How To Get Started With Account-Based Selling

Buyer Intent Data

Article | June 20, 2023

Intent data is an essential piece of the account-based marketing puzzle. It’s the type of data that can give B2B companies a competitive edge as they look to identify engaged, active prospects at prioritized accounts that show a clear pattern of interest in a product, service, or solution. As importantly, intent data can pinpoint signals in a buyer’s journey that lets you know what their next step might be, helping you target them with personalized, contextual messaging. There are a couple of flavors of intent data, but in this case, third-party intent data is the focus. Third-party intent data originates from external sources and may include many potential online interactions that have occurred away from your website and your company’s interactions. Website visits at competitor sites, webinar attendance, downloads, product reviews, social media interactions, and online subscriptions to publications in your industry or sector are fair game for third-party intent data insights. Like an intricate spider web woven from numerous data points, third-party intent data offers a view of online behavior for potential prospects as they traverse their buying journey.

Programmatic ABM

Article | June 9, 2022

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.

Buyer Intent Data

Article | August 23, 2022

ABM is B2B marketing with a higher ROI. It involves going after fewer accounts with a more personalized approach. So, account selection is vital. No matter the budget, if you fumble the ball in the account selection process, your campaign is bound to fail. Guesswork is not an option. You need to stringently research your ideal accounts based on your ICP (ideal customer profile). In an interview with Media 7, Maliha Aqeel, Director of Global Communications at Fix Network World, talked about the common mistakes companies make while implementing brand strategy. Not budgeting your ABM strategy correctly may be one of them. "One of the most common mistakes companies make is implementing a brand strategy that isn’t aligned to the organization’s overall business goal." Businesses that want to transition into ABM are often confused and have several questions about ABM implementation. One of the most important questions they have is about budgeting. According to a 2016 report by SiriusDecisions, 33% of companies allocated at least 30% of their marketing budgets to ABM. In 2017 that number increased up to 52% — a 57% year over year increase. Their 2019 State of Account-Based Marketing Study showed that the average ABM budget is around $350,000 excluding head count costs. Going by these statistics, how much should you invest in your ABM strategy? It is common to finalize a strategy way in advance. Allocating budgets to a certain strategy and then deciding to execute ABM can be a pain. Before deciding on your ABM budget and streamlining your ABM funding strategy, consider the following factors: Factors to Consider for ABM Funding Know Your Target Accounts Business size, decision-makers, departments, positions, interests, demographics, get all the information you can on your target accounts. Make sure you are investing your money in the right target accounts. The bigger your target account, the more stakeholders, and departments there are to manage. This may considerably increase the cost and complexity of your campaign. Your Advertising Budget Zero in on the platforms you want to use to engage your target audience. Once you do this, you will get an idea of how much you need to spend to reach your audience on these platforms and get maximum engagement. Additional marketing techniques like seminars, webinars, conferences, and other events should also be considered in your ABM funding. Brand Awareness Gather information on how well your target accounts know your brand. If they already know your brand, then you are saving time and money on creating a new relationship from scratch. However, if your brand does not have a good reputation or reach, creating new leads requires more resources than creating new opportunities. Your Product’s Complexity If your product or service complexity is high, you need to work harder to explain its advantages and benefits to convince the stakeholders of your target accounts. This effort is directly proportional to the amount of money you need to spend. Your Customer’s Needs The customer’s need for your product or service defines how much you need to spend on advertising. If there is no urgency or if there are many similar solutions that they have used in the past, it becomes difficult to convince them to use your product or service. In short, if they don’t need your product, you need to spend a better part of your budget on impressing them. Your Competition The more competitors you have, the more aggressive your campaign needs to be. An aggressive campaign will need a bigger budget. It gets trickier if your competitors already have an established relationship with your target account. However, if you have the target account’s CLV (customer lifetime value) figured out, you can easily determine how much you need to spend on pursuing a particular account. Technology Integration To deliver hyper personalized account-based experiences, you need to find suitable technological platforms to launch your ABM strategy. Platforms like ABM Unified Workforce are an ideal start because of their unified approach to strategy implementation. Consider allocating a part of your budget to technology integrations so you remain up-to-speed with modern implementations like marketing automation. It will also help you optimize your campaign results. ABM Partners You need knowledge, human resources, and technology to launch and successfully run account-based marketing campaigns. Alternatively, you can also hire new staff or train the people you already have. Partnering with an ABM agency is also a great option. It not only saves you the time and effort of finding the right marketers, but it also delivers the results and metrics you expect. There are many service providers in the market who can help you kick-start your ABM campaign. Funding Your ABM Strategy Now that you know the factors that should be considered for your ABM funding, let us look at some tips to enhance your budgeting. Identify Target Account CLV In ABM, less is more, so identify target accounts based on their CLV. It may require three or more years for your ABM campaign to show results, so make sure you periodically assess your target account’s CLV before making big investments. Harness Technology Tie your technology budget with sales. Support your goals and streamline your processes by using martech. Collaborating with specialized agencies that have talent and technology can uplift your ABM campaign. Not only do agencies quickly launch your campaign, but they also save you the trouble of recruiting new staff. However, make sure you engage a trustworthy agency with the best technology offerings and expertise. Get Approval and Support from Stakeholders Get your stakeholders on your side by justifying your budget with a list of target accounts and their projected value. If you are planning to implement ABM, then you should already have a preliminary version of your ABM funding proposal ready. Measure Your Performance Use relationships, reputation, and revenue, the three crucial R’s to measure your performance. These should be your benchmarks and should be assessed periodically. Conclusion ABM funding takes effort and time but doing it diligently can bring an increase in ROI, brand awareness, revenue, and confidence in ABM. FAQ What is the first step in your ABM funding strategy? The first step in your ABM funding strategy is to know your target accounts through stringent research. What are the three important Rs for measuring ABM performance? The three important Rs for measuring ABM’s performance are relationship, reputation, and revenue.

Article | April 13, 2020

Intent is an indicator that an account is interested in a certain topic, based on the content consumption of people within an organization. I know that sounds a bit abstract, so let’s look at how it actually works. Let’s say that Gio is looking at some content on marketing attribution. Gio is a Marketing Operations Specialist at Whale Enterprises, and he’s considering buying some new software. Gio’s research is creating intent data that can be tracked by intent providers, who can then let marketing attribution providers know that Whale Enterprises is showing intent to buy a marketing attribution solution.