We’ve surveyed the account based marketing technology available to you, mapping it across the maturity of your ABM programme and your needs. Mary-Anne Baldwin shares with advice on when to invest.
Are you interested in buying technology for your Account Based Marketing but a bit baffled by the array available? You’re not alone. Our 2019 Account Based Marketing industry survey shows that the second biggest challenge in deploying ABM martech (after a lack of resource and skills) is poor clarity over what’s available. To help we’ve devised this tech landscape map, updated from last year.
It shows the main vendors serving the ABM space, segmented by platform type and the five stages at which you’re most likely to deploy them (click here to find out more about the five stages of ABM delivery).
What are the most useful martech platforms for ABM?
As part of our most recent industry wide ABM survey, we asked participants what single platform has been the biggest driver in account based marketing productivity. In particular, Salesforce, Marketo and HubSpot were named as the most useful martech platforms for ABM (in that order). Other noted top contenders in the CRM space were Oracle and Sugar CRM, for automation Eloqua, Mailchimp and Pardot.
“For now, we’ve been using the platforms and tools that we already had. They turned out to be quite compatible. Essentially, I think that strategy should drive technology, not the other way around.”
How do martech needs vary across the different account based marketing methodologies?
It’s important to note that your tech needs – and the point at which that need arises – will differ depending on the method of ABM you have deployed. Whatever your needs and timeframes, make sure all of your IT stakeholders (including finance, IT and sales) understand ABM, why it requires technology and what that tech requires from its users.
One-to-one: This has the minimum requirement for martech. In the early stages you’ll be most reliant on your CRM platform with further investment most likely needed after a successful pilot has demonstrated the value of ABM.
One-to-few: As well as your CRM, you’re likely to need tools for additional data and sales insights, plus content and personalisation tools.
One-to-many (aka programmatic): The form of ABM requires you to reach a large number of accounts but with a personalised touch, as such the need for technology is much greater. In particular you’ll be looking at marketing automation, personalisation tools, predictive analytics and advanced measurement.
When’s the right time to invest in account based marketing martech?
While tech is a wonderful tool for account based marketing’s delivery and it’s prudent to scope out the opportunities tech vendors provide, early stage ABM can be carried out almost entirely independent of tech. The trick is in knowing when to invest.
Clive Armitage, CEO at Agent3 reasons that if you’re going to invest in technology, you should make sure you have a good understanding of how you are going to exploit it.
Here are the three questions he urges that you ask yourself first:
- Do you have a team that ‘gets’ the tech and can extract value for you?
- Does your preferred technology vendor have a services arm that will work with you to extract value (make sure you get a service level agreement for this too)?
- Does your agency partner know how to use the technology you’re buying (and you can outsource the management of it to ensure you get the value you want)?
“The key mistake we’ve seen at Demandbase is organisations trying to buy their way into an ABM programme,” says Tenessa Lochner, senior ABM education and training manager at Demandbase. “Without a clear use case, objective or ROI your ABM programme is not likely to succeed.”
Once you have that down, you need to find budget — without draining too much value from the results you’ve already driven. Tenessa advises:
- Release budget from non-target accounts: When you focus on your target accounts, you’ll find that you start to free up budget.
- Run an experiment: most companies have budget for experimental marketing. Take that budget and use it on ABM initiatives or technology.
- Roll it up: roll ABM technology into already existing categories. For example, if your team is working on a website relaunch, it might be a good time to talk about adding in a personalisation solution to the site.
- Split costs with sales: sales and marketing alignment is key for the success of ABM. Technology investments should help that relationship be more efficient and beneficial.
