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The Top Five Trends in Account-based Marketing

Apurva Pathak | January 11, 2022 | 263 views

Five Trends in Account-based Marketing
Over the last couple years, there has been a paradigm shift in the way customers engage with brands. The effect of this shift has also trickled down to the B2B domain. The marketing strategies that drove sales and revenue pre-COVID no longer work. In response, brands are focusing on revolutionizing their marketing strategies by implementing ABM to optimize their processes and drive a higher ROI. Today, 67% of brands leverage account-based marketing.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the answer to B2B marketers’ struggles as they navigate through the volatile business situation that the pandemic has created. It uses content personalization, focused targeting of high-value accounts, and aligns the marketing strategy with business goals. Through multiple platforms, brand awareness, and optimized processes, ABM gives a higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.

In an interview with Media 7, Mark Emond, Founder and President of Demand Spring, talked about B2B marketing strategies, content, and technology stacks.

“In today’s long B2B buying journey, buyers are in control and they are interacting across multiple channels. The key is to use data and technology to serve up highly targeted content across channels, tuned to the stage of the buyer’s journey a prospect is in, and what their behavior shows they are most apt to engage in.”

The following five emerging trends in account-based marketing have defined ABM in 2021 and may influence the way it evolves in 2022:

Data Integration

Manually researching target account data requires resources and time. To overcome this challenge, businesses use integrated marketing automation and CRM to collect firmographic data (company size and location), technographic data (target company’s technological choices), behavioral and intent data, predictive analytics, and more to optimize their ABM campaigns.

Marketing automation and CRM keep track of this integration so that brands can segment their prospects effectively. With the help of this integration, they can also find accounts similar to their target accounts. Breaking down internal info silos for cross-departmental collaboration promotes using the valuable customer intelligence that departments have. For example, the product management department can share the customization preferences of the clients they work with. This information can help marketers offer clients just what they want. Data integration helps steer ABM campaigns in the right direction.

New Tools

A wide array of tools to simplify and optimize account-based marketing are available on the market. These tools are used for CRM and marketing automation, intent monitoring, campaign execution, orchestration, measuring and reporting the performance of the ABM campaign, and content syndication. These tools are a part of the martech stack that brands use to find key accounts closest to their ideal customer profile (ICP). They facilitate better resource allocation so that personnel can spend more time on personalized interactions with the target accounts.

B2B businesses prefer using marketing automation platforms that they can customize to fit their needs, like sending email marketing (behavior based email), CRM and sales automation, campaign tracking, account-based digital marketing, and analyzing the performance of their ABM campaign, instead of creating a martech stack from scratch. They choose software that can have numerous integrations, products, and services to better adapt to changing circumstances.

Omnichannel Presence

Omnichannel presence is one of the most influential emerging trends in account-based marketing. Brands need to be present and relevant in the lives of their customers. They do this by using different channels for communication and engagement so that their relationship is deep and meaningful, focusing on understanding their problems and offering effective solutions.

A 2019 study by Gartner found that B2B buyers only spent 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. In the current pandemic situation, in-person events and meetings are replaced by AI-powered chat bots, behavior-based emails, personalized website content, and account-based digital advertising so that customers receive a steady flow of information from businesses across different channels. Marketing automation streamlines this omnichannel communication in ABM. However, it can also complicate things for buyers because of the barrage of information they receive. The Gartner study found that 77% of B2B customers found their purchase journey difficult. Striking a careful balance is necessary while integrating new channels into your strategy.

Customized Content

According to a 2020 ABM Benchmark Survey Report, 42% of respondents are personalising their content to increase account engagement and build long-term relationships. Businesses are creating tailored content for specific industries, roles, titles, challenges, and needs. Their content strategy is based on mapping content to suit a specific buyer persona. They engage the buyer at every stage. As one of the most important emerging trends in account-based marketing, customized content is making a huge difference in lead generation, conversion, and retargeting accounts.

The latest tools allow B2B marketers to personalize content based on target accounts’ interests and preferences. Selecting an appropriate content format, topics of interest, and the response to the use of respected industry influencers are mapped to create hyper-personalized content to better connect with prospects, especially decision-makers. Using marketing automation can modernize this process and deliver extraordinary results in terms of conversions and lead nurturing.

Account Metrics

Assessing the performance of an ABM campaign is of paramount importance if marketers want to meet their ROI expectations. To keep up with the emerging trends in marketing and analyze campaign performance, B2B marketers are focusing on account-centric metrics. Generated revenue and the number of accounts gained and retained are mapped using metric tools. Marketers also focus on KPIs like win rate, pipeline velocity, pipeline contribution, and account engagement score to measure the success of their ABM campaigns. As account-based marketing is evolving, it is crucial to map campaign performance so any weaknesses can be taken care of and the campaign can be optimized for better results.

