Account-based marketing (ABM) has been steadily rising as the hottest B2B marketing strategy. And there’s no sign of slowing down. A survey by ITSMA revealed 87% of B2B marketers reported that their ABM initiatives outperform their other marketing investments in terms of ROI, making account-based marketing the natural choice for marketers. Organizations have begun to invest at a higher rate in ABM as we have come a long way from the “one-size-fits-all” and “spray-and-pray” marketing tactics. Despite ABM being around for over two decades, it hasn’t always been humanized.
Account-Based Marketing is a proven methodology of marketing to drive real business results from a set of selected must-win accounts.
Be it in B2C or B2B, people buy from people. It’s a human thing! People prefer to talk to a human rather than some bot and would choose a zoom-call rather than an email. With the growing use of technology for automation and efficiency, marketing is losing its human essence. Most of the ABM software misses out on hyper-personalisation due to lack of human element so, it has become crucial to humanize account-based marketing programs. A key question you should ask: Am I doing enough to hyper-personalize my approach towards each of my ABM Accounts?
A rightly done ABM never misses out on the human element. ABM is more than just identifying the target audience, reaching them, and engaging in a personalised way. ABM is engaging at a personal level and delivering messages or insightful content that will be helpful for prospects.
Why research for ABM?
Research is significant particularly at the early stages of any Account-Based Marketing program The importance of research is implied by the importance of organizations resolving their understanding of where Account-Based Marketing fits in their overall business objectives. Researching about all high-value accounts can help in the attainment of an enhanced level of personalisation across all accounts. Account and industry knowledge equips sales and marketing teams with specific knowledge about the industry and accounts that the need to know. Research enables organisations to be more personal, knowledgeable about their accounts and assist in the alignment of the sales and marketing teams.
How research can humanize ABM?
ABM requires sales and marketing to be aligned. Salespeople and marketers always need to work toward creating meaningful and intimate connections with their future and present customers. Simple desk-research can reveal deep insight into your target accounts. Gathering insight would be a value-add for any organisation adopting an Account-Based Marketing approach, or one that sells to other large businesses. Having a structured process in place to turn the little nuggets of insight into actionable insights can be the difference between the success and failure of your Account-Based Marketing program.
A survey conducted by DemandbaseMarketing Innovation Summit for B2B revealed that – 92% of B2B tech firms recognize the value of ABM, going as far as calling it a B2B marketing “must-have.”
Here’s how to humanize research and contribute for Account-Based Marketing program:
Leverage information that is available publicly
Publicly available information from company websites, annual filings and investor presentations can reveal deep insight about your target accounts. These findings can then be leveraged into actionable insights for personalising your Account-Based Marketing Program, which in turn humanizes it. These small high-value insight can hyper-personalize all your outward communication. You can source information from other sources too, such as press releases, executive interviews and social media sites.
Create a structured process to turn information into insight
Having a structured process in place to turn the firmographic and technographic data into a structured report format would be the next step in your efforts to leverage research. Build a custom template to structure the information: overview followed by company insight, industry insight and key executive insight. After you have a template in place to collect actionable insights, you can start filling up the template with the insight you have collected from various sources. And now you have a profile on the target account or industry which you are chasing after.
Use the report to support Account-Based Marketing campaigns
Now that you have compiled a report on the target account or industry that you are chasing after, you can incorporate the report to support your Account-Based Marketing initiatives. Your Account-Based Marketing program is being supported with up-to-date and refined data and insight. This can help to achieve higher personalisation levels with your targeted marketing programs.
Sharing how we been helping our clients humanize their account-based marketing campaigns through research
For one of our clients, an SAP reseller we helped them hyper-personalize all of their sales and marketing outreach. The company had listed out 50 enterprise accounts they wanted to sell into. The challenge on their part was the effort required to sell into each account being far more than what was internally available.
Our team of research analysts built a detailed insight report on each target account as defined by the client’s pipeline uncovering major business priorities and key challenges. Through our reports, the client was able to align their sales and marketing activities across each account.
Conclusion
More than ever, now is the right time to deploy human-centric ABM campaigns. As the world is healing from a global crisis, B2B marketers need to move ahead with compassion. Instead of sharing generic content, they can focus on creating and assembling thought leadership pieces or content that educates their prospects. There is no doubt about the abundance of relevant information available. Creating a structured process in place to gather the relevant information and to turn the abundance into insight would be invaluable for any organisation wanting to humanize its targeted marketing programs. A well-executed human-centric ABM solution creates a true win-win for marketers and prospects alike and can generate a miraculous result for any B2B organization.
You can find copies of our insight reports on the website. Here’s a link to the report library for you to explore our reports.