B2B marketers have employed account-based marketing (ABM) for well over a decade, but the approach has quickly begun gaining currency over the past few years and that growth is expected to continue. Forrester predicts that, by 2025, account-based marketing will become the main way most B2B companies identify, plan, manage, and measure buying and post-sale activity.

What goes into a successful ABM strategy? Best practices that have emerged focus on these five core areas:

• Data enrichment
• Account targeting.
• Personalization and/or predictive recommendations.
• Interaction management.
• Performance measurement.

MarTech’s Account-Based Marketing Tools: A Marketer’s Guide discusses each of these ABM strategy elements in more detail and shows how ABM platforms help marketers achieve these strategic objectives.

Also included in this free 56-page report are profiles of ABM tools vendors, capabilities comparisons and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to get your copy now.

The post 5 key elements of successful ABM strategies appeared first on MarTech.

An account-based marketing strategy recognizes that B2B purchase decisions are often made by a group of individuals within the company, and ABM tools automate many of the data and workflow processes that enable this approach.

ABM isn’t new, though. It has been used by B2B marketers for well over a decade. But rapid advances in the sophistication and accessibility of relevant data — and in technologies that enable ABM — are now fueling widespread interest and adoption of this approach.

In this piece we’ll answer these questions and more: 

• What are the types of account-based targeting?
• What do account-based marketing tools do?
• What are the benefits of using account-based marketing tools?
• How do I decide if I need an account-based marketing platform?
• Why does account-based marketing continue to grow?
• Why has account-based marketing adoption accelerated during the pandemic?

What are the types of account-based targeting?

A successful ABM strategy aligns sales and marketing departments to focus on high-value accounts that represent the highest potential business opportunity. ABM “flips” the typical sales funnel by starting with a small group of accounts (rather than casting a wide net at the top) that widens as accounts are nurtured down into the funnel.

Many factors go into choosing targeted accounts, including history with a business, and whether the account is growing or in a growth-oriented market. One of the most important criteria is whether it fits the business’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

An ICP is typically developed using machine learning-based predictive analytics and scoring to determine if an account (not an individual) is an ideal fit for a company’s product or service. The ICP should consider relevant characteristics including industry/vertical, size (both employee number and annual revenue), budget, geography and technology used.

Once sales and marketing teams have agreed upon the list, there are three types of ABM targeting that can be executed. They are not mutually exclusive, and many companies use more than one:

• 1-to-1. Also called “Strategic ABM” by ITSMA, marketers work with account teams to develop and execute highly customized programs for each target account (i.e., face-to-face or virtual meetings).
• 1-to-few. Also called “ABM Lite” by ITSMA, marketers execute less customized programs for clusters of target accounts with similar needs or business attributes (i.e., email marketing campaigns, in-person or virtual roadshows and events geared toward groups).
• 1-to-many. Also called “Programmatic ABM” by ITSMA, marketers use machine learning to send highly targeted and personalized messages to individuals at hundreds (or thousands for enterprises) of key accounts (i.e., email, web content personalization, digital advertising and retargeting, live or virtual events for large groups).

What do account-based marketing tools do?

A wide variety of ABM tools are available to automate and execute ABM strategies. These include tools that provide B2B data enrichment, AI-based predictive analytics and recommendations, interaction management (i.e., digital advertising, direct mail, websites, events and sales outreach) and ABM infrastructure and orchestration.

Since data enrichment is a chief capability of ABM tools, it’s first to understand the types of data these platforms work with:

• Technographic data: Identifies the hardware and software systems that accounts use to run their businesses. 
• Firmographic data: Provides quantitative business information, including vertical market, company size and number of locations, number of employees, annual revenue and growth. 
• Intent data: Identifies company actions or signals that indicate whether or not an account is “in-market” for a solution.

Now, let’s dig into all of the capabilities and the key considerations involved in choosing an ABM tool.

Data enrichment

Effective ABM begins with robust, accurate account data. While many B2B companies collect vast amounts of first-party data, there are often gaps that can negatively impact efforts to customize content and offers to target accounts for ABM. Some vendors and their partners provide very specific types of business data, as well as broad-based business data, that can provide important insights into purchase intent.

