2022: The Death of B2B Marketing?
February 1, 20222022: The Death of B2B Marketing?
February 1, 2022Why AI is the Foundation of ABM at Scale
YOUR POTENTIAL B2B CLIENT LIST IS GROWING, BUT HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT ALL OF YOUR DIVERSE PROSPECTS HAVE IN COMMON?
THEY LOVE RECEIVING PERSONALISED ATTENTION - SO WHY ARE YOUR CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING SKILLS STUCK IN THE UNCANNY VALLEY?
WE GET IT. AUTOMATED OUTREACH SEEMS LIKE THE EASY WAY TO STRIKE UP AND SUSTAIN HUNDREDS OF UNIQUE DIALOGUES. THE PROBLEM IS THAT NOBODY REALLY ENJOYS TALKING TO BOTS – SORRY SIRI, ALEXA – PARTICULARLY WHEN THE BOTS WERE THE ONES WHO STRUCK UP THE CONVERSATION.
THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT WARM, HUMAN-LIKE ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING (ABM) IS NO LONGER THE IMPOSSIBLE IDEAL IT USED TO BE. THANKS TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS COMMUNICATION CAN SCALE RIGHT ALONG WITH YOUR PROSPECTS AND CAPABILITIES. HERE'S HOW TO KEEP YOUR OUTREACH GROWTH SUSTAINABLY IMPACTFUL WITHOUT IT FEELING QUITE SO ROBOTIC.
What Makes Account-based Marketing So Revolutionary?
There's a huge chasm between generic, best-fit client account data and paying B2B clientele. ABM bridges the gap by making interactions more genuine and rewarding for both sides.
Start small. Instead of beginning with a broad campaign, concentrate on individual accounts, ideally an existing high-valued client or viable target partners.
Then, you can create outreach specifically targeting those organizations' decision-makers and thought leaders. By engaging in organic conversations that potential clients could actually get hyped about, you'll dramatically increase the odds of positive feedback.
ABM is similar to how humans form and maintain such real-world relationships. The big difference is that it leverages AI to be achievable en-masse with far less heavy lifting.
How AI Complements and Strengthens ABM
Why isn't ABM the standard if it's so simple? The problem is largely historical.
In the past, marketers and sales teams didn't have the time to cultivate familiar relationships with all of their potential clients. They had to focus on just a few high-value prospects and hope for the best.
And traditional ABM strategies relying on manual interaction were tough to scale up. You'd have to hire more people to identify prospects and conduct preliminary research. You'd also be hard-pressed to maintain open lines of communication without paying marketing agencies thousands.
In short, it wasn't an outreach style all businesses had the means to implement.
A Perfect Problem for AI
Artificial intelligence makes many aspects of B2B marketing simpler, but it's particularly powerful when applied to ABM. Machine learning helps you put data to work more efficiently and draw more rewarding conclusions that inform your future actions. For example, your marketing team can easily
• Send exploratory inquiries to multiple people and use sentiment analysis to determine which ones respond favourably – or fine-tune your general approach,
• Automate tasks like sending follow-ups or remarketing based on specific account events, like whether someone in your industry engaged with a particular social media post,
• Examine organisational hierarchies from publicly available data, such as LinkedIn profiles and private or professional blog posts, to identify receptive decision-makers who have an impact on purchasing decisions, and
• Curate and filter social media behaviours, trade forum posts, and article comments by a target demographic to discover your prospects' biggest pain points.
Such practices overcome many of the traditional stumbling blocks to implementing ABM. By normalising how you tackle everyday marketing tasks and evaluate potential leads, AI also improves the quality of the feedback that drives your decisions.
The Value of Genuine Personalisation
AI-powered ABM is highly effective at boosting outreach success. Remember that marketing isn't just about finding and connecting with the right people. You also need to engage them in a manner they're receptive to.
One study by Google found that some 90% of marketers observed direct links between personalisation and profitability. The same research revealed that around 61% of people expected brands to tailor experiences to their preferences.
If this is the case in the consumer world, it stands to reason that the B2B arena would be similar. After all, when a purchasing manager decides how or if they'll respond to your outreach, they'll rely heavily on their perception of the tone you adopt. Whether your message passes this gatekeeper depends not only on what you say but how you say it.
Navigating Potential Pitfalls
Not all automated personalisation efforts are resounding successes. You have to go the extra mile to refine them.
As a case in point, we at MyConversation tried an experiment by split testing outreach messaging among two groups of targeted contacts. One set received outreach driven by AI-based personalisation, and the other did not.
At first, the response rates and other engagement metrics looked the same for the two groups. Then, we accounted for the varying degrees of personalisation used with different accounts.
When our outreach referenced a contact's previous social media activity, the difference was like night and day: Responses were far warmer, and there was an instant rapport at subsequent "first" contact.
What Does It Take to Do ABM Right?
When executed with diligent attention to detail and a human touch, AI-backed ABM outreach efforts accomplish more than merely getting your foot in the door. They distinguish you from the standard – those annoyingly bland, spammy tactics that sometimes make you want to close your LinkedIn account for good and move to a hermitage.
At MyConversation, we're not trying to replace human interaction. We just want to empower you to leverage it impactfully.
We're passionate about redefining outreach and fostering genuine dialogue between your marketing teams and senior industry leaders. We firmly believe your sales inboxes and social media presences should be venues for healthy conversation – not one-sided shouting into some empty digital void.