Growing Revenue and Increasing New Accounts Labeled as Top Account-Based Marketing Goals

Ascend2 highlighted effective strategies and tactics of account-based marketing in one of their latest reports, titled “Account-Based Marketing: Survey Summary Report.”

According to the survey results, the top priorities and strategic objectives of this marketing tactic are growing revenue generated from each account and increasing the number of new accounts (56 percent and 48 percent of respondents, respectively). Other important objectives of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy include unifying marketing and sales teams (46 percent) and integrating marketing and sales technologies (41 percent).

When rating the success of their account-based marketing strategy, 38 percent of marketing influencers consider it to be very successful and 46 percent consider it to be somewhat successful.

The challenges of ABM success align closely with the strategic objectives: 42 percent of respondents find it difficult to increase the number of new accounts and 40 percent find it challenging to unify marketing and sales teams.

Of those who find their strategy successful, the most effective tactics include personalizing content and messaging (51 percent), identifying high value existing accounts (45 percent), and creating account-specific campaigns (42 percent). Two of the most effective tactics, personalizing messaging and creating account-specific campaigns, also require the most effort – in terms of skill, time, and expense – to perform.

B2B Marketers Plan to Increase ABM Efforts

Another report produced in partnership with Bizible and Terminus, the “2016 ABM Metrics Report,” found 80 percent of respondents indicate their ABM strategy is moderately or highly successful. In addition, none plan on scaling back their efforts, and 60 percent plan on doing “a lot more” ABM over the next six months.

The report also found marketers are struggling in the planning and execution stages of ABM. With planning, marketers identified key challenges of getting relevant teams on the same page, identifying the right accounts to target, and identifying the right personas and normalizing titles.

When it comes to execution, more than 50 percent of the respondents say personalizing marketing outreach is the greatest challenge to success.