Biz Tips: How Account-Based Marketing Principles Apply to Dating
GROWTH:
How Account-Based Marketing Principles Apply to Dating
As I immersed myself deeper and deeper into account-based marketing (ABM) I started thinking in ABM terms even beyond marketing.
“Hey, let’s watch a movie tonight, what do you want to see — action, comedy, or drama?” — “Let’s look at what we’ve rated highly on Netflix in the past within Action category that features Natalie Portman and pick from those” — how is that not predictive account selection… khm… movie selection?
What if account-based marketing principles could be applied to everything in life?
The marketing funnel has always reminded me of a dating funnel — you start with a pool of potential dates (leads), you begin talking to a few people (MQLs), maybe go on a couple of dates with some (SQLs), then maybe get to know a few of them a bit more (Opportunities), then maybe you travel together, become closer, or even move in together (progress through opportunity stages), have some Closed Lost along the way and potentially a Closed Won or two. Makes sense, right? What if this could be optimized in an ABM kind of way?
Let’s walk through this together:
You see? This would work way better than going on numerous fruitless dates with dozens (if not hundreds) of people.
Let’s elaborate on each step.
1. Identify your top targets.
If you were to do this the ABM way, you’d use your existing data (dating history) and predictive scoring (eHarmony, OKC, or Tinder or another Everstring or Infer equivalent of the dating world, where some software tells you the likelihood of a match based on various aspects of your and their personality). You could also put your additional qualification criteria on top of that. For example, has to have a place to live, has to be able to support themselves financially, has to like trivia nights — whatever it is for you. Once you have all that in place, your pool of prospects will be significantly narrower and way more qualified.
2. Research your targets, identify the influencers.
If you were doing ABM, here you’d find out all the right titles and people who would be involved in the decision making process, in case of dating — find out which social networks your prospects are active on, if they have any influencers in their lives that would actually advise them on personal life decisions. In ABM you’d use Zoominfo and LinkedIn for this step.
3. Identify intent signals.