Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
Getting the attention of the target audience at the right time is the aim of every B2B marketing strategy. Most consumers research products and services before making a purchasing decision. B2B companies are no different. This means potential accounts are always on the lookout for a solution to a problem they are facing in their business. These are prospects that will convert into approachable leads and eventually customers if you offer them just what they are looking for, just when they are looking for it.
To find these lucrative prospects, marketers like you need to harness B2B buyer intent data. B2B intent data gives you deep insights into your marketing ICP’s behaviour, pain points, and requirements. With this important data, you can give your sales team promising leads they can follow up on.
In an interview with Media 7, Marc Laplante, CEO and Co-founder of Intentsify emphasized the importance of intent data.
“In B2B marketing and sales, intent data is typically understood as a tool to identify or prioritize which accounts we should target for advertising, lead generation, and sales follow-up. These are undoubtedly powerful use cases. But they represent only part of the intent data’s value. You should also use intent data to convert those accounts down the funnel into customers and revenue. Intent data, if granular enough, will highlight your target accounts’ problems, interests, research into competitors, geographic location, and buying stage.”
Let us take a look at what buyer intent data can do to bring you the sales numbers you want and how it can enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy.
Buyer Intent Data Brings You Ready-to-buy Customers
Every user has a unique online behaviour, which can be distinguished using behavioral signals that uncovers the topic, product, or service the person needs. This information gives insight into the perceived intent of your marketing ICP. As a marketer, this information will help you plan effective advertising campaigns. The sales team can use this data to design the right pitch tracks, demos, and collateral to convert members from your targeted buying group. Additionally, this data can also help your customer success teams identify existing accounts that showcase a churn risk or an upsell opportunity. It’s a win-win for three teams at once.
B2B intent data uses website data, off-site activity, CRMs, social media data, and content consumption data from online content like infographics, blogs, product comparisons and reviews, discussion boards, case studies, and news to pinpoint buyer insights.
Intent Data Improves the B2B Buyer Journey
The B2B buyer journey is a combination of accounts navigating through early stage (awareness content to identify the problem), middle stage (exploring solutions), late stage (comparing vendors that offer solutions) and finally the last stage (purchase/upsell/churn). Between exploring solutions and comparing vendors, lie hidden opportunities that haven’t reached you. Intent data can bridge this gap for you.
Intent data providers give you data that is tailored to keywords that are relevant to your business and use case. This data targets buying locations at the website level and aggregates signals across a corporate family. Deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) are used to screen the content to achieve relevancy and to map billions of unique online engagement events every week. Analytics pinpoint the accounts that are showing any kind of buying activity and correspond to your targeted keywords. All this actionable data can shorten your buyer’s journey towards conversion.
Identifying early-stage prospects
At this stage, intent data signals surge around the keywords or topics that relate to the general challenges and pain points of your prospects because they are looking at the cause of their problem. They will try to find a elementary solution and get to know more about the products and services different brands are offering.
Identifying middle-stage prospects
The intent data signals at this stage will show a higher level of activity around topics or keywords related to a precise product or service category because the prospects have already identified the root of their problem and the options they have to address it.
Identifying prospects ready to purchase
At this stage, the signals are mostly focused on topics related to your brand, your specific product names and features, and your competitors’ product names. These prospects are ready to spend and should be approached at the earliest to achieve conversion.
Sources of Buyer Intent Data
Intent data providers offer two types of intent data:
1. Internal Intent Data (First-party Data)
This data is collected in-house through a marketing automation platform or through application logs if you have a web-based app. You can control what you collect and how you collect it and act on the data instantly. You can customize the purchase intent to your liking.
2. External Intent Data
External intent data is third-party intent data and is collected outside of your business. It is sourced via IP lookups, cookies or specific websites. However, third-party cookies will be phased out soon. So, B2B marketers need to rely on first-party cookies, data points, contextual advertising, and tracking technologies to get information on their prospects. Read more about cookie-less ABM here.
