At a wine marketing conference that I hosted this past week, we got to listen to a speaker named Peter Isaacson from Demandbase. He provided a very helpful framework for sales and marketing alignment. Account Based Marketing is an approach for business to business marketing to help focus efforts on the main opportunities. The idea is not new, but their firm sells technology that allows you to scale and target in some interesting ways.
Demandbase sells technology to support this effort by allowing companies to prioritize and focus their marketing. If you get 100 visitors to your site, how can you make sure that those on your key account list get the right message and follow up? Instead of being overwhelmed by unqualified leads, sales gets the filets, not the fat.
If you have a targeted list of 20 accounts, how can you make sure that they receive the appropriate level of contact so that you market to a focused, limited group not a broad swath of the market?
Imagine going to a trade show and just spending one hour each on the three key, hot prospects and not wasting your time with the hundreds of browsers. Now imagine that’s how your website supports sales in generating leads and customers who want to know more. You want to focus your resources on those businesses who are most likely to purchase from you and who are on your top target list.
Most marketing is spray and pray.
Account Based Marketing
I don’t know enough about the technology to speak with authority on the topic, but it was an eye-opening approach that forces B2B companies to spend marketing dollars in a more strategic and targeted approach. One example of their technology allows you to know from a visitors IP address that they work at one of your targeted accounts. Then, as you drop a “cookie” on their computer, you can retarget messages to them with a considerable accuracy at the individual level. Retargeting means that when that person goes to a website like The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN or Politico, they see ads just for them about your offering.
Perception versus Reality. Marketing might believe they did an excellent job delivering one thousand leads in Q1 only to be disappointed when sales say, they weren’t qualified or from targeted customers.
According to a study by Miller Pierce (VOC study from 2014), 50% of all leads are never followed up with some estimates as high as 80%. Yikes.
Account based marketing allows you to:
- Focus on best opportunities
- Support sales reality
- Deliver customer-centric experiences
- Connect marketing to revenue
Want to learn more? Check out www.demandbase.com and check out this brief video on their offering.
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Do you need a little help aligning your sales and marketing targets? Let’s chat. I can help. Contact me.
Photo credit: File:US Navy 110419-N-HW977-339 Daniel King prepares alignment of various optical components using eye-safe visible lasers.jpg
Special note: This is not a paid sponsorship or ad for Demandbase. I think they offer something of value to marketers worth checking out.
