Account based marketing (ABM), is an enterprise marketing strategy that aims to shorten sales cycles by targeting specific companies (accounts), and then identifying and connecting with the decision makers in these accounts. New platforms on the market automate some or all of this process, providing advanced search capabilities to find the right stakeholders in the company you want to reach. Platforms like Terminus and Engagio help you automate the process of finding and connecting with decision makers for your product at targeted accounts.
Finding the Right Company for Your Product
But what if you don’t know what accounts to target. Say, for example, you’ve got a great product for contract medical device manufacturers specializing in implantable medical devices. There may be dozens or hundreds of such companies. How do you find ones that are a good fit for your product, and then reach out to the right people within these companies?
That’s where DemandBase comes it. DemandBase helps you build a profile of your ideal customer, much like a buyer persona, then it finds more companies that fit that profile, and helps you build campaigns to reach the right people in those businesses.
A Buyer Persona for Companies
DemandBase allows users to fill in the characteristics of their ideal companies, not individuals as in the case with inbound marketing buyer personas, with as much detail as possible. Then it identifies the companies that match your search criteria, and ranks the companies based on their behavior online. It goes even further to identify the right decision makers for your product, and displays each of these individuals’ behavior, including their interaction with your company (along with their contact information).
Those features are great, but DemandBase goes even further to suggest what kind of content would be right for each individual based on their web histories, and will even set up ad campaigns to serve ads to your individual prospects when it sees that they are online.
Big Data and Machine Learning
Behind the user interface are a lot of machine learning and big data analytics. DemandBase uses advanced IP address processing to track activity online, identifying companies and individuals, and uses that information to calculate buyer needs and interests. It also interacts with business databases to glean contact information, titles, and other customer information.
The reality for most companies is that few of the visitors to their websites are qualified potential customers–usually only about 20 percent. This means that your inbound marketing efforts are even more challenging, because you’re likely fielding inquiries from unqualified prospects, and staking your hopes for sales on hopes that 20 percent of your visitors will identify themselves and request information.
ABM puts marketers in the driver’s seat. But for some companies, knowing all the different businesses that are a good fit for your product can be difficult. DemandBase aims to solve this problem by using data to find companies and the individuals within them that are already interested in your product or service, and helping you reach them with the kind of content and offers they are looking for.