B2B marketers are all-in on ABM: Here’s what they need

After surveying nearly 7,000 marketers, Salesforce reports 92% of B2B marketers have implemented account-based marketing programs — a practice that involves coordinating comprehensive marketing efforts to targeted key accounts. Among the B2B organizations currently using an account-based marketing strategy, 64% began their ABM efforts in the last five years.

The increasing popularity of ABM programs, and its growth within B2B marketing programs, can be aligned to the availability of marketing automation solutions. Salesforce’s survey found that 68% of ABM programs use automation tools, with high-performing marketing teams investing as much as 18% of their marketing budget to their ABM efforts.

To get a close-up look at the tools marketers are using to run their ABM programs, we asked Ankit Sharma, head of account based marketing for the customer communication and engagement platform Netcore, which solutions he has found to be most effective.

Targeting and personalization tools are key

Sharma’s team has experienced much success with its account-based marketing efforts by implementing a combination of targeting and personalization solutions layered with communication and campaign automation tools. Specifically, they use Bombora for its targeting capabilities and Influ2 to help with hyper-personalization across targeted accounts.

“Bombora’s intent data has helped us to prioritize our target accounts based on the ICP [ideal customer profile] and the accounts in the market looking for a similar product or solution by showcasing the surge on a particular topic related to our products and services,” said Sharma, “Influ2 has been a very significant tool in hyper personalizing the 1:1 accounts — which not only scores accounts but scores people to let you know who exactly you should talk to from the buying committee, who is more likely to become your advocate.”

Sharma said Netcore has experienced a 25% increase in engagement with their targeted accounts list based on Influ2’s capabilities and its ability to identify which leads are engaging with their ads at each stage of the sales funnel.

Tying it all together with communication and automation platforms

To engage with leads, Sharma’s team uses the conversational martech platform Drift and relies on Salesforce’s Pardot automation solution to coordinate campaigns.

“Drift has been helpful in starting conversations with the right buyers at the right time. Whether those buyers are anonymous visitors on our website or open opportunities in our sales pipeline, Drift helps us connect with our best buyers at the right time,” said Sharma.

With Pardot, Netcore gets a unified view of its target accounts and the engagement happening with those accounts.

“It’s one seamless experience — keeping our sales, service and marketing data in one place using a fully integrated platform.”

The ability to align account based marketing efforts with sales efforts is a crucial element of an effective ABM strategy. Salesforce found that 81% of marketers work with their sales team when building out their account based marketing initiatives.

According to Salesforce, “Account based marketing programs are B2B marketers’ response to elevated business buyer expectations, and represent a new level of collaboration with sales teams.”