Whitepaper: Infusing Intent data to scale your Account-Based Marketing
March 16, 2016
While there is a lot of talk about Account Based Marketing (ABM), the process through which it can be effectively executed is often a side note in the discussion. Going beyond the buzz, a new whitepaper by Lattice Engines 'Scale Account-Based Marketing with Predictive Analytics' outlines the way marketers can ensure that their ABM efforts scale and deliver ROI. Featured in the white paper, Mike Burton explores how marketers can 'infuse intent' to enhance your 'winning ABM plays'.
Driven through the ubiquitous nature of content, research has become a natural part of the purchasing journey – whether buying groceries, a car or even a cloud security system. Forrester Research found that 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. As mentioned in the Lattice Engines report, and unsurprisingly, there is a natural transference of behavior from the B2C sphere to B2B environment. However where B2C is often a one-to-one journey (albeit the check in or social media influence from family and friends), the B2B buying journey is 'a team sport' - with up to 17 people involved in the enterprise buying decision-making process.
As the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded, it’s harder for B2B buyers to differentiate and understand what solutions they need to be successful. When bombarded by different messages, irrelevant to their immediate needs – it can be irritating or overwhelming. This is exactly what makes Account-Based Marketing so effective for B2B marketers, enabling them 'to market and sell to targeted sets of 'high value accounts in a very customized way'.
Account-Based Marketing made easy with predictive analytics
With access to an array of predictive analytics platforms, the report highlights that it is now easier than ever for sales and marketing teams 'to take advantage of advanced data science without needing to turn to data scientists, PhDs and data specialists'.
There are clear advantages for sales and marketing alike by using predictive analytics tools to make sense of what EMC forecasts to be 44 trillion gigabytes of data by 2020. From providing a holistic view of prospects and customers using internal and external data, to having the ability to harness the power of machine learning to create predictive models to understand propensity to buy and operationalize these insights by integrating directly with marketing automation tools - the ability to make sense of 'big data' and act on it will be paramount to the successful execution of Account-Based Marketing campaigns.
Scaling Account-Based Marketing with Intent data
For B2B marketers knowing what their target accounts are browsing, reading, watching and listening to - the behaviors represented through Intent data - is key to cutting through 'the noise'. Enabling marketers to serve the right message at the right time in a buyer’s journey, Intent data will be invaluable for scaling ABM.
In its 'winning plays' for ABM, Lattice Engines identifies that Intent data can be used to:
- Assess and determine which accounts are 'in market' - Getting an understanding of where accounts are in the purchasing journey is critical to not only determining the appropriate level of engagement, but to the accurate and efficient routing of leads.
- Enrich personas with account-level insights - Infusing Intent data into customer personas enables marketers to build out a richer picture of their target audiences. These insights can be used to develop more effective content strategy and execute more contextually relevant ABM campaigns.
- Contextualize sales conversations with shared insights - Having an understanding of a prospect's intent will also drive more contextually relevant sales follow up. In the long term, aggregating and monitoring Intent data could also aid the understanding of industry purchasing cycles.