ABM Tactics to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

Introduction: Account-based Marketing and ABM Tactics

B2B account-based marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on targeted campaigns for high-value accounts. An account-based marketing strategy involves identifying target accounts, reaching out to them using hyper-personalized content, and engaging them in the right way and at the right time, irrespective of their position in the sales funnel. Closing the deal through an alignment between sales and marketing is the ultimate goal of an effective account-based marketing campaign. By using certain ABM tactics, you can enhance your campaign. Let us first understand what account-based marketing is, what challenges it can help you scale, and how it can help you get a higher ROI compared to any other marketing strategy that exists today.

Why Should You Implement Account-based Marketing?

According to ITSMA, 87 percent of marketers say that ABM marketing outperforms other marketing investments. B2B account-based marketing gets better results year-over-year after its implementation. With changing times, B2B customer expectations have changed. A more humane marketing strategy, customized content, the right channels, and a smooth customer experience are some of them. Not only does ABM targeting offer solutions to customers’ specific challenges, but it also converts leads with buyer intent into customers. Here are some of the challenges that an effective account-based marketing strategy will help you overcome:

Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams

The account-based marketing process involves streamlining the goals, objectives, and metrics of your sales and marketing teams. This eliminates the possibility of poor communication. Instead, there is a group effort to go after the right people to get a better return on investment.

These teams centrally view the targeted accounts through your CRM. This breaks the silos and boosts the impact of your ABM tactics. It allows unobstructed data sharing between marketing and sales. The account-based marketing process solely functions using centralized data and empowers both teams to make the most of the intent data and predict when and how to engage with the stakeholders of the target accounts.

Effective Content Personalization

As a central metric, customer experience is of paramount importance to creating lasting associations with target accounts. Most customers know what they want and need, are aware of the market conditions, and seek solutions that work best for them. They want these solutions to be offered to them on a platter through predictive customer experience. ABM scores a homerun in this aspect. It connects customers with content personalization characterized by distinct messaging speaking about challenges and solutions. Content is important to the success of an account-based marketing campaign right from the start.

Achieving Complete Data Utilization

B2B account-based marketing is a data-driven marketing technology that drives success for your business. Data is used to predict the needs of target accounts, understand their pain points, and preferred channels of communication. Clean intent data helps in increasing brand awareness among target accounts, streamlines the buying cycle, and assists marketing in creating content and messaging that best represents your brand and sharing it with sales teams so that they can use it to convert leads. Feedback data can also help marketing to access the success of the account-based marketing campaign and improve it to get better results in the future.

Maintaining Long-term Relationships with Customers

No matter the kind of B2B marketing strategy (ABM Lite, Strategic ABM, or Programmatic ABM) you choose to apply, its personalized approach boosts confidence and trust in buyers because they experience a stellar customer experience. Through customized content and focused service offerings, lasting long-term relationships with target accounts can become a reality. It also creates new opportunities for businesses.

Marketing Budgeting

An account-based marketing program enhances marketing budgets by improving customer retention and makes it easier to track ROI. It also improves your brand awareness, engagement, and lead quality metrics, so you can allocate your resources better.

Now that the benefits of account-based marketing are evident, let us now look at ABM tactics to further enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy.

ABM Tactics to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

Before you start using any tips and tricks to optimize your account-based marketing program, you should set your expectations and finalize the KPIs you intend to use to measure the success of your B2B ABM marketing tactics.

Let us explore some ABM tactics that can optimize your account-based marketing program:

Optimize Your ABM Funnel

Optimizing your ABM funnel may be one of the most effective account-based marketing tactics that can help you achieve growth.

Target Accounts

Optimize your target accounts using the following ways:
  • Content Auditing
Audit your content and verify if it caters effectively to your target accounts’ personas and the industry they belong to. Stringently review every content piece you have to ensure it is hyper-personalized and addresses the target accounts’ needs and pain points. Sometimes, your content may help you tighten your target account list.

  • Use Intent Data Wisely
ABM targeting should be dynamic. Update your target account list based on the intent data you receive from CRM and other platforms. You must know what your target accounts are searching for. Is it something about your business, your product, or the solutions you offer? You should always use this data to enhance your list.

