We’re going to save you precious time as we cling to a huge lump of rock for as long as we can to tell you the best tools to use to provide measurement throughout the whole ABM process.
NB – some of the tools we discuss are FREE. Yes, there is such thing as a free lunch (for now).
ABM measurement: the why
ABM starts with defining your target list: figuring out which companies you are going to target in your campaign. Once that’s out of the way, the next step is to analyse which companies are visiting your website. That’s important, because how you’ll engage with Company A that is already visiting your website will be in the context of conversion, and Company B who isn’t coming to your website is more of a question of acquisition.
As ABMers, we can create a bespoke approach for each of our companies to give us the best possible chance of converting them. Because it’s the right thing to do.
For all this to work then, we need to know which companies are coming to your website now, and which will come in the future.
The best way to do this while some boffins in Boston work on brain-to-brain interface technology, we need some web tracking tools that give us information about which companies are visiting our website then.
ABM web tracking tools
Demandbase
These guys can remember when it were all fields round ‘ere.
Demandbase are certainly one of the founding fathers of ABM with tech. Because they’ve been around a while their tools have moved with the times in the way you would expect a very well funded Cali-based Martech business to.
In 2017 they launched their all-in-one ABM suite which provides everything you need to run ABM at scale.
Handily, they also have an integration with Google Analytics (GA) that gives account level information directly in your GA dashboard. This is top quality stuff and includes loads of popular business profile data, like company, company size and annual revenue.
Kickfire
Kickfire is renowned in the ABM world for having some of the best firmographic data out there. Having used their tool extensively with a number of clients, and tried many other solutions on the market, I would happen to agree.
So how do you get access to this juicy data around which companies are visiting your website then? Kickfire LIVE Leads my friends. It’s a web based tool that’s easy to configure and comes ready-equipped with connectors into leading CRM systems like Salesforce, Dynamics and the like.Their custom reports are pretty nifty too. In the same vein as Demandbase, there’s full support for Google Analytics integrations too if you fancy going down that road.
Lead Forensics
It wouldn’t be right to cover off an ABM web tracking blog without mentioning Lead Forensics. Yes, they can be a pain in the arse with their persistent calls: but it works. With over 400 employees and a global presence, clearly they have a strong customer base and a long standing reputation (and frankly, we wouldn’t mind being a few quid behind them). They’ve been around the block a little while and as such they have a very developed tool that supports the major CRM systems in addition to a great looking cloud dashboard,. Their training is world-class and you should definitely check them out if you can get your head around their ‘thorough’ sales technique.
Albacross
Viking lead generation! Huge cliche, but my wild opening isn’t so much based on the fact that Albacross are a Swedish startup, and the CEO of Facebook Nordics is a key investor, but more on their battle cry: “We want to kill the lead generation market.”
How the devil are they going to do that then? It’s a pretty big beast to slay to say the least.
Well, they’re going to give it away for free – that’s how. And for a free tool, it offers much of the functionality you get in the other tools explored here, which range in price from £5k through to £20k depending on the vendor and your size of business.
Why give it away for free? They want your advertising. Clearly if you know companies are visiting your website, but haven’t converted, you’re going to want to retarget them. Doing this at an account level isn’t really possible in AdWords, unless you’re talking big numbers of companies. Shifting channels to LinkedIn, Facebook or other ad networks is simply a ballache. Albacross makes it pretty much a 3 click process to not only run retargeting ads, but also to target ads at companies which haven’t yet visited your website. Crucially, this gives the end-to-end tracking that ABMers have had to build a stack for historically, which is really handy to say the least.
Marketing Automation System (MAS)
Since MAS’ emerged on the scene many years ago, web tracking has been a pretty important element of the process. There has to be a cookie drop to identify a contact on form-full so it always made sense to bring some visibility of which companies had visited as a precursor to the contact conversion process.
It’s pretty standard now for a MAS to have this functionality. If yours doesn’t have it, then it may be time to tap up some of the other players in the market to see who will do you a deal.
Despite Albacross being free, and there being such a wealth of great paid-for tools on the market, there’s a strong argument for getting web tracking at the MAS level to power your inbound strategy, which undoubtedly is on the cards for most decent B2B organisations worth their salt.
Contact us today for help
So there you have it. If you need help deploying any of this technology, or need a guiding hand to help you avoid risk in your ABM deployment, speak to us about our ABM consultancy services. We have years of experience helping companies of all sizes achieve great ROI using ABM.
