74% of B2B Marketers Are Finding Success with ABM Tactics

B2B marketers are widely adopting account-based marketing (ABM) strategies, and new research suggests that they are seeing success with these tactics.

According to the annual “2017 ABM Benchmark Survey Report” from Demand Gen Report, the majority of B2B marketers (54 percent) claim that their ABM efforts are meeting organizational expectations. An additional 20 percent stated that they are exceeding organizational expectations. To achieve their objectives, B2B marketers are frequently turning to web personalization (42 percent) and account-based advertising tools (41 percent).

The report also discovered that many B2B marketers’ ABM strategies have not been in place for very long. Half of the respondents (51 percent) said that they have only had an ABM strategy in place for 1 to 6 months. Twenty-four percent stated that they have had one for no more than 12 months.

In terms of challenges, sales and marketing alignment (45 percent) is still the top obstacle for ABM marketers. This is followed by personalization at a scale toward target accounts (38 percent) and proving ROI (36 percent).

B2B Marketers Increasingly Turning to ABM Tactics

Previous research suggests that B2B marketers have been looking into ABM practices for months.

The “2017 State of Account-based Marketing Survey” from #FlipMyFunnel found that over the past year, the percentage of B2B marketers using ABM increased from 49 percent to 81 percent.

“ABM is becoming a catch-all phrase,” wrote the authors of the report. “As inbound came to encompass search, email, social and content marketing, ABM has quickly come to mean anything involving highly targeted, focused marketing programs, be it technology or process.”