Nobody wants to be a nerd, right? Not exactly. According to this Advertising Age article, “nerds” are the cool kids people aspire to be in the data-driven world we live in today. Tech and science nerds are changing our society as we speak – everything from improving the cities we live in to developing advanced technologies to make our daily life easier. Mark Zuckerberg, who is one of the world’s most famous “nerds,” is even encouraging young women to “be the nerd” instead of dating a nerd. Being a “nerd” has become the equivalent of personal and professional success.
So if you want to be a nerd in the marketing world, where do you start? Well, first thing first, you don’t need those stereotypically geeky glasses or suspenders. According to the article, passion for data is what you do need to become a true marketing nerd, as well as an understanding of how you can leverage your data-driven insights to drive marketing success through account-based marketing (ABM).
What’s ABM To Marketing Nerds?
Rather than casting a wide net to catch as many leads as you can (which may or may not convert), account-based marketing focuses on identifying and targeting a number of high-value prospects that are most likely to convert.
For marketing nerds, account-based marketing is also about targeting more effectively at the group of decision-makers who influence the final purchase decision. For most companies, it is highly unlikely that one individual is responsible for making all buying decisions within an organization, and account-based marketing is about targeting the collective instead of individual decision-making.
How Marketing Nerds Are Using ABM
For many companies, marketing is a crucial, if not primary, source of revenue for the business. And for marketing nerds, account-based marketing is a powerful data-driven, strategic marketing approach to help them meet their company’s revenue growth goals.
Traditionally, account-based marketing was a strategy used primarily by sales teams to build a list of target accounts they try to close. This same approach allows marketing nerds to focus their time and resources on developing a deep understanding of a number of high-value accounts, their pain points, needs and interests, rather than a very large and broad number of prospects (which may not even close). This way, marketers can create highly personalized messaging and campaigns that address the target account’s key business challenges and needs, to ultimately drive more revenue and minimize ad waste.
Smart marketing nerds also know that, instead of using traditional marketing metrics, they need better, more relevant metrics to accurately measure the effectiveness of their account-based marketing performance and success. As such, marketing nerds look at metrics like quality of leads rather than quantity of leads. For example, three large target accounts who are open to upsell is much more valuable than twenty or even thirty leads that may or may not even convert.
Nerds United: Marketing And Sales Alignment
Real marketing nerds collaborate rather than dominate. And account-based marketing is a collaborative approach as both sales and marketing work together to jointly identify high-value target accounts they want to pursue, and develop the strategy they will use to convert those targets.
By collaborating and sharing their insights rather than working in silos, marketing nerds and sales reps can help each other succeed. One of the most common challenges sales teams face is the extensive amount of information and time needed to conduct research, which unfortunately ends with sales reps missing sales opportunities from time to time.
Through account-based marketing, however, marketing nerds can work with sales reps to determine which accounts are more likely to convert and hence to focus on, helping them to be more productive with their time and resources spent on research and to close deals more quickly.
By leveraging data-driven insights to better collaborate with sales, identify and select leads, and develop highly relevant, personalized content that adds value and converts, there is no doubt that smart marketing nerds are winning and leading in today’s marketing world.
What do you think? Is your company using account-based marketing, and how is it working (or not working) for you? Please share your thoughts below!
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