Account-based marketing targeting

ABM programs can target key accounts at the 1-to-1, 1-to-few and 1-to-many levels. The targeting precision needed will depend on the size and scale of the ABM efforts: SMBs may need a 1-to-many approach because of the number of contacts or influencers at their target accounts, while larger enterprises may find that 1-to-1 targeting allows them the customization necessary to successfully nurture a key account. Most vendors provide machine learning and the granularity to enable more than one level of account targeting.

Personalization and/or predictive recommendations

B2B buyers expect personalized messaging and offers from the companies they do business with. Some vendors use proprietary machine learning and AI to allow customers to create and execute highly personalized campaigns and programs. On the other hand, many vendors integrate with third-party personalization tools or CRM platforms that drive these types of customized programs.

Interaction management/Orchestration

B2B marketers must increasingly engage target accounts on multiple channels with highly customized and consistent ABM programs. Effective B2B channels include both offline (direct mail, events, roadshows and in-person/phone-based sales outreach) and online (email, websites, virtual events, webinars and paid/organic search, display and social) media. Many vendors manage ABM interactions, including offering CPC-based paid ad programs across search, display and social media.

Account-based marketing reporting

ABM is new for many B2B organizations, and, even for those that have been doing ABM, there’s still plenty of room for expansion and integration (See Table 3). As a result, measuring and reporting on program success will be vital for ongoing C-suite support, as well as securing sales team buy-in. Vendors are expanding their reporting capabilities through investments in AI to provide faster, deeper and more visual analytics that can highlight performance trends and patterns (highest performing geographic locations or company characteristics, for example). In addition, more vendors are providing reports at both the account and individual/contact level.

Third-party software integration

Vendors are aggressively expanding their application architectures through native integration and APIs to offer B2B marketers streamlined access to the third-party systems already in their technology stacks. Native or out-of-the-box integrations are most commonly available for CRMs and marketing automation platforms, although many tool vendors also offer plug-and-play access to event platforms and content management systems (CMSs). Several tools are specifically customized for Salesforce integration and use. API integration may incur additional charges, generally on a per-call basis for each data download.

Explore ABM capabilities from account-based marketing vendors like 6sense, Demandbase, Salesforce, Integrate and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on account-based marketing platforms.

Click here to download!

What are the benefits of using ABM tools?

Automating ABM data, analytics, campaigns and workflow processes can provide numerous benefits, including the following:

• Improved sales and marketing alignment. 
• Shortened sales cycles. 
• Increased marketing ROI. 
• Expanded account value and revenue. 
• Significant boost to pipeline velocity and closed rates.
• Enhanced customer experiences. 

How do I decide if I need an ABM platform?

Deciding if your company needs any marketing software application starts by answering a couple of simple questions. Deciding if your company needs an ABM platform is no exception. Assess your organization’s business needs, staff capabilities, management support and financial resources.

These questions will help you determine the answer.

• Have we identified our account-based marketing goals?
• Can sales and marketing agree on the list of target accounts?
• Do we have management buy-in?
• Are we including all of the costs?
• Are we prepared to measure and report results?

Why does account-based marketing continue to grow?

Whether it’s streamlining communication between marketing and sales or creating more personalized web engagement with target prospects, ABM technology offers the ability to build out critical relationships.

Although inbound marketing remains critical to B2B lead generation, many marketers are increasing their use of account-based marketing to take back some control of the process, speed up the buying cycle and find better ways to convert target accounts.

This shift from a reactive to proactive marketing approach is working well for many B2B companies. Marketers report ABM yields multiple important benefits, the Forrester SiriusDecisions 2019 State of Account-Based Marketing Study found.

Yet, few companies have fully integrated ABM within their operations. Just 13% of companies are at the highest level of adoption, ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance found. This means there’s still plenty of room for growth for ABM as a strategy.

Still, challenges remain. More than a third of B2B marketers surveyed by ITSMA named “tracking and measuring ABM results” as one of their top challenges.

While many of marketers’ challenges can potentially be addressed by technological solutions, it’s notable that “selecting and integrating the martech tools that will best support our ABM programs” was also cited as a challenge.

