Learn the Tools for Account-Based Marketing

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how Account Engagement helps with account-based marketing.
Explain how to extend Account Engagement into advertising with Advertising Studio.
Explain the role Sales Cloud plays in ABM.
Understand the importance of B2B Marketing Analytics.

Technology and ABM

Technology is a critical component of developing and executing account-based marketing campaigns. Remember our four pillars for a successful ABM strategy? Let’s look at which type of technology works best for each of those four pillars.

Pillar One: Identify Key Accounts

Sales Cloud stores all the account data you need to power your account-based marketing strategy so you can develop an account-centric view to power every touch point.

It’s important to start by extending your own CRM data from the Lightning Data ecosystem. Lightning Data uses sophisticated matching algorithms and machine learning to make it easy to implement and deliver strategic data and insights from trusted, third-party sources. Lightning Data apps give customers next-level data quality, enabling them to create more intelligent processes built on better, more targeted data, which improves CRM user adoption and ROI.

Using Lightning Data partners, you have all the data you need to know which accounts are the best fit for your business, and which ones are showing intent to buy. By combining the data from Lightning Data partners and the data from Account Engagement, you can know which accounts are actively engaging with your campaign.

When identifying which accounts and which data to use, it’s important to make sure you are pulling the right account fields into Account Engagement so you can use them in your personalization and segmentation. Also, when starting your ABM strategy make sure you have good data quality so you may need to do a data cleanup before implementing your strategy.

Fit = Intent = Engagement = The key to developing a prioritized list of accounts with your sales team. Knowing your target accounts is the Fit. Knowing which of your target accounts are actively researching or buying so you can prioritize them is Intent. And knowing when and how to create engagement with the right people (buyers) at these accounts to build pipeline and revenue is Engagement.

You can also use B2B Marketing Analytics and Account Engagement together to help rank these target accounts. Ranking ensures that everyone is focused on the target accounts with the highest propensity to close.

Account-Based Marketing Analytics Dashboard shows account details broken down by individual account.

Pillar Two: Engage Buyers Everywhere

Targeted buyers are more likely to engage with content when it’s tailored specifically to them. According to the fifth State of the Connected Customer report, 56% of respondents (comprising both customers and business buyers) said they always expect personalized offers, and 89% of business buyers said they were more likely to buy from a company that demonstrates an understanding of their business goals.

Because account-based marketing is a specialized approach, it’s important to create unique experiences for your buyers. Think of it like giving them the white-glove treatment. Engagement Studio makes this process a lot easier. The Engagement History Dashboard on the Account page layout shows data such as campaign activity and active contacts to help hone in on the successful campaigns.

You can engage buyers everywhere in three easy steps: Engagement Studio for automated journeys then Engagement History Dashboard for quick actions and Advertising Studio broadens the reach of this content into all channels where your accounts spend their time- LinkedIn, Google, Meta, and Twitter.

Account Engagement takes all the great data from Sales Cloud and lets you use it to build out targeted campaigns so you can build cross-channel account engagements in a single platform. From there, you can track your success and see exactly how your prospects are interacting with your content, all from one place.

Sample Engagement Studio campaign.

Pillar Three: Deliver Connected Engagements

Getting your sales and marketing teams to work toward similar goals is challenging, but it’s important for account-based marketing. Marketing can learn a lot from sales about your target accounts, and marketing can direct their efforts to help sales win those deals. Enabling collaboration between these teams delivers connected engagement with your customers and builds trust.

Sales teams should have easy access to all the compelling content your marketing teams create. If your sales teams are spending time searching for new content or crafting their own emails to customers, they’re either duplicating marketing’s efforts or potentially creating messages that fall outside of your brand standards. Either way, you can resolve the issue with marketing automation.

Sample Send Engage Email.

Pillar Four: Grow Customer Relationships

You’ve got your marketing and sales teams working together, and you’re creating special experiences for your prospects. But how do you know all this hard work is paying off? B2B Marketing Analytics, Engagement History, and Accounts as Campaign Members can help.

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