Five Emerging Trends in Account Based Marketing

In recent years, several technological and social trends have converged to the point where we are witnessing a massive cultural shift in how people engage with brands. B2B customer experience expectations are much higher than where they were at the start of the last decade. In response, brands desperately need to update how they think about marketing strategy. 

In How to Future-Proof Your B2B Marketing Strategy we discuss the need to design agile marketing systems around long-term relationship building, not just closing a sale. Doing so requires that you focus on generating long-term results on three fronts: platforms, presence and productivity. A great example of this type of thinking is account based marketing (ABM). 

ABM strategy is founded on today’s most effective marketing techniques: personalisation (presence), organisational alignment (productivity), and targeting high-value customers (platform). The 2020 ABM Benchmark Survey Report found that 98% of respondents currently use or plan to use ABM. Likewise, investment in ABM is rising. For instance, the 2020 ABM Market Research Study found that budgets dedicated to ABM increased from 20% in 2019 to 28% in 2020.

ABM best practices are constantly evolving as new tools emerge to further improve processes. As such, let’s look at five important trends for using ABM to take customer experience to the next level as part of your B2B digital marketing strategy.

Integrated Data Enables the Selection and Segmentation of High Value Accounts

When building a target account list they want to market to, brands need to:

• Leverage their list of named accounts – including verticals and strategic accounts.

• Evaluate their current customer base for possible areas of growth.

• Segment customers based on a set of attributes such as industry, company size and annual revenue.

Traditionally, account based marketing strategies have relied on manual research to uncover and select high value accounts. Indeed, according to the 2020 ABM Benchmark Survey Report, 73% of respondents said they still identified key accounts using manual processes.

However, creating targeted account lists through manual research is a resource-intensive activity. This makes it difficult to support deep-level ABM strategies for more than a handful of accounts at a time. 

Recognising this fact, a growing number of businesses have begun to use marketing automation and data-centric methods to determine optimal account targeting. By supplementing their ABM strategies with data, marketing and sales teams can make use of:

• Firmographic data (e.g. company size, vertical, location)

• Behavioural and intent data

• Technographic data (e.g. real-time insights based on a company's technology choices and buying signals)

• Predictive analytics

Integrated marketing automation and CRM systems contain and keep track of all this data. This allows them to effectively segment prospects, customers, and partners for highly tailored campaigns. Moreover, marketers can use this customer intelligence to automatically find lookalike audiences on platforms like LinkedIn to expand their reach in a targeted way.

To get the most out of their ABM efforts, forward-thinking companies are also breaking down internal information silos to promote cross-departmental collaboration.  Marketers are sitting on a goldmine of customer intel which can enhance other business operations. Product management is one example. Likewise, product management can provide valuable insights – such as customisation possibilities – which marketers can use to appeal to key accounts. And marketing and product management both can benefit from client input gathered by customer service.

Integrated data allows you to connect the dots across your entire organisation. In building a 360-degree view of your accounts, you can more easily steer your ABM campaigns in the right direction.

New Tools Create Efficiency in the ABM Strategy

In the 2020 ABM Market Research Study, CRM and marketing automation were deemed the top two most essential tools for successful ABM. As data-centric ABM continues to grow, marketers will need other intelligent new tools to organise and enrich account data. For instance: 

• Measurement & reporting tools

• Intent monitoring tools

• Content syndication

• Campaign execution & orchestration tools

Martech solutions help businesses use external data to gain better insights into prospects and find target accounts that fit their ideal customer profile (ICP). Background research that would take days to accomplish manually can be done in a matter of hours.

Sales and marketing teams can instead use this time to focus on human engagement. Doing so helps them to expand the reach of their ABM programs by offering more personalised interactions with accounts. This is a great example of the idea of Value Realisation we discussed in How to Future-Proof Your B2B Marketing Strategy. 

Instead of building a martech stack from scratch, many businesses use a marketing automation platform that can be customised for their specific ABM needs including features such as:

• Behaviour-based email

• Campaign tracking

• CRM & sales automation

• Reporting and analytics

When considering your tech stack it's important to consider a platform or suite of software that can play nicely with numerous integrations, products, and services – improving the ability of companies to adapt to changing circumstances. 

Building Multichannel Presence into Account Based Marketing Campaigns

A critical component of successful marketing is the idea of Value Capture – namely, creating deep relationships with audiences through a variety of channels for communication and engagement. Another way to think of it is being present and relevant in the lives of consumers.

The reality of the matter is that B2B sellers have little opportunity to directly influence customer decisions. Historically, ABM relied on marketing tactics like 1:1 meetings and discussions at tradeshows to establish a relationship with target accounts. However, a 2019 study by Gartner found that B2B buyers only spent 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. 

