Nowadays, there seems to be more content around account-based marketing (ABM) than you can shake a stick at, and I’m here to add to the noise. You’re welcome. I personally read as much as I can on ABM, as I’m always keen to hear other people’s perspective and, here in EMEA, we have some great ABM practitioners. I read this content because I’m keen to get a picture of how others view ABM, understand their journeys and, more than anything, learn something new.
However, more and more recently I’ve been reading lots of content around strategic 1:1 ABM and how it’s the only real ABM. Now, whether you agree or not, the more interesting outtake has been on how strategic ABM is being run and I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t seem to have moved on much in the past 20 years. I thought this was supposed to be a new topic?
It’s not all about strategic ABM
Herein lies the problem. I’m not saying strategic ABM isn’t what we should all be aiming for, but to be practicing it in the same way as we were 20 years ago doesn’t take advantage of the marketing advancements that are available to us in 2018.
You don’t need me to tell you that martech is exploding at a rate of knots. However, many of the more traditional ‘ABMers’ aren’t sure which platform to use or how to exploit them. And it’s not helped by the fact that martech platforms are often built to be very broad and focused on companies looking at scale and, therefore, aren’t specific to your exact needs or, more often than not, useful for anyone doing strategic ABM.
So, what can you do to make sure your approach to ABM takes into account the priorities of your business, and the sometimes very specific challenges of your target audience? Well, if there’s one element in your ABM strategy that can help you build something bespoke it’s your data.
Data trumps shiny new martech
If you can start to move away from trying to patch up your ABM programmes with more martech and instead start to use your own data (as a foundation), you’ll make your programmes all that more efficient. Some of you may be thinking that martech uses your own data anyway so what’s the difference? Let me give you an example.
A predictive analytics platform will tell you which companies are the best fit based on your own 1st party and some 3rd party data segments. The problem is, some platforms just spit out a result, so how do you know why that result is that result? In other words, let’s say you work in manufacturing and a big issue for a company buying from you is power failures, how does a SaaS platform that sells to thousands of customers tailor its platform to your specific need? They will say they use AI, but believe me, nine times out of 10 even AI won’t tailor it to your specific needs unless you are able to train the system.
"Once you control your own data, you can ingest further data points and then buy martech platforms to help automate some of the elements"
If, however, you were able to use your own data, ingest relevant first and third-party data and then overlay martech (such as predictive models), you could start to build your own customised propensity to buy models.
Personalised customer journeys
Let’s take this scenario a step further. Once you have this data, you could then start to build personalised customer journeys at an account and even individual level, and all of this can be done in real time. These might look like similar models but, in fact, these are two ways of attacking the same problem. The first one is the lazy approach of giving someone else the task of helping build your ABM strategy, the second is a way of taking control and ensuring your approach is customised for your business – ensuring the best results possible.
Let’s move another step forward. You can then build in AI programming to help identify behavioural and conversion-based trends and optimise your messaging in real time. Now, I’ll be honest, this is a bit of star gazing as a lot of this doesn’t quite exist at the moment, or isn’t done in real time – but you see my point. Once you control your own data, you can ingest further data points and then buy the right martech platforms to help automate some of the elements. That’s surely a more effective approach than the martech platforms using their own data, mixing it with yours and telling you something you aren’t even sure is right. Once you have control of the data, you know about its value, relevance and can interrogate it if the output looks strange.
This type of approach can be applied to all types of ABM, hence my issue with always focusing on strategic ABM and using the same old tried and tested methods of 20 years ago without moving with the times. After all, we’re human and so we often put our ‘gut feel’ into our programmes. Using data will help you marry science with traditional approaches, which, in turn, will yield greater results. Get your data working for you and it can help you with every type of ABM from foundational one-to-many demand generation all the way up to strategic ABM.
