AI and ABM! Who’d have thought?

ABM (Account Based Marketing) is an effective strategy for engaging high-value prospects. In this context, AI-powered tools can be utilised to significantly enhance your approach.

As many businesses look to AI to enhance/automate processes, analyse large amounts of unstructured data and provide predictive analytics quickly, AI can also play a pivotal role in optimising ABM strategies. For example, AI algorithms can analyse significant amounts of data from myriad sources to identify ‘right fit’ target accounts or ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Using AI in this way for the purpose of target account identification, you can better identify and prioritise ICPs that are most open to dialogue, engagement, or a purchase.

Get more personal

A key component of ABM is the creation of personalised and target-relevant content. With AI, you can automate and deliver content and communications that better resonate with individual key customer accounts. Using AI-powered tools, such as ChatGPT, marketing professionals can identify niche industries and generate a list of target accounts. ChatGPT’s extensive knowledge base enables you to create a highly focused list of companies in your target industry sectors.

It can also be trained on your existing email templates and customer data to generate personalised emails for specific accounts. This allows you to generate content, service offerings and product recommendations to individual accounts, therefore facilitating better engagement and improving conversions.

Building a target account list using ChatGPT

To create a target account list, it’s important to first Identify your target industry sector or subsector. Be specific about your intended target industry i.e. ‘life sciences’, ‘pharma’, renewable energy’ etc. Then ask ChatGPT to generate a list of companies within your chosen industry sector. For example, ‘give me a list of fast-growing renewable energy companies’. Once you have your list, you can review and refine it, aligning potential prospects with your ABM goals and objectives. Once you are happy, you can save the list for use with your marketing automation application. CSV files are a common file type.

Convert company names into websites

Ask ChatGPT to convert company names into email domains and websites. This enables seamless data matching with existing data lists. Simply input your list of target companies and ask ChatGPT to convert the company names into website URLs. Review the results and export the data to integrate with your marketing platforms.

Personalised messaging

ChatGPT is great for helping you create personalised messaging for your target accounts by generating industry-specific copy that is aligned with your target audience. Firstly, identify your target industry sector and the specific roles you wish to engage with, for example C-suite or senior managers etc. Then give ChatGPT some context about the industry sector, the roles you have selected, and the product or service offering you are promoting. Ask ChatGPT to generate copy variations for your marketing assets, such as emails, blogs, animations, or social media snippets. For example, ‘write an email subject line that targets decision-makers in renewable energy.’ It’s important to review and assess the autogenerated copy and make any appropriate edits to ensure it fits with your brand’s tone of voice, whilst resonating with your intended prospects.

More ChatGPT ‘good to knows’

ChatGPT can perform a competitive analysis of your prospects' competitors to help identify potential opportunities and USPs for your product or service offering. You are also able to generate industry-specific concept and content ideas by asking ChatGPT for suggestions, such as industry reports, whitepapers and/or blog topics etc. Use ChatGPT to help you analyse the sentiment of your prospects, enabling you to personalise messages that resonate with their purchasing mood. If your ABM campaigns span multiple geographies, ChatGPT can support the translation of your marketing content into different languages.

Conversational AI

I can’t write a blog on AI without mentioning conversational AI, AKA chatbots and digital assistants. These AI-powered touchpoints are growing in capability and can effectively handle first- and second-touch interactions, answer questions, and collect valuable data about target accounts. They are also able to assist with lead qualification and provide personalised experiences. ChatGPT can be used to build a chatbot that can engage in personalised conversations with individual accounts. The chatbot is trained on your existing customer data and sales transcripts to provide relevant information and answer questions. This helps to build trust, improve the customer experience, and move the sales process along.

ChatGPT can be as much a risk, as a panacea

Direct usage of ChatGPT is not without its risks and challenges. These typically include security and data leakage, confidentiality and liability concerns, IP complexities, compliance with open-source licenses, limitations on AI development, and uncertain privacy and compliance with emerging international and country laws.

It’s important to carefully consider implementing AI in your ABM strategy. It’s key that your strategy aligns with your core goals and objectives. It is crucial to select and deploy the right AI tools and techniques that fit with your target audience, data, and overall marketing strategy. Implemented correctly, AI can play a significant role in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of ABM.

In our next blog, I cover how you can drive higher ROI through ABM.