TLDR:
Intent data is a valuable tool to use when practicing ABM. The problem that most marketers have is how to take action on that intent data once they get ahold of it. Most marketing and sales teams rely on triggers to determine whether to engage a prospect. Normally, marketers would use an account-based platform to set up such triggers. But if a marketer lacks such an engine, they can create sublists manually.
Intent data: a modern B2B marketer’s dream.
There are tools that better enable a marketer to make sense of intent data, but too often, when marketers get intent data, they don’t know what to do with it. It’s true, too—it’s not enough for marketers to merely possess the data, they need to know how to take advantage of it.
And that’s not even considering the fact that because ABM stresses marketing and sales alignment, marketers have to share the data with sales.
But all of this can be avoided if a simple understanding is formed—kind of like a service-level agreement in inbound marketing. This understanding would spell out when it’s appropriate for marketing to act and when sales to swoop in.
Under normal circumstances, a marketer’s marketing budget would be large enough to accommodate account-based platforms such as Terminus. Terminus could automatically set up and carry out such rules, but there is a way to do this process manually if marketers need to do so.
It starts with creating sublists.
First, marketers doing this manually will need to define trigger inputs based on a variety of factors including fit, intent, relationship, and engagement.
Next, marketers would then need to define the actions that the trigger sets off. In the case of marketing, this could include when a prospect has crossed a touchpoint in the buying cycle. In sales, it could look like an alert as to when to engage the prospect.
Finally, define what happens and everybody involved when a trigger is set off.
By establishing the who’s who and what’s what of how to engage your prospects, marketing and sales can learn to be more efficient and work throughout the buying process without tripping all over each other.
Original article from Terminus on 2 July 2019.
