Terminus CMO discusses slowing ABM budget increases and measurement challenges

The number of companies reporting year-over-year increases in budget for account-based marketing activities has fallen nearly 20 per cent, and 41 per cent say measuring and reporting results is a challenge, according to research from Terminus released this week. Conducted in partnership FlipMyFunnel and Heinz Marketing, the third-annual Terminus State Of Account-Based Marketing report is  based on a survey of more than 200 sales and marketing professionals. Among other findings, the data showed that while nearly half, or 45 per cent of firms have only been running ABM programs for less than a year, 15 per cent are now in the three-plus years range. Thirty per cent also said they would describe their ABM programs as “broadly implemented, focused on optimization and iteration.” According to Terminus CMO Derek Slayton, the measurement issues may stem from the inability of many martech tools to adequately track things like account progression. That means marketers may still be falling back on things like marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to determine their success, which doesn’t make as much sense when you’re pursuing ABM. “We have champions that feel they’re moving the needle but don’t have the rest of the organization at the same place,” Slayton told B2B News Network. “Make sure when you’re starting out that you spend some time being clear on how you’re going to measure your KPIs but also make sure the rest of the organization understands that.” On the other hand, only 60 per cent said they expected to see more money invested in ABM next year, down from 82 per cent the last time the survey was conducted. Slayton suggested this may be in part due to the need to better integrate or bring together disparate tool sets. “(Marketers) have a lot of stuff they’ve purchased that they aren’t getting value from,” he said. “I think the simplification of the tech stack will speed up account based marketing over the long term.” Perhaps most encouraging, more than  84 per cent of respondents with an advanced ABM program report that target account selection is a joint effort conducted by both sales and marketing. Besides reporting and measurement, nearly as many survey respondents said finding the right ABM content to align with their program goals was a problem, followed by building out account and contact data.