2017: The year in B2B marketing innovation

For B2B marketing, 2017 was a big year, with changes happening so fast that I barely had time to binge-watch “Stranger Things.”For those of you still reeling from all the activity this year, I thought I’d take a few minutes to recap some of the biggest headlines in B2B marketing and shine a light on how these trends will continue to develop in 2018.Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has been a hot topic for quite some time now, but 2017 was really the year we saw it move beyond the early adopters and cement itself as a critical strategy for driving growth. As more marketers made the move to ABM, the conversation moved from the elementary “why ABM?” to the more actionable “how can I do ABM” and “how can I do it better?”While quite a few factors played a role in this shift, including advances in technology and the success of early adopters, education is worth calling out here. In the past year, there’s been a large number of programs, certifications and seminars focused on increasing awareness and education around ABM, along with resources that provide best practices and new ways to approach the strategy.In 2018, we should expect the conversation to build on these efforts and become even more tactical and results-focused.In addition to the increased adoption of ABM, we also saw an overwhelming number of companies enter the ABM race in 2017. There’s now technology for each piece of ABM, from account identification and advertising to measurement and reporting.