Shifting customer expectations have prompted a change in B2B marketing behaviours. Advances in virtual communication are allowing marketers to get more creative in using different channels to engage business buyers. As such, in-person events and meetings are now being heavily supplemented (or even replaced) by:

• Behaviour based email

• Account based digital advertising

• AI-powered chatbots

• Personalised website content

Marketing automation enables ABM at scale in an omnichannel environment. Furthermore, it bridges the gap between inbound marketing and ABM. Businesses can engage members of target accounts no matter where they are on the web. By simultaneously operating across different channels, brands can bring together content marketing, email, social media amplification, remarketing, and PPC campaigns to create a cohesive customer experience.

However, the more options you introduce into your customer experience, the more complicated it becomes. This can make things more challenging for buyers. The same Garter study found that 77% of B2B customers described their purchase as 'very complex' or 'difficult'.

The goal of AMB is to create a positive customer experience. As such, you want to strike a careful balance when integrating new channels into your strategy. You want to create a journey that makes the route to purchase easier, not harder, for your customers.

Customised Content Improves Effectiveness

Another major shift in account based marketing revolves around personalised messaging and content. According to the 2020 ABM Benchmark Survey Report, 42% of respondents are now personalising their content to increase account engagement and build long-term relationships. 

One way marketers can maximise content impact is by tailoring pieces for specific industries, roles, titles, challenges and needs. This entails mapping content not only to suit buyer personas but to engage at every stage of the buyer’s journey. You then need to go a step further. 

Data-driven tools now allow B2B marketers to tailor content based on a deeper understanding of individual interests and preferences. This can include content format, the sort of topics they're consuming, whether they respond to the use of respected industry influencers, etc.

The goal is to build up your layers of understanding to hyper personalise content for every member of the buying committee. This is a huge task. Consider that, on average, 5.4 people now have to formally sign off on each B2B purchase. In addition, you need to persuade other account members who help influence decisions. 

Such a feat requires leveraging the power of automation. When done correctly, your content marketing seems fortuitous, appearing at exactly the right time and place to create an optimal customer experience for each individual account member.

Measuring Account Level Performance

Performance measurement has been an ongoing challenge with ABM adoption. For instance, in the 2020 ABM Market Research Study, only 5% of respondents reported their measurement of ABM as ‘awesome’. The majority, (63%) were still in the ‘very early’ or ‘early’ stages of ABM measurement. 

The problem is that the complex nature of ABM strategy does not lend itself well to traditional measurement approaches. For instance, standard lead generation metrics often break down in situations where multiple key stakeholders are influencing a decision with a lifecycle spanning months. Moreover, a majority of martech tools are built around tracking individual customer journeys, not account level journeys. The result is that businesses are only getting a partial understanding of how their ABM strategy is performing. 

The lack of accurate measurement infrastructure means that accurate ROI information remains elusive for many companies using ABM. The same study found that 57% of companies reported they haven’t yet started to measure the ROI of ABM. Another 12% admitted they didn’t know how to.

To overcome this challenge, a growing number of B2B marketers are turning to more account-centric metrics. In addition to measurements like generated revenue and the number of accounts retained and gained, marketers are also using the following KPIs to measure the success of their ABM strategies: 

• Contribution to pipeline

• Win-rate

• Pipeline velocity

• Account engagement score

The 2020 State of ABM Report found that for companies with mature ABM strategies, the top three performance indicators were ‘New Business Generation’, ‘Customer Retention’, and ‘Pipeline Acceleration’. 

These types of measurements happen across different stages of the customer journey. By focusing on more ABM specific metrics, you gain the ability to connect siloed data sets across your entire strategy. This lets you collect valuable information to impact decisions as prospects move through your marketing and sales cycle. Doing so helps you identify conversions, gauge program effectiveness and establish best practices. 

With accurate performance data, you can then build even more multi-faceted, adaptable ABM strategies.

Your Partner for ABM Success

Recent technological and social shifts have resulted in the rapid growth and evolution of account based marketing approaches. 

At its core, ABM is still about forging a personal connection with clients by intimately understanding their wants and needs. However, marketers are increasingly applying data-led methodologies and automation technologies to ABM to do this more effectively and at scale. 

As such, ABM is a great example of building a marketing strategy around platforms, presence, and productivity. By utilising data, omnichannel marketing, and hyper-personalised content, B2B marketers can reinvent their ABM programs to meet future changes. 

Contact 1827 Marketing to learn more about creating a successful modern ABM strategy for your business!