Today’s Volatile Market Requires Three-Dimensional ABM

May 18, 2021 | Blog, Resources

White MRP logo.

As the business world continues to find its footing in a post-pandemic world, account-based marketing (ABM) has never been more essential. In order to deliver contextually-relevant and timely messages amidst changing conditions, companies need to harness quality data, predictive insights, and next best actions via a unified platform.

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden shift to remote operations, employees are now three times as likely to continue working at home in 2021 and beyond — radically changing the way B2B firms reach prospects. Digital marketing has taken center stage, with firms relying more than ever on data signals to surface prospects and identify qualified leads. 

In this environment, enterprise ABM has the potential to shine. The one-to-one, personalized connections enabled by ABM can produce a revenue lift of up to 30% when compared with traditional one-to-many campaigns.

So far, however, companies are struggling to realize that potential, due to inadequate data management. While the average firm uses six marketing personalization tools, 86% report they’re unable to connect even two of those channels to create a holistic view of customer interactions across the organization. Furthermore, as most platforms are contact-centric rather than account-centric, reassembling a picture of accounts is not native to these systems.

As a result, marketers target the wrong prospects with irrelevant content — wasting time and resources and eroding recipients’ goodwill. More than three in 10 marketers surveyed in DemandGen Report’s latest State of ABM Marketing report said they struggled to predict which accounts will purchase. 

To improve their ABM performance, marketers need to adopt a holistic approach that incorporates three essential elements working in concert: 

  • Quality data. Data is essential to ABM, informing targeting, lead matching, and even performance measurement. Companies should adopt a comprehensive approach, incorporating firmographic and technographic information and online and offline intent signals. MRP’s Prelytix digests and distills 1.5 trillion data signals per month, creating a holistic picture of prospect activities across channels. Data quality is as essential as quantity. Marketers must take a granular approach down to the keyword level, paying attention to vocabulary as well as the geographic and linguistic distribution of incoming signals. 
  • Predictive analytics. Many marketers now rely on the power of artificial intelligence to help assess the potential for prospects to become customers, using sophisticated algorithms that combine past interactions with likely outcomes based on similar behavioral profiles. Machine learning enables these predictive models to improve over time as more interactions occur. This automated intelligence is crucial in order for companies to be able to deliver individualized marketing at scale.  

  • Real-time connections.  Marketers need the capacity to deliver relevant content in a timely context, using the right channel mix to reach prospects throughout the purchase consideration journey. Automated alerts for sales teams and personalized messaging capabilities are crucial to ensure prompt contact at crucial decision points. This dynamic capacity is especially important as companies adapt to changing workplace routines and prospect needs in the wake of the global pandemic.

While each of these three elements is crucial, none are standalone solutions. Most companies already have abundant data, but lack the tools to unify and act on siloed information. Predictive analytics can provide forward-looking insights, but need quality data to produce relevant recommendations. And only by harnessing ML and data insights to drive sales and marketing action can companies create the timely connections that close deals in a continually-evolving marketplace. 

MRP’s unified solution helps companies orchestrate data, insights, and action to produce results. Request a product tour: https://mrpfd.com/request-a-demo/

 

Read Next…