There’s a cardinal rule for achieving strong Account-based marketing: it’s all about data. ABM is getting so much airplay, it’s easy to forget the foundational element on which all good account-based marketing depends.

With many new ABM technology niche apps and point solutions available in the market, it’s also easy to lose sight of how all the pieces fit together into an effective overall account-based marketing framework –and how data makes the whole thing sing.

For most B2Bs, Salesforce is the single biggest investment in marketing technology or MarTech. It is also usually the primary book of record for all marketing and sales activities, feeding the myriad other MarTech apps and functions that are connected to it.

Fully leveraging this investment in Salesforce (or any other CRM) means getting the data right—down deep—and using the core platform to the fullest.  Good data enables a better view of your sales opportunity landscape, which enables better awareness of where to focus, analysis and decision-making, which ultimately drives smarter allocation of resources to growing your business.

Having strong data maintenance routines in Salesforce delivers major benefits. It creates a solid foundation for all other apps in your MarTech stack, and ensures you extract maximum utility and benefit from each MarTech tool.  It also helps to control how and when you need to add to your MarTech stack, and knowing which ones are exactly right for your business. The worst reason to deploy a new MarTech app is because it appears to solve a problem that could have been readily solved within Salesforce with better attention to data.

Account-based marketing is really just a digital form of mass customization.  It allows B2B businesses to simultaneously target thousands of prospective accounts and provide each potential decision-making persona with relevant content and a tailored buying experience based on their needs, function, preferences and readiness to buy.

By putting in place strong processes and routines for data scrubbing, matching, enriching, monitoring and updating within your Salesforce platform, you are underpinning the strength and efficacy of your ABM program.  If you want to convert quality and accuracy into revenue growth, just remember one thing for your Account-based marketing: it’s all about data.