Compared to the more traditional mass-marketing email campaigns, the emerging trend of account-based marketing (ABM) has proven to be a lot more beneficial for B2B marketers.
So, we decided to investigate further to get a better idea of how and why more businesses are choosing ABM for their marketing strategy.
Below we’ll look at some of the key findings from our Account-Based Marketing Research Report, to help prove why this more targeted approach can help your campaigns, and therefore sales, perform better.
So if you’re a B2B marketer looking to implement ABM into your strategy this year, here are five facts that you need to know:
Fact 1: ABM provides higher ROI than other marketing activities
One of the biggest impacts of ABM is the increased return on investment (ROI). When asked how the ROI from ABM strategies compares to that of other marketing activities, the majority (85%) said it was higher. Although 14% said it was about the same, no one found it to be lower than other marketing techniques. The full breakdown of results looks like this:
How does ABM ROI compare to other marketing activities?
- Somewhat higher – 47%
- Significantly higher – 38%
- About the same – 14%
- I don’t measure ROI – 1%
88% of marketers revealed that they had seen an increase in conversion rates with ABM; more conversions mean more sales, which provides a higher ROI. Those who aren’t measuring their results, simply haven’t worked out how. If you’re not measuring results, how do you know what’s performing well? What needs improving? Or whether budget is being well spent? If you’re looking for a helping hand, take a look at our guide for measuring ABM activity.
Fact 2: ABM increases your average deal size
Our research found that 80% of B2B marketers have seen higher average deal sizes on their ABM accounts when compared with their regular (non-ABM) accounts. This makes sense of course, as the idea is to upsell or cross-sell. Increasing the average deal will lead to a greater increase in overall revenue going into the business.
Plus, by utilizing the strong sales funnels created through ABM, less time and resources are needed for less-effective marketing techniques such as blanket emails that target hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective customers.
Fact 3: ABM is driven by great content
Using ABM is all about creating tailored and personal messages for existing clients, and this is one of the reasons it works so well; because everybody loves personalized content and offers! No one wants their inbox filling up with information that isn’t relevant to them, which makes personalized content absolutely key to the success of ABM.
And it’s the job of the marketing team to create this engaging content. When asked how they were doing this, B2B marketers revealed the top forms of content they were using to re-engage their existing clients:
- Research/analyst reports – 74%
- Videos – 64%
- Webinars – 64%
- Infographics – 58%
- Case studies – 55%
- Display creative – 53%
- Articles/blogs – 51%
Fact 4: More marketers will be investing in ABM and setting aside larger budgets
Over half (53%) of B2B marketers are planning to invest more in ABM over the next 12 months. Of those that already invest in these marketing techniques, almost a third (29%) invest 50-75% of their overall marketing budget.
A further 40% said they set aside 25-50% of their budget for ABM, and just over one in five (22%) businesses allocate 10-25% of their budget to this type of strategy. It’s clear from these figures that some marketers are prepared to invest huge chunks of their overall budget into these techniques, further supporting the idea that running an effective ABM strategy is worth the investment.
Fact 5: Implementing ABM has multiple benefits to businesses
From looking at the data above it’s clear to see that ABM can have some extraordinary results on a business’ overall revenue, ROI and sales funnels, but the benefits don’t stop there:
- 56% saw an increase in ‘best fit’ customer base
- 53% have been able to build strong relationships with top tier clients
- 53% generated higher quality opportunities
- 52% delivered higher ROI
- 35% saw better alignment between the sales and marketing departments
- 35% were able to accelerate their sales pipelines
It’s clear that businesses who are using ABM are seeing some real results both to their revenue, customer/client relationships and the alignment of their teams. These statistics have shown that ABM is a very effective marketing tactic and that more B2B brands plan to invest in this in the future.