B2B Buyer Intent Behavioral Indicators
Actions that prospects carry out on your website or the internet are compared with the behavioral data of prospects that become SQLs (sales qualified leads). Here are some behavioral indicators that show purchase intent:
High intensity engagement with your brand’s social media posts
Exploring your product or pricing pages
Exploring product or service customer review page
Reading articles about your product’s features on your blog
The frequency of prospects’ website visits and the actions they take
Content consumption, like downloading e-books, templates, or any other resources
What Does Buyer Intent Data Do for You?
While implementing account-based marketing techniques, you should prioritize intent data above everything else. Capitalize on the potential of intent data by incorporating it into your sales and marketing workflows. Adjust your interactions to match your prospects’ demands and establish meaningful connections with them.
Primarily, intent data helps prioritize a list of target accounts that need to be pursued. Once the sales and marketing teams are aware of a user's location in the sales cycle, they may focus on moving them along in the purchasing process with customized content. Let us look into what intent data can do for your business in detail:
Efficient Prospecting
According to a survey by HubSpot, 75% of businesses ranked being able to close more deals as their top sales priority. With intent data, a prospect that is in the market to buy is easier to find because of predictive analytics. You already have your ICP in marketing in place and when prospects match this list and are in the market to buy, buying intent data efficiently puts your brand in front of these leads. Apart from this, buyer intent also helps segment your target list based on the intensity of the purchase intent. Targeting accounts with high intent through email marketing, content marketing, advertising and direct mail becomes easier.
Enhances Outbound Sales
The higher the quality of leads, the easier it becomes for your sales team to convert them. Buyer intent data lets your sales team know the exact position of a lead in the buying cycle. Instead of wasting time emailing unqualified leads, your team can approach these prospects which match your ICP in marketing and start a meaningful conversation. Intent data also increases the ROI of your B2B content syndication efforts.
Superior Lead Scoring
Your marketing team can predict prospects’ purchase intent based on what they are researching. They can do lead scoring with precision and supplement your sales team’s efforts. They don’t have to rely on traditional lead scoring methods where they add points to a lead’s score when certain actions are performed. Intent data uncovers possible paths that your leads can take even when they are not on your website.
Personalized and Targeted ABM campaigns
Personalization is key for any B2B account-based marketing campaign to bring the results you expect. The most effective method to enhance your ABM strategy is to map out your buyer journey and sprinkle it with relevant content to influence leads. You can also use intent data to strategically personalize and rank your ABM demand generation campaigns, so that every touch point of your ABM campaign meets your prospects' expectations.
Relevant Content
Creating content that can catch the attention of your prospects while offering solutions and value is crucial to get the conversions you expect. Intent data will help you see the correlation between topics and the context of those topics with the solutions your prospects are looking for. If you are aware of the questions that your prospects have before they go to market, you can answer them through your content. Buying intent data offers you just that. Let intent data drive your content strategy to give your prospects just what they want.
Intent Marketing
Intent-based marketing is when you know just where to spend your time and budget. In intent marketing, the focus lies on analyzing the intent of your prospects and strategizing how to meet them. Spending less time trying to target and rank keywords with low or irrelevant intent can help you increase your ROI, make an ironclad content strategy and a streamlined lead generation process that results in conversion and revenue.
Assessing Buyer Intent
Understanding and calculating buyer intent is not an easy task. It depends on these three factors:
Recency
Buyer intent that reports how recently a prospect engaged with your content is valuable so that your sales team can approach leads who have visited your website.
Frequency
Frequency indicates the intensity of your prospects’ intent to buy a product or service to solve their problems. If they visit key pages that have information on pricing, case studies, customer stories, etc., your sales team can reach out to them immediately.
Engagement
When your sales and marketing teams score leads, one of the most important parameters on their scale is engagement. If a prospect is engaging with the content on your website, through a chatbot, or as a result of an email campaign, you know it’s a great time to reach out to them.
Apart from these factors, buyer intent data tools also use variables like firmographics, technographics, account size, and job titles for accurate buyer intent mapping so that you can reach out to your marketing ICP with a personalized message in your intent-based marketing strategy.
Metadata Sees 42% Dip in CPL with G2 Buyer Intent
Metadata, a demand generation platform that runs paid campaign experiments and self-optimizes them to generate revenue, invested in G2 buyer intent. Their cost per lead (CPL) dipped 42%, their click-to-open rate for ads increased 114%, and their average deal size for ads spiked by 18%.
