Where is ABM headed?

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) hasn’t yet reached a point of maturity that some other marketing approaches and tactics have, which makes it an especially interesting topic to research in today’s landscape. It’s not like email or lead generation or other topics that have been relentlessly tested, optimized, and growth-hacked into oblivion, but we do hear about it quite a bit which gives us a sense that it is being more widely adopted. With this growth, we were curious to find out how ABM is evolving and what marketers are discovering as they adopt an ABM approach.

Earlier this year we did some research on the approach to ABM that marketers are taking, but this post focuses on one chart, in particular, that got me thinking… where is ABM actually headed?

Shout-out to 2019

(for not being a complete and utter dumpster fire like 2020).

When conceptualizing the Account-Based Marketing survey, I went back to our 2019 Account-Based Marketing report to review what we had discovered.

Some key take-aways on the strategic level were:

• Increasing existing account revenue was a top goal for an ABM strategy to achieve for over half (56%) of marketers
• … meanwhile increasing the number of new accounts and contacts was a major challenge for 43% of marketers
• … and only 6% of marketers said that their ABM strategies were unsuccessful at achieving priorities.

On the tactical side of things:

• 53% of marketers are looking at the profitability of account deals as one of the first criteria when targeting accounts
• …also when it comes to managing contacts, less is more. 45% of those with ABM programs say it is most effective to have fewer than 50 contacts to manage
• …and speaking of who is doing what, one-third of marketers are keeping their ABM efforts completely in-house but 57% said they find that using a combination of in-house resources and outsourced expertise is best.

Then I came across our “Strategic Status” chart which asked marketers, “Which best describes the current status of an ABM strategy?” … most were “planning for ABM in the future” and about one-quarter of marketers were in the process of “rolling out an ABM pilot program.”

I wanted to make sure we posed this same question to marketers in 2020, in the season of COVID-19, in an era where up is down and down is up and funnels are flipped… or are they?

The comparison:

Here is the comparison chart showing the current status of an ABM strategy from 2019 to 2020.

Why is this chart interesting?

Well for one, let’s take a look at the numbers for respondents who are “Rolling out an ABM pilot program”… There has been a nearly 42% DECREASE (from 24% in 2019 to 14% in 2020) in marketers reporting to be in this phase of implementation.

Ok so, one would think that those who were in the pilot phase last year, went on to have happy, healthy, bouncing baby ABM programs. And by now, their little ABM programs are growing toddlers, in place and measurable.

Not by the looks of it… the percentage of those who have a strategy in place and measurable hasn’t increased. BUT, marketers reporting they are not planning for ABM in the future have increased 100%! You read that right. This percentage went from 15% in 2019 to 30% in 2020.

Were plans abandoned? Have the past few (four? several? what day is it?) months taken a toll on account-based strategies that require an incredible amount of resources and planning to implement? It should be noted that we didn’t survey the exact same individuals for these two reports, but the number of survey participants neared 300 marketers both years, which is a respectable sample size.

I certainly don’t have the answer as to why this dramatic change took place, and I’m sure it is different for every organization, but I have to assume that this past year has been the perfect storm of factors building up against account-based initiatives.

The good news

The good news is there is an opportunity here. Our 2020 report shows that 29% of marketers are seeing “best-in-class” success within their ABM programs. That is a very promising number and one that hasn’t wavered by much over the last year. Maybe now is the time to take a closer look at how account-based marketing is executed, and whether it should be considered as a future endeavor.