they have to address it. Identifying prospects ready to purchase At this stage, the signals are mostly focused on topics related to your brand, your specific product names and features, and your competitors’ product names. These prospects are ready to spend and should be approached at the earliest to achieve conversion. Sources of Buyer Intent Data Intent data providers offer two types of intent data: 1. Internal Intent Data (First-party Data) This data is collected in-house through a marketing automation platform or through application logs if you have a web-based app. You can control what you collect and how you collect it and act on the data instantly. You can customize the purchase intent to your liking. 2. External Intent Data External intent data is third-party intent data and is collected outside of your business. It is sourced via IP lookups, cookies or specific websites. However, third-party cookies will be phased out soon. So, B2B marketers need to rely on first-party cookies, data points, contextual advertising, and tracking technologies to get information on their prospects. Read more about cookie-less ABM here. B2B Buyer Intent Behavioral Indicators Actions that prospects carry out on your website or the internet are compared with the behavioral data of prospects that become SQLs (sales qualified leads). Here are some behavioral indicators that show purchase intent: High intensity engagement with your brand’s social media posts Exploring your product or pricing pages Exploring product or service customer review page Reading articles about your product’s features on your blog The frequency of prospects’ website visits and the actions they take Content consumption, like downloading e-books, templates, or any other resources What Does Buyer Intent Data Do for You? While implementing account-based marketing techniques, you should prioritize intent data above everything else. Capitalize on the potential of intent data by incorporating it into your sales and marketing workflows. Adjust your interactions to match your prospects’ demands and establish meaningful connections with them. Primarily, intent data helps prioritize a list of target accounts that need to be pursued. Once the sales and marketing teams are aware of a user's location in the sales cycle, they may focus on moving them along in the purchasing process with customized content. Let us look into what intent data can do for your business in detail: Efficient Prospecting According to a survey by HubSpot, 75% of businesses ranked being able to close more deals as their top sales priority. With intent data, a prospect that is in the market to buy is easier to find because of predictive analytics. You already have your ICP in marketing in place and when prospects match this list and are in the market to buy, buying intent data efficiently puts your brand in front of these leads. Apart from this, buyer intent also helps segment your target list based on the intensity of the purchase intent. Targeting accounts with high intent through email marketing, content marketing, advertising and direct mail becomes easier. Enhances Outbound Sales The higher the quality of leads, the easier it becomes for your sales team to convert them. Buyer intent data lets your sales team know the exact position of a lead in the buying cycle. Instead of wasting time emailing unqualified leads, your team can approach these prospects which match your ICP in marketing and start a meaningful conversation. Intent data also increases the ROI of your B2B content syndication efforts. Superior Lead Scoring Your marketing team can predict prospects’ purchase intent based on what they are researching. They can do lead scoring with precision and supplement your sales team’s efforts. They don’t have to rely on traditional lead scoring methods where they add points to a lead’s score when certain actions are performed. Intent data uncovers possible paths that your leads can take even when they are not on your website. Personalized and Targeted ABM campaigns Personalization is key for any B2B account-based marketing campaign to bring the results you expect. The most effective method to enhance your ABM strategy is to map out your buyer journey and sprinkle it with relevant content to influence leads. You can also use intent data to strategically personalize and rank your ABM demand generation campaigns, so that every touch point of your ABM campaign meets your prospects' expectations. Relevant Content Creating content that can catch the attention of your prospects while offering solutions and value is crucial to get the conversions you expect. Intent data will help you see the correlation between topics and the context of those topics with the solutions your prospects are looking for. If you are aware of the questions that your prospects have before they go to market, you can answer them through your content. Buying intent data offers you just that. Let intent data drive your content strategy to give your prospects just what they want. Intent Marketing Intent-based marketing is when you know just where to spend your time and budget. In intent marketing, the focus lies on analyzing the intent of your prospects and strategizing how to meet them. Spending less time trying to target and rank keywords with low or irrelevant intent can help you increase your ROI, make an ironclad content strategy and a streamlined lead generation process that results in conversion and revenue. Assessing Buyer Intent Understanding and calculating buyer intent is not an easy task. It depends on these three factors: Recency Buyer intent that reports how recently a prospect engaged with your content is valuable so that your sales team can approach leads who have visited your website. Frequency Frequency indicates the intensity of your prospects’ intent to buy a product or service to solve their problems. If they visit key pages that have information on pricing, case studies, customer stories, etc., your sales team can reach out to them immediately. Engagement When your sales and marketing teams score leads, one of the most important parameters on their scale is engagement. If a prospect is engaging with the content on your website, through a chatbot, or as a result of an email campaign, you know it’s a great time to reach out to them. Apart from these factors, buyer intent data tools also use variables like firmographics, technographics, account size, and job titles for accurate buyer intent mapping so that you can reach out to your marketing ICP with a personalized message in your intent-based marketing strategy. Metadata Sees 42% Dip in CPL with G2 Buyer Intent Metadata, a demand generation platform that runs paid campaign experiments and self-optimizes them to generate revenue, invested in G2 buyer intent. Their cost per lead (CPL) dipped 42%, their click-to-open rate for ads increased 114%, and their average deal size for ads spiked by 18%. Final Thoughts Buyer intent data changes the way you interact with your prospects and leads. Harness buyer intent data tools to have an edge over your competitors and get more conversions. FAQ What are the essential elements of an intent data strategy? Align your intent data strategy with your ABM strategy, get buy-in from the C-suite, begin with a small pilot, analyze performance metrics, and integrate your systems with intent data. How are B2B marketers leveraging B2B buyer intent data to boost revenue? B2B marketers use intent data to create effective content, identify buyer groups, improve lead qualification, boost team productivity, and increase customer retention to boost revenue. How does intent data enhance your lead scoring process? Predictive purchasing insights help you find prospects in the market so you can make a list of accounts that are close to making a purchase decision. This makes your lead scoring process easier and better.

