Why Analytics is a Must in Account-Based Marketing

How do you formulate an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy? How do you decide which accounts to target? And what is the role of analytics in ABM planning?

That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest, Chris Rack, President at PureB2B.

PureB2B leverages a database of B2B decision-makers in combination with their predictive analytics technology, to provide a full suite of solutions that help their clients meet their specific B2B demand generation sales and marketing revenue goals.

Listen to this episode to learn how to plan a successful ABM strategy.

Building Your ABM List

Who is responsible for creating the ABM list? Marketing or sales?

Chris says it should be a very collaborative approach, “taking a data approach and combining thought and feedback from both leaders, frontline sellers, sales leaders and front line marketers to come up with a real collaborative list.”

Marketing must go through a process of digital marketing transformation to rely on data and analytics to build a list of target accounts.

Instead of just going for the larger enterprise clients out there, marketers should start by looking at their CRM data to see:

• Who is buying with the highest frequency
• Who are the prospects answering sales calls
• Who is engaging with your website
• Who is engaging with your emails
• Which gates have the highest conversions on your website

Once you have that list, start filtering them by:

• Job title
• Company size
• Geo
• Industry
• Buyer personas
• Roles
• Level 
• Influencers
• Buying history
• Public/private

All of the above are analytics that marketers can use to determine which accounts to target using internal data.

Using Analytics Data

Now, there are also external analytics or predictive indicators marketers can use, with some tech tools available. However, Chris says, the intent signals from these tools are not designed to identify when people are ready to buy.

“Only Google knows that,” Chris says.

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