Why has ABM adoption accelerated during the pandemic?

We hear a lot about how dramatically the pandemic has affected consumer purchasing behavior, but the business-to-business side of buying is less frequently discussed. That doesn’t mean the pace of developments is any slower, however.

While researching the all-new updated MarTech Intelligence Report on account-based marketing (ABM) solutions, we learned about how B2B buyers are engaging with companies in the current environment, and how marketing technology providers are helping those companies turn prospects into customers.

While ABM has been used by B2B marketers for well over a decade, rapid advances in the sophistication and accessibility of relevant data – and in technologies that enable ABM – are fueling more widespread adoption of this approach. Another driving force, which I mentioned at the start, are fundamental changes in the B2B buying cycle — shifts that the COVID pandemic accelerated as events and in-person meetings went virtual.

For more on what we learned, as well as profiles of individual vendors of ABM solutions, download Account-Based Marketing Tools: A Marketer’s Guide.

The post What is account-based marketing or ABM and why are B2B marketers so bullish on it? appeared first on MarTech.

At some stage the question arises: “Do we need some dedicated technology to automate these processes?” Because of the cost of ABM solutions, it’s a question to be considered carefully.

The benefits of ABM

Automating ABM data, analytics, campaigns and workflow processes can provide numerous benefits, including the following:

• Improved sales and marketing alignment. A successful ABM strategy requires marketing and sales organizations to work together to identify key accounts to target.
• Shortened sales cycles. B2B sales cycles are notoriously long. ABM helps solve this problem by putting the right messages in front of key decision-makers at target accounts. As a result, ABM opportunities move through the pipeline more quickly.
• Increased marketing ROI. Seventy-two percent of marketers say ABM gives them “somewhat higher return than other marketing initiatives, according to ITSMA. That’s because ABM efforts focus on growing pipeline and revenue from companies with a high propensity to buy more and more often.
• Expanded account value and revenue. Companies that implement ABM experience a nearly two-fold increase in annual contract value (ACV) according to research conducted for the ABM Leadership Alliance. And the gains are not limited to enterprise-level companies.
• Enhanced customer experiences. ABM isn’t just about acquiring new target accounts, it’s about retaining and growing target accounts through cross-sell, upsell and advocacy programs. As a result, ABM is more personalized and delivers more consistent customer experiences across channels.

Sounds good? Yes, but is your business ready for it?

Do we need an ABM tool?

Deciding whether or not your company needs an ABM tool calls for the same evaluative steps involved in any software adoption, including a comprehensive self-assessment of your organization’s business needs, staff capabilities, management support and financial resources.

How many of the following questions would you answer in the affirmative?

1. Have we identified our ABM goals?
2. Can sales and marketing work together to identify our target accounts?
3. Do we have C-suite buy-in?
4. Can we invest in organizational training?
5. Have we established KPIs and put a system in place for tracking, measuring and reporting results?

It is also needs to be clear which team (or combinations of teams) will own the solution.

Once you have satisfactory answers to the above questions, you can start drawing up a list of vendors to contact with RFPs. For a deeper dive into what those questions mean, and profiles of leading ABM vendors, download our new ABM MarTech Intelligence Report (registration required).

The post How to decide if you’re ready for an ABM solution appeared first on MarTech.

Factors driving changes in ABM include shifts in buyer preferences and pre-purchase behavior, as well as the development of more sophisticated technology and data products that enable marketers to analyze behavior, identify in-market audiences, and craft experiences for a buying group or its individual members.

Additionally, the COVID pandemic accelerated fundamental shifts in the B2B buying cycle by forcing events and in-person meetings to go virtual. A survey by the IT Sales and Marketing Association (ITSMA) found 27% of the marketing budget dedicated to ABM in 2021, with 75% of those surveyed saying they planned to increase spending on ABM in 2022.

Even a return to the “new normal,” however unlikely that may current seem, isn’t expected to slow the growth of ABM, because the trends driving the changes in buyer behavior have long been brewing.

How B2B buying has changed

For some time, B2B buyers have conducted substantial research online before talking to a salesperson, and the vast amount of information available to buyers has given them an upper hand. The lockdowns, canceled events and work-from-home trends that characterized the pandemic period exaggerated this phenomenon, and, even as in-person opportunities return, the buying cycle has been forever changed.

