Tech-powered ABM is the future of marketing. Is your startup prepared for the transition?
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Take a look around any city sidewalk, classroom, restaurant or waiting room, and you’ll see how prevalent technology has become in our society. In fact, according to a 2018 survey by Pew Research Center, just more than a quarter of consumers say they’re “constantly online.” But technology could never eclipse real human conversations and interactions, could it?
According to Daryl Plummer, managing VP at Gartner, that reality is just a few years away. Plummer believes that by 2020, artificial intelligence tech (such as chatbots) will dominate both our social and business cultures, heading up everything from customer service interactions to lead discovery conversations. And because bots will be trained to deliver targeted messages, have personality and incorporate hyperlocal nuances into conversations, people could find great joy in engaging with them. Before we know it, we could all be conversing more with bots than with our own spouses.
We can thank today’s information-fatigued consumers for innovative solutions such as this — and, in part, for the growing popularity of account-based marketing. Rather than wasting time on mass marketing that fails to grab or keep targets’ attention, ABM calls for marketers to tailor messages to specific personas or audiences — ultimately personalizing the brand experience for users and generating more viable leads for the company.
And when paired with certain technology, ABM can be a real game changer for businesses, especially resource-strapped startups and time-starved entrepreneurs looking to tip the scales in their favor.
Making ABM work for your startup.
It’s the scaled-back, prospect-focused approach of ABM that’s key to effectively engaging your targets and maximizing your team’s efficiency. Each success you have with a targeted account will offer you new insights, skills and tools that will help you expand your marketing efforts as your startup grows.
However, the true secret to ABM success is leveraging the right technologies to set your business apart from the others. The best emerging technologies will help you not only target and streamline your efforts, but also track and strengthen your engagement rates, saving you valuable time and money in the long run.
Some technologies are already known to pair well with ABM. For instance, digital footprints can aid in identifying your audience’s unique obstacles, and predictive intelligence solutions can help you anticipate target accounts’ needs so you can perfectly time marketing messages. Furthermore, addressability and programmatic buying can enable you to target messaging to those with certain characteristics, such as job title.
But it’s important to investigate…
