Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
We all know that account-based marketing means targeting the best customer accounts, creating personalized marketing campaigns, and getting to the conversion stage.
Though these steps may sound easy, it takes a lot of brainstorming to implement them to convert the accounts that matter the most. To know more about these steps, you can read six hard-hitting lessons for the ABM strategy.
This article will talk about the best and correct ways to implement ABM plans with examples.
But first, let us briefly inform you about ABM and how it works.
Brief Introduction to ABM
Account-based marketing is a marketing strategy implemented by B2B marketers to concentrate on their exclusive clients. First, the sales and marketing team collaborates to collect the maximum data about specific clients. Then these clients are targeted with personalized marketing campaigns on various platforms.
Thus, account-based marketing allows you to utilize your workforce and resources efficiently. It also helps to market your products to a handful of customers who have a 90% chance of conversion.
Now, let us see the correct ways to implement ABM for various B2B industries.
Ways to Implement ABM Plans with Examples
We have specifically chosen the four best ways to implement ABM in B2B marketing strategy. These are the core strategies that have worked for B2B and are sure to work for you too.
But first, look at these wise words from Maliha Aqeel, Director of Global Communications at Fix Network World.
'One of the most common mistakes companies make is implementing a brand strategy that isn’t aligned to the organization’s overall business goal.'
So before implementing any marketing plan, ensure that your brand strategy, marketing campaigns, and everything else aligns with the overall business goals.
Identify Exclusive Accounts
It is the root of your ABM strategy. Your fruits of labor will be decided by the correct places you plant these roots.
So basically, when you are filtering your clients/customers for ABM, here are the key factors to be kept in mind;
Choose the correct industry.
Know the size of the organization.
Identify the needs, challenges, and pain points of the organization.
Know the timelines and hierarchy of their decision-making process.
The answers to these questions will help you to recognize the target accounts precisely.
Example:
Vidyard is a video platform that helps businesses transform communications and drive more revenue through the strategic use of online video. It collaborated with SmartBug Media to change the video experience for users worldwide. Thus, they can target the correct customers on Hubspot. In addition, they help customers to make videos an integrated part of their marketing campaigns and other processes.
Craft Tailored Content
Every filtered account for ABM will have unique needs, demands, challenges, and pain points. Thus, you have to craft content to address the customers directly. They should instantly recognize that you understand them and have built solutions exclusively for their challenges.
You should also be ready with different content for different stages of the buying journey. And remember to design content for customers even after they convert. It helps you to be ready for the retention stage.
Like Mark Emond, Founder and President at Demand Spring quotes;
“Content is at the heart of great marketing today. It needs to educate, inspire, and convert. It must be tied to the unique rational and emotional needs of each target persona.”
Example:
Intridea executed an excellent content strategy to target the advertising giant Ogilvy. First, they rented a billboard right across Ogilvy’s Manhattan office. The billboard said, “Ogle this, Ogilvy.” Intridea also placed its logo and company URL at the bottom of the quirky line. This exclusive content got them an appointment with Ogilvy’s CEO!
Use Marketing Automation Tools
There are various personalization tools available to assist you in ABM. These tools provide centralized data collection and data analysis. They also coordinate your marketing campaigns across all platforms.
Example:
Growsteak is a Vietnamese company that provides advertising and digital marketing solutions. However, it faced several challenges like lead generation and competitor analysis. Thus, they incorporated Hubspot’s Partner Program. It not only helped them overcome their challenges but also generated 5,166% more leads overall.
Measure the KPIs
You need to measure the metrics once you implement ABM. It is one of the essential factors of a successful ABM strategy. However, these metrics are different from traditional marketing. Thus, you need to keep a hawk’s eye on them.
Some of the KPIs to consider are;
Is the current coverage of key clients sufficient and, is it growing?
Are there known or anonymous visits to your site? Have they increased?
Is the incoming traffic getting converted?
How much is the depth of engagement?
Has the strategy made it easy to get appointments of the target accounts?
Wrapping Up
The success of account-based marketing depends on research and personalization. The more effort you put in to know your clients, the closer you get to convert them. Thus, make use of the abundant data and accurately target your potential customers!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ABM more successful than traditional marketing?
Yes. Compared to traditional marketing methods, ABM has proved to create wonders and save a lot on time, resources and workforce. It has also guaranteed a better success and conversion rate for the sales and marketing teams.