Last year, Forrester Research found the average number of buying interactions occurring during the purchase process soared by 10 to 27 in 2021. This trend shows that buyers are determined to do their due diligence before making purchase decisions, raising the importance of the personalized, targeted experiences enabled by ABM technologies.

Digital engagement, Salesforce notes in its most recent “State of the Connected Customer”
report, “hit a tipping point” in 2021, when an estimated 60% of interactions took place online,
compared to 42% the year before.

This shift from a reactive to proactive marketing approach is working well for many B2B
companies.

Dig deeper: A deep dive into changes in the ABM space — our new ABM Marketing Intelligence Report

The vendors respond

A great number of ABM vendors provide everything from all-in-one platforms to enable ABM strategies, to adjacent services like data enrichment, identity resolution, analytics, and interaction management/orchestration to B2B marketers ramping up their programs. The more comprehensive platforms come from B2B mainstays such as Dun & Bradstreet, Salesforce and Marketo, which share the space with a growing group of independent ABM platforms including 6Sense, Integrate, Demandbase, Bombora, Jabmo, RollWorks (a division of NextRoll), N. Rich, MRP, Madison Logic, Terminus and more.

Here are seven of the top developments we are monitoring:

1. Platforms, not point solutions

Where the ABM landscape dominated by point solutions offering specific elements of the mix, but now, through partnerships, consolidation and technological development, many vendors offer more comprehensive solutions.

2. Consolidation of ABM and demand gen

Another notable development among ABM vendors is the move to consolidate ABM with demand generation. Many vendors are buying into the vision of eliminating the distinction between these two elements of B2B selling and are developing the tools to enable marketers to carry it out. For example, Demandbase calls this convergence its “Smarter Go-To Market” offering, while Kwanzoo
expects a B2B Go-To Market suite — anchored by its B2B GTM platform — to become standard.
Madison Logic calls its solution “Journey Acceleration,” and Salesforce expects businesses
to align all of their customer-facing activity (marketing, sales and customer service) on the
Salesforce Customer 360 Platform. Meanwhile, Terminus and Dun & Bradstreet are unifying
around a CDP.

3. More M&A

Most vendors we surveyed expect merger and acquisition activity to pick up in the space as the larger players build more comprehensive platforms. Inflation worries, interest rate hikes and general economic uncertainty are also factors here, since they all contribute to a less-attractive IPO market, leading venture-funded companies to seek M&A opportunities.

4. Deeper investments in AI

In addition to consolidating their tool sets, vendors are also investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to deepen the data insights available through their tools, as well as the targeting and relevance of marketing execution. More vendors have introduced recommendation engines that analyze multiple data sources to provide “next-best-actions” based on account intent and behavior signals.

5. Help for the sales team

To enhance the alignment between B2B sales and marketing teams, vendors are also adding sales enablement tools that automatically activate sales triggers based on CRM account reporting, and provide lead-to-account mapping, for example. The goal is to streamline the “hand-off” of leads from marketing to sales.

6. Efficiency across channels

Interaction management, or orchestration, is a key feature for many ABM vendors profiled in this report, which are expanding the number of channels that can be managed through their tools. Vendors are building out APIs and increasing the availability of native (outof-the-box) integrations with CRMs, marketing automation systems, digital ad networks and other ABM data providers.

7. The growing importance of compliance

While data unquestionably drives value, it can also create difficulties with complying
with privacy regulations especially for those businesses looking to take their ABM programs
global. This is why many vendors touted their capabilities for data management and compliance
as they gear up to support global marketing initiatives.

Download Enterprise Account-Based Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

The post What is account-based marketing today and how has the space evolved? appeared first on MarTech.

But how do you make sure you are choosing the right platform for your organization?

