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.

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.

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.

External analytics can identify when a buyer has a problem they need to solve, based on their content consumption triggers as well as public data such as job board postings.

For example, certain tools can identify companies who are consuming content across topics that are related to the solutions you offer, either content on your own website or other websites. 

If you want to know when a customer is “in market,” your first task is to know the ICP and then partner with analytics providers to acquire intent data.

Chris says that companies of all sizes have access to these analytics tools, but large companies have more data to process from their CRM and many more products to sell requiring more analytics to uncover intent signals compared to smaller companies.

There are also many analytics companies as a service who can help smaller companies analyze data to identify buyer intent.

Chris says that in a startup scenario his first hire would be a Rev Ops person to understand their buyers and to select the tools needed to create a successful ABM target list.

Listen to the whole episode to learn more about using analytics and sales tools in your account-based marketing plan.