2 key trends make Account Based Marketing necessary today

We hear a lot of tips and tricks around ABM but have you ever stopped to consider why this approach makes sense today?

Over the last several years two key trends have developed. Both of these trends serve to distanced B2B marketers from their audiences and reduce the ROI of their prior marketing technology investments. Let's check them out...

1. Buyer research is shifting away from vendors - In a marketing world focused on producing and widely distributing content to help serve buyer needs, increasingly buyers are seeking early stage content to form their point of view from sources outside of vendor websites. It's not that content is unimportant, it's just that vendor produced content that is focused on the top of funnel doesn't have the same impact it once had. In fact, The CMO Council identified last year that while 88% of B2B buyers value content in their vendor selection process only 9% of them trust the content produced by vendors. 3rd party validated research was identified as having the highest degree of trust. In any case, the fact is that buyers are looking beyond vendors during early and influential phases of issue research and vendor selection. Because of this, existing marketing systems cannot even sense buyer content engagement because it's occurring outside of their purview. Then, when registered engagement does occur, the ensuing automated nurturing threads face waning impact as buyers have increasingly solidified their point of view prior to these systems ever seeing or gaining registered information.
2. Existing marketing systems and CRM are not engineered to understand todays buying signals - These B2B marketing systems view leads as independent agents acting to solve isolated problems, whereas buyers are increasingly acting as complex buying entities - shifting from individuals to highly organized team evaluations. Consider the situation where four independent leads separately visit your website, once each, and each register and download one piece of content... because marketing systems view this activity as four independent agents acting on their own accord, each of these four actions mean very little. Ultimately, the scoring of these leads will be trivial and none may rise to a point of interest, MQL status. However, when seen in their totality, at the account level, this can represent a very different picture. Consider that these four people are from the same company and are working together as a buying group. Even though they source content independently, they share it and they work with each other to form conclusions and select solution options. In this reality, the four visits and downloads can represent a highly engaged buying decision.

I'm not arguing that inbound marketing and marketing automation are bad, in fact, quite the contrary. They're requirements regardless of these two trends. However, my point is that the market has changed and marketers need to consider how they should adapt.

ABM is an "AND" strategy

Account based marketing isn't a replacement for inbound marketing, content marketing, SEO and social media participation, it's an addition to your marketing strategy. When done using the Account Based Marketing Capabilities Framework, marketers are able to successfully displace these trends:

• Bring buyers back in to your top of funnel - Among other things, ABM can reignite your top of funnel awareness and interest, displacing the buyer trends by enabling highly targeted advertising. This "narrowcast" media strategy is designed to speak to account level needs and opportunities and is a new capability brought about by a properly conceived and managed ABM program. Highly efficient and effective, this new capability acquires engagement with those who are predetermined to be sales qualified.
• Shift your marketing technologies to understand and leverage group buying activities - By its nature, ABM will surface account level activity, solving the issue of connecting group buying behavior. A properly conceived and configured ABM program will enable marketing programs and resulting measurement to message and view activity at the account level... rather than platform, campaign or channel.

To better understand the capabilities that underlie this point of view, please check out my prior LinkedIn article, "Account Based Marketing - beyond the hype and hyperbole", and download the Infographic showing the 6 Keys to Account Based Marketing Success. Join the LinkedIn Group, Account Based Marketing Consortium, if you want to stay on top of the latest news and thought leadership.

 Please drop me a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!