For starters, once you have determined that ABM software makes sense for your business, spend time researching individual vendors and their capabilities by doing the following:

• Make a list of all the ABM capabilities you currently have, those that you would like to have and those that you can’t live without. This last category is critical, and will help you avoid making a costly mistake. For example, if enriching your ICPs with deeper technographic data is important, be sure to ask about it during vendor interviews and demos. If you find that one vendor doesn’t offer this “must-have” capability, it’s obviously not a fit.
• Take your list of capabilities and then do some research. Speak to your marketing peers to find out who is using which ABM tool and why.
• Narrow your list down to those vendors that meet your criteria. Submit your list of the ABM capabilities you’ve identified, and set a timeframe for them to reply.
• Decide whether or not you need to engage in a formal RFI/RFP process. This is an individual preference, however be sure to give the same list of capabilities to each vendor to facilitate comparison.

Explore ABM capabilities from account-based marketing vendors like 6sense, Demandbase, Salesforce, Integrate and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on account-based marketing platforms.

Click here to download!

Once you have moved beyond those steps, begin reaching out for demonstrations. You want to set up demos within a relatively short timeframe of each other to help make relevant comparisons. Make sure that all potential internal users are on the demo call and pay attention to how easy the platform is to use, whether the vendor seems to understand our business and marketing needs, and whether they are showing your “must-have” features?

To further help you out, here is a list of 24 questions you can ask.

General questions:

• How easy is the tool to use?
• Does the vendor seem to understand our business and our marketing needs?
• Are they showing us our “must-have” features?

Account targeting and interaction management/orchestration:

• Does the tool help identify target accounts?
• What type of machine learning and/or artificial intelligence does the tool use?
• Can we segment and view accounts by multiple criteria?
• Can the tool match existing and new leads to their correct accounts?
• Can the tool identify anonymous leads and match them to their correct accounts?
• Does the tool show where visitors came from (channel or campaign)?
• Does the tool track website visitor actions (i.e., clicks and content views)?
• Can the tool track visitor actions across all visits?
• Can we manage cross-channel campaigns (in all of our relevant channels) through the tool?
• Does the tool help us comply with relevant privacy regulations?

Reporting and integration:

• Does the tool provide real-time analytics?
• Does the tool provide summary and/or detailed views of account data and insights?
• Does the tool measure account engagement? How?
• Are native integrations with our CRM and/or marketing automation platform available, so we can utilize historical data?
• If not, is an API available for custom system integrations?

Training and customer support:

• How much training will we need to use the software, and what kind of training is available?
• What level of customer support is offered, and when is it available (i.e., 24/7 vs. 8/5)?
• What is the turnaround time for support queries/tickets?
• Are professional services or support available for our transition to ABM?
• What new features are under consideration?
• What’s the long-term product roadmap and launch dates?

Good luck!

The post 24 questions to ask account-based marketing vendors during a demo appeared first on MarTech.

While researching the all-new updated MarTech intelligence Report on account-based marketing (ABM) solutions, which just launched, we learned about how B2B buyers are engaging with companies in the current environment, and how marketing technology providers are helping those companies turn prospects into customers.

While ABM has been used by B2B marketers for well over a decade, rapid advances in the sophistication and accessibility of relevant data – and in technologies that enable ABM – are fueling more widespread adoption of this approach. Another driving force, which I mentioned at the start, are fundamental changes in the B2B buying cycle — shifts that the COVID pandemic accelerated as events and in-person meetings went virtual.

For some time, B2B buyers have conducted a lot of research online before talking to a salesperson, and the vast amount of information available has given the buyer an upper hand. The lockdowns, cancelled events and work-from-home trends that have characterized the pandemic period have contributed to this phenomenon.

Digital engagement, Salesforce notes in its “State of the Connected Customer” report, “has hit a tipping point this year, with an estimated 60% of interactions taking place online, compared to 42% last year.” The company expects this trend to become part of the “new normal” post-pandemic. Its survey showed that 80% of business buyers expect to conduct more business online after the pandemic as compared to before.

At the same time, the number of influencers involved in B2B purchase decisions has increased, leading to a longer and more complex buying cycle. The median B2B buying group involves six to 10 decision makers, according to Gartner, and 77% of buyers surveyed say purchases “have become very complex and difficult.”

For more on what we learned, as well as profiles of individual vendors of ABM solutions, download Account-Based Marketing Tools: A Marketer’s Guide.

The post Account-based marketing propelled forward by the pandemic appeared first on MarTech.