Majority of B2B Marketers Have Plans to Increase ABM Efforts

A recent survey of senior marketers reveals companies that are practicing account-based marketing (ABM) are committed to their efforts. In the “2016 ABM Metrics Report” produced in partnership by Bizible and Terminus, about 80 percent of respondents indicate their success with ABM is either moderately or highly successful, and none plan on scaling back efforts.

In fact, roughly 60 percent plan on doing “a lot more” ABM over the next six months.

Last month, early results from this survey (reported here) discovered that ABM shortens the sales and marketing cycle from 120 days or longer to 90 days or less for the majority of companies utilizing ABM.

The full report released this week found marketers are struggling in the planning and execution stages of ABM. With planning, marketers identified three key challenges: 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 ABM execution, more than half of the respondents say personalizing marketing outreach is the greatest challenge.

Marketers are using a variety of metrics to measure ABM success (engagement, opportunity conversion, revenue generation, pipeline velocity, and forecasting ability).  Revenue generation was named as the primary metric for roughly 40 percent of respondents, revealing the majority of companies are not – or are unable to – prioritize revenue as the key metric of ABM success.

According to the authors of the report, the data shows ABM is growing, but is still in early stages of adoption.

“What we’ll see in the near future is that, once the execution portion gets figured out, proper measurement will become essential to moving ABM forward,” the authors wrote. “Smart ABM measurement gives marketers the ability to prove and improve the revenue value of ABM strategies and tactics, and it will be the driving force behind ABM achieving its mass market appeal.”

Account-Based Marketing Key Driver for Success

A September 2015 benchmark report by Demandbase and Demand Metric titled, “Account-Based Marketing Adoption,” found that 96 percent of B2B marketers consider ABM to be a key driver of marketing success. About 71 percent of B2B companies are already using ABM or show interest in adopting it. Nearly 60 percent that have already done so can attribute revenue increase to ABM marketing.