Over the past few years, Account Based Marketing (ABM) has emerged to be one of the key components of demand generation strategies across all marketing organizations and it has been delivering tremendous results especially for <\/span>growth marketing teams that are leading the charge for revenue marketing<\/span><\/a>. The importance of <\/span>ABM in 2020 continues to grow and it has become a more mainstream tactic for B2B marketing<\/span><\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n The underlying theme that separates ABM from traditional demand generation and has been responsible for its unprecedented success is the focus on the <\/span>\u201chyper-personalized\u201d demand generation strategy<\/span><\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Executing a successful ABM strategy<\/span><\/a> is easier said than done given the natural tendency across marketing to lean towards the \u201cspray and pray\u201d approach to drive the so-called leads and MQL volume. As all marketers would agree, ABM is all about focusing on a critical few rather than trivial many.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Entering into 2020, there is about <\/span>92% probability that each marketing organization has an ABM program in place or is in the process of implementing one<\/span><\/strong>. The data scientist in me wanted to cite this metric! While the existence of an ABM strategy is a good indicator of the degree of alignment between sales and marketing in any organization but at the same time,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the world full of marketing technology first enthusiasts, <\/span>we continue to be strong advocates of letting the marketing strategy drive the martech strategy<\/span><\/strong>. This could not be more true for ABM execution. At marqeu, across all our ABM engagements, we see that <\/span>marketing analytics continues to be the competitive advantage<\/span><\/strong><\/a> that continuously powers the success and optimization of ABM strategies.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A successful ABM strategy requires creative data-driven enhancements in regular marketing operations and demand generation frameworks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n A true ABM execution is like setting up a <\/span>parallel demand generation engine<\/span><\/strong> within the marketing organization.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While the rhetoric is that a marketing organization needs new tools and platforms to launch the ABM strategy but we have seen that most of the modern marketing organizations already have the tools and technologies in place to launch a successful ABM strategy. The success of ABM is all about bringing together these diverse tactics and tools to operate in resonance and power the ABM demand generation engine.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We see that <\/span>the combination of these 4 highly cross-linked tactics is required for a successful ABM strategy<\/span><\/u><\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Account Planning:<\/span><\/strong> is the foundation of the ABM strategy. This is where a solid sales and marketing alignment comes into play. Let\u2019s be honest, there is no platform, framework, \u201cbest practices\u201d consulting that can foster sales & marketing alignment within any organization. The onus of building this relationship is on the marketing and sales leadership. But when it comes to ABM strategy, marketing should be fully armed with the insights about ABM accounts to lay a solid foundation of ABM the strategy. Account-level insights powered by Marketing analytics are critical here. These include:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n List of the companies\/target accounts based on <\/span>account scoring algorithms<\/span><\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Analysis of recent wins<\/span><\/u> across sales segments and gets<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Analysis of <\/span>deal cycles & buyers journey<\/span><\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Analysis of the product portfolio<\/span><\/u> and white spacing accounts\/persona at the account level<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n Predictive Analytics:<\/span><\/u> there is a wealth of information available within the existing sales and marketing platforms and it can be utilized to predict the next best action or engagement tactic based on the historic engagement and behavior of similar accounts and persona. These insights power the content strategy for a personalized experience.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Lead Scoring:<\/span><\/u><\/a> demographic and behavioral scoring could be augmented to take into account extra scoring points for the ABM campaigns and intent data for ABM accounts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Data Enrichment<\/span><\/u><\/a>:<\/span><\/a> provides more data about individuals and accounts and persona that power the content and engagement strategy. It also helps with providing the sales and telemarketing teams with insights for impactful conversations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Data Validation:<\/span><\/u> it is a known thing that data is always changing and we need to make sure that we have the up to date information about our target accounts and the personas. The success rate of any campaign (whether ABM or not) is dependent on the data quality.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\n
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