Why Market Intelligence Is The Key To Great Account Based Marketing

An article for Marketing, Growth & Sales Executives, revealing why Market Intelligence is the foundation to great ABM.

Account based marketing (ABM) is a pretty utopian concept; everyone wants to do it, but there are barriers stopping them from the outset.

ABM is often driven by intent signals; you buy the same intent data as everyone else (which is a critical problem in itself) and learn that a buyer is interested in a new CRM, but this insight lacks context. Why are they interested? What does the CRM need to solve? These are the types of questions that salespeople need to know the answer to in order to best engage the buyer.

According to AMPLYFI’s research, most sales reps are currently using social media to research prospects (31%) which is very surface level. The amount of research conducted is also heavily influenced by the availability of information (44%) – the less information that is easily accessible, the less time is spent on research.

Beyond that, ABM intent is also based on web visits; customer X looked at page Y. While this is a useful metric for digital marketing, translating it into meaningful outreach is a challenge and risks hurting conversion rates.

At the very core, buyers want salespeople to know them and what they need before engaging. In fact, 81% of buyers said they’re more likely to purchase if the seller demonstrates an understanding of them and their business. This is the level of insight that ABM campaigns need but often lack.

The good news is that AI market intelligence tools can help. However, given that fear is currently holding back 60% of businesses from adopting generative AI, leadership teams must play an active role in overcoming these institutional barriers first.

The road to ABM greatness

There are three elements that make up a ‘best practice’ ABM solution stack: a clear set of accounts, a clear understanding of their needs, and a campaign that connects them. As part of account planning, teams conduct SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), and sector PESTLE analysis (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental), but often to a low quality due to time constraints.

Doing this analysis manually is just not feasible for several reasons, the primary one being a sheer lack of time. Sales teams are already under immense pressure to hit targets, but they don’t have enough hours in the day to develop prospect lists, do enough research and then tailor outreach. Put simply, targets are hurting sales’ ability to do better outreach, and 87% of sales reps say pressure to hit targets prevents them from tailoring outreach as much as they would like.

Another reason is an ongoing phenomenon of information overload. The datasphere is exponentially growing, and people across the board are becoming more and more overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information available to them, to the point that it hinders productivity. AMPLYFI research found that over half (57%) of workers today agree there are too many channels to feasible search through to find the information they require for their day-to-day job. A further 62% state that they do not have enough time to access information; choosing the quickest channel saves precious time, but comes at the expense of restricted reach. This is a killer for sales outreach.

A better way

Now we flip to the other side of the table, where buyers are being inundated with cold email outreach, receiving an average of 11 cold emails per day (and that excludes communications caught by spam filters). It takes a lot to cut through the noise of an overwhelmed inbox, and AI has the power to do so.

It’s time sales and marketing teams evolve their ABM strategies to leverage the full potential of AI to help them instantly connect with their prospects. The majority of respondents in AMPLYFI’s research agree that salespeople having insights on the buyer and business is vital before making contact. And the importance only increases as the potential deal size rises:

for £20k

for up to £500

AI-powered tools allow teams to take intent signals, contextualise them to the organisation and the sector, and drive better outreach, all with less effort. As a result, sales teams are freed up to focus their efforts on high value tasks, without neglecting the crucial research and insights that will open doors with prospects.

With email and LinkedIn inboxes becoming a graveyard of lazy sales templates, sales teams need to act now to turn things around.

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