Using Data to Help your ABM Strategy

Using data to help your ABM strategy is absolutely key to an effective marketing campaign. Account-based marketing (ABM) is once again coming to the fore of digital marketing conversations. It offers some interesting benefits for lead generation and business-to-business (B2B) engagement. However, like every marketing solution on the market, ABM isn’t immune to failure.

Marketers and sales reps shouldn’t be discouraged, however. Account-based marketing campaigns can be powerful tools when paired with the correct approach to data management. Market research and analytics are the foundations for goal-driven and properly executed campaigns, so how can they help you with your ABM strategy?

The power of a data-driven approach

Data-driven marketing is a strategic approach to creating high-engagement campaigns that are focused, impactful and profitable. Businesses rely on data to make accurate projections, predict market trends, and assess the efficiency of their operations.

Data management offers those same benefits to marketing solutions, with a few added advantages. A data-driven approach makes it easier to isolate ineffective strategies that don’t justify their investment. Early reporting helps managers redirect resources to the methods that produce the highest rate of investment (ROI).

 

How data can optimize your ABM strategy

Targeting is the most crucial aspect of account-based marketing. As a strategy, ABM focuses on identifying and engaging with the accounts that align best with the campaign’s overall goals. Too often, marketing strategies try to create the most visibility, which isn’t always the most cost-effective way to generate leads.

Data can improve an ABM strategy when marketers hone in on its universal benefits.

1. Improved engagement

Engagement metrics are priceless to digital marketers. This information helps to define how effective a campaign is at every level. At the broadest level, engagement metrics reveal how many people the campaign reached, what percentage interacted with it and how many of those interactions led to sales.

Data reveals insights at a micro-level too. Each social media post, advertisement, and mailing list update comes with its own set of data. These metrics contribute to the overall campaign data and help rank individual messages by their impact and return on investment.

2. Reduced waste

Without the proper framework, high visibility can actually hinder lead generation. ABM targets the most valuable accounts, not the largest audience. Good data puts visibility into context so that the focus is on being visible in places that generate leads.

3. Insights for future campaigns

While no marketing strategy is foolproof, data management make it easier to pivot from failure to future success. The insights into where a marketing campaign failed highlight which problems to address in the next cycle.

 

Creating a data management strategy

Data in ABM helps marketers define which metrics will create the most value for their campaigns. Data management is about organizing that information so that it is accurate, accessible and actionable.

Creating an effective management strategy will involve the following steps:

1. Audit existing data channels

Before processing new data, all existing databases need to be examined. The most important question to ask here is: how reliable is this data source, and can it be easily accessed?

2. Protect data integrity

Reliability and integrity are two different qualities when it comes to data. Reliability means being able to access data consistently. Integrity means recording and storing that data without compromising its accuracy. Data integrity is most at risk when it’s being recorded manually or stored on a faulty system.

3. Organize for analysis

Data management organizes information in a way that makes it easy to access and interpret. Data sets are most effective when grouped by factors that give them context, like date recorded, data sources, and time scope.

4. Generate actionable reports

Reports tell stakeholders how to interpret data. Not only should the insights they offer be clear, but they should offer solutions to the problems the data presents. Even positive reports can be helpful by highlighting which effective strategies to avoid tweaking.

 

Data management technology for your ABM strategy

Technology continues to be a valuable asset in data management. Information software meets the same goals as the above strategies while removing as much risk as possible.

Cloud-based marketing platforms create a central hub for data management. Centralization gives campaign members remote access to the data they need while allowing managers to control access.  That access control reduces the risk to data integrity in storage and streamlines analytics.

Automated marketing software, on the other hand, can reduce the cost of operations. Automation can also save time in ABM by assigning tasks to the platform itself. Some areas where automated marketing software excels are:

  • Information processing
  • Generating reports
  • Organized data storage
  • Accurate data capturing

Key metrics to focus on

Data is only as helpful as the questions it needs to answer. Depending on the goals of a campaign, some metrics will hold more or less value to an ABM strategy – especially when it comes to targeting accounts.

Take an ABM strategy needs to choose between two B2B accounts to target.

Account A has a social media platform with 100 000 followers, while Account B only has 10 000 followers. A metric like impressions could reveal that Account A‘s posts get seen by 2 000 people on average. In contrast, Account B’s more aggressive social media schedule gets their posts seen by 3000 people on average.

So, while Account B only has 10% of Account A’s audience, it still generates more leads. That could be the difference between targeting a large, underperforming account and a smaller one primed for impact and growth.

Like any marketing strategy, data works when it’s managed correctly. By integrating good data management into the overall strategy, ABM campaigns can increase their chances of success. Data also ensures that they can extract value from setbacks too.

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Using data to help your ABM strategy, and great ABM starts with clean and accurate data. Whether it’s leads validation, content curation or social influencer identification, Impact Enterprises provide those services that can help you identify ideal customers to target in your strategy. For more information, visit https://impactenterprises.org.