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ABM Accounts

How to Organize ABM Content Effectively?

Article | January 11, 2022

Account-based marketing, also known as ABM, is an effective yet efficient way to seek out high-value leads and close sales. A B2B marketer can align his sales and marketing strategies to break into the industry. However, there’s one thing that needs all the attention from the marketing team- the content. The B2B marketers from around the world are shuffling their budgets to focus more on account-based marketing. As of now, 28% of the budgets were allocated to support account-based marketing. When considering ABM, marketers often jump to the execution part instead of planning, identifying, and targeting the target accounts. Therefore, they fail to understand the critical needs of the clientele. The whole process of connecting with the customers with their accounts goes into vain.

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Core ABM

In Focus: Account Mapping in ABM

Article | August 5, 2022

Account mapping is the process of identifying and structuring your target accounts, as well as the important individuals within them, for your ABM strategy. This stage comes after you've established the objective of your ABM strategy. After you've chosen and sorted your target accounts, you can develop a communication and engagement strategy to influence them. Account Mapping for B2B Marketing For B2B marketers like you, account mapping comes in handy to gain insights into the budget cycles of target accounts. This helps your marketing teams run their campaigns based on the time of year where customers are more likely to have the budget to spend on new solutions. Apart from this, once you identify target personas and buyer personas relevant to your ABM strategy, your marketing campaigns can precisely target these personas. As a result, your campaigns will be relevant and successful and can bring you the conversions you desire. Effective Account Mapping for ABM Success While mapping account for ABM strategy, you need to follow these four crucial steps: Identify the Target Account’s Key Decision-makers and Influencers Target accounts with department structures are usually complex and have multiple influencers. The larger the company and the account, the more difficult it is to identify the decision makers or the buying group committee that makes the purchase decisions. Collecting contacts, documenting details, and understanding the buyer roles and responsibilities of these decision makers is the first step. Once you get this information, create a visual map of the decision markers for your team and the sales teams so your targeting strategies align. Investigate Your Target Account’s Critical Pain Points Gather information on the key accounts and stakeholders in the target account. Determine their requirements, pain points, challenges, and frustration. Discovery calls, search intent, social listening, Google Alerts, and press releases are some ways to find out this information. You can also engage ABM platforms and solutions providers to get deep insights into the account and the group of decision-makers. You should closely collaborate with sales so they can share insights on the challenges customers and prospects share with them. Once you have all the data you need on the target account’s pain points, move to the next step: designing a content strategy to address these pain points with solid solutions. Develop Content and Messages that Appeal to Decision Makers Find the right channels to approach decision makers; determine what time of the day or what days of the week they prefer to connect; and when they are likely to consume content on a particular channel. After you find this information, you know when and where to connect with them and how to engage them in a productive conversation. Create Content and Messaging that Aligns with the Decision Makers Each person in the decision-making group (buying group committee) may consume content differently. You need to tailor your content to target each of the decision makers to influence their buying decisions. You might not need to create all the content from scratch. Repurposing existing content in a relevant way can save you time, money, and effort. However, you need to make sure that your content is convincing enough to influence the buying decisions of the buying committee members. Final Thoughts Account mapping is vital for ABM success and to maintain market competitiveness. It helps you determine who the decision makers are in your target account, so you can build the right communication plan and content to convert the account into a long-term customer.

