One thing is top of mind for marketers across the board in 2023: driving operational efficiency. With a recession looming on the horizon, it’s high time for businesses of all sizes to start planning and executing more precise go-to-market strategies or risk losing clients to savvier competitors.
Enter account-based marketing (ABM), a strategy that go-to-market teams utilize to target select groups of accounts that represent higher growth opportunities. The practice has risen in popularity in recent years, with 66% of marketers reporting ABM efforts are meeting or exceeding organizational expectations.
That said, ABM programs are only as successful as the supporting intent data—the information that indicates a prospect’s level of interest in a particular product or service online—used to inform them. Marketing teams use intent data to gain insight into which accounts are actively researching their products and services, allowing for easy identification of where accounts are in the sales funnel.
Equipped with this information, marketers also gain a holistic picture of which issues prospects and customers are most concerned with so they can tailor their messages and outreach tactics accordingly.
Ensuring the effective use of intent data is crucial for optimizing ABM strategies and thereby driving operational efficiency. Bearing that in mind, here are three ways marketers can use intent data to amplify account-based strategies and boost results.
Create a content marketing strategy
Intent data not only accelerates the sales cycle, it improves efficiency by ensuring teams aren’t wasting time and resources creating irrelevant content for accounts that shouldn’t be prioritized. Engaging prospective buyers with relevant content geared to what they’re researching and their journey stage will always perform better than generic, one-size-fits-all messaging.
As marketers compete for an account’s attention, it’s critical to create unique experiences that help differentiate your brand. Intent data enables teams to understand where target accounts are in their buyer’s journey, as well as which issues they care most about. By revealing the topics accounts are interested in, intent data can guide the development of content for segmented accounts at each stage.
Armed with this info, marketers can home in on the right messages, content and engagement tactics to personalize outreach for each account. They can also create a messaging and content matrix that maps intent signals to journey stages to content assets.
Develop an account-targeted paid media plan
During the research phase of the buyer’s journey, prospects utilize a variety of websites, tools and channels to understand the challenge they face and pinpoint a solution. From a marketing perspective, this is the optimal time to use a mix of engagement tactics to ensure messages are getting in front of decision-makers at target accounts. However, it’s equally important for marketers to ensure they are using the right tactics.
Paid media efforts add an extra layer of targeting precision to your brand outreach. By creating an omnichannel experience that immerses target accounts in brand-specific messaging relevant to their identified challenges and pain points, marketers drive ABM success.
What’s more, running intent-driven lead generation campaigns in tandem with programmatic advertising campaigns helps lay the groundwork for direct demand-generating efforts, such as content syndication initiatives or LinkedIn ad campaigns. These tactics boost the impact of individual channels and increase the likelihood that a business’s messaging and content will resonate with target accounts, ultimately increasing the odds of prospect conversion.
Analyze results for optimal performance
Once an ABM program launches, marketers should begin analyzing results across campaigns. They can see which intent data topic or keyword signals are proving to be the most important for each funnel stage and use case. From there, they can optimize their selection of topics and keywords accordingly.
However, there are several metrics to consider when evaluating an ABM campaign. Here are a couple of examples:
Total addressable market (TAM): This term refers to the revenue opportunity available for a product or service. Establishing a TAM helps your business understand every potential customer in a given segment. In turn, it also enables marketers to develop content that resonates with specific prospects instead of generic messaging.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This metric is the total sales and marketing cost required to earn a new customer. With intent data, marketers can dig deep into what specifically a customer is looking for, right down to the product pages they are viewing online. By gaining this deeper insight, organizations can tailor their marketing efforts to get customers in front of the singular product solution they need. Less time A/B testing means less money spent on customer acquisition.
As the economic landscape continues to shift in 2023, marketers need to focus on driving operations and increasing efficiency. They should have a keen eye on which content resonates with prospects and leads to the quickest sale. By leveraging the right data, in the right way, they can develop highly personalized and effective campaigns that target accounts that are ready to buy—and ultimately drive ROI.
