Small business marketing is a challenge. Limited resources and budget constraints mean SMBs can’t afford to spread money around to every imaginable prospect and hope for the best. Instead, you need to zero in on the best possible buyers and then spearfish.
But how do you spot the handful of buyers in a sea of prospects?
With the emergence of AI, SMBs are now equipped with powerful tools to spot buyers, make a great impression, and win their business.
How to Build a Huge Brand Presence on a Tight Budget
AI-driven Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platforms remove guesswork from your small business marketing strategy by revealing which accounts are likely to buy, what those accounts care about, and when they are nearing a purchase decision.
Armed with these insights, you can target the right accounts at the right time with the right messages. This will help you win much more business.
In 2022, Forrester Consulting examined the potential ROI for B2B sellers deploying the 6sense Revenue AI™ solution. The Total Economic Impact study showed organizations that prioritized accounts identified as likely buyers by 6sense achieved:
Increased sales revenues
- 2X increase in average contract value
- 4X increase in win rate
- 31% increase in opportunity volume
AND
Decreased costs
- 40% reduction in aggregate costs to qualify opportunities
- 40% reduction in effort to close opportunities
- 20% to 40% reduction in time to close deals
As an SMB, you don’t have the budget to achieve brand awareness with every possible customer. But you CAN dominate brand awareness with the customers who matter — the customers who are ready to buy.
3 Keys to Winning with a Lean Budget
1. Know Who to Target, and When
An effective B2B small business marketing strategy starts with Account-Based Marketing (ABM), which is an approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts. In ABM, marketing efforts are personalized to meet the needs of individual accounts and key decision-makers within those accounts.
By focusing resources on high-value target accounts, SMBs increase the chances of converting these accounts into customers.
AI plays a crucial role in ABM by leveraging advanced algorithms to identify high-value target accounts. AI tools can sift through large volumes of information (at speeds and accuracy that humans could never achieve) to pinpoint accounts that align with your Ideal Customer Profile. They identify key attributes such as:
- Company size
- Industry
- Annual revenue
- Buying behavior
- Intent signals
Intent signals, which indicate which potential customers are currently researching solutions, can help your small business marketing budget have a much bigger impact. You can focus dollars exclusively on prospects who are ready to buy.
2. Know What to Say
Intent signals give SMBs other superpowers that can help with content marketing and customer acquisition. Read this guide for a deep dive into what intent data is and how it functions.
Here’s the tl/dr version:
In addition to letting you know which accounts are in-market, intent data can reveal which topics those accounts are researching. With a little bit of AI-assisted sleuthing, you can figure out which people within a target account are probably doing the research. Then you can target them with messaging that addresses their specific needs and interests.
Whether you are setting up an ad campaign or making phone calls, your odds of success dramatically improve when you can personalize your approach to match your buyer’s journey.
B2B intent data platforms gather this information and make it easily available to both marketers and sellers. The most sophisticated B2B revenue generation platforms then:
- Enable you to create workflows that automatically segment your audiences based on their current research
- Make it easy to deploy those updated segments by automatically syncing audience lists in tools like LinkedIn, Google Ads, and Facebook.
Additional Reading: Dynamic Segments and Orchestration Make Your Teams Feel Twice the Size
Personalized Experiences
ABM allows businesses to deliver highly personalized and relevant marketing content, which enhances the customer experience and strengthens relationships.
By leveraging AI-powered tools, SMBs can deliver relevant content and messaging directly to key decision-makers. AI analyzes data to determine the preferences, pain points, and interests of those decision-makers, enabling SMBs to tailor marketing campaigns to address those specific needs. This, in turn, leads to improved customer satisfaction and higher customer retention rates.
Let’s say you’re a broker that helps businesses find the best insurance options. Intent data can show you when people are searching for terms like “employee health insurance plans” or “insurance for LLC owners.” Orchestrations can then automatically enroll those prospects into campaigns that directly address those topics and highlight your value propositions — keeping your solution top of mind as they near a purchase decision.
Intent data can also power personalized experiences across touchpoints, whether a buyer is browsing your website in their initial research or are further along in their journey.
Intent data gives you a profile of your target account. You can use that data to deliver the most compelling messaging and convert more clicks into revenue. Tools like chatbots and virtual assistants use AI to engage with website visitors in real-time, answering their queries and guiding them through the purchasing process.
Lead generation tools also enable SMBs to nurture leads effectively through automated email sequences and personalized content. By analyzing intent signals as well as user behavior and preferences, AI can deliver targeted content recommendations and personalized messages to leads. Automated email sequences can be set up to deliver a series of relevant and engaging content to leads, nurturing them through the sales funnel.
3. Know When to Reach Out
For SMBs, time is at least as much of a constraint as money. This is where the predictive capabilities of an AI-driven sales platform come into play.
In addition to detecting when companies are in-market and what they are researching, 6sense also uses AI to analyze intent signals and determine where accounts are in their buying journey. This helps sales teams know when prospects are likely to welcome outreach.
Sales reps can then enter into conversations with background info about what an account has been researching and what types of consultation and collateral are likely to move them closer to a decision.
Knowing which accounts are ready to talk makes sales reps far more productive, and gives them the fastest path toward growing revenue and earning commissions.
The value extends to your existing customer base, too.
Cross-Selling and Upselling
Beyond identifying prospects with the highest conversion potential, AI algorithms can identify complementary products or services that customers may be interested in. This information empowers sellers and marketers to create targeted cross-selling and upselling campaigns, tailored to each customer. As a result, SMBs can increase their revenue per customer and foster long-term loyalty.
Conclusion
AI-powered technology is a game-changer for SMBs, enabling them to market themselves with precision and efficiency. These algorithms help to identify and prioritize the most promising revenue opportunities, personalize marketing efforts, and streamline both internal and external sales and marketing processes.
By embracing AI-powered tools, SMBs can maximize their growth potential and market themselves with precision and effectiveness.
