Is your ABM strategy data-driven?

[jrineakter]

Account acquisition rather than contact acquisition as a B2B marketing strategy has been around for a long time. Statistics point to great success with ABM in some companies, which is why many marketing professionals have thrown themselves into its dazzling universe.

For most of these companies, there has always been a critical piece missing in the way their account-level B2B engagement has been conceived. Have all of these companies ensured that their ABM strategy is data-driven? We believe not.

Ditch gut-based marketing
The number of marketers actively deploying ABM tactics for their revenue goals took a huge leap from 15% in 2020 to 70% in 2021. This high rate of ABM adoption in the B2B marketing universe would seem to suggest the existence of an ideal machinery for generating qualified leads and high funnel velocity in most of these organizations.

And yet, the B2B space has seen a 22% increase in sales cycles since 2015. Win rates have fallen across all industries. And companies have seen a 38% increase in deal dead rate over the past list of telegram users in cambodia 5 years. These numbers simply demonstrate that in many companies ABM has been deployed as a result of an aspirational mandate.

ABM as a game plan relies on careful account selection, account prioritization, smart messaging, and the ability to consistently take corrective action. The first goal of any ABM adoption plan should be to create a data strategy. It also requires a shared understanding of the ICP and buyer groups, as well as an appreciation of the buyer journey.


However, most B2B marketers are limited by a lack of a clear data strategy that enables them to gain the insights needed to understand what moves accounts along their journey and what doesn’t.

This leads to the terrible scenario of a broken pipeline and low funnel velocity. In such a situation, it wouldn’t be too harsh to point out that these companies are practicing aspiration-based marketing rather than account-based marketing. To ensure that they are truly practicing the latter, there needs to be a conscious shift from an instinctive style of marketing to a more data-driven approach.

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Better management of customer data to better understand the buyer journey
The challenges mentioned above highlight a fundamental problem in current ABM marketing strategies . The lack of understanding of account purchase journeys across multiple channels, long timeframes, and multiple stakeholders within an organization.

This is due to the absence of a strategy to aggregate data from all customer touchpoints over a long period of time. There is also an over-reliance on third-party data, such as B2B intent data . The stark reality is that most marketers are not employing any adequate form of engagement and intent tracking systems to measure the account-to-purchase process.

Without a clear buyer journey in sight, B2B marketers are unable to identify buying group behavior that directly impacts contact prioritization and, subsequently, accounts.

B2B companies should actively focus on customer data management. This should facilitate the capture and processing of account and contact data at different stages of the journey to ensure that marketers receive the right signals to work on. Calculated and structured account engagement is only possible with a data-driven process that takes into account end-to-end data management of all customer touchpoints .

It's not about more tools, it's about more information
Account-level engagement relies heavily on data accuracy. However, many companies practicing ABM have not followed a data-driven movement. This has been the biggest reason why B2B companies have failed to generate a qualified pipeline in a predictable manner. Sales and marketing have also been failing on their KPIs.