Account-based marketing (ABM) is the talk of B2B marketing lately, especially as more and more companies start using this approach to close larger deals with high-value accounts. As the popularity of ABM grows, we’re seeing an increasing number of opinions, software solutions, and success stories from a variety of industries.
If you haven’t been plugged into the ABM conversation this summer, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up a handful of ABM trends, perspectives, and resources to get you up to speed so you can head into the rest of 2019 ready for what’s ahead.
ABM Goes Mainstream: What Have We Learned and What’s Next?
While B2B marketing and account-based marketing aren’t synonyms, ABM skills have become essential for B2B marketers, according to this article from Marketing Land. The author explains the insights he gathered by interviewing over 50 B2B teams this past quarter, including the impact of ABM on lead-based metrics, the growth of intent data, and why you need to emphasize the things that matter to people.
The takeaway: As ABM grows more common, you also have more opportunities to learn from what’s working and not working for others. Then you’ll have a better sense of what to expect at your own organization.
How to Measure Account-Based Marketing Success
ABM, just like every other marketing strategy, must be measured. You need to know what’s working and eventually if ABM has positive ROI. But you can’t immediately jump to tracking ROI. At their blog, Marketo explains metrics for ABM, pointing out that you need the right metrics for the right stage of your campaigns. That means top-of-funnel metrics when prospects are in the awareness stage and bottom-of-funnel metrics later, rather than trying to track conversions right away.
The takeaway: You need to know which metrics to use to track ABM success at each stage of your marketing campaigns.
ABM’s Potential Is Endless, But We’re Already Endangering It
ABM is definitely trending, but that doesn’t mean it’s a fad you can throw on top of your other marketing efforts. This opinion piece published at Demand Gen Report makes the case for why you can’t just treat ABM as a tactic and expect to see great results. Instead, ABM is a top-down, holistic strategy that affects the way your whole organization approaches accounts.
The takeaway: Before you dive into ABM, you should work to align your teams and give some serious thought to how you approach this strategy.
The Next Phase of Account-Based Marketing: Business Ecosystems
Both marketers and vendors have displayed growing interest in ABM over the past few years, and as a result, we’ve seen an increasing number of ABM technology solutions and tools to help marketers work faster. So what does the ABM ecosystem look like now, and what will this category look like in the future? You can get a clearer picture in this article from ClickZ.
The takeaway: To fit ABM solutions into the martech stack, we’ll need true technology integration that helps connect data, audiences, and workflows.
Account-Based Marketing: The Basics
If all this talk about ABM makes you feel like you’re behind, we can help with that. Our recent video series explains the basics of ABM, including how to research your ideal customer profile, develop a target account list, map the buyer’s journey, align your teams, and create and deploy content. It’ll give you the foundation you need to get started.
The takeaway: Our ABM video series explains the fundamentals of ABM for anyone who’s new to the strategy or who needs to get ABM buy-in from others in their organization.
Have more questions about how you can use account-based marketing? Get in touch. We’d love to discuss how ABM can help you close more deals at high-value accounts.
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