Final Thoughts
Buyer intent data changes the way you interact with your prospects and leads. Harness buyer intent data tools to have an edge over your competitors and get more conversions.
FAQ
What are the essential elements of an intent data strategy?
Align your intent data strategy with your ABM strategy, get buy-in from the C-suite, begin with a small pilot, analyze performance metrics, and integrate your systems with intent data.
How are B2B marketers leveraging B2B buyer intent data to boost revenue?
B2B marketers use intent data to create effective content, identify buyer groups, improve lead qualification, boost team productivity, and increase customer retention to boost revenue.
How does intent data enhance your lead scoring process?
Predictive purchasing insights help you find prospects in the market so you can make a list of accounts that are close to making a purchase decision. This makes your lead scoring process easier and better.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | June 20, 2023
Inconsistent language in B2B marketing is becoming a growing hurdle for collaboration.
I attended a workshop recently that brought together members of different marketing functions to train them on ABM. The task was simple enough: Act as the agency and put together an ABM brief. We didn’t have any trouble understanding the assignment. We just couldn’t seem to speak the same language.
We were discussing the same topics and working toward the same goal. But the variations in how each of us used established B2B marketing terms made collaboration harder. And so, it got me thinking. How often have you sat in a meeting and understood what someone has said but not what they’ve meant? Sure, you understand that impressions measure how many times someone’s seen your ad. But why does it matter? How does it contribute to revenue growth and the overall performance of the campaign? What does it mean to me?
I was reminded of when we were learning a foreign language in school. You could try directly translating a sentence to English, but chances are it wouldn’t make much sense. A translation would only add up when you understood its grammatical and syntactical context. So, if we (no matter how humorously) consider B2B marketing a language of its own, why aren’t we as rigorous in policing our use of terminology?
Growing pains
In the past, B2B marketing departments were seen as single-focus, cost center arms of a business. Since then, the Marketing remit has grown considerably. Tools and technology allow us to work on everything from insights and analytics to bespoke, hyper-personalized 1:1 ABM programs. Sales and Marketing alignment is helping prove our contribution to the bottom line. And we’re finally becoming a revenue center.
But I think there’s a catch. The same increased responsibilities that allow us to connect our marketing activity to revenue have made the language we use more inconsistent. Teams are more specialized than ever. And the size of the marketing department has expanded massively. There are even employees in the same functions who’ve never said a word to each other.
This creates bubbles of intradepartmental dialects. Linguistic nuances that create collaborative hurdles between teams, departments, and even organizations. Time that should be spent planning, producing, and activating is lost to soul-destroying email chains and inane meetings clarifying points of uncertainty. Things I’m sure we’d all be happier without.
The effects on business
Then there are the impacts inconsistent language has on your business. Brief your teams unclearly and budget/resource that could be used more productively is squandered on multiple revisions. Chains of stakeholder questions that could have been easily avoided with greater context can result in strained working relationships. Levels of employee stress can increase out of fear of asking a question and sounding stupid. And perhaps the scariest of all – misunderstandings of key deliverables that find their way through to your final outputs.
Standardizing our use of language can help alleviate these challenges. Key performance metrics will always differ between functions. KPIs like leads generated and engagement will be valuable to your Marketing or social teams, but not Sales whose sole focus is accelerating pipeline. But it’s context that helps tie everything together.
It saves you questioning why everyone’s talking about split testing and not A/B testing (before realizing they’re the same thing an hour into the discussion). It clarifies why certain conversations are happening, sets clear expectations of what needs to be done and by whom, and breaks down siloes between departments. It stops important points of discussion from being lost in translation.
Speaking the same language
Driving revenue through a more unified marketing and sales function is becoming core to what we do. But we need to take a step back and evaluate our use of terminology. Before considering Sales and Marketing alignment, our marketing teams have to speak the same language.
Collaboration is a product of good communication. But siloes across your marketing department can stand in the way of productivity. Making a concerted effort to convey the scope and role of specific marketing functions, core metrics necessary for success, and ways of working for each team helps promote a more collaborative work culture.
It’s our responsibility to ensure we’re all on the same page before starting group projects or aligning with other branches of business. Recognizing the inconsistencies in our language and addressing them in advance helps reduce wasted time and resource. It sets us up for success by reducing the number of roadblocks in the way of our work and path to revenue growth.