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Core ABM

Marketers Given Marginal Grades for ABM-Driven Revenue Growth

GlobeNewswire | January 25, 2024

Seeding and harvesting the sales pipeline — the process of acquiring, capturing, qualifying and converting business opportunities — are essential to the growth and profitability of B2B marketers across every industry and geographic sector. Marketing is largely responsible for driving this business process, yet nearly two-thirds of lead gen and engagement strategies are underperforming. A new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report, produced in collaboration with WM America, entitled “Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine,” covers critical aspects of lead generation and engagement. This includes models and metrics for tracking and measuring performance, best practice demand-gen execution, ways to score effectiveness, and more. The latest CMO Council research finds scores of marketers falling behind in lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. Key findings from a Q4 survey of over 170 B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution leaders include: 63% say marketing must own and optimize a company’s revenue-generation engine 64% say their lead gen and engagement strategy underperforms 78% of highly evolved marketers are satisfied with their accelerated pipeline, compared to only 15% of lesser evolved marketers “In today’s competitive data-driven environment, marketers should no longer be satisfied with paltry returns on their sizable lead-gen and ABM investments,” the report notes. “It’s time to turn the tables on inefficient, ineffective, and outdated practices for anticipating, adapting, and responding to customer needs and opportunities.” “Marketers must climb the evolutionary ladder and leave behind outmoded and dated practices,” notes CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May. “Using AI-derived, intention-based buyer data and advanced sales intelligence are among the ways growth marketers bring more precision, predictability, and performance to B2B account marketing investments.” The CMO Council’s research revealed the top five skill sets contributing to improved ABM-driven business outcomes: Better segmentation and precision targeting of buyers and influencers On-demand customer business intelligence and personal buyer insights Tighter integration of demand gen, channel, direct sales, and support teams Greater utilization of tools and data sources for richer prospect profiling Proactive and timely pre-sales follow up and cultivation strategies The CMO Council has uncovered widening gaps in performance between highly evolved marketers and lesser evolved marketers. Gaps are occurring in four core capabilities: lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. This report tiers factors that make up a model for better identification, engagement and conversion. The model coincides with the CMO Council and WM America’s thought leadership initiative to advance lead revenue science practices through a certified Lead Evaluation and Assurance Process, or LEAP model. “Marketers will need to take a few LEAPs of faith in the coming months, because sticking to the status quo is just not practical or possible anymore. As data becomes more critical than ever before, CMOs need to extend their visions for innovation and forward-thinking strategies,” according to Lee Salem, WM America’s Vice President of Sales. Methodology The report is based on a survey of over 170 heads of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution in Q4 2023. It also included content from in-depth interviews with executives from Netline, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry. About the CMO Council The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 16,000+ members control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in over 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE). To learn more, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org. About WM America WM America is a leading B2B marketing company specializing in targeted in-market demand generation. The intent database at WMA tracks the intent behavior of over 75 million business professionals globally, 24X7. The database is segmented into 3,300 categories. WMA keeps around-the-clock track of buying signals from each category in this database. Based on this extremely strong foundation of data points, the company delivers precisely targeted prospects for focused marketing. Accurate keyword search enables deriving of active content consumption and opt-in content downloads. WMA's deep search ensures accurate and targeted information delivery that helps craft successful, cutting-edge marketing strategies. For more information, visit www.wmamerica.com

