Demand for the right tech stack that will help marketers with the many facets of their demand generation and ABM programs are soaring. Marketers are all looking to scale, automate, and accelerate their marketing initiatives that will move leads further down the pipeline and support them especially if they are implementing an ABM program with their target accounts.
Finding out the right tech stack for your organization can be daunting and confusing. It’s not surprising as you take a look at ChiefMartec’s Marketing Tech landscape for 2020. With 8,000 companies vying for your attention, you’ll need to choose wisely on which marketing technology works best for your needs and your budget.
The first step is to gain clarity on the what, the why, the who, and the how. What is your objective? What is your strategy in acquiring this tool? What problem are you trying to solve? What is your budget? Why do you need it? Who and how many will use it, and who can manage the technology you are planning to get? All these questions will need to be answered before you even venture to look at what is available.
To help you figure out what you should be looking at in terms of tech stack. Here’s a breakdown of the basic types of technologies you must have as you kickstart your ABM program.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Depending on the size of your organization, you probably already have a CRM platform in place. With an ABM strategy, every interaction is important thus having a robust CRM tool helps keep marketing and sales aligned as they use it to get insights on how the account is moving along the funnel. Keep in mind, your sales team will have to be diligent in recording information on any touches with the potential customer to keep everyone on track especially as you execute ABM plays. Also, keeping a keen eye on the customer experience with your CRM tool is paramount to growing sales organically.
Companies offering CRM solutions include Salesforce which is ideal for bigger enterprises while Hubspot is best for small to medium-sized businesses.
Content Management System (CMS)
You know that content is king but you’ll need proper management of your content or you are wasting all that effort creating it. Your websites, landing pages, blogs etc. should be all part of a content management system that keeps track of engagement with your customers as they come through. Optimization is key as you want to ensure that the content experience for your potential customers will encourage stickiness.
You are all too familiar with CMS systems for your website such as WordPress or Wix but also keep in mind having a fully optimized landing page using Unbounce, Instapage or Hubspot can help. Read why you should be using landing pages here. For content experience, Uberflip can also help in providing compelling content experiences.
Marketing Automation and Lead Management
In a recent Salesforce trends report, 55% of growing SMBs say tech drives their customer interactions. Any engagement or personalized communication with your potential and existing customers, whether it is through inbound or outbound marketing, should all be in your marketing automation and lead management tool. This is a no-brainer as keeping track of lead interactions, the content consumed, which marketing programs worked best and what resonates with your leads as they move along their customer journey is key. Your marketing automation tool speaks volumes and is one of the must-have tools for any marketer looking to start an ABM program.
Our picks include Marketo, Pardot and Hubspot. Mailchimp has also increased its ante when it comes to email marketing.
Advertising and SEO
With more and more buyers conducting online research and looking for solutions and products online, never has it been more important to have your company top of mind. This category of the stack offers a huge selection of options.
For paid social media, we all know the obvious platforms of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube or Linkedin. However, there are tools that offer automatic, AI-driven campaign management across platforms such as Metadata.IO.
Google Ads is probably at the minimum you will need for a search engine marketing tool but don’t discount Bing or Yahoo. For SEO, read our previous blog post on the non-tech guide to SEO for some SEO strategy tips. Sample SEO tools are Moz & Ahrefs.
Our tip is to take a look at your ad spend and from there you can decide whether this platform is worth the investment.
Social Media
The skyrocketing popularity of social media means you need to always keep track of your social conversations and curated content. Popular tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social offer ways to manage your social media platforms seamlessly. If you use SEMRush for your marketing platform tool, you could also use it to manage your social media engagement.
Planning and Collaboration
As you plan your ABM campaign and collaborate with your team. You’ll need tools such as Slack for communication, Asana, Trello or Monday.com for project management. Any of these tools will make planning and implementing a campaign all the more efficient and transparent. With virtual events increasing in popularity, webinar tools such as On24 or even Zoom are good choices. Outreach IO is a great sales enablement and engagement platform for your sales team but your marketing team can take advantage of this solution to help sales with their email sequencing and outreach.
Reporting and Analytics
Measuring the performance of any campaign and your ABM program is critical for marketing success. Comprehensive data found in reporting and analytics will help you make better business decisions, support future marketing spend and ultimately show ROI. You’ll need reporting and analytical tools that help you attribute the revenue, find out the number of customer interactions, track B2B metrics by account, and enable you to create audiences based on intent data among other things. Conversion rate optimization tools such as Hotjar and Crazyegg is a must. Having the right reporting tool will influence your future marketing strategies and campaigns. Google Analytics is probably at the minimum you might have but consider Adobe Analytics, Tableau, Google Smart Sheets, and Google Data Studio as well.
Keep in mind that these tools need to connect and interact well with each other as the goal is a personalized customer experience and tracking of your customer journey to get the ROI you want. If budget allows, there are platforms that offer end-to-end ABM solutions such as DemandBase. Here’s a great guide on questions you should ask to help you choose the right vendor that will help with your ABM platform choices.
Lastly, as you look at a 360° approach to your marketing strategy and ABM, you might also find that you’ll need a partner to help you manage key Martech activities. At Magnolia, we are here to help.