Marketing departments in B2B industries will likely continue to grow. And for organizations like B2B tech enterprises, the challenges associated with inconsistent language are only exacerbated by teams spread by geo, mother tongue, and culture. Creating clear and consistent rules for the language we use as B2B marketers can help overcome these barriers, allowing us to focus on creating exceptional marketing.
Some ways forward
So, how do we create guidelines for more consistent marketing language? I won’t say I have all the answers. But I do think there needs to be a shift in employee education and training with a view to standardizing nomenclature. Glossaries that include company-specific frameworks can be a great way to provide context and meaning to your business’ use of terminology.
Pre-recorded video resources with your subject matter experts can be paired with an intranet site to offer a more interactive, always-on education and training solution. Or, better still, regular workshops across departments to promote cross-functional understanding of why terms are used at certain times.
I’d also recommend reviewing your corporate team structures to see which stakeholders have a seat at the table. Changes in how your teams communicate can only come from the top down. And a reflection on how your use of language affects those you work with, through researching communication processes/best practices or otherwise, can be a step toward fostering a more collaborative work culture.
Establishing clear definitions for common language allows us to work closer together. It breaks down barriers to collaboration and lets us focus on common business goals. If Marketing really wants to become a revenue center, we need to start speaking the same language.
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Programmatic ABM
Article | June 9, 2022
If you are a seasoned marketer, you must be aware of how hard it is to find highly qualified leads. Wouldn’t it be convenient to have an intent data strategy that helps you identify companies that are looking for a product or service you offer by tracking their internet activity? If you are an IT service provider, some businesses must be looking to rope in a company like yours to help with their IT needs. If you find these businesses in time, you could clinch a deal with them.
Your sales and marketing teams will be able to work efficiently, your company will get more conversions, and your revenue will grow. This is what buyer intent data tools do.
What is Buyer Intent Data?
In the B2B domain, knowing what your target accounts want and need plays a big part in creating and executing ABM marketing. B2B buyer intent data indicates companies that are actively a part of your buying cycle. It allows marketers to understand what buyers are interested in, what kind of solutions they are looking for, what content appeals to them, and which topics they are stuck on. This data can be acquired from buyer intent data tools that measure buyer intent signals. They are generally a part of account-based marketing software.
Some of the buyer intent signals measured by buyer intent data tools are:
Subscription behavior
Clicks on social media ads
Website visits
Length of time spent on the website
People from the same company visiting your website
What the numbers say:
According to a SiriusDecisions study, a B2B prospect is already 67 percent into the purchasing journey.
73 percent of B2B marketers use buyer intent data in their email marketing.
62 percent of B2B marketers agree that B2B intent data improves their nurturing and personalization workflows.
It is no wonder that buyer intent data tools have created a buzz in the world of B2B marketing. Platforms that provide account-based marketing services have solutions that offer intent data for lead generation and intent-based marketing.
Types of Buyer Intent Data
There are two broad types of buyer intent data: internal buyer intent data and external buyer intent data. These can be used in any intent data strategy.
Internal Buyer Intent Data
This type of data is called first-party data, and it is gathered from your website, automation systems, or from within the account-based marketing software that you use. It is further classified into data you submit manually and data that your CRM perceptively creates. Some examples of this data are: website visits, time on page, lead information submitted, job title, downloads of the bottom of the funnel content like case studies, and viewing bottom-of-the-funnel pages like product comparison pages.
External Buyer Intent Data
B2B processes and sales cycles are often complex. Tracking customers on your website may not be enough. You need to widen your net and go above and beyond your website tracking software. You need to take a look at the off-site behavior of your customers by using buyer intent data tools. This will help you understand what prospective buyers are searching for on the web and not just on your website. Could it be that they are checking some review sites, or your competitor’s website, or possibly finding answers to their queries somewhere else but not on your website?
Understanding this B2B intent data will help you expand your sales funnel accordingly. You cannot control buyer behavior, but you can definitely decide strategically how you will respond to the buyer intent data.