How important is personalization in marketing?
Personalization plays a prominent role in ABM. A trust factor builts if you can address the challenges and pain points of the client with personalized solutions.
Also, personalization ensures a higher rate of getting appointments and conversions of the targeted accounts.
Can SMBs also implement ABM?
Of course. SMBs have a higher chance of growing if they plan their marketing strategy along with ABM. It will allow them to understand the market and their customers from the very beginning. And once they have converted the customers, retention will be an easy task.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | March 6, 2023
The disruption from 2020 has forced many companies across different industries and verticals to improve their digital potential, including technology adoption. Among the industries, account-based marketing practitioners had to adapt to change in 2020 – and fast because it created a host of challenges in B2B. Industries and businesses had to find the right technologies that allow growth, as companies now have to operate in the only digital world.
But, even in the time of uncertainty, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has gained traction. This is good news for enterprise tech vendors. Gartner estimates that expenditure on technology will rebound in 2021, with the enterprise software market predicted to surge by 7.2%. This seems to be a year of growth, improvement, and success for those organizations deploying account-based marketing as part of their B2B strategy.
In addition, one of the global data leaders, Acxiom, has experienced rapid sales growth from its technologically blended ABM program. Before considering a fully technology-based ABM strategy for 2021, it is crucial to understand how technologies fuel ABM growth.
Technologies are Fueling ABM Growth
Well, it's easy to understand and see how and why the technology-fuelled revival of ABM is taking hold. Let's see where B2B marketers are gaining profits. They are :
Driving improved deals, higher close rates, and earning more revenue
Winning strategic accounts in their industries
Getting higher ROI
Reaping benefits from additional marketing strategies
The 2019 State of ABM study by SiriusDecisions validates this trend in ABM results in:
91% of the B2B companies realizing larger deals by adopting technology in ABM.
92% seeing a higher percentage of qualified opportunities in ABM accounts than in non-ABM accounts.
More B2B marketers are moving towards tech-enabled ABM programs, where it was 62% in 2020 compared to 40% in 2018.
ABM in the overall marketing budget of companies surging rapidly.
With the rise in internet usage, which accelerated digital marketing, it was challenging to understand individual behavior. Now, marketers are empowered with account-centric targeting, measurement, and personalization across all their digital channels. Because marketers dedicate more budget to their ABM programs by upgrading technology stacks. It plays a significant role in making ABM scalable.
So, explore the critical technology trends propelling ABM today and shaping its future for marketing purposes in this blog.
How much does your tech stack matter?
The most influential tech marketing programs invest more in data, insight, and analytics. And that's because you have no hope of successfully engaging with your target accounts.
Despite the rapid acceleration of digital transformation in 2020, few organizations already have a mature tech stack. 25-39% of them used it for content syndication, sales automation, evaluation as third-party data, and reporting software.
By this, you must have understood that investing in technologies or technology that is attributing results supporting your ABM efforts is essential. But this doesn't mean the more tech you have, the more successful you will be. It's more a case of having the proper fundamentals (tech-wise) in place that deliver value.
Likewise, other tech fundamentals like intent data fully functioning (and ABM-ready) CRM are perhaps the most important tech pieces to have in place. They are listed under the top planned investments for 2021.
Here are five tech trends for ABM that will make a tangible difference in your business.
Automation Reduces Risks
To execute account-based marketing, marketers need to introduce automation to engage accounts through a handful of channels. Marketers can engage all the named accounts of the sales team and their long tail of target accounts through automation. This allows the marketing team to create demand in the accounts they're pursuing and alleviate the risk of putting all sales requirements in one place. This is possible by continuous demand generation through different channels, probably the less expensive ones (and alerting accounts from time to time to decrease the risk of missing out).
This way, your business will witness a more consistent and coordinated engagement of accounts between sales and marketing. So, ABM automation is a crucial aspect in reducing risks.
AI Introduces Personalized Customer Understanding
Businesses are witnessing the transformational impact of AI throughout the process, particularly in marketing. While marketers can easily get started with ABM by targeting a list of accounts, AI puts more power enabling them to confidently and precisely identify the accounts to pursue.
With AI, marketers can get their ideal customer profile (ICP) at a granular level. Tech-savvy marketers are using AI to analyze their historical sales and implement new strategies to achieve more in the coming years. In other words, AI helps marketers to leverage more information significantly from both internal and external sources to draw more precise models for their ideal customers.
