ABM Adoption Increasing, But Demand Generation Still King

According to the The 2016 ABM Benchmark Survey Report from Demand Gen, account-based marketing (ABM) is still a very new initiative for most companies.  While the number of adopters of ABM has increased dramatically in 2016 over the previous year, it is still early days for ABM and most companies still rely on the tried and tested methods of traditional demand generation.

Findings of the Survey Report include:

Adoption rates of ABM
• 59% of respondents said they've been doing ABM for less than a year
• 29% of respondents have been doing ABM for less than six months

Plans for adopting ABM
• 47% of marketers have an ABM strategy in place, and
• 33% indicated they are planning to implement ABM within the next 18 months, while
• 20% said they had no strategy or plans to implement ABM.

Demand Generation vs. ABM
• 36% are primarily focused on demand generation
• 37% are evenly split between ABM and demand generation activities
• 23% are still employing demand gen but now are focusing on ABM
• 4% practice only ABM

One of the major hurdles to the adoption of ABM seems to be the lack of clarity on how to execute, with 45% says they did not know how it would work in practice, and 19% saying that identifying the accounts to target accounts was problematic.  Other challenges for companies that intend to adopt ABM are attribution of revenue to ABM methods and measuring ROI, coordinating between sales and marketing teams, and the lack of data that allows specific targeting of a critical volume of accounts to justify the spend on ABM tools and training.

On the positive side, the technologies required to support ABM processes seem to have finally arrived in the market, with several vendors providing tools that include collaborative integration between sales and marketing, use of highly customized content, predictive marketing analytics, web and email personalization, and intent-data driven advertising.  Also, there is a plethora of vendors that provide training and ‘hand-holding’ during the early stages for adopters of ABM. 

While the growth of ABM has been significant in 2016, it will remain to be seen if the positives outweigh the challenges for marketers in adopting ABM in 2017.  If you’ve not include at least a look-see at ABM for 2017, it may be something worth checking out.  Meanwhile, demand generation is still king.