Leveraging Buyer Intent Data in ABM Marketing
An effective account-based marketing strategy is a data-driven marketing strategy that targets key accounts with buyer intent. This laser-focused approach to targeting makes it more successful as compared to other marketing strategies.
Here is how buyer intent data can help you enhance your account-based marketing strategy:
Enhances Demand Generation
Buyer intent data enriches the demand generation process by assisting marketing teams in identifying and planning campaigns for prospective accounts. Email marketing and personalized ads can speed up outreach and conversion.
Optimizes Content Strategies
It improves content marketing strategies through insights into prospect behavior. It becomes easier to tailor a content strategy to target a prospect once you know what your prospect thinks about a solution or product you offer.
Improves Lead Generation
Your prospect’s online behavioral data can drive your lead generation strategy. You can target specific accounts based on their intent. Your cost-per-head (CPL) will go down significantly once you generate more interest in your sales pipeline.
Strengthens ABM Partnerships
ABM implementation also involves channel marketing solutions that are complex. Intent data can make the process manageable and bring clarity to the intentions and objectives of the marketing strategy. You can easily prioritize your ABM partners’ leads for higher revenue. It guarantees the success of your ABM group channel program.
Reduces the Churn Rate
You can reduce the churn rate by monitoring the research activity of your target accounts. You can easily identify the likelihood of churn. To tackle this problem, you can create personalized offerings for prospects who are checking out your competitor’s offerings.
Helps You Tweak Your Solutions
With the help of buyer intent data, you can understand your prospects’ pain points better. Tweak your solutions, design products or services based on the trends you see or the patterns you notice in your target audience’s behavior.
13 Best Buyer Intent Data Tools for B2B Marketers
Here are thirteen game-changing buyer intent tools for B2B marketers that can help you with your intent-based marketing plan:
1. Terminus
Terminus was named a ‘Leader’ in the 2020 New Wave of ABM platforms and has more than 1,000 customers trusting its account-based marketing strategies. Its account-based marketing tools help marketers analyze how their marketing strategies fare in terms of sales. Its deep B2B account database has over 70 million businesses. Its tools can sync easily with CRM and MAP data and deliver immediately marketable segments.
2. Bombora
Bombora provides risk-free intent data that is not only comprehensive, but also privacy-compliant. It can be integrated with multiple platforms across sales, martech, and B2B advertising. Its data comes from fully consented B2B publishers. The Bombora Data Co-op captures the buying signals of nearly 3.3 million unique domains through 20.1 billion interactions a month, across more than 4000 sites.
3. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo has an impressive and comprehensive business database that can help you run B2B intent-based marketing campaigns. Its solutions bring together your sales and marketing teams. Its buyer intent data tools have features like lead scoring, sales prospecting, territory planning, and targeted outreach.
4. Demandbase
Demandbase’s platform, Demandbase One, is a great go-to-market solution. Its buyer intent data tools use data built around data privacy and security best practices. It has cloud solutions for advertising, account-based experience, sales intelligence, and data. With this single platform, you can orchestrate and automate your buyer journeys easily.
5. Slintel
Slintel, a 6sense company, analyzes buying behavior, patterns, sales intelligence, and digital footprints of your key accounts. It has a database of more than 15 million organizations. It helps marketers understand buyer behavior and pain points using buyer journeys and keyword insights. It evaluates over 100 billion data points to identify 3% of prospects with high buyer intent.
6. Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder features a variety of filters, both basic and customizable, that allow users to segment companies based on company demographics, location, behavior, location, and more. In addition, it integrates tools like Zapier, CRMs, and other email marketing tools which help provide insights on accounts. It has a responsive support team and is easy to use.
7. KickFire
KickFire provides first-party intent data by identifying anonymous website visitors through visitors’ IP addresses. This crucial data can be used by sales and marketing teams to create personalized content and increase sales outreach. There are different tool versions like LIVE Leads and KickFire for Google.
8. DemandJump
DemandJump provides insights into the customer journey and helps analyze your competitors. You can get information on what your prospects are doing, like which websites they are visiting and what things they are searching for. You can also find out what your competition ranks for, what kind of content they publish, and what kind of ads they use to attract traffic.