AI is also enhancing engagement. According to The State of Engagement, 72% of marketers are expected to prioritize personalized messages and content to engage with customers. Nearly 40% of marketers plan to leverage AI and machine learning to enhance content used throughout the customer journey. So, through AI, marketers can personalize communications in a one-to-one way. This way, they can predict the content that most likely to convert readers across multiple channels.
As marketers continue to realize the potential of AI, you will see more rules-based ABM activities that AI enhances. This way, your marketers can efficiently target the proper accounts, engage accounts across channels to get insights to optimize programs.
Advanced Analytics Provide Attribution
Is your ABM strategy working? One way to find out this is by measuring its impact on the business through advanced analytics. With automated attribution reporting, marketers can find more opportunities, a longer pipeline of accounts, and higher revenue generation in the ABM context.
But why? Here are three reasons:
Marketers need to show that their partnership with sales to the target audience is working efficiently.
Advanced analytics will allow you to compare the efforts and results of one account vs. another to optimize the ABM program.
Most marketers plan multiple or blended marketing strategies. So, marketers running an ABM or practicing a blend of it, such as inbound marketing, need to know which investments are working. Advanced analytics can help them to allocate a budget for strategies being used for their business.
Therefore, it is expected to witness more touchpoints and data brought into advanced analytics becoming increasingly easier for marketers to consume in the future.
Chatbots' Demand in ABM
As per Salesforce, 69% of U.S. consumers prefer using chatbots when engaging with brands as it yields a prompt response.
A chatbot on your website can answer customers' basic questions every time. AI-powered chatbots can be used for customer support, expanding contact strategy dramatically with a controlled message. These chatbots have become so lifelike that many customers don't even know the difference. And chatbots offer the added benefit of gathering, analyzing, and providing actionable data to improve the customer experience.
How Can Marketers Harness This Potential?
As per SiriusDecisions' survey, more marketers are doubling their budgets and moving their ABM journey effortlessly. So, irrespective of where you are on your journey, you also need to make sure you always move ahead.
When it's time to include technology, be sure to select an ABM platform that supports your marketing journey now and in the future, as well. This means it should support multiple channels and marketing strategies, giving the flexibility to adapt and discover what works best for your organization.
Conclusively, look for a platform that can serve as the hub of your ABM technology stack. The ablest place to start is from a platform that will give you the ABM essentials and connect a wide range of technologies to encourage you to grow over time. This way, you can shape your future in account-based marketing in the best possible ways.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does ABM work?
Identifying which accounts (companies) you can target is the first step after creating a buyer persona. The next step is to market them using campaigns to attract potential clients. And then, measure the activities of your account-based marketing campaigns. Metrics, such as clicks, impressions, and page views, are easily measured.
Why is account-based marketing important?
ABM helps to assemble marketing efforts through multi-channels and analyses key accounts' status to drive more revenue. It also maximizes the efficiency of your B2B marketing resources and aligns sales accordingly.
How is AI used in ABM?
AI solutions in ABM can help the marketing team to make firm data-based decisions faster than before. The usage of chatbots helps to answer many common questions about marketing efforts and benefits. Also, AI tools can be used to track intent data as well.
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Programmatic ABM
Article | June 9, 2022
Data-driven strategies for increasing time to market, pipeline, and revenue impact.
The B2B environment is incredibly complex, so it’s no surprise that more than three-quarters of B2B buyers describe their purchasing journey as very complex or challenging. A significant majority (67%) of the B2B buyer’s journey happens digitally, but B2B buying does not play out in any predictable, linear order. Unfortunately, much of today’s ABM technology lacks the capabilities required to provide personalized experiences across multiple channels, platforms, buying centers, geographies, and lines of business. This puts the target account into an undesirable linear campaign and assumes all accounts progress through the funnel at the same speed.
Instead, customers engage in “looping” behaviors during a typical B2B purchase, revisiting multiple buying stages at least once. Buying stages do not happen sequentially but rather simultaneously. This means that ABM success depends not only on a deep understanding of its audience’s needs but also on precisely orchestrating the delivery of the right message in the right channel at the right time - and on a global scale.