  • Approach Different Segments
Simultaneously run multiple account-based marketing campaigns with different levels of personalization and investment. Choose from ABM Lite (one-to-few accounts), Programmatic ABM (one-to-many accounts), or Strategic ABM (one-to-one) based on your ABM targeting goals.

Engaged Accounts

Optimizing engaged accounts can be difficult because no two engaged accounts can be in the same stage of the sales funnel. Checking on how your ads are performing through click rates, organic visits on your website, email click through rates, or any other digital interaction with your brand can be a good start. Your ads should be informative yet beautiful. Improve on your copy and tighten your target account list so you reach out only to the accounts that are engaging with your content. Go all out through social media, emails, and all other channels available on the internet to reach out to engaged accounts. These account-based marketing tactics ensure that you take advantage of target account engagement enthusiastically through all channels.

New Opportunities

Help your sales team to enhance the rate of new opportunities through lead generation strategies created by ad retargeting so they can tap into the accounts that have interacted with your ads previously with renewed vigour. Creating an account engagement model to define an ‘engaged account’ in collaboration with your sales team can smoothen out the process of controlling the number of accounts it has to work on.

Outreach

Focus on creating or warming up existing relationships with the employees of your target account stakeholders. Use direct mail or personal meetings to get in touch with your target accounts. This opens the doors to new pipeline opportunities. One-to-one C-level campaigns, phone calls, and demos can be used to reach more people, warm up leads, and create brand awareness.

Improve Sales Velocity

Sales velocity is the average time taken from when an opportunity is created to when it is converted into a customer. Treat every opportunity that comes your way with the same dedication that you show to your target accounts. This approach is applicable to all the lead generation strategies you execute. Opportunities may make their way through your ABM platform or through inbound channels. Once they make their way through the funnel, make it a point to shift from awareness to ROI campaigns by exhibiting customer success stories and testimonials. These efforts can lead to a shortened sales cycle.

Harness Social Media

For the success of your B2B marketing strategy, using social media can be an effective way to capture important target accounts’ behavioral data. Follow their company accounts, stakeholder accounts, and employee accounts to remain updated. Understanding stakeholders’ and employees’ social media behaviour, likes, and engagement can help you narrow down your target account list. Strategically calling out the target accounts on social media through mentions can work in your favour.

Use Paid Advertising & Content Marketing

LinkedIn targeting, paid Google ads, industry-specific blogging along with problem and solution-oriented content can create target account engagement. Consider using account-based marketing services to market your content better and more accurately.

Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) based marketing can optimize your account-based program by providing you with predictive insights and enhancing your communication efforts. Email campaigns can be executed using marketing automation to offer measurable account engagement. AI and big data rely on CRM data to gather user information from different platforms. This information can help you personalize your content better. Account-based marketing services offer these options to execute targeted marketing campaigns at scale.

According to a MarketingProfs survey, companies that used this ABM tactic saw 59 percent increase in closing rates.

Implement Influencer Marketing

Harness the influence of industry experts, thought leaders, and recognized contributors that your target accounts consider authentic. It can improve your conversion rate. By humanizing the buyer experience through an influencer, you can win over the trust of your accounts, encourage brand advocacy, attract new audiences, and increase the authority of the content you share. This tactic adds value to your B2B marketing strategy.

Test, Measure, Improve

Periodically testing your ad copy, content, design, and channel elements to see what works and what doesn’t is crucial to improving B2B account-based marketing. Tracking important KPIs that measure the success of your strategy can help you make it more effective. Avoid being constrained and try new things boldly. If something doesn’t work, find other ways to achieve your goals instead of scrapping the strategy. Account-based marketing tactics will only work if you analyze how they affect your strategy and accordingly keep improving its execution.

In an interview with Media 7, Daniel Englebretson, the founder of Khronos, talked about how to improve an account-based marketing strategy.

“The best programs, and the best marketers, have built their success on the back of rapid iteration and a long history of testing, learning, and continuously improving.”

Northrop Grumman Won a $2 Billion Contract by Leveraging Account-based Marketing

Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company headquartered in Virginia, clinched a ten-year, $2 billion contract with VITA. Their B2B ABM marketing tactics included using marketing and business development teams that worked closely to understand VITA’s issues, needs, and priorities. They used all this information to create a focused branding campaign to target the key decision makers at VITA. They ensured that every interaction they had with VITA reinforced their IT expertise.