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Buyer Intent Data

ON24 Recognizes 2023’s Leaders in Digital Engagement

Business Wire | January 24, 2024

A recent Forrester survey found that more than 60% of B2B buyers base their final purchase decision solely on the digital content and experiences companies provide. That’s why thousands of B2B companies choose ON24 (NYSE: ONTF), a leading digital engagement platform for B2B sales and marketing that helps enterprises generate data-driven insights and deliver cost-effective revenue growth. Today, ON24, announced the industry-leading digital experiences of 2023 that drove ROI for their organizations. “At ON24, our goal is to propel business success through digital engagement, with our customers at the core. We take pride in helping our customers drive deeper engagement with their target audiences and extract meaningful insights that result in revenue growth,” said Callan Young, CMO, ON24. “It is our honor to recognize the leading organizations that exemplify excellence in leveraging our platform to create digital experiences that not only meet but surpass their audience’s expectations.” The following organizations were recognized for delivering outstanding digital experiences on the ON24 platform in 2023: Danfossdrove product growth and customer retention by leveraging distributor, reseller and customer data to optimize its webinar and digital engagement program. FloQastinfluenced 82% of event pipeline in Q3 and created 120+ new active opportunities by routing high-quality leads from in-experience demo requests directly to sales. Global X ETFsincreased qualified, high-value leads in Australia by 22%, by integrating ON24 engagement data with their CRM and using the platform’s personalization capabilities. Informaticascaled a live event into a hybrid experience across three key regions simultaneously, driving registration and delivering a consistent customer experience on a global scale. Infopro Digitalincreased conversion rates and registrations by automating processes on the ON24 platform and making real-time adjustments based on customer feedback. Kasperskydrove product adoption and business growth by creating new relationships with prospects and fostering existing relationships with customers. KnowBe4generated over $300k in pipeline through an ON24-powered digital experience. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)achieved 100% participant satisfaction for its unique and impactful digital experience powered by the ON24 platform. PowerSchoolachieved record-breaking registration rates, 75 CTA clicks, over 400 poll responses and 300+ content downloads during an educational experience with ON24. S&P Globaldoubled marketing qualified leads and boosted engagement by designing an ON24 digital experience personalized to different customer segments. Tata Consultancy Servicesdrove revenue growth with record-high registrations for their webinar on ON24, resulting in 70% attendee participation across 30 countries. Texthelpsourced leads during a webinar series and converted at least 70% of them into marketing-qualified leads within 30 days. TOPdeskincreased revenue and improved its customer engagement by 7% YoY and extended the shelf life of its content with an on-demand hub. TravelMediaGroupclosed three deals from a single digital experience by creating a seamless and engaging customer experience on ON24. UCBachieved a 50%+ attendee conversion rate by enhancing the HCP’s experience and integrating ON24 engagement data with its business intelligence system. UnitedHealthcareachieved an 80% cost savings, increased attendee score and engagement with a new digital engagement strategy and an always-on content hub. Wood PLCsourced leads, increased audience engagement and automated continuing professional education credits on ON24, across different time zones. ZoomInfosurpassed webinar benchmarks by generating a record number of marketing-qualified leads and 190 scheduled demos, resulting in 10 closed-won deals. To learn more about 2023’s leaders in digital engagement, watch the on-demand webinar here. About ON24 ON24 is on a mission to re-imagine how companies engage, understand and build relationships with their audience in a digital world. Through our leading sales and marketing platform for digital engagement integrated with generative AI, businesses use our portfolio of webinar, virtual event and content experiences to drive engagement and generate first-party data, delivering ​revenue growth across the enterprise – from demand generation to customer success to partner enablement. ON24 powers digital engagement for industry-leading customers worldwide, including 3 of the 5 largest global technology companies, 3 of the 6 largest US banks, 3 of the 5 largest global healthcare companies, and 3 of the 5 largest global industrial manufacturers, enabling organizations to reach millions of professionals a month for billions of engagement minutes per year with all the first-party data being captured, generated and integrated from one place. ON24 is headquartered in San Francisco with global offices in North America, EMEA, and APAC. For more information, visit www.ON24.com.