In the face of these complexities, ABM is rapidly maturing as a practice. New research shows that almost half (45%) of companies consider their ABM programs to be fully adopted versus experimental – up a third compared with 2020. But even as ABM programs mature, the headwinds of change are accelerating, leaving more than two-thirds of ABM marketers thwarted in their mission to drive significant revenue impact.
B2B marketers must contend with and overcome a slew of challenges that can feel beyond their immediate control. A recent study by Demand Metric and MRP found that more than three-quarters of marketers’ report that the pace of their campaigns has intensified over the past year. That percentage is higher still, at 83%, at enterprise companies that operate with high levels of complexity on a global scale. Four in ten marketers report that changing account profiles poses a challenge, as does the emergence of new channels and demand for new content formats.
Responsive buyer experiences and relevant content across channels have always been the top criteria for mature, high-performing, omnichannel account-based orchestrations. But much of today’s conversation revolves around linear, top-down campaigns, where the target account is placed in a marketing or sales play, operating within a siloed platform throughout the buyer’s journey. The result is often antithetical to the desired buyer “experience.” Addressing this reality requires rethinking how marketers engage with accounts.
The most mature account-based orchestrations are adaptive, understanding a target’s changing needs, aligning content to those desires, and delivering personalized experiences consistently across multiple channels. This demands a new approach to data management, better use of intent and predictive insights, and fully synchronized orchestration.
To make meaningful connections with prospects and customers amidst these changes, enterprise marketers are evolving their ABM initiatives to focus on highly personalized experiences tailored to the account level and individual locations and buyer roles. Increasingly, ABM leaders employ a set of principles and processes that are consistent from company to company – giving others a blueprint for success. The most critical steps for marketers to achieve significant results with their ABM programs include:
Collaborate Closely Across the Organization
Enterprise marketers must share insights widely across interdisciplinary teams. This allows campaigns to be coordinated across shared accounts. A study of top ABM performers found that nine in ten reported close cross-functional collaborations between marketing and sales. ABM leaders need to establish a standardized measurement framework so everyone is working toward the same goals and success.
Establish a Single Source of Truth
Not only are ABM leaders’ teams highly integrated, but so is their data. A single view of data allows for a deeper understanding of audience needs and improves collaboration. Eight out of ten (80%) top performers use data from three or more systems to guide their ABM practice, and even more, 84%, say that their tech stack is mostly or completely integrated. This is more than double the number (30%) of those whose ABM impact was negative or couldn't be measured.
Deliver Messages Consistently - and Across Touchpoints
Successful ABM marketers can customize the buyer’s experience based on the specific product or solution under consideration and factor in their stage within the buying journey. Almost half of leading ABM practitioners (46%) go beyond personalizing messages by industry to adapt their messages to the recipient’s job role and stage of the customer lifecycle. Highly personalized content delivered at the right time is more critical than ever since customers often skip “steps” on the buying journey and require digital experiences to adapt accordingly.
Grasping at New Buzzwords Isn’t the Answer
Calling an initiative “ABX” instead of “ABM” doesn’t make it easier to execute successfully. In fact, in a rush to accelerate the delivery of 'account-based experiences', the platforms that support it have become a critical bottleneck, creating yet another siloed system. This not only adds to the complexity but also undermines the outcomes it is intended to improve.
Today’s B2B marketers face unprecedented challenges but the enterprise must approach ABM as a guiding strategy rather than a limited tactic. Synthesizing data across multiple sources, eliminating tech and people silos, and taking a collaborative approach to ABM can give marketers a deeper understanding of what target accounts need and where to deliver it. The right tech solutions can trigger omnichannel actions based on account insights, simplifying the complexity of ABM and executing mature, omnichannel orchestrations that have a measurable impact on revenue.
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Article | April 10, 2020
As COVID-19 became increasingly widespread in the U.S. last month, Senior Account-Based Marketing Manager Kristin Kolb had to quickly shift her department’s planned Q1 pilot. Originally, it had involved direct mail that the Matillion team was going to send to target audiences in their office. Kolb said they decided on an alternative digital approach, upping the ante with personalization efforts. “You don’t need the latest and greatest technology or idea to create a hypothesis and run a small test to see if it works,” Kolb said. Billtrust’s Director of Revenue Marketing Deirdre Mills also champions personalization. While she believes that ABM is more of an art than a science, she ties relevant prospect information into program data, keeping company initiatives in mind.
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