In this increasingly complex and dynamic B2B marketing environment, marketers are struggling to keep up with legacy demand and ABM strategies. Cutthroat competition and advancements in AI technologies are driving the need for B2B marketers to take full advantage of any and all tools available to stay one step ahead of their competitors. This means connecting quicker with more buyers, discovering and nurturing more opportunities, operating with accounts at a higher scale, and analyzing higher volumes of interactions even more precisely in order to optimize the delivery of the right campaigns to the right people at the right time – before their competitors do!
In a recent Forrester Report, B2B Needs to Move Beyond Demand & ABM, Laura Cross and Robert Peterson outline the problems that exist within the historically segregated demand and ABM methods, their evolutions, and the 4 cornerstones guiding the transformation above and beyond a simple convergence. The main problems noted stem from the fact that, “the silos that have typically existed between demand and ABM, for example, inhibit potential breakthrough thinking aimed at driving smarter demand and intelligent revenue growth.” And while the adoption of account-based strategies has delivered meaningful results to B2B marketing, they pose the question, “why can’t this data-driven, audience-centric approach be delivered to support all opportunities within all accounts, at scale?” As they expand upon the 4 cornerstones to moving beyond the convergence of these methods, they list critical concepts, actions and thought processes to internalize moving forward to ensure your company evolves with the B2B marketing world rather than falling behind it.
Forrester outlines the 4 cornerstones of transformation beyond convergence as:
- Revenue Growth Must Focus On All Opportunity Types
- Replace Leads With Buying Groups In Revenue Processes
- New Capabilities Must Be Addressed Beyond Convergence
- Success Metrics Must Evolve Beyond Sourcing
In short this means that ABM at the account or lead level is not enough — it has to be at all levels of the buying center and buying team. Which means that active profiling is key. This requires unified first- and third-party profiles with advanced scoring and buying signal prioritization.
Let’s take a look at one of the ways B2B marketers can tackle these 4 cornerstones and ultimately move beyond Demand & ABM – by implementing a powerful Customer Data Platform (CDP). With a CDP solution, all opportunity types (acquisition, cross-sell, up-sell, and renewal) are categorized within dynamic buyer profiles where they’re monitored by numerous unique considerations and buying signals to paint an up-to-date picture of your buyer beyond just their transactional behavior.
With a CDP, you can identify your TAM, buyer profiles are created at the person, account, and buying center levels – meaning you can segment, score, and prioritize entire buying groups – as well as individuals within accounts – instead of just accounts.
A CDP offers capabilities beyond unification as it integrates AI-optimized buying signals from 30+ curated third-party data-sources that go into building dynamic, multi-level buyer profiles which are regularly updated for accurate, timely understanding of your buyers.
You can take advantage of scoring models (Fit, Intent, TAM, and ICP), so it’s easier than ever for B2B marketers to target the right people, with the right campaigns, at the right time – before your competitors do!
How Leadspace enables advanced Account Based Marketing to buying centers and buying teams:
- Account Identification & Prioritization: Account-based predictive models w/ full transparency built to prioritize your known set of accounts and identify unknown (whitespace) high value accounts to target.
- Lead-to-Account Discovery: Ensures existing leads within your Marketing Automation and CRM are properly associated with accounts. The lead to account matching is also available in real-time for net new inbound leads. Also, includes support for account hierarchy (site level) and subsidiary matching to maintain parent/child relationships.
- Account Expansion: Use predictive models to “expand” accounts, finding new high-value contacts for each buyer persona.
- Persona Targeting: Use best-fit persona signals and rich attribute data at the company and person level to better understand prospects and engage with them in the most effective way.
- Account-Based Sales Prospecting: Identify and prioritize ideal contacts within key accounts in real-time, using predictive models built on actionable insights at the company and person level.
- Buying Signals (Intent): Identify unique, actionable buying signals using Leadspace proprietary data blended with traditional “intent data” at the individual and company level.
- Leadspace Analytics: Measure, track and optimize your ABM efforts across all of your key accounts.
How Leadspace goes beyond ABM with Leadspace Professional and Enterprise Profiling:
- Advanced Profiling for ABM to pursue and optimize high-spend retargeting campaigns, early funnel scoring prioritization, high-touch proactive nurturing, lookalike messaging, and vertical- and/or persona-based. Key capabilities include identification of buying propensity, in-market company or product interest, persona-scoring for specialist reps, and efficient account & contact targeting.
- Advanced Profiling for Account & Lead Scoring to pursue and optimize account selection and prioritization, lead scoring & conversion, bigger deals (LTV), cross-sell/upsell, and retention. Key capabilities include being powered by CDP data & activation, actionable model insights, adaptive model refresh, and segment normalization.
- Advanced Profiling for Product or Account Intent to pursue and optimize monitoring target accounts for in-market buying signals, uncovering and targeting potential opportunities before competitors, and improving sales and marketing intelligence for more timely and effective outreach. Key capabilities include being powered by CDP data & activation, having multi-source aggregation, and topic/trigger weighting.
- Advanced Profiling for Inbound and Outbound Lead Prioritization enables you to prioritize outreach to Accounts based on predictive fit, weekly intent surges, and product-specific intent scores.
For more information about the evolution of Demand & ABM, issues surrounding their convergence, and a deep-dive into the 4 cornerstones of transformation beyond their convergence, check out the Forrester Report, B2B Needs to Move Beyond Demand & ABM written by Laura Cross and Robert Peterson. Read the Leadspace fact sheet to see how Leadspace’s CDP solution can modernize and optimize your B2B marketing approach in a world where Demand and ABM fall short.