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ABM Accounts

Bloomreach and Sonepar to Power Continued Search Relevance for Customers

Business Wire | January 12, 2024

Bloomreach, the platform fueling limitless e-commerce experiences, today announced Bloomreach Discovery will continue to power product discovery for Sonepar, the global world leader in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions, and related services, as the companies renew their existing partnership. With Bloomreach Discovery’s AI-driven search and merchandising capabilities, Sonepar enables customers around the world to find what they want to buy — when, where, and how they want. “Sonepar is pleased to partner with Bloomreach as we continue to pursue our next stage of digital transformation,” said Fabrice del Aguila, SVP Digital Factory, Sonepar. “We look forward to leveraging Bloomreach’s expertise in product discovery as we become the first global B2B electrical distributor in the world to offer the best omnichannel experience to all our customers.” Sonepar leverages Bloomreach Discovery to drive personalized experiences across its omnichannel platform. Using rich data to refine search results, Bloomreach Discovery helps customers easily discover the products they want. It also accounts for a range of attributes and quantitative search queries, creating a search experience that is not only personalized, but personalized to the unique needs of B-to-B buyers. “We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Sonepar,” said Jordan Roper, General Manager and Head of Product, Bloomreach Discovery. “The B-to-B space has so much to gain from digital transformation, and Sonepar is a leader in making that transformation a reality. We’re proud to join them on this journey and look forward to continuing to support their omnichannel experience with the fast ROI and relevance of Bloomreach Discovery.” Learn more about how Bloomreach Discovery and Sonepar are working together to drive success. About Bloomreach Bloomreach personalizes the e-commerce experience. Its data engine unifies real-time customer and product data so businesses understand what customers really want. By connecting that understanding to every channel, the e-commerce experience becomes limitless — reflecting a changing customer as they shop. Amplified by the speed and scale of Loomi, Bloomreach's AI for e-commerce, this creates endless new paths to purchase, greater profitability, and fast business growth. Bloomreach products include: Engagement, a marketing automation platform; Discovery, an e-commerce search solution; Content, a headless CMS; and Clarity, AI-powered conversational shopping. The company has multiple AI patents and serves 850+ global brands including: Albertsons, Bosch, Puma, and Marks & Spencer. About Sonepar Sonepar is an independent family-owned company with global market leadership in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions and related services. Through a dense network of brands spanning 40 countries, the Group has an ambitious transformation agenda to become the first global B-to-B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitalized and synchronized omnichannel experience to all customers. Drawing on the skill and passion of its 44,000 associates, Sonepar had sales of €32.4 billion in 2022. www.sonepar.com

