B2B buying is changing and revenue teams have become disconnected from the modern buyer’s journey, some even still using the “spray and pray” model of acquisition. And, even for organizations that have deployed an ABM strategy, it is still a challenge to scale the approach beyond a handful of target accounts.
Today’s revenue teams are struggling to understand what the best plan of attack is when interacting with prospects. They find themselves asking:
- Who do I target and what content do I create for them?
- Where and when do I engage buyers?
- What are the best channels to reach my buyer?
- How can I utilize tools as a marketer and not an IT shop?
- How do I align my sales and marketing teams?
- How can my sales team beat the competition and get into deals faster?
These are just a few of the many questions teams are currently facing in today’s B2B buying landscape, but the challenges don’t stop there. The disconnect starts at the very first step of the buying process: based on 6sense analysis, only 10 percent of visitors to a website will raise their hand, making it difficult to identify those already interested in your brand.
It’s a challenge for teams to figure out who to target, as 9.6 people are involved in a typical B2B purchase decision — not to mention, nearly 70 percent of the sales cycle is completed before interacting with prospects. When faced with these challenges, revenue teams struggle to prioritize budget, identify which prospects to target with specific campaigns and sometimes where to even focus their time.
Competing and winning in the age of Account Based Buying
The revenue teams that are employing ABM strategies are winning, but not at the speed and scale they need. According to research from TOPO, this is the primary challenge marketers face this year. Many teams are now trying point solutions to solve their problems, but are quickly realizing the unstructured data is ineffective.
But, when revenue teams unite on a single platform leveraging big data, AI and machine learning, it allows them to not only uncover anonymous buying behavior but gives them the access they need to scale their ABM initiatives. With this information, they can easily prioritize fragmented data to focus on in-market accounts and engage with buying teams through personalized, multi-channel and multi-touch campaigns — resulting in the ability to understand and connect with buyers in today’s B2B landscape.
How Mediafly is cracking the code on Account Based Buying
It’s one thing to be able to identify the right accounts to target, but quite another to orchestrate all of the data into meaningful outreach. Without the right platform, big data can be overwhelming rather than empowering. AI must be a part of the solution to help marketers turn a massive volume of buyer intent signals into actionable insights that accelerate demand.
Mediafly, a B2B sales and marketing solution that delivers relevant, interactive insights to prospective buyers, had a lead-based approach particularly for events and inbound. This was driving a lot of activities, but not bottom-line results. With a target list of 1,000 accounts, they were ready to adopt Account Based Marketing to engage prospects sooner and generate more high-quality opportunities, and, most importantly, heighten their alignment between their sales and marketing teams.
Mediafly first engaged with ABM technology vendors with a focus purely on ABM ads. The team quickly realized the ability to uncover anonymous activity, then prioritize who is in-market with highly targeted ads was going to be a much more valuable approach. To accomplish this, they chose to invest in 6sense, an Account Based Orchestration platform powered by AI, that allows them to scale their ABM strategy, increase lead generation and improve campaigns.
In less than a week from implementing the Account Based Orchestration Platform, Mediafly was able to uncover anonymous intent from first and third parties, analyze data to create more sophisticated, targeted campaigns, and created highly personalized ads. Now, 6sense is used as a verb at Mediafly. Account executives beg to “6sense” their opportunities and have made it part of every forecast call.
Mediafly is now creating a unique experience for more than 1,000 enterprise companies — from industry videos and brand-specific campaigns to keyword search campaigns. Since implementing the Account Based Orchestration Platform, the quality of inbound opportunities has quickly gone up 10x. Previously, Mediafly had their eye on a Tier 1 account but was unable to reach it. With 6sense, they generated an opportunity with the account within just two months.
When revenue teams know which competitors are likely in their deals, what the prospect is researching, and which key personas they should be targeting, they can tailor their outreach with impactful content that delivers a better prospect experience – enabling them to compete and win more often.
About the Author: As CMO of 6sense, Latane Conant empowers revenue teams to compete and win in the age of account based buying through 6sense’s solution — allowing them to uncover, prioritize, and engage with demand by uniting one common, AI-powered platform.