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How ABM strategies can accelerate marketing and sales velocity

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The B2B customer journey is set on a digital track

“What we have learned over the years in B2B — where we have higher average sales prices — is that we’re dealing with buying committees and multiple personas that are making [buying] decisions,” said Auseh Britt, VP of growth marketing at Terminus,  her presentation at The MarTech Conference (scroll down to watch the video of their session). “It’s a more efficient and effective approach to go after accounts than it is just one or two individuals.”

Rather than tailoring messages to individual customers, marketers in the B2B space are recognizing the need to adopt account-based strategies to resonate with groups of executive-level buying groups. This process necessitates a strong appeal to brands’ goals — often at the enterprise level — and this can’t be done without proper marketing and sales team alignment.

“The other thing that you need to make ABM successful is tight marketing and sales alignment,” Britt said. “It only works if you’re working together as a unified team and deciding who your ICP [ideal customer profile] is. Which accounts within that ICP are you going to go after?”

Here are three ways an ABM strategy can help improve sales and marketing velocity.

Account targeting from a marketing side

“I’ve worked for organizations where marketing ended when the opportunity was created,” Britt said. “We were all about driving the demand and the awareness and getting those qualified opportunities. But then after that salespeople are sometimes like, ‘Alright, it’s mine now. I don’t want any kind of marketing or promotions hitting them because I don’t want this prospect to get distracted.’”

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“I think that’s changing now; it’s refreshing to see that marketing does have a role to play with open opportunities,” she added.

Britt says marketing teams can improve account targeting by looking at these open opportunities, especially those one might think to glance over at first. She recommends including opportunities that aren’t just categorized as top tier — those with the highest propensity to close quickly. They should reach out to accounts that are under a certain dollar amount or those that are at a higher stage of the sales funnel as well.


1650069292 819 Why we care about B2B marketing A guide for marketers

More B2B marketers are adopting account-based marketing than ever before. Find out why and explore the ABM platforms making it possible in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!


Sales engagement and outreach

Britt’s presentation also highlighted the necessity of sharing data between marketing and sales teams. When accounts start to visit your web properties, click on your ads, or attend your event, marketers must get sales teams involved with their marketing campaigns.

She said marketers should share that data with sales so they can see who’s engaging and what type of intent signals they’re showing. This provides additional opportunities for sales outreach — even if no one’s clicking on that ad, they might be showing other intent signals that sales can act on, such as visiting the site or interacting through some third-party intent.

Britt’s own marketing team’s process of collaborating with sales, enhancing their engagement and outreach opportunities. They put together an email template for sales to use (shown below). It showcases an upcoming virtual event in the signature portion, helping sales better connect with accounts via email marketing.

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email signature marketing for ABMemail signature marketing for ABM
Source: Auseh Britt

“It’s about continuing to have those touches, that engagement with the account,” she said.


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Account analysis and measurement

“When it comes to pipeline acceleration, you’re hopefully improving your win rate with these [ABM] programs that you’re putting the surround sound type of campaigns around,” said Britt. “You’re increasing your average deal size as you’re nurturing them through the opportunities journey and then shortening that sale cycle and increasing the sales velocity.”

She suggested marketers develop methods for measuring account engagement — both from a marketing and a sales side. Teams should look into whether accounts are clicking on your ads, registering for your events or your webinars, signing up for the direct mail, and other straightforward measurements, but also less obvious engagement metrics. These include activity time, churn rate, customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value (CLV), and more.

She recommends marketers put together a high-level overview of their analysis for managers, what she calls an ABM scorecard (shown below). Scoring your marketing and sales teams’ account engagement in this way can make data clearer for higher-ups to act upon.

1654288431 31 How ABM strategies can accelerate marketing and sales velocity1654288431 31 How ABM strategies can accelerate marketing and sales velocity
Source: Auseh Britt

“This is a simple way to display those key metrics, especially when you’re reporting it to leadership,” she said.

Account-based marketing: A snapshot

What it is. Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a B2B marketing strategy that aligns sales and marketing efforts to focus on high-value accounts. 

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This customer acquisition strategy focuses on delivering promotions — advertising, direct mail, content syndication, etc. — to targeted accounts. Individuals who may be involved in the purchase decision are targeted in a variety of ways, in order to soften the earth for the sales organization. 

Why it’s hot. Account-based marketing addresses changes in B2B buyer behavior. Buyers now do extensive online research before contacting sales, a trend that has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of marketing’s tasks in an ABM strategy is to make certain its company’s message is reaching potential customers while they are doing their research. 

Why we care. Account engagement, win rate, average deal size, and ROI increase after implementing account-based marketing, according to a recent Forrester/SiriusDecisions survey. While B2B marketers benefit from that win rate, ABM vendors are also reaping the benefits as B2B marketers invest in these technologies and apply them to their channels.

Read next: What is ABM and why are B2B marketers so bullish on it?


About The Author

Guide to what you missed at the fall 2022 MarTechGuide to what you missed at the fall 2022 MarTech

Corey Patterson is an Editor for MarTech and Search Engine Land. With a background in SEO, content marketing, and journalism, he covers SEO and PPC to help marketers improve their campaigns.

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MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

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