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Core ABM

Marketers Given Marginal Grades for ABM-Driven Revenue Growth

GlobeNewswire | January 25, 2024

Seeding and harvesting the sales pipeline — the process of acquiring, capturing, qualifying and converting business opportunities — are essential to the growth and profitability of B2B marketers across every industry and geographic sector. Marketing is largely responsible for driving this business process, yet nearly two-thirds of lead gen and engagement strategies are underperforming. A new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report, produced in collaboration with WM America, entitled “Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine,” covers critical aspects of lead generation and engagement. This includes models and metrics for tracking and measuring performance, best practice demand-gen execution, ways to score effectiveness, and more. The latest CMO Council research finds scores of marketers falling behind in lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. Key findings from a Q4 survey of over 170 B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution leaders include: 63% say marketing must own and optimize a company’s revenue-generation engine 64% say their lead gen and engagement strategy underperforms 78% of highly evolved marketers are satisfied with their accelerated pipeline, compared to only 15% of lesser evolved marketers “In today’s competitive data-driven environment, marketers should no longer be satisfied with paltry returns on their sizable lead-gen and ABM investments,” the report notes. “It’s time to turn the tables on inefficient, ineffective, and outdated practices for anticipating, adapting, and responding to customer needs and opportunities.” “Marketers must climb the evolutionary ladder and leave behind outmoded and dated practices,” notes CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May. “Using AI-derived, intention-based buyer data and advanced sales intelligence are among the ways growth marketers bring more precision, predictability, and performance to B2B account marketing investments.” The CMO Council’s research revealed the top five skill sets contributing to improved ABM-driven business outcomes: Better segmentation and precision targeting of buyers and influencers On-demand customer business intelligence and personal buyer insights Tighter integration of demand gen, channel, direct sales, and support teams Greater utilization of tools and data sources for richer prospect profiling Proactive and timely pre-sales follow up and cultivation strategies The CMO Council has uncovered widening gaps in performance between highly evolved marketers and lesser evolved marketers. Gaps are occurring in four core capabilities: lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. This report tiers factors that make up a model for better identification, engagement and conversion. The model coincides with the CMO Council and WM America’s thought leadership initiative to advance lead revenue science practices through a certified Lead Evaluation and Assurance Process, or LEAP model. “Marketers will need to take a few LEAPs of faith in the coming months, because sticking to the status quo is just not practical or possible anymore. As data becomes more critical than ever before, CMOs need to extend their visions for innovation and forward-thinking strategies,” according to Lee Salem, WM America’s Vice President of Sales. Methodology The report is based on a survey of over 170 heads of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution in Q4 2023. It also included content from in-depth interviews with executives from Netline, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry. About the CMO Council The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 16,000+ members control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in over 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE). To learn more, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org. About WM America WM America is a leading B2B marketing company specializing in targeted in-market demand generation. The intent database at WMA tracks the intent behavior of over 75 million business professionals globally, 24X7. The database is segmented into 3,300 categories. WMA keeps around-the-clock track of buying signals from each category in this database. Based on this extremely strong foundation of data points, the company delivers precisely targeted prospects for focused marketing. Accurate keyword search enables deriving of active content consumption and opt-in content downloads. WMA's deep search ensures accurate and targeted information delivery that helps craft successful, cutting-edge marketing strategies. For more information, visit www.wmamerica.com

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Buyer Intent Data

ON24 Recognizes 2023’s Leaders in Digital Engagement

Business Wire | January 24, 2024

A recent Forrester survey found that more than 60% of B2B buyers base their final purchase decision solely on the digital content and experiences companies provide. That’s why thousands of B2B companies choose ON24 (NYSE: ONTF), a leading digital engagement platform for B2B sales and marketing that helps enterprises generate data-driven insights and deliver cost-effective revenue growth. Today, ON24, announced the industry-leading digital experiences of 2023 that drove ROI for their organizations. “At ON24, our goal is to propel business success through digital engagement, with our customers at the core. We take pride in helping our customers drive deeper engagement with their target audiences and extract meaningful insights that result in revenue growth,” said Callan Young, CMO, ON24. “It is our honor to recognize the leading organizations that exemplify excellence in leveraging our platform to create digital experiences that not only meet but surpass their audience’s expectations.” The following organizations were recognized for delivering outstanding digital experiences on the ON24 platform in 2023: Danfossdrove product growth and customer retention by leveraging distributor, reseller and customer data to optimize its webinar and digital engagement program. FloQastinfluenced 82% of event pipeline in Q3 and created 120+ new active opportunities by routing high-quality leads from in-experience demo requests directly to sales. Global X ETFsincreased qualified, high-value leads in Australia by 22%, by integrating ON24 engagement data with their CRM and using the platform’s personalization capabilities. Informaticascaled a live event into a hybrid experience across three key regions simultaneously, driving registration and delivering a consistent customer experience on a global scale. Infopro Digitalincreased conversion rates and registrations by automating processes on the ON24 platform and making real-time adjustments based on customer feedback. Kasperskydrove product adoption and business growth by creating new relationships with prospects and fostering existing relationships with customers. KnowBe4generated over $300k in pipeline through an ON24-powered digital experience. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)achieved 100% participant satisfaction for its unique and impactful digital experience powered by the ON24 platform. PowerSchoolachieved record-breaking registration rates, 75 CTA clicks, over 400 poll responses and 300+ content downloads during an educational experience with ON24. S&P Globaldoubled marketing qualified leads and boosted engagement by designing an ON24 digital experience personalized to different customer segments. Tata Consultancy Servicesdrove revenue growth with record-high registrations for their webinar on ON24, resulting in 70% attendee participation across 30 countries. Texthelpsourced leads during a webinar series and converted at least 70% of them into marketing-qualified leads within 30 days. TOPdeskincreased revenue and improved its customer engagement by 7% YoY and extended the shelf life of its content with an on-demand hub. TravelMediaGroupclosed three deals from a single digital experience by creating a seamless and engaging customer experience on ON24. UCBachieved a 50%+ attendee conversion rate by enhancing the HCP’s experience and integrating ON24 engagement data with its business intelligence system. UnitedHealthcareachieved an 80% cost savings, increased attendee score and engagement with a new digital engagement strategy and an always-on content hub. Wood PLCsourced leads, increased audience engagement and automated continuing professional education credits on ON24, across different time zones. ZoomInfosurpassed webinar benchmarks by generating a record number of marketing-qualified leads and 190 scheduled demos, resulting in 10 closed-won deals. To learn more about 2023’s leaders in digital engagement, watch the on-demand webinar here. About ON24 ON24 is on a mission to re-imagine how companies engage, understand and build relationships with their audience in a digital world. Through our leading sales and marketing platform for digital engagement integrated with generative AI, businesses use our portfolio of webinar, virtual event and content experiences to drive engagement and generate first-party data, delivering ​revenue growth across the enterprise – from demand generation to customer success to partner enablement. ON24 powers digital engagement for industry-leading customers worldwide, including 3 of the 5 largest global technology companies, 3 of the 6 largest US banks, 3 of the 5 largest global healthcare companies, and 3 of the 5 largest global industrial manufacturers, enabling organizations to reach millions of professionals a month for billions of engagement minutes per year with all the first-party data being captured, generated and integrated from one place. ON24 is headquartered in San Francisco with global offices in North America, EMEA, and APAC. For more information, visit www.ON24.com.

