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As the convergence of demand and ABM continues, marketers must connect the dots between channels. Addressing complex buying committees across these channels through personalized content leads to more engagement and a better experience for buyers.
To help marketers better understand this concept, we brought on guest speaker Robert Peterson, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester, to share the latest research on the state of data-driven multi-channel ABM and how these findings will impact future B2B marketing strategies.
Throughout the research findings presentation, Vin Turk, COO and Co-Founder, Madison Logic, and Rachel Teare, Senior Director, Global Marketing Readiness & Enablement, Citrix Systems, discussed the research and shared their own ABM challenges and successes.
We’ve rounded up the most important takeaways for marketers as they think through their multi-channel ABM strategies for the future:
It’s time to break down the silos and work with the sales team throughout the entire buyer’s journey. Marketers and sales should work together to identify and prioritize accounts, develop content strategies, and define what qualified accounts look like.
Sales teams have the “inside scoop” into what qualified accounts want from your solution as they consider purchasing, so why not use them earlier in the journey to inform your targeting and multi-channel ABM campaign strategy? Through sales feedback, marketers will have help in identifying target accounts, activating content that speaks to each buying committee member and converting accounts into strong opportunities.
B2B companies are hard-wired to care about leads, but some predict the death of the marketing qualified lead (MQL). By definition, a lead is a singular person. Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Survey confirmed that it’s not a single person that makes a purchase decision, it’s a group of stakeholders within the buying committee.
So, it’s time for sales and marketing leaders to leave MQLs behind and focus on an opportunity-based metric instead. This method accounts for the multiple members of the buying group and aligns marketing and sales to integrate their demand management and deal conversion.
B2B marketing is no longer a “pray and spray” approach. B2B ABM is understanding and prioritizing target accounts through data and tools. Now, Forrester states that traditional Demand Marketers are using the same tools and tactics as ABM, causing a convergence between the two.
A 2020 Forrester survey presented during the webinar found that this idea is still in a state of transition with only 54% of marketers envisioning this convergence. However, in an update shared reflecting findings for the first quarter of 2022, 54% to 82% of marketers now want to converge demand and ABM. In time, we predict that ABM will lose its unique acronym for B2B marketing and be a natural part of any marketing team’s strategy. This applies to companies of all sizes.
Data is a central part of ABM for targeting accounts and delivering the next-best content. Forrester finds that when marketers think through data in 3 types, they understand the different jobs data must do for their ABM approach:
By classifying these three data types and using them to fuel their ABM approach, marketers and sales teams understand what’s happening with their target accounts. This helps them prepare meaningful engagement and content plans that resonate with each member of the buying committee. Data management is an ongoing challenge, but Robert Peterson at Forrester believes that putting data into these three buckets will help marketers understand their target accounts.
An ABM campaign delivers the right content to the right contacts at the right time. However, marketers must understand that the number of meaningful buying interactions before making a purchase decision has increased from 17 to 27 in 2021, according to Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Study.
This 63% increase in one year indicates a need to deliver content across multiple channels to reach buying committee members across all stages of the purchase journey. This creates more complexity in B2B buying and more interactions that marketers must watch to orchestrate multi-channel ABM the right way.
While the main goal of an ABM program is to deliver qualified accounts to a sales team, each ABM program needs to meet three key objectives. This will help orchestrate a multi-channel approach:
In addition to these takeaways, Citrix Systems’ Rachel Teare also highlighted some best practices ABM marketers should follow:
Hungry for more? Watch The State of the Multi-Channel ABM.