According to the the ITSMA & ABM Leadership Alliance 2019 ABM Benchmark Study, Account Based Marketing is transitioning from a niche b2b Marketing discipline to a maturing practise.
Almost of half of the marketers and their organisations have moved from exploration and experimentation phase to expansion phase.
There is a misconception that ABM is for landing new deals. This can't be more wrong as ABM is great for use cases like expansion - from one unit to enterprise wide, one geography to worldwide, pre-targeting, waking the dead etc. Clearly this is evident from the report that marketers are using ABM the most for account growths.
Practice patience: ABM can generate substantial results but takes time to develop fully; the most mature and carefully executed programs drive far greater business impact.
From proper account selection to establishing a targeting and personalisation strategy, it takes significant time and effort to establish a winnable playbook.
Strengthens Sales & Marketing alignment: ABM programs do a good job in establishing the marketing-sales co-ordination. According to the report, there’s a substantial room for greater collaboration across the range of approaches and programs.
Companies can benefit even more if marketing can move from handover-to-sales after qualification thinking to working alongside sales during and post acquisition of a customer/Account. We call it as Marketing assisted Sales.
Invest in insight: The best ABM programs are customer-centric and executed based on deep insights; marketers are still early in tapping the full benefits of tools and data for sustained and high impact success.
The ability to harvest insights across channels and touch-points is a key in reaping full benefits from the ABM programs.
Master multichannel: The most effective ABM programs use a cross-channel approach in targeting their named accounts.
It requires an integrated view for tracking engagement across channels and orchestrating campaigns.
Build a blended strategy: Most companies are still relying on just one type of #ABM but the most effective programs use two or three: One-to-One, One-to-Few, and One-to-Many.
While this could entirely apply for larger, it becomes complex for mid-sized organisations to run parallel programs that don't necessarily scale.
