Account Based Data
Article | June 29, 2023
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.
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Core ABM
Article | June 20, 2023
ABM in Marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is diametrically opposite of traditional marketing. Instead of targeting all kinds of customers with generic content, it targets only the most lucrative accounts using personalized content. This concentrated targeting results in more conversions, longer business associations, expansion, and account retention.
In an interview with Media 7, Clive Armitage, CEO of Agent3, said,
“If you are not utilizing the power of data, technology and content then you are failing to be a modern marketer.”
ABM leverages firmographic data (basic info), technographic data (data about the kind of technology the lead uses), intent data (lead behavior), and engagement data (data gained through form filling, and event attendance) to target accounts and segment them based on priority.
A 2020 benchmark study by the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) found that 76% of companies reported a higher ROI with ABM than other marketing types.
How Does ABM Contribute to Revenue Growth?
ABM drives higher ROI and measurable sales using marketing campaigns created by both sales and marketing teams.
A successful ABM strategy has components like these:
Targeting the right accounts and managing them
Cross-channel engagement
Measuring and dynamically optimizing the ABM programs using specialized dashboards to map targets, programs, and revenue metrics created by an account-based marketing software
ABM helps scale business revenue in the following ways:
Shows a Clear ROI
Businesses prefer precise results from their marketing strategies. ABM prioritizes ROI. It gives the highest ROI compared to any other B2B marketing strategy because it targets the highest-value accounts that meet defined criteria through custom campaigns addressing their needs and pain points.
Helps with Resource Allocation
ABM focuses only on high-value accounts. Consequently, companies can allocate their resources better and save time and money.
Engages the Audience
Personalized content means targeted accounts see only the content they can relate to so there is increased engagement and interaction.
Can Be Tracked Every Step of the Way
ABM metrics can be tracked every step of the way, so there is a clear idea of what is working and what isn’t. Important metrics include ROI, engagement, awareness, target account reach, and influence.
Aligns Sales and Marketing Teams
ABM aligns sales and marketing teams by helping them find common ground for their goals and objectives.
5 Must-ask Questions about ABM Strategy Implementation
Account-based marketing questions about ABM technology and strategy arise when businesses transition from traditional lead generation techniques to ABM. The following five must-ask questions about account-based marketing can be the keys to transitioning to ABM:
How to Create an ABM Strategy That Works?
To create an ABM strategy that works, follow these steps:
Define your target accounts.
Identify the key decision-makers of your target accounts.
Personalize your content to cater to your target accounts.
Choose appropriate channels to approach your target accounts.
Formulate campaigns to engage the target accounts.
Measure the success of your campaign using correct metrics.
What Things Should You Consider Before Allocating a Budget for ABM?
It is pretty challenging to find the correct answer to this question. The cost of tools, channels, and individual items keeps varying. Money spent on-field events, content creation to cater to target accounts, ads, trade shows, research, and intent data collection factors into budgeting.
To make budgeting easier, consider bifurcating the expenses into categories like technology (CRM, marketing automation systems, and data management platforms), human resources (data analysts, social media associates, and content strategists), events (one-on-one meets, trade shows, and webinars), media campaigns and direct mail.
How to Decide on the Size of the Target Accounts?
The size of your target accounts depends on your business goals (acquisition, retention, expansion), team size, and initiatives on an organizational level. Tiering accounts into three categories using data, technology, and thorough research has worked out for several businesses.
Tier 1: These are the accounts that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) bill perfectly and have high strategic value.
Tier 2: These accounts have an excellent ICP but lower lifetime value.
Tier 3: These accounts meet only some criteria of ICP. Pursue these accounts but don’t go overboard to get their business.
What Metrics Should Be Used to Map ABM Success?
The biggest advantage of an ABM strategy is that its success can be measured. To measure this success, you need to focus on important KPIs like:
Engagement: This includes email metrics, social metrics, consumption rates, and offline activity metrics.
Awareness: This KPI measures how aware your target accounts are of your brand, how credible they think it is and how they respond to it.
Influence: Measure how your ABM campaign contributes to the lead conversion rate, and increase the frequency and volume of your lead interactions.
Target Account Reach: With the help of ABM tools, this KPI measures the percentage of the target account’s engaged decision-makers.
ROI: Mapping ROI is essential for assessing the success of an ABM strategy. ABM gives better ROI as compared to other marketing strategies.
Other metrics to consider are value, customer retention, and sales metrics.
Who Should Be on the ABM Team?
To begin with, your ABM team should have leadership that knows ABM and its implementation. Key decision-makers from the marketing, sales, and operations departments should be on this leadership team. It should work on setting goals, overseeing the implementation of the ABM strategy, and mapping its success.
