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6 Hard-hitting Lessons for ABM Strategy

Purva Mishra | September 30, 2021 | 577 views

Account-based marketing has gained momentum incredibly in the B2B industry. ABM promises a higher conversion rate than any other marketing strategy. It is the best personal approach to B2B marketing.

If you are new to ABM, here is a little introduction to the strategy. ABM is creating a funnel of your clients and filtering the ones who have higher chances of conversion. Once you have the required data, your sales and marketing team can collaborate to create marketing campaigns for these exclusive clients. This strategy can overcome many challenges faced by the marketing and sales team.

Generally, the challenges faced by your businesses can be to
  • Drive retention with the key accounts
  • Deliver relevant content to exclusive customers
  • Boost conversion percentage with the clients most likely to convert
  • Build a strategy for a personalized marketing approach

Once you know what ABM is and implement it correctly, your business can easily overcome these challenges. Thus, we have provided some insights on how to overcome hurdles and excel in your ABM campaign.

How to Excel in Your ABM Campaign

According to B2B data-driven companies, personalization is the biggest challenge to succeed in ABM. Nowadays, B2B clients demand personalization like B2C clients. Now, this is a difficult task as business clients have access to business profiles. Thus, the sales and marketing teams have to develop unique ideas and make extra efforts to personalize campaigns.

So basically, this means utilizing the available data in the best way possible. But sometimes, that takes up a massive investment in terms of time and resources.

Abhi Yadav, Founder & CTO of Zylotech, says,

“Drawing intelligence from data is like pushing a boulder uphill. In most cases, it takes a team of data engineers & scientists an enormous amount of time that comes with a hefty price tag.”

So how do you minimize efforts and still excel in your ABM campaign strategy?

Well, we have six lessons that organizations have learned while implementing ABM in their marketing strategy. Some of these lessons are answers to why a particular strategy failed.

Put Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes

If you have limited access to personal data but have plenty of professional data, put it to the correct use. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and look at the challenges they are facing at present. You can also think about their future problems and provide solutions to avoid them. Once you think like your customers, strategies and solutions become a simple task.

For example, if your targeted client is the MD or CFO of a healthcare sector. Determine how the pandemic has impacted their revenues or how they need to manage personal and government financing in these challenging times. Also, you can provide visionary solutions about future implementations for the healthcare sector.

Flip the Funnel

The traditional funnel of awareness, interest, consideration, and purchase needs to change. The implementation may work even today, but the conversion process takes time. Thus, it’s time to flip the funnel.

Flipping the funnel is the new strategy that is uprooting the traditional funnel. This method implies putting targeted organizations on the top of the funnel and then broadening it. First, it means to target the people of the organizations, then ways to connect them, and then the broadest part is to provide them with appropriate solutions.

This funnel strategy has proved to work wonders in the ABM strategy.

Personify is the leading constituent management and engagement (CME) platform. Their challenge was to create a funnel for better insights into their target market.

Their solution was to partner with product marketing and sales for an ideal customer profile (ICP). Thus the top of the funnel was sorted. Then they researched and set up personalized digital ad campaigns and sales strategies. Thus, these creative campaigns increased their brand awareness, engagement, and conversions.

They increased their on-site visitors by 39 times by implementing this strategy.

Make the Best Use of Technology

There are a plethora of tools available to strategize and implement ABM. But organizations do not make full use of these tools, leading to wastage of time, resources, and resources.

Survey the market and know there are tools developed to optimize ABM strategy and keep track of account-based metrics. Implement these tools, and you will notice that your work gets executed faster and in an intelligent way.

P.S. Human-assisted AI technologies help organizations to build compelling campaigns and optimize revenue operations.

Streamline Your Processes

Sometimes organizations do not realize that ABM requires streamlining processes with the regular ones. ABM strategies require experimentation. You have to select the strategy that suits you and your organization in the best way. Thus, ensure that your teams do not get overwhelmed by the process.

Thus, define roles, responsibilities, and the entire execution plan when the target accounts are shortlisted.

VersionOne, a cloud-based agile application life-cycle management (ALM) software provider, simplified the process by implementing data-driven approaches. Thus, VersionOne gave both teams access to monitor the ABM strategy and the success of the targeted accounts. Thus both the teams worked in collaboration and focused on segmentation. This helped in building a proper pipeline between the sales and marketing teams.

This doubled VersionOne’s sales by streamlining the processes between the sales and marketing teams.

Focus On Retention

ABM is not only targeting exclusive clients and converting them. But you have to track and retain them. Many a time clients convert and the organization forgets to follow up. Thus, it creates a void for current and future clients, as the success rate is incredibly defined by retention.

For example, small gestures like regular surveys, emails regarding workflow, and more can play an essential role for the clients to know that you care.

