The B2B ecommerce market emerged in 2022 as one of the fastest growing business models. This trend is expected to continue in 2023. It is estimated that 17% of all B2B deals will be completed online by 2023. While these are exciting times for B2B ecommerce, the market continues to face a number of challenges. First, sales cycles are long, often weeks or months. In addition, identifying qualified leads is often more difficult for B2B ecommerce stakeholders. Poor customer retention is another constant problem. Consequently, B2B operators have tried different strategies to solve these problems and increase profits. This has led to account-based marketing, a promising and pioneering strategy.
WHAT IS ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing tactic that groups potential and existing buyers for highly targeted sales and marketing campaigns. At ABM, the goal is to establish long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with customers. This is made possible by conducting research studies to understand their needs and idiosyncrasies. Then marketers can nurture and convert buyers with personalized marketing campaigns and services. Hence, ABM is often referred to as a market for one approach.
Account-based marketing is perfect for B2B ecommerce businesses, especially those that sell expensive products to a limited number of customers. Companies looking to shorten their sales cycles and reduce customer churn should also find ABM quite useful. There is plenty of statistical evidence of the effectiveness of this marketing tactic. For example, according to SiriusDecisions, 91% of companies using this strategy increase their deal size. In addition, a revenue increase through the use of ABM can amount to as much as 208%.
As effective as ABM can be, many marketers fail to maximize this strategy. This happens because they cannot deliver the level of personalization needed to convert buyers. And as we now know, personalization is all about dates. That's why ABM marketers need to invest in one today Customer Data Platform (CDP).
HOW DOES CDP BOOST ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING STRATEGY?
A CDP is robust software that collects data from multiple sources and unifies the information to create customer profiles. This seemingly simple feature can take account-based marketing to the next level. Here are four ways it helps:
IDENTIFICATION OF IDEAL CUSTOMERS
Most ABM marketers often face a selection crisis when choosing the right customers. This further lengthens the sales cycle and potentially leads to wasted resources. However, a CDP can help marketers know accounts that need their products and services. This is due to the customer profiling function of CDP software. By helping marketers build the ideal customer profile, a CDP can significantly streamline marketing and sales processes. Marketers can use the characteristics of the ideal customer to generate leads with the viable potential to become customers.
BETTER LEAD QUALIFICATION
Even after generating leads, the important task remains to qualify them in the right way. Often this phase of lead qualification puts a strain on the relationship between marketing and sales teams. However, a CDP can greatly improve the situation for more powerful account-based marketing. CDP software can collect and unify customer data to provide a 360-degree view of each account. It can then perform advanced segmentation based on keywords, behavioral data, and other preset criteria. This will reveal accounts with the greatest potential to become long-term and valuable buyers. Therefore, marketers can focus on creating personalized campaigns for these prospects. Similarly, the sales department can close more sales calls and both departments can work together better.
CREATION OF HIGHLY CUSTOMIZED CAMPAIGNS
Personalization is essential in business, but perhaps even more important in B2B transactions. CDP can help account-based marketing work better by providing valuable insights by analyzing the customer information in the database. For example, it can inform marketers about the prospect's preferred channel and communication hours. Also, a CDP can map the average customer journey, which can reveal pain points that prevent prospects from converting. The segmentation feature also increases the relevance of marketing content shared with customers. As a result, marketers can enhance their campaigns with personalization for greater returns.
APPROACH THE RIGHT STAKEHOLDERS
One aspect of account-based marketing that is often neglected is the target account's stakeholders. A perfectly designed campaign can still struggle if it's targeted at the wrong buying committee members. For context, the right members are those who find your content highly engaging and heavily involved in decision-making. This becomes evident through behavioral targeting to identify the stakeholders who spend the most time consuming your content. The campaign can then be further streamlined to get as many stakeholders as possible on the buying committee.
In conclusion, while account-based marketing is a formidable strategy, it still needs support. CDP software is crucial to scale your ABM strategy to hundreds and thousands of accounts and larger deals. This can increase sales and ROI for online B2B companies. Consider getting the right one CDP to include in your ABM strategy to enjoy a profitable 2023.