How DocuSign Used ABM to Increase Their Customer Engagement and Sales Pipeline by 22%
“We have more awareness and educational content that’s reaching our non-engaged accounts. And we will dedicate a lower level of spend to that program so that we are prioritizing our spend on our more engaged accounts.”
- Perri Gardner, Director of ABM, DocuSign.
By using ABM to target high-value accounts and categorizing their spending based on the value of those accounts, DocuSign increased their customer engagement and sales pipeline by 22%.
Conclusion
Transitioning from a traditional marketing strategy to account-based marketing is vital to drive ROI, engagement, brand awareness, and influence. Correctly implementing an ABM strategy contributes to revenue growth through quicker lead conversions, proper allocation of resources, and a targeted approach.
FAQ
What is the first step in implementing an ABM strategy?
The first step of implementing the ABM strategy is to define the accounts you want to target.
Is ABM better than a traditional lead-based marketing strategy?
Yes. As of 2021, 70% of marketers are using ABM and are seeing a remarkable increase in their ROI.
What does an ABM strategy depend on?
An ABM strategy depends on high-quality intent data. Content personalization, account segmentation, and lead nurturing cannot be achieved without it.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | August 23, 2022
ROI matters in B2B business. Account-based marketing has reached a significant tipping point and has become an investment that could pay off for the years to come. It is because B2B marketers are achieving substantial results with the help of ABM, and those who haven't started using it yet are planning to implement it.
And why not? This type of marketing harnesses the best marketing tactics for creating highly relevant campaigns that positively impact a B2B businesses’ bottom line. Forrester describes ABM as "a strategy by which marketing and sales cooperatively work to pursue, establish, and grow in long-term and engage in revenue-generating relationships with specific accounts." As a result, its study says that 71 percent of companies that invest in ABM report that their return on investment is fairly or significantly higher than traditional marketing programs it used before.
Now that the importance of account-based marketing has come into the picture while detailing the reasons why ABM gives a better ROI. It is decisive to know why you should get interested in ABM.
Importance of Account-Based Marketing
ABM is vital to your marketing strategy because it helps you create a more targeted and effective campaign.
In other words, it has the potential to fuel growth for years into your B2B business future and develop stronger relationships with customers who matter most in support of your business objectives.
Understand that ABM is more than social media advertising that incorporates traditional marketing methods such as direct mail and email marketing.
Similarly, marketing automation is yet another crucial part of ABM. When you automate your ABM, you get qualified leads and prospecting activities. This gives you a competitive advantage over other companies in your industry so that you can get an insight into what your competitors are up to. But, most importantly, you get a higher chance of getting the right prospect to what you offer.
In connection to this, here comes an important step to include—creating relevant content. It is because when it comes to ABM, relevance is all that matters. Your offers need to be tailored for qualified prospects, and not all noise will cut through the clutter anymore.
A recent Forrester Consulting study by LiveRamp surveyed 312 B2B marketers across six industries found that nearly all marketers said their businesses are committed to using ABM as a revenue-driving strategy in the present time. Similarly, most marketers also reported a high level of confidence by using a wide range of ABM capabilities.
Let’s deep dive into five reasons why ABM offers a better return on investment than more traditional methods.
Efficient Operations for Sales and Marketing
ABM users highlight its role in bringing sales and marketing closer to collaborate on developing and executing sales and marketing strategies. As per Bizible’s research, marketers are now 40 percent more likely to align their strategy with sales because of ABM's strategy.
By putting the teams together, sales and marketing can coordinate their outreach and ensure client engagement is conducted high-value and meaningful.
Meanwhile, marketers benefit from a streamlined approach that lets them discard a far-and-wide marketing strategy favoring carefully chosen prospects. With having a focus on selected targets rather than scattershot marketing campaigns, marketers can now focus on harmonizing and automating their digital marketing efforts, which makes them ready to work on next-generation demand-gen platforms with the help of AI and machine learning. In this way, they can orchestrate their campaigns and exponentially grow the ROI of your business. This ensures the right account prospects and results in the most significant ROI potential.
This automated marketing approach reduces the marketing team workload and saves staff precious time while preserving huge marketing dollars. Thus, more efficient spending and a higher threshold for returns will bring a significant ROI to your business.
Master in Multichannel
Amid the rush to digital marketing, which is gaining prominence in the current time, the most effective ABM strategy and programs create a balance of online and offline approaches, fully integrated across sales and marketing. In addition, account-based marketing automation saves marketers from making unnecessary costs, so they spend less on marketing while still getting results.