Do Not Refrain from Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a great way to ease out tasks and get a filtered list of high-value clients. Also, companies that specialize in data-driven technologies can provide you with more relevant information about the clients than your in-house team.

So, avail services from experienced companies and industry leaders in providing you with the best list of relevant clients. These professional organizations know the pain-point of the clients, which helps you in planning your ABM strategy.

That’s All Folks

We hope we have provided you with solutions to the hurdles that you face while strategizing ABM. Remember, ABM strategy cannot be mastered overnight. So set goals, implement ABM, learn from the results and repeat- it is that simple!

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is the best way to succeed in ABM?

The key idea is to focus on the personalization and retention of the clients. Your ABM strategy is likely to succeed if you provide personalized solutions to your exclusive clients. Success in your ABM strategy depends on your team, your account-based marketing campaigns, and the level of experimentation you do.

Is it okay to outsource for account-based marketing?

If your organization does not want to invest the time, resources, and technology required for ABM, it is good to outsource it. These third-party organizations can help you provide you with a list of the best clients and their information.

How important is ABM strategy?

ABM is an essential strategy as it helps to shorten the sales process and increases the conversion rate. In addition, it helps an organization concentrate on the most exclusive clients and retain them, thus generating better revenue and ROI.

Spotlight

Response Mine Interactive

Based in Atlanta, Response Mine Interactive (RMI) is an industry leading digital marketing services firm that expertly wields data for customer acquisition and retention. Founded in 2001, RMI focuses on honest, meaningful feedback to create dominant online brands in the e-commerce, healthcare, retail, travel and home services markets. Also the authority in acquiring boomers and seniors, RMI has a culture based on integrity, testing and margin-based decision-making to create breakthroughs in volume and efficiencies that optimize ROI. For more information,

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Drift Introduces Drift Engage to Help Businesses Capitalize on Anonymous Website Traffic

PR Newswire | October 04, 2023

Drift, the buyer experience and Conversational AI company, today announced Drift Engage, a first-to-market product powered by Lift AI, that uses machine learning to score visitors' real-time site behavior, even for visitors who are 100% anonymous. This collaboration with Lift AI delivers on a strategic partnership to enhance customers' experiences, and reinforces Drift's commitment to delivering cutting-edge AI-driven results. With 98% of website traffic labeled as anonymous, companies struggle to generate pipeline from all of their website visitors, even after making significant investments to drive traffic to the site. ID Reveal tools help, but they can't identify all traffic, especially in a remote-working world. Until today, customers using these tools have been missing out on 70% of their website traffic, even with data enrichment tools in their tech stack. Drift Engage is the only solution that can automatically deliver relevant chat experiences based on real-time buyer intent scoring, which identifies and measures both known and anonymous visitors' site engagement in real time. It instantly provides the right chat experiences for customers that convert high-intent website visitors into loyal customers, ultimately increasing sales velocity and conversion rate. Since early 2020, top brands like Loopio and Intelex have used the Lift AI technology behind Drift Engage to generate a dramatic increase in conversions, pipeline, and revenue, and now all Drift customers can leverage this fully integrated technology. Today, we are deepening our strategic partnership with Lift AI to help every Drift customer turn first conversations into enduring relationships with AI-powered personalization, said Scott Ernst, CEO of Drift. Drift Engage is perfect for businesses that invest in bringing traffic to their site, but lack the visibility to convert visitors into leads. It helps capture buyers when they're already shopping, increasing conversions, sales velocity, and revenue by fast-tracking high-intent visitors to sales. Features of Drift Engage include: Real-time buyer intent scoring:Identify and measure each visitor's site engagement in real time via Live Chat or Prospector Real-time playbook targeting:Deliver the most relevant chat message/playbook based on a buyer's real-time engagement on your website CRM sync:Seamlessly add a contact's Drift Engage score to Drift leads within any CRM that Drift integrates with Audiences Summary Data:Sort site traffic by low, medium, and high intent to review playbook performance and optimize conversions Lift AI provides a proprietary cloud-based scoring AI model that integrates via a JavaScript snippet on business websites to measure real-time intent. Drift makes it possible to action these scores and surfaces intent data within its buyer engagement platform. "By joining forces with Drift, we're leveraging the power of our AI solutions to illuminate the full potential of conversational marketing on business' websites," said Don Simpson, CEO of Lift AI. "With our existing customers who are using Lift AI and Drift, we're seeing 9x conversations turn into pipeline with our real-time scoring technology. This is just the beginning—we're certain that solving for the gap of anonymous visitors will be a major unlock moment for B2B marketers and sales reps using Drift." Customers already using Drift Engage see 3x more ROI, 10.6x more pipeline and 2.1x more opportunities than the median Drift customer. To learn more, please visit www.drift.com. About Drift Drift®, the buyer experience and Conversational AI company, inspires businesses to create more engaging customer experiences, one conversation at a time. Drift helps thousands of customers across the globe translate conversational data and buyer behavior into deeper relationships, more pipeline and more revenue. A pioneer in Conversational Marketing, the company was founded in 2015 to help remove friction from the B2B buying process. As buyer expectations continue to increase and AI becomes central to empowering meaningful customer journeys at scale, Drift is disrupting the category it created. Its human-centric, AI-powered platform listens, understands and learns from buyers to deliver personalized experiences and recommendations at every touchpoint. Drift is creating a world where AI works for humans to turn conversations into relationships. About Lift AI Lift AI identifies the buying intent of every website visitor in real time, even those that are completely anonymous, enabling websites to trigger the most effective conversational marketing conversion tactics before the visitor leaves the site. The Lift AI proprietary machine-learning models are based on 18 years of experience, billions of data points, and real-time behavioral analytics, working out-of-the-box to deliver a dramatic increase in sales efficient pipeline from conversational marketing in just 90 days.

