Information is abundant. Insight is not. Are you confident your team understands your target industries well?
Now that you have launched ABM, are you confident your team knows enough about each of your must-win accounts? What about key executives at each one of those accounts?
If you get this right, you surely are a step closer toward achieving significant ROI from your marketing spend.
Custom, in-depth insight about the target industry forms as the bedrock for your ABM initiative. Primarily, because ‘Account Selection’ and ‘Insight’ are crucial in the earlier stages of your Account Based Marketing process.
According to Forrester Research, the primary question you should be asking before venturing into ABM is: What new data will I need to make ABM successful?
Knowledge about your ideal customers means a laser focused content marketing. The deeper you know about your customers, the more compelling your messages are to them. This article deals with why insight is crucial for your ABM program and how it leads to ABM success.
Data vs Custom Insight
There is a difference between tailored insight and just data. Data about your target industries – such as the market size simply does not cut through the crowd. To win, having knowledge about key trends influencing the industry is good to know. But, being able to figure out what factors are enabling the industry’s growth vs. what’s pulling the industry down is another.
“What really empowers your ABM team is when they know how each of your target accounts are responding to major industry trends.”
Now, if all insight about your industry or your ideal customers’ industry is consolidated under a single report which everyone can leverage, it brings about various benefits. Firstly, it brings about sales and marketing alignment whereby sales and marketing operate under the same level of insight and knowledge about their target accounts. Secondly, you get to build a deeper understanding across sectors and industries which you are targeting.
Account Based approach to Sales and Marketing demands a high level of insight
Since an Account Based approach to Sales and Marketing is based on data and insight, a high level of information is demanded. To satisfy the high level of data and insight demanded by ABM, or for that matter any targeted marketing program you require a high level of insight about the account and industries you are targeting. Hence, since an account-based approach to sales and marketing demands a high level of insight, tailored insight is crucial for your ABM success.
How to create Custom Insight reports
You can create custom insight reports to fuel your ABM initiatives simply by conducting simple desk-based research. With just a computer and an internet connection – you can leverage simple desk based research. All you need is a report structure and format for you to start collecting insight from various sources including: Company Website, Annual & Quarterly filings, Investor Presentations and many more. This article empowers you to build such reports for your team: How to leverage simple desk based research for your ABM program.
Other benefits of Custom Insight for your ABM program
Custom Insight that is specific to the industry brings about more benefits than just sales and marketing alignment. Custom Insight that is specific to the industry you are targeting makes you more aware about the industry which you are targeting. At the same time, having a Custom Insight program in place reduces time spent on desk-based research tasks for everyone. Hence, a Custom Insight program enables you to build deeper understanding across sectors and industries and at the same time delivers time saving and cost reduction for your team.
Conclusion
There is doubt about the abundance of insight available at your fingertips from public sources – however creating a structured process in order to gather all the relevant information into insight would be an invaluable proposition to any organisation adopting an account-based approach to sales and marketing since data and insight is crucial for your ABM program.