Account Based Data
Article | June 29, 2023
The shift in buyer behavior has increased the opportunities for digital ABM. Organizations implementing ABM are seeing significant success. But what does the situation in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) market look like? ABM is still not well understood in EMEA. Two out of every three ABM programs are not showing optimal performance (Heinz ABM Research). However, things might not be as bleak as they seem.
Talking about the 2021 State of ABM in Europe report by Terminus, Albany Vincent, Senior Research Manager at Vanson Bourse said, “While we were not shocked to see the US to be moderately ahead of Europe in their ABM maturity, we were surprised to see how much more eager European companies were to adopt these practices and their American counterparts. It appears to be a very exciting time to be a marketer- especially in Europe."
Europe has stringent data laws, so the account-based approach could be the only way for sustainable growth for organizations based in EMEA.
Do You Know Enough About ABM Execution?
Taking into account the ever-evolving account-based approach, here are five things you should know about ABM and how to implement it for optimal performance:
A Curated Account List Is the Secret Ingredient
Your target account list should be the result of a conversation between your sales and marketing teams using as much high-quality data as possible. Start off by implementing the program on a small number of accounts and analyze your ROI. Then, periodically revaluate your team performance, tools, skills, and messaging to clear the path for ABM success.
Your Sales and Marketing Teams Should Share Their Pizzas
Sales and marketing synchronization is the most basic requirement of ABM. The marketing team can enable sales with target accounts’ interests and behavior data. The sales team, on the other hand, can give the marketing team insights into key members of the target account buying group. According to research by ZoomInfo, when the sales and marketing teams are aligned, organizations have a 36% higher customer retention rate and a 67% improved chance of converting leads.
Depending Only on MQLs Will Not Get You Far
The TechTarget 2021 Media Consumption Survey highlighted that most buying teams have an average of five people, but can also be more than ten. Understanding the intent of the individuals from the buyer group and offering them value through every sales and marketing interaction is crucial to the success of your ABM strategy. Depending on only MQLs can limit the potential of your ABM.
Only Strategic Content Brings in the Results You Want
Your target accounts are flooded with content every day. To stand out in the crowd and appeal to the individuals in the buying group, you need to align your content with their customer personas. The content should address their pain points and needs. It should be crafted based on an account’s maturity, challenges, and technical abilities.
ABM Isn’t Your Regular Marketing Strategy
ABM is a strategic approach where the marketing and sales teams share their insights through the account interactions of everyone in an account. Then they collectively reach out to the whole buying team rather than targeting just a few individuals. ABM takes a detailed look at the target account and aligns your business with your prospects’ needs and pain points, and this easily surpasses a regular marketing strategy.
Circling Back
ABM in EMEA is still evolving. Therefore, organizations need to make special efforts to implement ABM effectively, keeping the target accounts in focus and understanding the attributes of ABM in detail to get the most out of it.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | June 20, 2023
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 | October 7, 2022
These days the challenges that the marketing and the sales team face are tremendous. The pressure to meet targets, deadlines, achieve revenue, and at the same time keep the clients satisfied is not an easy task. And to add to the woes, there is massive competition in the industry.
But there is one way to overcome all the obstacles and achieve targets while keeping clients happy and satisfied. This strategy is ABM- Account-Based Marketing. ABM campaigns have been a trendsetter in the B2B marketing field for a long time. As it ensures successful marketing, businesses are turning towards this thriving approach.
What Exactly Is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing is identifying the target, high-value customers and selling your product/service to them. This ABM approach allows you to concentrate on exclusive clients and guarantees the best ROI.
What Is B2B Account-Based Marketing?
B2B account-based marketing is targeting an organization with specific and personalized marketing campaigns. When you target the decision-makers of an organization, you need to tread with caution. When you design a marketing strategy for them, personalize it, and deliver everything to increase their brand value.
Thus, ABM is a marketing strategy wherein the sales and the marketing team have to put their heads together to deliver an impeccable buying experience for the best and valuable clients.
Tactics to Implement a Successful Account-Based Marketing
According to the Pardot site survey, 89% of businesses reported higher ROI in ABM than traditional marketing methods.