Connecting siloed data sets across the entire content strategy becomes easy because of these ABM-specific metrics. These metrics gather valuable information that impacts purchase decisions as prospects move through the sales and marketing cycle.

How Snapchat’s Bitmoji Brings Traffic to Its Discover Page

Snapchat’s Bitmoji app was launched in 2016 so that users could create their own personalized cartoon avatars. Every user’s Bitmoji appears on the Discover page, where advertisements and brand content are also displayed. This way, traffic comes to the Discover page for Bitmoji but ends up being exposed to brand content and advertisements. This is a great illustration of how personalized content can drive traffic.

Conclusion

B2B marketers are keeping up with the changing and emerging trends in account-based marketing to get the most out of their campaigns. In 2022, ABM is expected to flourish and optimize the demand generation and conversion process.

FAQ

What is the future of ABM?

ABM is expected to become robust with the use of technology like marketing automation to enhance the customer experience.

Why should businesses use account-based marketing?

Account-based marketing motivates marketing and sales teams to work together, identify target accounts, craft campaigns, and align individual accounts through the pipeline.

Spotlight

Sullivan Branding

Sullivan Branding is a full-service, integrated advertising agency based in Memphis serving a mix of regional, national, and global B2C and B2B brands. We develop own-able, business-building marketing strategies for brands, expressed through creative storytelling that separates and elevates those brands from the competition increasing awareness, compelling adoption and igniting advocacy.

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By using firmographic and account data to pivot their ad campaigns, B2B marketers can optimize their results and achieve greater success. StackAdapt’s in-platform offering uniquely operates within a closed-loop identity ecosystem to improve match rates. The goal is to target and engage specific high-value individuals, which requires a deep understanding of the audience. With full control over B2B data, StackAdapt ABM Targeting and Measurement attributes ad engagement back to the exact same authenticated audiences, ensuring that measurement is deterministic and highly accurate. This level of personalization and targeting is critical for creating meaningful engagement and driving desired outcomes such as highly qualified leads, revenue, and brand recognition. “StackAdapt ABM Targeting and Measurement has empowered Centerline Digital to better grow upper and mid-funnel campaign adoption and investment by clients,” said Joey Vara, Associate Paid Media Director at Centerline Digital. “In addition to targeting with confidence, StackAdapt provides an excellent diversity of inventory and tactics to execute throughout the buyer journey. With a renewed capability to effectively target and reach prospects at scale, programmatic has become the top driver of reach, traffic, and engagement for our client base.” StackAdapt’s ABM Targeting and Measurement is built off proprietary, in-house B2B ID graph technology that targets and measures the same authenticated audience, enabling users in a multitude of ways: Frictionless campaign creation and reporting: StackAdapt B2B customers will now be able to use this self-serve solution directly in the platform, allowing for frictionless campaign creation and reporting. Authenticated audiences are also ready for activation quicker than ever before. Audience intelligence: Understand how business professionals and decision-makers are engaging with campaigns and creatives to better iterate on campaign performance. Segment the audiences into more applicable groups that can be targeted using increasingly focused and effective means. Track progress across the buyer's journey: Learn what actions users are taking at which stage of the programmatic funnel to gain intelligence into your unique sales cycle, and prioritize what to do next. Impact on accounts and engagement: Discern interested and engaged accounts for prioritization within the sales team. Quantify your marketing dollars: Be empowered to show stakeholders how programmatic can help nurture and drive the ideal audience through a long and complex sales funnel and provide a return on ad spend. Diverse, multi-channel inventory: Users can reach their ideal audiences no matter where they spend their time through native, display, video, CTV, audio, and in-game, influencing their customer journey and decision-making process down the funnel. Low-risk activation: While other companies may require a long-term contract without providing a testing opportunity, StackAdapt allows companies to launch campaigns quickly and without contractual minimums, giving teams the confidence to test and learn. “We are thrilled to provide StackAdapt users this latest offering because they can now launch a highly scalable and measurable ABM strategy through programmatic technology,” explains Michael Shang, Vice President of Partnerships and Business Solutions at StackAdapt. “B2B marketers can create highly targeted, personalized campaigns to win over best-fit accounts and nurture audiences through the B2B buying journey across all devices and different programmatic channels.” For six consecutive years, StackAdapt has been recognized as a high performer and the highest-ranked DSP in customer satisfaction on G2. For more information, visit www.stackadapt.com. About StackAdapt StackAdapt is a self-serve programmatic advertising platform used by hundreds of brands and agencies around the world. StackAdapt’s data-driven platform combines state-of-the-art machine learning with a clean and intuitive user interface to provide media buyers with an easy way to plan, execute and drive the best performance across all devices, inventory and publishing partners. StackAdapt has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America, is rated the number 1 demand-side platform (DSP) on G2, and is the highest performing and easiest to use platform. For further information, visit www.stackadapt.com.