The Takeaway

These ABM tactics are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing your account-based marketing program. Confidence, attentiveness, and patience are key to achieving expected conversions from an ABM strategy.

FAQ

What are the types of ABM marketing?

Programmatic ABM (one-to-many approach), ABM Lite (one-to-few approach) and Strategic ABM (one-to-one approach) are the three types of ABM marketing.

Why is account-based marketing more effective than traditional B2B marketing?

Account-based marketing targets accounts with buyer intent. It increases the conversion rate and customer experience through content personalization and a close understanding of key accounts’ needs and challenges. This focused approach leads to a higher ROI.

What are the benefits of using account-based marketing software?

An account-based marketing software powered by AI can help you reach, engage, and convert target accounts and provide you with actionable data through your websites, CRM, and marketing automation platforms. It helps you grow your business quickly and efficiently.

Spotlight

dunnhumby

A world-leader in customer data science, dunnhumby has pioneered the use of big data to drive growth for retailers and brands since 1989. With 46 offices in 27 countries, dunnhumby’s strategic process, proprietary insights and multi-channel media capabilities deliver competitive advantage for clients including Coca-Cola, Homeplus, L’Oreal, Monoprix, Procter & Gamble, Raia Drogasil, Raley’s, Shoprite and Tesco.

OTHER ARTICLES
Targeted Account Strategy

6 Hard-hitting Lessons for ABM Strategy

Article | January 11, 2022

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. { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{ "@type": "Question", "name": "Which is the best way to succeed in ABM?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "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." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "Is it okay to outsource for account-based marketing?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "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." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "How important is ABM strategy?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "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." } }] }

Read More
Targeted Account Strategy

Optimizing ABM with Personalized Landing Pages

Article | July 5, 2022

Personalization is an essential component of an ABM strategy. Without content personalization, it is difficult to target decision makers and influence their purchase decisions. Within this content personalization, ABM landing pages play an important role in offering your target account just what they are looking for. However, without proper personalization, your ABM landing pages will not perform as expected and remain industry-specific pages that are too generic to create any impact. With the help of technology, it is easy to create hyper-personalized ABM landing pages. Here is how you can build your landing page strategy: Categorize Your Accounts Break your accounts into clusters, map patterns and choose relevant, effective content for each landing page. Use industry or firmographic details in the beginning and then switch to using account-specific pain points that each segment might face. Based on this data, you can build account personas. If you can, make a separate persona profile for each job role for certain accounts. This will make things run more smoothly. Create Value-added and Relevant Content for Each Cluster Your deep research into your target accounts will help you understand what kind of content will be valuable for each account. With your buyers in mind, create content that empowers them and facilitates their purchasing journey. Avoid creating fluffy content that raves about your brand. Instead, give the visitor something that can help them solve their business problems. Offer Personalized Offers for Each ABM Landing Page In a 2019 study conducted by Hanover Research for PROS, 69% of buyers said that personalized offers helped them purchase a product and that they were willing to pay more if a specially tailored price was quoted. Having relevant promotions and offers for a landing page that targets an account can get you the conversions you desire. Every visitor that arrives on the page should know that you have created specific content for them that can add value to their business. Delegate a Dedicated Sales Representative Your visitors may be used to chatbot automation, but they might still want to interact with a sales representative to get their queries cleared or to make special demands. Assign one sales representative to handle an account. This representative’s information should be available on the landing page so the visitors know who to get in touch with. Design a Personalized ABM Landing Page Layout Your landing page should follow a layout that aligns with the customized content. It should have a nice flow and should guide the visitor towards the call to action. It should influence the visitor through content they might find resourceful. Elements like a custom logo and the company’s banner will enrich the page with branding. The most important part of the page will be relevant content pieces like the visitors’ pain points, their industry highlights, product comparisons, and case studies. These are lucrative resources that the visitors might find useful. Using a landing page builder tool that is up-to-date, you can easily make campaigns for different campaigns. Focus on Your Call to Action Don’t hesitate to offer your visitors multiple calls to action. Offer them lead magnet downloads, specially tailored resources, tools, app downloads, upsells/cross-sells, etc. to entice them. Think about all the possible ways that could help your target accounts throughout the buying process and post-conversion. Multiple CTAs can be your way of showing how much you care about the visitors’ needs and experience. What’s the Bottomline? The pressure to bring in new customers is higher than ever before. Marketers need to get creative, revamp their acquisition strategy, and start talking to their target prospects directly through relevant content. Only then can ABM deliver the results you are looking for.