If you develop an account-based marketing plan, here are some tips to follow:
Collaborate working of the marketing and sales team to identify high-value clients and gather maximum data about them.
Use social media to gather data and create a personalized approach for the clients.
Try to sync in with the brand of the target company to develop relatable content and graphics.
Recognize the expertise, pain points, and challenges of the target account and frame communication.
Send personalized emails addressing the challenges your target account faces.
Host face to face or virtual events
5 Trend-setting Examples of Account-Based Marketing
ABM is a marketing strategy that has shown guaranteed success in the B2B industry. You have to sculpt unique ideas and have a personalized approach towards your targeted clients. The clients should feel that you have made efforts to know them, understand them, and address the challenges that they face.
Some companies have achieved an altogether different benchmark in ABM strategy. As a result, these are prominent examples of B2B account-based marketing.
Let us go through their account-based marketing case study and learn their ways of execution.
Snowflake- Excellent Use of Content Creation
“We needed to make sure that when you see an ABM campaign, it’s reflective of not only sales input but also product marketing, partner marketing, field marketing, and our SDRs. We needed a way to co-create one cohesive message for our key accounts.” — Hillary Carpio, Director of ABM, Snowflake.
Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehousing company, utilized its in-house services in the best way to create a library of high-quality content. This content is used to create personalized experiences for high-valued and targeted accounts. Then, this personalized content creates account-based marketing campaigns customized to reach the target customers.
Gumgum- Using Technology the Right Way.
GumGum collaborated and created an effective marketing product for the Clorox brand. They showcased this product at the Clorox annual iConnect Conference.
The product they created was turning a temporary tattoo into a fascinating 3D animation while incorporating logos of the concerned brands. It was a hit among the Clorox brand, and almost 200 attendees downloaded the GumGum app.
Intridea- Making the Right Confrontational Approach
Intridea did take a risk by implementing the direct approach of ABM advertising. They rented a billboard right across the advertising giant 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.
And they succeeded in fixing a meeting with Ogilvy’s CEO.
Payscale- Utilizing Data to Gain Profits
Payscale helps employers manage compensations in the right way. They also aid employees know their correct market value.
Payscale collaborated with their sales and marketing team to gather the correct information about ABM target accounts. Once they had ample information about the company’s decision-makers, they targeted the client with their best ad campaigns.
As a result, their ROI was six times more compared to any other marketing strategy!
O2- Gathered Data to Create Personalized Reports.
O2 is a leading ICT service provider.
The organization targeted many high-value clients and created personalized reports for them. Their modus operandi was to curate personalized reports on how the organization will benefit by utilizing O2 for their ICT services. The dedicated teams also emphasized on face to face meetings for customized strategies.
As a result, O2 had a successful ABM strategy as they achieved 313% of their target pipeline.
The Bottom Line
Account-based marketing strategies are incorporated in unique ways. As a result, there are many ideas where you can implement account-based marketing to stand out and gain maximum ROI. All you have to do is gather data and make the correct use of it.
So gear up and come up with uncommon ideas and, you never know your company could make it to the list of trendsetting examples of B2B account-based marketing!
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best strategies for successful account-based marketing?
Enlist your high-value clients and gather maximum data about them(Social media can be of great help.)
Address their pain points and portray how well you know the organization
Collaborate with the marketing and sales team in the best way to provide appropriate solutions
Deliver 100% relevance in communication
What are the advantages of incorporating ABM?
Faster sales process
Guaranteed maximum ROI
Cost Efficiency
Shorter sales cycle
Deliver excellent value to high-value customers
When should you implement ABM?
ABM should be used in the B2B industry to sell to clients with high-value accounts. ABM should be implemented when an organization notices that certain exclusive clients can be easily converted with personalized strategies.
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Article | April 12, 2020
There is a New Marketing Landscape and it is critical for companies to rethink their marketing and sales strategy. This is a world of financial uncertainty for your prospects and customers, resulting in decreased budgets, longer sales cycles, and higher churn. It’s also a world of competing priorities. Key influencers and decision makers are drowning in priority issues, making it challenging to earn their attention. Given these new realities, Account Based Marketing/Sales/Customer Success (ABX) is top of mind for marketing and sales leaders given its proven efficiency and effectiveness in engaging and converting priority accounts.
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