B2B marketing with the ABM method
The future in marketing
In Sangram Vajre's presentation "Future of Marketing", he begins by asking who really believes that they know where the journey is going? The first laugh goes round. Only very few believe that and he recommends living authenticity. Especially for SMEs, he sees a great opportunity to bring branding authentically into digitalization with storytelling. Consequently, he changes his definition of ABM to Authenticity Based Marketing. What is clear is that ABM is becoming the standard in B2B business and that knowledge leadership in this area is becoming a major competitive advantage.
ABM no longer only for large companies
The presentation by Sharon Gillenwater "ABM is not just for big companies anymore" did not really show a new way. Of the 3 principle variants of ABM, she presented the 1:1 personalized communication, only technically supported by specific advertising for the entire buying team. Omnichannel is used there, from individual advertising to e-mail sequences to direct mailings. Nothing new and easy to implement with the right technology.
Cloud solutions made ABM viable in the first place
The idea of doing account-based marketing goes back to the early 90s. But it was the new technical possibilities with cloud solutions and Big Data technology that ensured the feasibility of this idea, which was ahead of its time.
ABM Definition of ITSMA.com
"(...)more than a sales or marketing approach. It is a collaborative strategy that involves sales, marketing, subject matter specialists and delivery specialists. Also included are decision makers related to the selected customer accounts who determine where and how best to address the customer's unique business challenges. With deep insight into the target company and its goals, this collaborative team can ideally tailor a marketing and sales campaign to a single target account."ABM is not just a strategy that convinces in theory, it's the numbers from the field that prove marketing with ABM right:- 80% of marketers state that ABM efforts are often much more efficient than traditional marketing for B2B lead generation (Source: Marketo)- 92% of companies recognize the value of ABM as an indispensable B2B marketing strategy (Source: SiriusDecisions study "The 2015 State of Account-Based Marketing Study")- 97% of marketers agree that ABM usually generates a significantly higher ROI compared to other marketing strategies (source: Marketo)- 208% more revenue expects companies that use ABM for their marketing (source: MarketingProfs)
Urgent need to catch up in Europe - not only with ABM
ABM is firmly established as a best practice approach for both SMEs and enterprise companies and will become even more differentiated in the future. As shown in the Presentation by Scott Brinker already shown, some of the ABM special solutions are fully integrated in Hubspot. The integration is so good that you don't even need to leave Hubspot. This makes data-driven agile B2B marketing even more fun. Unfortunately, though, this show makes you realize that we are way behind in Europe when it comes to digital B2B marketing, and therefore ABM. Do you want to learn more about what ABM exactly is, what the 5 advantages and the tools used are, read more here. * Alex Schöpf is an independent marketing automation expert, CEO of MAtech, Author and lecturer. He has worked on the client side for over 20 years and now supports SMEs for rapid implementation of marketing technology. As a studied engineer ETH NDS of economics, he works with marketing automation systems since these tools exist. In addition to his proven expertise in Marketing Automation, he has a lot of experience in the field of digitalization as well as a high practical orientation. His latest just published Marketing Automation book is called "More business success with Marketing Automation 2018".
