Using AI and ABM To Drive Success During a Recession

Historically, the economy has proven to be cyclical. A recession can quickly turn into an economic boom, and vice versa. Companies that are able to adapt to changes in their market’s demand during an economic boom or bust can be well positioned for success when the next cycle hits. In fact, some of the best growth strategies are executed during recessions, as consumers look for ways to save money by going to cheaper alternatives instead of higher-cost products and services that they don’t necessarily need or want.

And let’s face it - demand generation is an important part of any marketing strategy, no matter the time or economic climate. When executed strategically, Account Based Marketing (ABM) is an effective way to reach prospects at the right time. It allows marketers to identify potential accounts and individuals who are likely to convert and target them accordingly.

It’s not however, a panacea without penalty. ABM is a long-haul play requiring an intimate partnership with sales teams and marketing strategy that needs to build momentum to drive short-term results. If you’ve ever been engaged in an ABM effort before, you know that there can be a lot of ‘heavy lifting’ in terms of time, resources and budgets to build momentum. Marketers often will need help just getting started.

AI informed techniques and technologies can help marketers to understand their audiences better than ever before by parsing through vast amounts of data to find insights that would have been impossible to discover just a few years ago. In fact, AI can accelerate marketer’s ROI on their ABM investments.

How? They will be able to create more personalized content and inform the ABM strategies that resonate with both Accounts and individual customers or prospects. AI can predict what an audience is in need of, highlight what they are already interacting with, and help to surface this insight - sometimes in real-time - to inform the personalized messaging, content and CTAs that resonate within selected ABM targets.

?Look Beyond Today’s Targets - Whenever there are economic downturns, it's more necessary than ever to be creative about who is targeted and how. Using AI informed demand generation techniques that are uniquely tailored to the needs of marketers can help them expand beyond their current lists and targets.

Building account plans with the ICP expansion in mind can be tricky, but it's worth it. With AI's help, you'll be able to create more targeted account plans that will convert at higher rates than ever before. Plus, marketers will have more unique data about their customers. So, when they're ready to spend again, they'll know who their best prospects are and how much time they should invest in each one.

Start with diving into your prospect's data to see what they know today about targets, prospects and customers. You need to find out what’s filling pipelines and resulting in sales today and whom are most profitable and desirable to retain over the long run. No doubt you can also use this opportunity to offer up data enrichment to fortify what they know about their customers. The goal here is to give you a good baseline to build from and will start the creative juices flowing with marketers.?‘I didn’t know that’ or ‘this makes sense’ are the right sorts of reactions so you’ll know you are headed down the right path.?

Once you have validation, you can start using artificial intelligence to uncover new buyers and the channels they are engaged with by looking beyond today’s dataset as potential leads. Look for targets beyond in-house data using 3rd party data resources to seek out look-alikes and expand their reach. In a recession, marketers should be thinking about how they not only continue to reinforce their best customers and prospects, but they should be actively seeking future growth.

Strengthen Data Quality - Having good data is paramount to any ABM technique and an ideal outcome from using AI. Invest in data hygiene by deleting duplicate contacts, updating contact data, and incorporating new information into your working database. Their CRM system should also be updated to reflect the most current marketing efforts, so that you can make informed decisions with them about where and how to spend resources.

Beyond cleaning up bad data, companies may need to mature their understanding of the lead funnel. This is to help them and you to keeping tabs on where contacts fall in terms of marketing stage. The basics apply - moving leads into marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and then further develop them as sales-ready leads.

Contact information about every MQL should be entered into your CRM system, so that you’re able to use proper segmentation in your ABM plan. Marketers want to avoid wasting time with accounts and individuals who are unqualified. This keeps costs down and may require less resources when it comes time to buy ads, invest in technology, creative, or even sending email campaigns. Data quality is a key factor often determining whether these tactics will work or not.

And helping to save money to make more revenue during an economic downturn is not only good for any enterprise but will benefit your organization over the long run.?