B2B Trending Conversations: Account based marketing special

Marketing August 24, 2016August 30, 2016 Brett Wilkins
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This week, B2B Conversations is all about account-based marketing. While it may sound cliché to refer to 2016 as the year of ABM, this latest strategic approach to B2B marketing has been enthusiastically embraced by players both big and small. In this column, you’ll get a thorough intro to ABM, insights from industry thought leaders successfully utilizing it, a webinar on ABM implementation and more. AMB is more than just the latest B2B buzzword and understanding its core components and uses is key to maximizing your B2B marketing prowess.

Intro to ABM

What is account-based marketing and how is it more than just the latest B2B trend? XEN’s Kerry Butters offers this AMB primer  to help you identify and plan target accounts and create campaigns based on landing pages and advertising. “ABM is something that many B2B businesses are taking a huge interest in this year,” writes Butters. “It relies on personalization which we know works well in both the consumer and B2B markets. While many companies appear to understand its worth, adoption is currently slow, so if you’re a B2B marketer then now is the time to jump on the ABM bandwagon and identify those high value customers who will boost sales.” In today’s multi-channel digital environment, Butters asserts “it’s necessary to find new and innovative ways to reach customers, no matter what industry we’re in. ABM offers an opportunity to gain the most profit from each account that’s identified as being valuable in both sales and marketing.”

ABM thought leadership

Everstring’s latest installment of its “6 for 6” blog series features Terminus co-founder and CMO Sangram Vajre, who along with his talented team has been at the forefront of the #FlipMyFunnel movement. Vajre, who literally wrote the book on ABM, says businesses looking to embrace ABM should start by challenging the status quo when measuring the success of their marketing programs. Identify the right accounts and then expand your reach by having the correct data on all contacts, decision-makers and stakeholders in the account. It’s also crucial to ensure your marketing efforts are tailored to engaging those people on their terms.

ABM core elements

Although ABM is ideally suited to B2B sales, many B2B marketers have found optimized, fully effective ABM elusive. Why? Often this is because they lack the necessary infrastructure for success. However, Reach Marketing explains that marketers win when they connect marketing and sales, create meaningful segments, define triggers and filters and track results. It’s also critically important to discuss success stories and areas for improvement during regular meetings with your sales and marketing teams.

ABM webinar

Global data resource leader Avention gathered a panel of experts who will help you keep ABM from becoming “A Big Mess.” Terminus CMO Sangram Vajre, Marketo senior director of enterprise marketing Charm Bianchini, Heinz Marketing president Matt Heinz and Avention CEO Steve Pogorzelski will hold a webinar at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 26 in which they discuss strategies for starting and scaling an ABM program from scratch. You’ll learn how to structure and align your teams for success and how to measure that success; how to find, organize and use the right program for any program; how to choose the right ABM tools for your job; and how to integrate ABM programs into your existing sales programs. For more information or to register, click here.

ABM infographic

Aviyos Predictive Insights shares this ABM study-sales model infographic detailing how the abundance of growing ABM tools and tactics represents an exciting time for B2B marketers to find new ways to boost conversion rates, average deal size and more efficient delivery of personalization at scale. Understanding ABM is more important than ever for B2B companies — 92 percent of them recently said that ABM is “extremely” or “very” important to their overall marketing efforts, and half of these companies currently report having ABM pilot programs in place. How is your company implementing its ABM regimen?

That’s all for this week’s installment of B2B Conversations. We’ll be back again next week; in the meantime, if you have any B2B content or ideas you think we should focus on next week, let us know via @b2bnewsnetwork. We love hearing from you!

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Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for U.S. news. Based in San Francisco, he is the editor and publisher of Moral Low Ground and is a Yahoo! Featured Political Contributor.

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