Read More
Targeted Account Strategy

ABM Strategy in Healthcare: A Quick Overview

Article | November 26, 2021

Account-based marketing in healthcare helps marketers reach institutional decision-makers based on intent and target accounts. However, ABM becomes a bit more complex in the healthcare domain where the needs, regulations, and procurement processes vary widely, and so do the ways healthcare providers communicate. For an ABM strategy to work in this domain, effort, time, tailored content, and deep customer insights are necessary. ABM Strategy in Healthcare Here are the co-ordinated steps you need to take to implement ABM in the healthcare domain: Getting Buy-in Get buy-in from sponsors at the highest level and coordinate with functional stakeholders. Create client-centric teams and decide on KPIs that matter. Identify Key Accounts With the help of sales representatives and relationship managers, identify key HCP accounts that can benefit from your ABM strategy. Conduct Extensive Research Deep-dive into research on these key accounts, their history, buyer journeys with you. Find out their current and future needs and issues, and their status within the market. Tailor Your Content The research will help you tailor the content for your content marketing strategy. Address the decision-makers with content that solves their pressing issues to get the conversions you want. Analyze & Adjust the Strategy Analyze campaign results from time to time (preferably quarterly). Based on your identified KPIs, check what is working and what isn’t bringing the expected results. Adjust your strategy accordingly. What to Expect from ABM in Healthcare? Salesforce recently conducted research among healthcare marketing professionals. The results showed that 70% believed connected customer journeys positively impacted client loyalty and willingness to recommend products to others. So, ABM could be a great way to increase your revenue and get a higher ROI as compared to any other marketing strategy.

Read More
Account Management

Why Should Tech and Demand Gen Only Support ABM, Not Drive It?

Article | July 7, 2022

Targeted advertising has become the norm on popular ABM platforms. As a result, many marketers have forgotten ABM's principles. Leadership, marketing, revenue, sales enablement, customer success, and product teams should work together to hit ABM numbers instead of completely relying on platforms and demand generation strategies. Here are three reasons why ABM platforms and demand generation campaigns shouldn’t drive your ABM strategy: GTM Teams Cannot Advance Companies focusing on targeted demand gen through technology make their ABM strategy campaign-based instead of focusing on the interactions the sales and marketing teams need to have with target accounts to deliver revenue growth. They struggle with winning multi-year contracts. Ideally, the teams should focus on filling the gaps left by competitors with different content and messaging in order to turn accounts into sales. Buying Journey Support is Limited ABM is about getting key accounts to generate revenue. When teams rely on technology to put out content and messaging for target accounts but don’t change their sales motions, processes, and conversations, their win rates drop. They should change their prospects’ experiences at every stage of the buying journey to deliver an optimal customer experience. Sales Cycles Continue to be Lengthy An ABM strategy should be used to influence both selling conversations and internal conversations that the sales teams are not privy to. Creating demand and building a pipeline through ABM platforms won’t bring revenue growth if there is no follow-through to convert accounts. Teams should engage in account-based enablement and come up with a plan to engage accounts that go dark or get stuck in the buyer journey. Use Technology and Demand Generation in Moderation Remember that ABM platforms and demand gen strategies can enhance your ABM efforts, but they shouldn’t be the driving force behind your ABM strategy. Marketers need to start using ABM to fix the revenue issues in their organizations instead of treating it like a targeted demand-generation function.

Read More

Spotlight

dunnhumby

A world-leader in customer data science, dunnhumby has pioneered the use of big data to drive growth for retailers and brands since 1989. With 46 offices in 27 countries, dunnhumby’s strategic process, proprietary insights and multi-channel media capabilities deliver competitive advantage for clients including Coca-Cola, Homeplus, L’Oreal, Monoprix, Procter & Gamble, Raia Drogasil, Raley’s, Shoprite and Tesco.

Related News

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

Read More

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.

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More

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.

Read More

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

Read More

Events