9. TechTarget Priority Engine
Priority Engine gives real-time access to leads that are ranked based on their engagement level and their purchase intent. You can use this information to enhance your ABM strategy, sales outreach, and lead generation. This tool also shows the topics which interest prospects, the kind of technology the prospects use and also provides contact information for leads whenever it is available.
10. Lead Forensics
With the help of Lead Forensics, you can engage with your prospects and customers swiftly. By using the valuable data that this tool provides, you can start useful conversations with the visitors to your website. You can also identify visitors, location, demographic information, and how much time they spend on your website.
11. Pure B2B
Pure B2B is a web-based demand generation tool designed to supplement businesses with their B2B content syndication. It helps in displaying ads, developing outbound leads with the help of predictive analytics and multi-source intent data. If you want to generate high-quality leads, you should consider using this tool.
12. Triblio
Tribilo allows you to combine account-based ads, web personalization, and sales activation through a single platform. You can easily engage with your customers, grow their awareness, and get in touch with your target accounts.
13. HappierLeads
Easily reach out to companies that show buyer intent but are not converting into customers with the help of HappierLeads. This tool accurately tracks website visitors and allows you to identify anonymous website visitors, connect with decision markets, and segment traffic.
By using account-based marketing services that offer the best buyer intent data tools, you can enhance your account-based marketing strategy. These intent data providers will highlight you in front of the buyers when they are in their decision-making process. Not only will it give you an upper hand in account-based marketing, but it will also help you proactively intercept prospects without having to wait for them to land on your website.
How Daniel Englesbretson, Founder of Khronos, leveraged Terminus to run successful ABM campaigns for clients
“What I have found is that, especially leveraging technology like Terminus, the data you get from the start speeds you up substantially, and gives you a lot more perspective that you couldn’t have had or wouldn’t have had before.” – Daniel Englesbretson.
ABM has become a mindset for Daniel. Read his full interview with Media 7 where he talks about the impact of AI on the ABM landscape.
Terminus’ account-based marketing software has shown tremendous results because it has one of the best buyer intent data tools in the market. Companies saw a 30 percent increase in opportunity size for the enterprise segment and a 2X increase in the probability of an account moving to opportunity.
Summing It Up
B2B buyer intent data tools can be a great addition to your arsenal of account-based marketing solutions. They can help you with swifter lead generation, boost your sales and save costs on pursuing qualified leads. Roping in a good-intent data provider will enhance your account-based marketing strategy.
FAQ
What information does buyer intent data reveal when a qualified lead comes to your website?
Buyer intent data reveals qualified leads’ areas of interest, referral sites, and pages visited. This data can be used to personalize outreach and contact prospects.
How can you leverage buyer intent data to achieve higher close rates?
You can use intent data for lead generation. You can appeal to a lead throughout the awareness, consideration, and decision-making phases. Buyer intent data positions you in front of the prospects early on in the buyer’s journey, and that is how you get higher close rates.
What are some examples of internal buyer intent data?
Website visits, lead information submitted, time on page, job title, downloads of bottom-of-the-content, and viewing bottom-of-the-funnel pages are some examples of internal buyer intent data.
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Account Based Analytics
Article | December 18, 2021
Many marketers define ABM as good B2B marketing. Targeting the right accounts at the right time with an appropriate message is the golden aim of account-based marketing (ABM). ABM ensures not only reach but also accuracy.
In an interview with Media 7, Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email, talked about the importance of ABM technology and the challenges in marketing after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
"B2B companies should adopt ABM technology to level up their communications and react quickly."
ABM technology enables marketers to hit pipeline and revenue targets swiftly while working alongside sales teams.
Salesforce provides ABM automation to its clients using AI Einstein technology in their Customer Success Platform. But what does Salesforce’s ABM platform look like? How are they finding accounts that need a sophisticated AI-run ABM marketing platform?
How Salesforce Created Its ABM Program
Salesforce considered B2B buyer behavior (purchase intent and engagement) to deliver a solid marketing and sales experience for each of its strategic accounts. Accordingly, it took the following steps to kick-start its ABM program:
Defining ABM
Salesforce ABM marketing team handles campaigns that target 300 or fewer accounts.
An ABM program can have many approaches. It can be 1: Many, 1: Few, or 1:1. The smaller the radius of the process, the more hyper-focused the campaign, content, budget, and customer journeys are.
