Marketing is an ever-changing field. Marketers constantly develop new marketing techniques to match the changes in customer expectations and technological developments. The latest marketing approach to takeover the field has been Account-Based Marketing (ABM). But how did the ABM approach become the primary approach for B2B companies, and what new technology can help you gain a competitive edge?
We’ll cover why ABM is important and why a visitor identification tool is a key technology to implement sooner rather than later.
The Changing Faces and Phases of Marketing
Marketing started in the late 18th century when print media took hold. From the early twentieth century to the late 1940s, market competitiveness became fierce as the number of companies skyrocketed. The need to increase revenue by marketing tactics became an integral part of staying competitive.
In the 1960s, businesses started considering marketing as a separate area and discipline. Huge agencies towered over the field. They created unique pitches and commercials that no longer simply described the product and its benefits but instead connected the product to emotions.
In the late 1990s came internet marketing. Marketers started exploring search engine optimization, digital advertising, and mass outreach that has now become more advanced in terms of ads and social media marketing.
A modern effective marketing strategy relies on comprehensive analysis, user testing, defining your buyer persona, funnel formation, activity assessment, and a unique approach for each client. There is no more blasting a single message everywhere like they did in the 60s.
Because of the massive amount of data marketers can now access, it’s possible to target specific accounts and personalize messaging for prospects. Typical outreach through email and ads has become so cluttered with sales and marketing messaging that targeted personalization is the only way to cut through the noise.
This brings us to ABM. There are other proven lead generation strategies that we have discussed in our earlier articles. But in addition to those techniques, we are sharing a new two-step approach that will help you identify hot prospects and effectively close them.
Consider The New Two-Step Approach in Your Marketing Strategy
You need to analyze every possible source to find potential clients and target accounts. So, without further ado, here’s how you can implement the two-step marketing approach for rapid identification and closing of prospects.
Step 1: Identify Your Website Visitors
The best source to identify your prospects is your website. However, according to Marketo, 96% of website visitors will not make a purchase or submit a form. Marketers can only concentrate on the 4% of website users who opt-in or sign up. A lot of effort and money is invested in an attempt to lift that number to 5 or 6%. That’s the challenge. How do you get insight into that other 96% of visitors who, based on their interest in your product or service, could become customers?
Yet, we have to admit not every user is a potential buyer. The key is to identify the businesses coming to your site. Then you can surmise that multiple visitors from a single company are more aware of your product category and have at least a moderate degree of interest in it.
Marketers can tailor the experience for anonymous visitors by using a visitor identification tool, to unlock data about your website visitors without requiring them to fill out forms. At this stage, you may not need to know every detail about your website users, but you can gather relevant data to enhance your website’s experience, find new accounts for outreach and retarget those visitors through specific campaigns!
Here’s what you can achieve using the visitor identification tool:
- Aid in the introduction of digital initiatives to attract the appropriate types of customers. For example, a company’s technographic or firmographic information may assist you in better understanding what size of companies are currently being attracted by your marketing efforts.
- Identify visiting companies, as well as the particular material they are interested in, to shorten your sales cycle and ultimately help you boost sales.
Step 2: Target Website Visitors With Account-Based Approach
Now that you have unmasked the visitors, it’s time to choose the best approach to reach them. As we established earlier, the current ideal method is account-based marketing.
According to a new SiriusDecisions survey, more than 70% of B2B businesses are committed to using Account-Based Marketing, or ABM. One size does not fit all, but you can build an ABM approach that fits better for you and your business.
Since the first step in developing an ABM approach is to identify accounts, you are already halfway through the process by using a visitor identification tool.
Next, analyze the behavior of your website visitors by tracking the web pages they visit and seeing what businesses are showing multiple visitors. Once you have that data, gather the firmographic and the technographic data of the businesses. You can then easily reach out using personalized messaging tailored to their size, field, and tech stack.
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It’s a win-win situation for you as you are targeting potential buyers, and you are sending them the content they want to read and engage with. This two-step approach is a smart way to boost your sales and marketing process.
It Never Looked Easy Until…
Not all visitor identification tools are created equal. Some are basic but inexpensive, capable of identifying previously anonymous website visitors, and not much else. Others will take the data and put it into effect, telling you which guests are worth considering as potential customers.
One thing is certain: no matter the scale of the business, there is a solution that will meet your needs while remaining within your budget. Our tool is VisitorIntel, and if you’re considering a visitor identification tool, we’d like to cover what VisitorIntel offers so you can compare it to other options you may find.
VisitorIntel:
- Allows sales and marketing teams to capture the names of companies visiting their website and then match that data against SalesIntel 40+ filters to narrow the results to accounts that match your ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Once your accounts have been narrowed you can filter the data on a contact level. Thus, giving you 95% accurate human-verified contact data of decision-makers and key influencers in those companies! This includes mobile work phone numbers, direct emails, LinkedIn profiles, and more.
- With your target accounts and your decision-makers identified, export the contact data directly to your CRM or email marketing platform for use in your sales and marketing funnel. For example, paid retargeting!
- Access industry-leading direct dials and mobile phone numbers for decision-makers and key influencers working for the companies who have visited your website.
- Identify net new “look-alike” prospects by using SalesIntel Firmographics and Technology to create detailed profiles for companies similar to your website visitors. This enables marketing departments to easily identify and incorporate other companies that match your company profiles into their target account lists.
- If your decision-makers are not in our system, you can request our Research on Demand service for any company that visits your website. This helps ensure that you will always find who you are looking for when using SalesIntel.