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ABM Trailblazer Demandbase Announces Buying Group AI, the Next Breakthrough in B2B

PR Newswire | June 06, 2023

Demandbase, the Smarter GTM™ company that helps B2B organizations hit their revenue goals, today introduces the biggest breakthrough in B2B since ABM — AI-powered buying groups. Demandbase One™ will be the first and only platform to use cutting edge, generative AI to analyze millions of data points, drawing from more than 150M B2B contacts combined with the industry's deepest advertising, intent, and engagement data to generate dynamic B2B buying groups, assign roles and personas, and recommend new contacts. It also will aggregate buying signals across the group and streamline engagement, unlocking a clear competitive advantage and saving hours of manual research and guesswork to drive greater revenue growth. "As a company that heavily relies on ABM, Demandbase's new Buying Group solution will be a game changer," said Dan Cafiero, senior program manager, Account-Based Marketing and Paid Media at Seagate. "The ability to automatically identify and engage with accurate buying groups, understanding their personas and roles, will revolutionize our sales and marketing efforts. This tool truly understands the complex dynamics of B2B decision-making processes, cutting through the noise to reach the right people at the right time. We can't wait to get our hands on it." "B2B GTM teams have known for a long time that the traditional lead-based approach really misses the mark, because individuals don't buy solutions in the enterprise — that focus is too narrow," says Brewster Stanislaw, chief product officer, at Demandbase. "That's why account-based marketing came into existence… but the reality is an account-based approach has its drawbacks as well. It's too broad because it's not every person at an account that participates in a buying decision. The sweet spot is in between; it's the buying committee, made of influencers, champions, blockers, etc., that actually determines where and when an enterprise will invest in a given solution." Stanislaw continues, "Until now, it's been too hard to implement buying groups because companies had to rely on manual guesswork and faulty data. Our AI-powered buying groups solve this once and for all by delivering on the audience that is 'just right.' We're using artificial intelligence to analyze massive behavioral data sets to generate accurate buying groups and automatically assign roles and personas to each of their constituent members. This empowers our customers to be optimally efficient across their entire GTM motion. By focusing on the buying group as their core GTM object, they can generate more demand with greater velocity through the customer journey, while minimizing waste by investing resources where they are most impactful. This is a revolution for B2B GTM teams that will unlock efficient growth, and those that adopt will be the CMOs and CROs of the future." The industry has recognized the need to target and reach buying groups, with Forrester Research saying that the goal of this approach is to "better align with the true buyer in virtually all B2B buying decisions — a group of people (the buying group) all working together to solve a business issue." "Identifying and engaging with the buying committee is the key to winning deals but it's really hard," commented Craig Rosenberg, chief platform officer at Scale Venture Partners. "That's why the introduction of AI-powered buying groups is so powerful for GTM teams. It eliminates the manual guesswork for B2B GTM teams thus allowing these teams to focus on driving increased demand." Historically, teams have relied on guesswork, manual processes, and missing and inaccurate data, resulting in systematic under-estimation of all personas that make up the full committee. With Demandbase Buying Group AI, this will all change. For the first time, companies will be able to use AI to automatically generate their ideal buying groups, create different buying groups for different products and journey stages, find the right contacts for each persona — adding them to their CRM, if not already there — and engage them with accurate contact information. The result will be fewer missed, lost, or delayed deals and vastly superior go-to-market execution. Demandbase pioneered the ABM movement and is now leading the way in this latest evolution of B2B go-to-market. The company is uniquely positioned to deliver on AI-generated buying groups with its massive data set that combines the customer's engagement data with Demandbase's B2B data — including AI-validated contact data on more than 150M buyers plus expansive advertising and behavioral data — to see how individuals interact across products and with each other. Demandbase Buying Group AI will launch out of beta in Q3 of 2023. See how it works to learn more and discover why buying groups are the foundation of a modern, Smarter GTM™ platform. About Demandbase Demandbase helps B2B companies hit their revenue goals using fewer resources. How? By using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase, powered by combining your sales and marketing data with our validated B2B data — what we call Account Intelligence. Better data makes better AI, that's Smarter GTM™.

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