Account-Based Marketing is one of the most powerful strategies in B2B marketers' collection. Combined with the right tools and processes to get the job done, ABM can transform the way you market. New technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing how we identify target accounts while delivering deeply personalized experiences, customized content, and targeted advertising.
What's in store for ABM?
The focus and efficacy of ABM make it an attractive avenue for almost every kind of business. Apart from narrowing the playing field and personalize campaigns, it's also easier to align marketing with sales and measure ROI.
Today, more than 70% of B2B companies emphasize on employees to focus on ABM activities. Smart appliances and other IoT devices give marketers reliable insights on user behaviors and activity preferences to fuel their ABM initiatives. Consequently, utilizing ABM software or a strategic digital growth partner will be more important than ever in 2019 and beyond.
1. Aligning your sales & marketing teams
ABM helps in developing a comprehensive understanding of the accounts your company wants to target and craft highly personalized content to appeal to these specific prospects. Hence, it is important to ensure that your marketing and sales teams are work in partnership on your ABM campaigns by identifying high-value accounts to nurture greater business growth and profitable ROI.
2. Personalizing online presence
It is important to ensure that your online channels provide tailored customer experiences for potential leads that cater to specific business challenges. Account-specific personalized landing pages can utilize unique forms, visual assets and other promotions to maximize their conversions.
3. Role of technology in the better account selection
AI will bring a new level of automation to ABM, where it can be used to personalize practices for target accounts across all devices and media. ABM and AI's combined capabilities are sure to extend to channels like advertising, reporting and email in a couple of years.
With the application of AI in lead scoring, look-alike modelling, predictive intelligence, customer segmentation, campaign analytics, businesses can choose their target accounts, spend time, money and effort to try to convert them effectively. Chatbots are streamlining the process like directing prospects to the right sales representative and extracting relevant data. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, 40% of sales work activities can now be automated with AI. Salesforce predicts that high-performing sales teams are 3.4 times more likely to be using AI compared to underachieving teams. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30% of all companies will use AI to supplement at least one of their primary sales processes.
64% of marketers who are using AI have seen a substantial increase in overall marketing efficiency. Companies like IBM and The Trade Desk are working to tackle potential roadblock that AI faces in all areas of marketing.
4. ABM marketers will grip intent data
Intent data is the fuel for ABM to drive business. When implemented correctly, intent data helps companies with an insight into online behavior patterns, now only at an account level but also an individual level. Intent data, enabled by Bombora, use ABM exceptionally in informing a company's enabling marketers to find new audiences for a brand's campaigns.
5. Conversational ABM Is the Future
Implement conversational ABM by creating a personalized welcome message and treating outbound email like a real-time channel. In every outbound email, include a link that triggers a real-time conversation. Alternatively, in your email signature, always include a link to an online profile where prospects can learn more about you, schedule meetings, and start one-to-one conversations. Implement real-time alerts with the help of a browser extension, where you can now get notifications as soon as someone from target accounts strikes up a communication.
ABM will become more scalable
Although technology is making ABM more scalable and will continue to add more productivity and effectiveness to the process, research and personalization, the most critical elements of a successful ABM campaign, are difficult to scale unless you grow your team.
One of the exciting trends in ABM is that it helps in bringing sales and marketing functions together to work target accounts as a cross-departmental team. The future of ABM is about changing the way B2B marketers think about their customers and prospects and helping the sales team convert more of the leads generated.
