1. Know the research you need to be doing
We often pair data and insight together as one and the same, but data and insight are two completely different concepts in ABM. While data is the actual analysis, insight is about what is going to drive your ABM activity. It’s the research that drives your decisions. Before deep diving into your ABM programme, know the difference so you can conduct your research more effectively.
In a lot of cases, marketers don’t have a firm grasp of how essential data and insight are in ABM so they don’t know what they need to be researching or how they need to conduct their research.
Robert says: “I think very often, they don’t know what information they need, and they certainly don’t know how to collect it. I think there is an assumption that the knowledge of the customer will always reside in sales, and historically, that’s not the case. So, for marketers, I think it’s something a bit new.”
When it comes to the type of research, it starts with strategy. Are you doing one-to-one? One-to-few? One-to-many? If you need to do early-stage engagement with 500 accounts, it’s vastly different than doing a deep dive into three main accounts. Once you figure that out, you can start segmenting the kind of research you’ll need in the early stages. From there, you can work out which specific accounts you should be engaging with. This could include firmographic data around size, location, opportunity or intent platforms you might be considering.
Robert adds: “As you come down into the focal point of ABM, then it’s much more about understanding the market that they operate in, the market conditions, the sector they’re in and then drilling down the account into detail, such as their location, their key stakeholders, potential decision makers and their strategy. You really need to have a 360-degree view of that account.”
In addition, an opportunity analysis can be used to spell out the specific business drivers and pain points that accounts are wrestling with so that you’ll be able to understand when it’s appropriate to engage.
2. Build a close relationship with sales
There are so many pain points between sales and marketing, but alignment is critical in ABM.
Robert says: “It’s the old chestnut that you can’t do ABM without sales engagement, and I think it’s really important that you level set what they know right at the beginning of the ABM activity. Because of course, there’s no point in going off and doing lots of research with questions they already have the answers to.”
Typically, when Robert runs an ABM programme that is either one-to-one or one-to-few, there would be a kick-off or a scoping session with sales, which lays out:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- What knowledge gaps are there?
- How can ABM help us?
If you get sales involved early on, you both are on the same page in terms of the account plan. While you might still look at the big picture of the account, you can figure out what areas of the account you really want to focus on.
3. Use the right ABM tools
Knowing what tools to use is also important, especially if you have a clear roadmap of what your ABM programme will look like. If you’re doing a one-to-many approach, where you’re doing intelligent targeting of accounts, need to talk to the right people, and want to do it at scale, that’s when you’ll need a platform that can help you with these ideas.
Robert says: “There’s a lot of tech out there, but, as always, it’s like a kid in a candy shop; there’s all this technology to buy, and I do think people end up getting confused. Sadly, vendors are giving their full-on sales pitches. It still goes back to the fact that no technology is going to solve your problem if you don’t know what the problem is. You really need to work out what the strategy is and what accounts are we going to be looking at first.”
Some recommendations from Robert include:
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Crystal
- TechTarget
- Cyance
- Bombora
- 6sense
- Demandbase.
4. Data audit regularly
In our ABM report, we assessed whether marketers were utilising data audits. Only 33% of respondents have a steady stream of data and insights, and when asked whether the customer data was audited, 31% admitted that they don’t, while 13% said they weren’t even sure what an audit meant. A data audit is an assessment and review of a company’s data to see if it’s still serving a specific purpose. This type of hygiene is essential especially when considering the impact of GDPR.
Robert says: “My point of view is that a data audit is looking at all the data you hold, working out whether it’s up to date, complete, compliant and clear. GDPR has put a lot of pressure on companies and the whole removal of third-party cookies is going to create a huge issue for people. Essentially, you must look at primary data that is opted in ideally, or you need to look into a third-party provider that is ready and solves that problem for you.”
The key is accuracy. If you’re going to be talking to customers, you need to be talking to the appropriate customers at the right time about the right topics and if you don’t have access to those because your data is out of date or wasn’t populated correctly in the first place, then you’re just going to be wasting your time, effort and money by targeting people that have left the company or are not in the right positions. In that aspect, it is so critical to make sure that what you put together is relevant and correct and cleaned within the last 12 months (at least).
