Making Money On-line: Account Based Marketing and its Growing Interest Among B2B CMOs

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Account Based Marketing and its Growing Interest Among B2B CMOs

In his Forbes piece published last month, contributor Daniel Newman shared a quote from Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group Director, Data-Driven Marketing, at SiriusDecisions: “Companies of all sizes are trying out ABM, from expanded efforts in very large global companies to laser-focused go-to-market models in lean startups. The next question is whether ABM will go from being a trend to becoming a dominant strategy, forever replacing ‘spray and pray’ in the B2B mindset.”

I would say based on the results of research done by Leadtail, a social strategy firm that has built a panel of over 1,000 B2B and B2C CMOs and marketing executives located in North America and active on Twitter reveal a growing interest in Account Based Marketing (ABM) among B2B CMOs - in particular B2B tech CMOs.

In the latest edition of the CMO Social Stat of the Month, we see the most popular hashtags used by B2B tech CMOs from the month of April 2016. As you'll see in the chart below, ABM checks in as 21st most popular hashtag. Not all that impressive.

But what you don't see is that when Leadtail looked at the most popular hashtags used by B2B tech CMOs from all of 1Q 2016, #ABM was ranked #55.

Karri Carlson, Leadtail’s VP of Social Insights: "We recently looked at data for this set for all of Q1 2016. One of the things we noted as surprising was that #ABM (Account-Based Marketing) wasn't showing up higher in the list (it ranked at #55) - especially since it seemed all the B2B marketers we were talking to had plans for ABM. Fast-forward to April and we can see it's jumped up to #21 on the list. Expect #ABM to continue to rise as marketers get into the nitty gritty of ABM programs and reach out to find and share best practices and innovative approaches."

So Why The Growing Interest In ABM?

Well, seeing how this is marketing we're talking about and marketers love stats, try these on for size.

80% of marketers measuring ROI say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments.
84% of marketers said that ABM had significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships.
When ABM has been in use for at least a year, 60% of users reported a revenue increase of at least 10% & 19% reported a revenue impact of 30% or greater.

Newman believes that in order for account-based marketing to be truly successful, it’s vitally import to support the entire B2B buyers’ journey from acquisition and prospecting to closing new business while enabling B2B marketers to optimize targeting on paid media, more effectively engage target prospects and simplify data management and integration.

"In the future B2B companies are going to not only want, but need to move to account based marketing models," he adds. "With content continuing to grow at an exponential rate, the war for attention in the B2B space will force marketers to get more personalized and specific with their marketing efforts to make sure that their target customers are being marketed to in a way that is highly personal, and specific."

The success of account based marketing will hinge greatly on the use of the right marketing technology and platform, which is precisely why you need to download The CMO Solution Guide to Leveraging New Technology and Marketing Platforms.