By simply aligning their approach strategy with defined ABM, Salesforce achieved larger deal sizes, higher sales win rates, higher ROI, and faster revenue growth compared to other marketing strategies. It suitably approached accounts that it thought were high value and showed buyer intent for their products and services.
Choosing a Suitable Account-based Platform
Salesforce was aware that it would have to engage a variety of vendors and platforms to run its ABM program smoothly. It had to go beyond building a foundation for its program. For that, it needed dedicated tools and resources. Without account-based partners that could provide them with these tools and resources,it would be difficult to implement their program. They chose RollWorks as their account-based partner, to set up their ABM program.
Putting Together a Dedicated Team to Ensure ABM Program’s Success
Creating a single team to support and execute the ABM program was crucial before launching the ABM campaigns Salesforce had planned. They had teams who knew what ABM was all about; they even ran campaigns in silos. So, Salesforce pooled its ABM resources and formed a single team to carry out ABM-related operations.
Identifying Strategic Target Accounts
With the support of technology, Salesforce validated the list of target accounts and filtered out accounts that weren’t such a good fit using their first-party data. They made sure they looked at all the possible data they had, including third-party, so there was no scope for error. As a result, they had a list of high-value accounts with an ideal customer profile (ICP).
Engaging the Target Accounts
After the target accounts were identified, Salesforce ran campaigns of highly customized content for each stage of the sales journey to entice prospects. Once the prospects entered the sales pipeline, hyper-personalized messages, ads, and emailers were sent to them using AI.
Using Data for Continued Engagement
Salesforce ABM campaigns used all available data to create new or repurpose existing content assets like customer stories, consultation forms, research reports, and blog posts to nurture the leads at every stage.
Cultivating Customer Relationships
Using a specially created ABM dashboard, Salesforce monitored its campaign results to understand which content its leads engaged with the most. Then, it removed the content that did not generate engagement to streamline engagement with previous unengaged leads. The secret was to create humane content that didn’t have buzzwords, consistently maintain brand voice and tone, and make special content that the leads could resonate with.
Educating and engaging the leads increased the deal sizes and customer lifetime value. Holistic reporting helped them evolve their ABM strategy continuously.
By creating a robust ABM program that took care of its targeting accounts’ evolving needs, pain points, and expectations, Salesforce saw a 24 percent faster revenue growth and an 87 percent higher ROI.
How Salesforce Got a 30 Percent Close Rate by Using ABM Technology
While promoting their Boston World Tour Series, Salesforce used ABM campaigns to get registrations. One out of their fourtarget accounts engaged with their content, and an average of five contacts per account engaged with them. In six weeks, they got in touch with 410 target accounts, of which 110 engaged with them. They achieved a 30 percent close rate for their campaign.
Creating an ABM Program like Salesforce
Salesforce has come a long way by using ABM technology to expand its offerings. It has AI-powered products, tools, and services that provide ABM automation to other companies. For example, their ABM Salesforce Marketing Cloud product has helped brands like Herman Miller achieve a 200% increase in their email revenue.
To create an effective ABM program like Salesforce, you can use their steps as a blueprint. These steps apply to all kinds of businesses, but if you still don’t know how and where to start, find the answers to the following questions to comprehend what you can do next:
Do you think ABM is right for your business?
Are there any customer accounts that require special attention?
Can your business fund expert consultation for ABM and eventually an ABM program?
Once you find the answers to the above questions, you can take your first step towards building an effective ABM program that can help you scale your business.
Conclusion
ABM technology is revolutionizing B2B marketing by harnessing AI and targeted approaches, personalization, and automation using high-quality intent data. Implementing an effective ABM strategy is crucial to driving ROIs and growth.
FAQ
How does ABM differ from a traditional lead generation marketing strategy?
ABM helps you target high-value accounts with hyper-personalized content, instead of presenting generic content to unclassified accounts.
What is an ABM platform?
An ABM platform is a technology that helps marketers run their ABM programs at scale.
Why is ABM important in your marketing efforts?
With the help of ABM, marketers may be able to shorten their sales cycle, increase their marketing involvement in the sales funnel, and achieve a high ROI.
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