A Deep Dive into Data Discovery
Welcome to part 4 of our Account Based Marketing (ABM) series.
So far, we’ve taken a look at the basics of ABM, how to align your sales and marketing teams ahead of your ABM campaign, and how to choose your target accounts.
In this installment, we’ll be taking a deep dive into data discovery — the importance of data to your ABM strategy, how to collect it, and why data hygiene is so crucial.
Let’s get started.
Why Good Data Is So Important
Good data is arguably the most important part of developing your ABM strategy, specifically when choosing your target accounts — it’s a B2B marketer’s best tool to identify the decision-makers ready to buy now.
In the next few paragraphs, we’re going to be discussing how to collect and utilize data from outside sources, but it’s important to note that plenty of data can be gathered internally from team members and existing data in your CRM.
3 Steps to Using Data For Choosing Targets
Step 1: Use Internet Data
One of the best ways to identify a target account is by gathering internet data. By using IP addresses and third-party cookies, we can look into online behaviors, such as search engine queries, repeat website visits and content downloads.
Step 2: Identify Net-New Prospects Through Audience Mirroring
As you begin to research and discover potential target accounts, you’ll begin to notice similarities in the types of businesses that come onto your radar. This can be a valuable research tool in helping you identify trends and patterns to build criteria for likely target accounts, ultimately speeding up your identification process and boosting your results.
Some places you’ll likely notice similarities include:
- Revenue
- Location
- Departments
- Employee Responsibilities
- Employee Roles
- Budgets
Step 3: Researching the Individual
By now, you’ve narrowed down a pool of prospects into a group of true target accounts. Now let’s not blow all your hard work with a sloppy ending — it’s time to bring it home with by researching your point of contact.
Figure out who you need to reach out to. Once you have it ball parked (department, level of seniority, etc.) start looking at who the ideal point of contact might be. Some of the specific details you’re after are:
- Job title
- Tenure
- Decision-making hierarchy
- Account affiliation
- Activity/engagement history
- Skills and proficiencies
- Experience with your category
- Personal information (hobbies, family, likes dislikes)
Identifying Weaknesses and Maintaining Data Hygiene
It’s important to recognize areas where you may have insufficient data. This is a good opportunity to partner with other companies who have access to quality data and work together.
It’s also crucially important not to be cavalier in your choices when it comes to third-party data acquisition — choose your third-party vendors wisely to ensure that data is well-informed and accurate
Moving onto hygiene: once you have data, you need to maintain it. While we all know that good data is important, accudata.com offers these statistics to put the true cost of bad data into perspective:
- Corrupted and inaccurate data costs US businesses approximately 3.1 trillion dollars each year.
- Nearly 40% of all sales/donor leads include some form of corrupted data, making them either difficult to use or simply useless.
- There is a 25% rate of consumer data decay annually, requiring consistent vetting.
The bottom line here: make sure you acquire good data and maintain its integrity through best practices.
ABM is all about specificity, whether that’s in delegating roles, establishing goals, or doing research. An ABM strategy can be intimidating, but the rewards are worth it. Make it easy on yourself by starting with great data.
Looking to broaden your knowledge on Account Based Marketing? Check back next Thursday for our final ABM blog focusing on how to execute your campaign.
Think you’re ready to start your ABM program now? Contact us to see what Strata can do for you.
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