Marketing and sales departments are investing big time in technology to advance account-based marketing (ABM) as the strategy’s popularity soars.
Our research indicates almost three out of four B2B organizations are increasing budgets for ABM initiatives,” Bob Peterson, Research Director in the Account Based Marketing category for SiriusDecisions, said in a recent Q&A with my company, ZoomInfo. “Keep in mind, in some cases organizations plan to raise their spend by more than 30 percent compared to last year.”
The trend is starting to pay off. Peterson reports SiriusDecisions clients have used ABM to increase a sales pipeline by 200 percent and average deal size by 20 percent. And a ZoomInfo ABM campaign grew our pipeline for a product by 114 percent and the related customer base by 30 percent in only 90 days.
Despite all the plusses, however, the hype still exceeds reality.
As Forrester Research put it in a report titled Retro Yet Revolutionary: Demystifying Account-Based Marketing, “Unfortunately, the buildup exceeds the buildout today.”
Part of the problem: “ABM is a term that lacks specific meaning and is used inconsistently today,” according to 73 percent of B2B marketers surveyed for a Forrester report titled Vendor Landscape: Account-Based Marketing, Q4 2016.
ABM is elusive because it’s a strategy rather than a channel, and it can’t be packaged into a piece of software or a service. Solutions also vary, spanning data provision, sales enablement, content management, marketing automation, web personalization, predictive marketing analytics, and more.
Forrester, Vendor Landscape: Account-Based Marketing, Q4 2016
“Many B2B marketers mistake ABM as a distinct marketing technology category, which it isn’t,” states Forrester’s Vendor Landscape report. “It is, however, a powerful marketing methodology that demands its own set of goals and objectives. Without specifying and agreeing to specific outcomes, supporting technology is just a diversion.”
So what’s the best way to build a pragmatic, profitable pilot ABM program?
These three steps are key:
1. Secure full company buy-in and sales-marketing alignment.
You need the C-suite’s long-term commitment to an ABM model, plus functional groups’ support, and sales and marketing collaboration.
Seventy percent of companies with ABM strategies described their sales and marketing organizations as mostly or completely aligned, compared with 51 percent of those without ABM, according to a 2015 Heinz Marketing report on Account-Based Marketing Adoption.
2. Obtain highest-quality market intelligence, based on accurate, complete data, to anchor account selection.
ABM success rests on a precise choice of accounts and contacts to target. In turn, Forrester in its Retro Yet Revolutionary report advises to “make data insights and iteration the cornerstones of account selection.”
Correct, consistent, thorough information is available but not pervasive. A ZoomInfo-Ascend2 study found only 33 percent of marketers termed their data-driven marketing strategies “very successful,” and 64 percent of these “very successful” marketers listed “improving data quality” as their No. 1 challenge in personalizing the customer experience (which was their first priority).
Once you’ve created an ideal customer profile (ICP), you need to select a market intelligence provider that can identify a matching account universe, including prospects. Beyond defining your total addressable market (TAM), top vendors offer comprehensive profiles, encompassing email addresses; direct phone numbers; and prospecting insights about buyer personas within target accounts (such as academic and employment history to industry accolades to professional certifications to news coverage).
Use this data to identify all key decision-makers for each targeted account, including stakeholders, gatekeepers and influencers. Tap vendors for data appending and enrichment.
3. Start with fundamental technology investments.
Keep your technology stack simple at the outset to help marketing and sales to focus on delivering the right message and avoid sunk costs.
The basics include a CRM for tracking and reporting; marketing automation software and sales automation tools (for email and dialing) for personalized engagement and outreach; and a market intelligence solution (from a data provider) for identifying and connecting with buyer personas and target accounts. Retargeting advertising or predictive analytics may be added later.
“Many B2B marketers are already using a data provider to augment lead and account profiles or an ad retargeting solution to engage prospects with personalized experiences before they fill out a lead-capture form,” Forrester’s Vendor Landscape report states. “And most B2B marketers are certainly using a marketing automation platform. All of these solutions – and many others in your current martech stack – are adding new ABM-specific capabilities every day.”
This vendor responsiveness bodes well for marketing and sales professionals looking to leverage the hot ABM trend and for data scientists and IT experts who support them.
Contributed by: Hila Nir, Vice President of Marketing & Product at ZoomInfo, an Inc. 5000 company whose Growth Acceleration Platform combines a comprehensive and actionable market intelligence database with integrated tools to help B2B companies optimize sales and marketing effectiveness, jump-start growth and maximize profitability.
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