Report: Majority of Marketers Implementing Some Form of Account-Based Marketing Practices

Although some marketers have already implemented some form of account-based marketing (ABM), new research shows that many of them are still in the initial phases, while others have not begun to think about ABM at all.

Canam Research recently published “The State of ABM Survey 2020 Trend Report,” and data suggested that the majority of marketers (27.31%) are in the middle of integrating ABM into their overall strategy, while 25.21% have an ABM program in place. That said 8.82% of marketers are still unfamiliar with ABM in its entirety, and 14.71% want an ABM strategy, but have yet to implement one.

When it comes to executing ABM programs at scale, most respondents (51.06%) stated that their biggest challenge is creating personalized experiences. Other obstacles include tracking and analyzing campaign performance (38.30%), buyer persona and messaging development (37.02%) and having an unreliable/not actionable contact and account database (36.60%).

ABM and the Challenges of Sales and Marketing Alignment

There are many challenges associated with implementing ABM into an existing strategy, and previous research shows that a lack of sales and marketing alignment can be detrimental.

Ascend2 conducted the “Account-Based Marketing Survey,” and statistics indicated that while most marketers (65%) have been at least “somewhat successful” at achieving their goals through ABM, a lack of sales and marketing alignment (43%) continues to be a problem.

Other challenges include increasing accounts and contacts (43%), increasing existing account revenue (39%) and attributing marketing efforts to revenue (37%).

Just 21% of marketers have a measurable ABM program in place, while 24% are now beginning to roll out an ABM pilot program.