Tag: Account-based Marketing

Breaking boundaries: ABM in Digital Era

The B2B landscape is undergoing a dynamic transformation, propelled by the forces of digitization, technological breakthroughs, and evolving workstyles. This multifaceted shift is reshaping the business landscape, fostering unprecedented growth and diversification. Account-based marketing or ABM is one such strategy that is aligned with account-based sales to target high-value accounts with personalized and targeted campaigns. The thought behind account-based marketing is to shift focus from volume-based lead generation programs to high-value and key accounts that are treated as individual markets.  The guiding principles of ABM are the development of relationship strategies, account-specific messaging, and complete alignment between marketing and sales. ABM’s targeted activities go beyond the traditional practices of generic marketing and result in relationship acceleration where your team focuses on engaging and delighting high-value accounts. Groundbreaking technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analytics are proving to be vital tools to implement ABM even as multichannel and omnichannel strategies are providing a more seamless customer experience.  Importance of personalized and targeted marketing strategies The cornerstone of ABM is a customized approach that uses personalized and targeted marketing strategies to create a seamless marketing experience. Data is collected from different sources and analyzed to identify patterns to effectively target best-fit, high-value accounts. These data insights also help marketers to clearly understand the specific requirements of their target accounts and nurture relationships with better engagement. Through a personalized and targeted approach, ABM aligns your solutions to the account’s business needs and creates competitive positioning.  Personalized marketing strategies have the potential to shift a targeted account from disinterest to engagement and awareness of your solutions. Targeted campaigns can also help you differentiate your offerings and position your company as the preferred provider of solutions for your high-value accounts.  “In the current digital landscape, we are overwhelmed with information and advertising. Account-based marketing narrows it down to a level at which we get customized messages that specifically address our needs as professionals, the roles that we play, and the personas we have.” – Tejas Arur, Business Communication & Customer Engagement Strategist, Axtria Inc (Snippets from episode #10 of the Shift podcast) Tune in to the episode 10 of the Shift podcast, Dr. Karthik Nagendra, CMO at Demand Farm, interviews Tejas Arur, Business Communication & Customer Engagement Strategist at Axtria Inc., about the key principles and strategies behind account-based marketing in a digital age. Personalized and targeted marketing strategies also help contextualize your message to the state of the account and this proves to be far more effective than the ‘spray and pray’ approach. Role of Data Analytics and AI in Account-based Marketing  AI and data analytics are transforming ABM by boosting personalization and creating meaningful communication. AI-enabled systems that align with your account’s needs also provide transparency which is crucial for the successful implementation of your strategies. Let’s look at how AI and data analytics are optimizing account-based marketing: 1. Account Profiling Profiling and defining customers is the starting point of any ABM program. The power of AI helps you deep dive into the internet and multiple databases to extract information for accurate customer profiling. This helps in the efficient allocation of your key resources to nurture key accounts and build lasting and fruitful relationships.  2. Creating Personalized Content Understanding your accounts and their specific needs and pain points can help you customize your offerings and provide bespoke solutions. With clear account profiles, ABM can customize content that appeals to your high-value accounts. AI can also help you segment data mined from CRM and marketing automation platforms to create hyper-individualized experiences. 3. Automating repetitive tasks ABM includes certain tasks like data management, campaign monitoring, and customer outreach that are significant but repetitive and tedious. You can leverage AI tools to automate these repetitive tasks and create more bandwidth for your team to focus on more strategic tasks to improve the overall campaign performance. Additionally, data management consulting can help ensure that your data processes are optimized, allowing for better decision-making and more effective use of AI tools in your ABM strategy.  4. Data Analytics & Reporting Data is the new currency and everywhere we go, we create data points that can be used by ABM to create bespoke experiences that suit the account’s needs specifically. AI-enabled tools help you demolish data silos by merging data from disparate sources.   “Data analytics help us analyze behavior as well as segment and micro-segment and personalize content. Engagement analytics help us perform AB testing to know what kind of messaging to have, the value proposition, and product and services that we need to position,” – Tejas Arur, Business Communication & Customer Engagement Strategist, Axtria Inc (Snippets from episode #10 of the Shift podcast) AI also adds a new dimension to ABM by elevating simple reporting and descriptive analytics to predictive analytics. This helps you to tweak your recommendations in real-time and ensure your audience is not hassled by irrelevant offers.  Synchronization between Account-based Marketing and Account-based Selling A comprehensive approach to ABM is built on the basis of complete synergy between marketing and sales. To ensure an engaging and personalized experience for your key accounts, you have to ensure that marketing and sales are on the same page. ABM can be successfully implemented only when roles and responsibilities are clearly assigned to the sales and marketing teams. They must work together on allocating resources for each account and ensuring that there’s a smooth transition between marketing and sales activities. The success of your account-based selling strategy largely depends on recognizing marketing as a part of the revenue team. Marketing can create customized marketing plans to create targeted campaigns for your high-value accounts. Both marketing and sales must work together at every step including reviewing the account plan and building successful campaigns.   “Sales teams and marketing assets are means to create an experience for the customer. Marketing and sales are not opposites; sales bring in outcomes that lead to instant gratification. Marketing takes longer, it’s more empirical and the messaging creates a brand, a personality, and