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ABM Accounts

Bloomreach and Sonepar to Power Continued Search Relevance for Customers

Business Wire | January 12, 2024

Bloomreach, the platform fueling limitless e-commerce experiences, today announced Bloomreach Discovery will continue to power product discovery for Sonepar, the global world leader in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions, and related services, as the companies renew their existing partnership. With Bloomreach Discovery’s AI-driven search and merchandising capabilities, Sonepar enables customers around the world to find what they want to buy — when, where, and how they want. “Sonepar is pleased to partner with Bloomreach as we continue to pursue our next stage of digital transformation,” said Fabrice del Aguila, SVP Digital Factory, Sonepar. “We look forward to leveraging Bloomreach’s expertise in product discovery as we become the first global B2B electrical distributor in the world to offer the best omnichannel experience to all our customers.” Sonepar leverages Bloomreach Discovery to drive personalized experiences across its omnichannel platform. Using rich data to refine search results, Bloomreach Discovery helps customers easily discover the products they want. It also accounts for a range of attributes and quantitative search queries, creating a search experience that is not only personalized, but personalized to the unique needs of B-to-B buyers. “We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Sonepar,” said Jordan Roper, General Manager and Head of Product, Bloomreach Discovery. “The B-to-B space has so much to gain from digital transformation, and Sonepar is a leader in making that transformation a reality. We’re proud to join them on this journey and look forward to continuing to support their omnichannel experience with the fast ROI and relevance of Bloomreach Discovery.” Learn more about how Bloomreach Discovery and Sonepar are working together to drive success. About Bloomreach Bloomreach personalizes the e-commerce experience. Its data engine unifies real-time customer and product data so businesses understand what customers really want. By connecting that understanding to every channel, the e-commerce experience becomes limitless — reflecting a changing customer as they shop. Amplified by the speed and scale of Loomi, Bloomreach's AI for e-commerce, this creates endless new paths to purchase, greater profitability, and fast business growth. Bloomreach products include: Engagement, a marketing automation platform; Discovery, an e-commerce search solution; Content, a headless CMS; and Clarity, AI-powered conversational shopping. The company has multiple AI patents and serves 850+ global brands including: Albertsons, Bosch, Puma, and Marks & Spencer. About Sonepar Sonepar is an independent family-owned company with global market leadership in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions and related services. Through a dense network of brands spanning 40 countries, the Group has an ambitious transformation agenda to become the first global B-to-B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitalized and synchronized omnichannel experience to all customers. Drawing on the skill and passion of its 44,000 associates, Sonepar had sales of €32.4 billion in 2022. www.sonepar.com

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Events