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StackAdapt Partners with Lead Forensics to Expand Its ABM Targeting and Measurement Capabilities in EMEA and Canada

Business Wire | October 04, 2023

StackAdapt (www.stackadapt.com), the leading self-serve programmatic advertising platform, has partnered with Lead Forensics, the world’s No. 1 B2B website visitor identification software, to expand StackAdapt’s latest ABM Targeting and Measurement solution. This integration empowers B2B marketers and ad agencies seeking to reach highly specific audiences within EMEA and Canada in addition to the company’s existing targeting capabilities for the US. Key Benefits for B2B Marketers and Advertisers: Expanded Market Reach: B2B marketers can now extend their reach beyond the US and tap into new markets in EMEA and Canada targeting a broader audience and potential customers. Relevant Targeting: This expansion ensures that ad campaigns are relevant and resonate with the right audience. Measurable Impact: With highly accurate measurement capabilities, B2B marketers can assess the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize results, leading to higher ROI and more effective marketing efforts. Frictionless Campaign Management: The self-serve solution offers easy-to-use features for campaign creation and reporting, saving time and resources for B2B marketers and streamlining their advertising process. Low-Risk Testing: The solution allows for quick campaign activation without contractual minimums, giving B2B marketers the confidence to experiment and learn, leading to improved strategies and successful outcomes in the long run. “We’re delighted to partner with StackAdapt,” said Chris Murray, Vice President of Partnerships at Lead Forensics. “We know how powerful our data is and we look forward to working with StackAdapt to help businesses connect, engage, and succeed like never before.” Agent3 is a global ABM agency focused on delivering hyper-targeted campaigns for its clients. As a StackAdapt partner, it was one of the first to harness the power of Lead Forensics' IP data. This collaboration extends our ability to offer increased reliability, visibility and scale in EMEA and Canada, as well as complimenting and expanding the reach provided by many of our customers' existing pure-play ABM platforms across the US, explained Daniel Sands, Chief Innovation Officer and Partner at Agent3. “With precise audience targeting via StackAdapt, combined with the ability to measure campaign impact with pinpoint accuracy, our agency was able to achieve really great scale and performance metrics. We were particularly impressed from an account attribution perspective and the data we were able to capture about the companies we had reached. This partnership represents a significant milestone in our ability to deliver outstanding results for our clients." "The ability to provide ABM measurement in EMEA and North America is a unique delivery for our platform compared to competitors, and we are thrilled to provide this offering thanks to our partnership with Lead Forensics,” said Michael Shang, Vice President of Partnerships and Business Solutions at StackAdapt. "This collaboration allows us to provide a comprehensive self-serve solution that caters to the evolving needs of B2B marketers and advertisers seeking to make a measurable impact." StackAdapt provides easy access to its platform with no monthly minimum commitment, including for ABM targeting. For B2B marketers, StackAdapt utilizes programmatic to deliver an increase in leads and sales to meet growth requirements and build a long-term sustainable funnel. For more information, visit www.stackadapt.com. About Lead Forensics Lead Forensics is the world's #1 B2B website visitor identification software. Trusted by 60,000+ customers, Lead Forensics owns the world’s largest database of business IP addresses, enabling you to identify B2B website visitors, access contact information for key decision-makers, and get detailed website analytics. Lead Forensics has been named as one of the 100 Best Global Software companies and the software has also been named in the world’s Top 25 Best Software Products by G2. For further information, visit www.leadforensics.com About StackAdapt StackAdapt is a self-serve programmatic advertising platform used by hundreds of brands and agencies around the world. StackAdapt’s data-driven platform combines state-of-the-art machine learning with a clean and intuitive user interface to provide media buyers with an easy way to plan, execute and drive the best performance across all devices, inventory, and publishing partners. StackAdapt has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America, is rated the number 1 demand-side platform (DSP) on G2, and is the highest performing and easiest to use platform. For further information, visit www.stackadapt.com.

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