Forrester's survey says that the key strengths of dedicated measurement solutions by ABM are the improved ability to track engagement and optimize across online and offline channels. This is so marketers can manage the frequency of engagement as well as precisely determine attribution.
A Personalized Approach
Personalization makes ABM so appealing to clients. ABM has a way of turning attention to detail, so it immediately gets a client’s interest. To be true, the marketing and sales teams have to be competent in conducting in-depth research of potential leads. When it’s done accurately, they will target clients based on their likelihood of converting, then develop personalized offers to get good results. For this, you have to keep a separate ROI of account-based marketing at the same level.
When you have such a narrow focus, you get a chance to communicate with the specific prospect and craft a better offer for them. By providing a personalized approach, you have a high chance to see increased ROI of your business.
Manage, Monitor Data Governance and Privacy
Maintaining the privacy of prospect data is crucial for B2B organizations. In today’s time, where the lines between B2B and B2C marketing are increasingly blurred, applying strict governance policies over the use of prospect data is a must. In addition, people expect brands to respect privacy preferences and actively work to build trust.
Every dollar counts in a crisis. But almost one-third of marketing professionals are still planning to increase their investments towards ABM in the next calendar year. Moreover, decision-makers expect those investments in digital to yield substantial business benefits; the pressure to deliver is higher than ever. So, to have an actual ROI of account-based marketing is equally crucial to enjoying a significant revenue of your business.
ABM Encourages to Measure Performance
By integrating ABM strategy and account-based marketing automation, marketers can identify and reinforce the most effective strategies to measure the performance of marketing efforts that exclusively depends on ROI generation. It’s easy to measure acumens when you have highly focused accounts and well-sorted campaigns. You need to perceive what content approach gains traction and what attempts fail to succeed.
In a nutshell, when the businesses are identified, an account-based approach will offer precisely what a business needs; this will help your business gain maximum ROI.
So, plan now for an account-centric marketing future. Your team can accelerate deliver strong business ROI out of account-based marketing automation programs by considering a cross-channel B2B business solution that can help fill capability gaps and evidently prove the worth of your ABM marketing efforts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How effective is ABM for generating ROI?
When it comes to increasing the ROI of business, ABM helps drastically. It aligns sales and marketing teams to work together, which generates a positive ROI and increases revenue. In this, 60% of companies that use ABM experienced a revenue increase of at least 10% within a year, while one out of five companies experienced a 30% and more rise in revenue.
What is a good ROI percentage for ABM?
A good ROI percentage for ABM stands at 5:1, which is considered the middle of the curve. A ratio over 5:1 is considered robust for most businesses, whereas a 10:1 ratio is exceptional.
What are the top 3 reasons to choose ABM marketing?
The top three reasons are:
To reach the right prospect that matters according to business
To gain a competitive advantage
ABM shortens long sales cycles
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Account Based Execution
Article | July 13, 2022
Some companies are wasting a significant portion of their B2B advertising dollars because they lack the audience insights of larger, more seasoned B2B firms. Some are still using outdated strategies while understanding the nuances of digital marketing.
Check out these five steps to optimize your B2B ad campaigns:
Survey the Audience to Determine Brand Preferences
Regularly survey your audience to see how open they are about confessing their brand preferences and ad campaign responses. In one of Forrester’s surveys, 91% of B2B buyers said they became aware of a previously unknown company due to advertising.
Make Behavior Insights the Prime Metric
Most B2B buyers may respond to the ads without clicking on them, so their behavior insights are crucial to know their response to the campaign. According to a Forrester report, 92% of buyers searched for the company featured in an ad, and 86% visited the advertised website without clicking on the ad.
Base Ad Creative & Copy on Ad Preferences
B2B buyers prefer ads relevant to their needs and interests. Irrelevant ads without any personalization can waste your ad budget. “Avoid promoting too much gated content and opt for higher-value advertising creative to reduce waste if form-fill efficacy is too low,”says John Arnold, Forrester Principal Analyst.
Identify Preferred Media and Channels for Effective Outreach
Marketers like you should go beyond using Google Search and LinkedIn for your outreach. Map your omnichannel approach to ensure maximum exposure across channels to get maximum impressions. Doing this can help you distribute your costs over multiple modalities.
Access Media Time Spent to Allocate Ad Budget
Track media time spent on the B2B buyer level and target buyers who spend media time on B2B products or services. Instead of spending money on account-based marketing vendors and having them figure out everything for you, be thoughtful about where you want to place your ads.
Conclusion: Don’t Wait for Buying Cycles to Develop for Your Ads to Work
B2B buyers need to develop a stronger preference for your company or solution through your ads to enter your sales funnel. So, invest in ads and get them placed where they can get you the response and conversions you expect.
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