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Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a hot topic in B2B circles because it promises to dramatically increase the value of customer relationships, enabling marketers to treat accounts as markets of one and personalize every step in the buyer journey. To meet demand for ABM solutions, virtually every B2B marketing vendor has skin in the game. With so much activity and so many solutions crowding the space, many marketing teams have lost direction. Forrester recently released their ABM Vendor Landscape to provide strategic direction to marketing teams and help clarify the myriad of vendor solutions. Forrester specifically calls out how sales enablement tools can enable ABM.
Forrester outlines 4 key components to ABM success:
1. Select and target — create strategy and identify account priorities and contact targets
2. Gather Insights — identify issues, insights and communication approach
3. Design Engagement — develop assets, messaging and engagement strategies
4. Orchestrate Interaction — execute strategy, record interactions and track results
Sales Enablement tools become particularly important in Designing Engagement (content personalization) and Orchestrating Interaction (maintaining a context on accounts between Sales and Marketing to ensure ABM efforts continue past initial marketing qualification). However, some can support all 4 components of ABM. For example, ClearSlide customers use robust engagement analytics to support each component:
Select and Target. Account Based Engagement Reports in ClearSlide are designed to help identify new contacts to target, prioritize existing contacts, and rank accounts when selecting accounts and targeting contacts. Identify and rank engagement quality across channels (email, online meetings, and in person meetings) of contacts within any account. Engagement data is represented in easy to digest dashboards, with detailed drill-downs.
Gather Insights. Identify when buyers take key actions with real-time alerts and engagement analytics. Measure actions and activities in a specific channel (in-person or online meetings, email, or social) or aggregated across channels. Assess how customers engage with your company to help identify opportunities for upsell and maximize retention.
Design Engagement. In creating content and assets, most ABM tools stop short at connecting account based marketing messaging with sales efforts. With ClearSlide prior engagement insights at the contact and account level can be leveraged by sales teams to personalize content.
Orchestrate Interaction. Ensuring seamless hand-offs and transitions between marketing, sales, and service is critical to the success of ABM. Capturing the complete history of activities and engagement ensures continuity across accounts and contacts as different teams interact with them. Account Based Engagement Reports facilitate this orchestration by providing intuitive, complete view of account engagement.
Utilizing engagement analytics can help support ABM efforts across all 4 components of an ABM strategy. Before investing in new tools, Forrester recommends you clearly define goals and initial use cases for ABM and leverage your existing marketing and sales technology. As you plan for the future, consider how a complete sales engagement platform can help build an integrated marketing and sales technology stack.
To learn more, read the full Forrester report.