Account-based marketing (ABM) is more relevant in 2024 than ever before. Market and customer segmentation and in-depth personalisation are not just effective but expected and will drive significant results.
Gartner says ABM strategies can increase conversion rates by 14%, leading to substantial ROI, but evolving technologies mean that ABM strategies must be continuously revitalised.
In this article, we’ll look at account-based marketing, relevant for success this year, which leverages AI tools, data, precise tracking, and personalisation.
1. Deploy AI Enhanced ABM
Using AI today goes far beyond automating tasks. The powerful insights AI-powered platforms produce allow the creation of finely tuned campaigns acutely targeted to the nuances of a refined set of prospects most likely to be receptive. AI’s insights mean less time covering ground and more time creating quality campaigns for customers who want to listen and who will engage.
If you’re already using one of the leading sales CRMs, it might be time to sit down and pay attention to how AI has been incorporated into its analytics, modelling and workflows and ensure your business is using these tools effectively.
If you find your martech stack lacking, begin 2024 by assessing new tools that fit your market and objectives. Look for providers likely to consistently innovate, as AI evolution isn’t over yet.
2. Go Above and Beyond with Personalisation
Gartner uses the term “hyper-personalisation” to define an approach that’s far more than simple name-dropping. Consumers expect personalisation, but B2B sales demands you demonstrate a deep understanding of your customer’s business, its activities, its objectives, and the problems you can solve.
Hubspot says salespeople save two hours and 15 minutes daily by using AI. This time can be effectively reinvested into personalisation. Sales teams can take the time to plan a call script or draft an email with a few very specific lines that clearly empathise with their prospect and a call to action that acutely matches a known pain point.
Gartner recommends that companies develop a culture of continuous learning for ABM personalisation using A/B testing and AI insights to refine tactics. AI automation now provides the time for sales teams to achieve this.
3. 360 Your ABM Strategy
Most businesses can’t deny that departments and functions have become disparate and disconnected through growth and technology. An ABM approach that sits solely with sales cannot deliver the level of intent and personalisation required to convert in 2024.
First, leaders must understand the intricate web of processes and workflows within their business before removing the siloes that exist between sales, marketing, and product development teams. Systems thinking is one way to overcome complexity and drive revenue growth.
Aligning sales, marketing, and product teams means every team member thoroughly understands product and campaign features, and sales and marketing can coordinate activities targeted to customer segments.
It’s as simple as ensuring that campaign themes and personalisation efforts synchronise and that calls and individual emails match the sentiments and features conveyed in social media and email marketing. Gartner says businesses that align sales and marketing teams are three times more likely to meet customer acquisition goals.
As well as using a systems thinking culture, on-the-ground approaches for effective alignment might include cross-functional teams, cross-departmental meetings, and shared dashboards and KPIs.
4. Refresh Segmentation and Adopt Tiering
A further symptom of maturity can often be out-of-date customer segmentation. Established sales team members will likely have prospects attached to them that are no longer relevant or need to be included in engaging clients with whom they will have a greater connection.
A new fiscal year is an opportunity to review target prospects and re-segment them to the appropriate stage or employee. AI-delivered insights will allow you to group prospects with similar pain points together, aiding personalisation and aligning the intent of sales and marketing teams.
Tiering takes segmentation a step further. This involves refining your customer groups by those that most closely match your ideal customer profile, have a high value, and have a high probability of converting. You can then tier down to less valuable groups and allocate sales and marketing efforts and investments according to the potential return.
5. Nurture Influencers and Strong Relationships
B2B sales takes more than knowing and contacting a decision-maker. High-value clients have multiple internal influencers and potential referrers, and it’s important to value the end product or service user as highly as the leader who holds the purse strings.
Nurturing influencers requires your company or product and its benefits to be visible to relevant stakeholders. Post-pandemic technological advancement requires creative approaches in media production, developing physical events, and forming connections with product users and leaders. Hubspot, in its account-based marketing guide, reiterates the importance of personalisation and choosing channels most relevant to your target accounts and contacts.
6. Measure, Analyse and Iterate Your ABM Strategy
The pace of industry today moves in months instead of years. ABM strategies need to be quickly produced and implemented, and monitoring of KPIs is closely incremented. Once again, the power of today’s CRMs can quickly lay bare sales and marketing campaigns that lack engagement and customers that have demonstrated zero potential interest.
It’s vital to step back weekly, monthly, and quarterly and use AI-powered instant progress dashboards for data-driven decision-making. It no longer takes days to collate performance against KPIs, so leveraging data insights as quickly as they are collated is critical. Don’t be afraid to change tactics quickly because your competitors will be moving fast, too.
With AI’s ability to significantly disrupt sales and marketing and sales CRM developers rushing to incorporate new AI functionalities into their platforms, 2024 will certainly be interesting for account-based marketers. It’s definitely not a year to take your finger off the pulse with strategy, technology, and performance monitoring. It is, however, time to hyper-personalise.
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