Every year, ABM seems to take on new levels of importance to B2B marketing.
It’s easy to see why. As this survey from ABM report points out: “there is the need to defend the spend” and do more with less, putting your resources where they count the most, rather than spending it on mass media or less targeted digital strategies, there is the technology to facilitate it, and, as the stats show, it can be incredibly effective.
We’ve been looking around for some of the most interesting and eye-grabbing stats around ABM marketing. Numbers that show how many are using it, how they’re using it, and why.
Here’s a summary of what we have found out.
How popular is ABM marketing?
In this wide-ranging 2022 report by ABM Leadership Alliance which surveyed more than 300 B2B professionals, a whopping 93% of respondents said they currently have an active ABM program, compared to 77% the year before.
That said, for many B2B sales and marketing teams it’s still early days when it comes to ABM. Also from this report, 7.9% of respondents claimed to be in an experimental “pilot” phase, and 43% in an “early” phase.
So while ABM has been taken up widely, comparatively few are using mature strategies.
The question is, how much it pays to invest in a long-term ABM strategy? The longer it’s part of the marketing mix, the more it comes to dominate, with the numbers suggesting it tends to eventually become a primary source of opportunities.
What it means for you
It means it’s time to start thinking ABM if you haven’t – but we’re sure you already knew this.
It’s not only time to bring ABM to the table, but to start thinking of it as a multi-year, complex strategy. How will you manage resources? What tools will you use? Getting ahead of the curve now will place you in front of competitors. It’s clearer now than ever that ABM will only become more important as time goes on.
How are people using ABM?
ABM can be used towards several KPIs. Indeed, here at Expandi Cyance, we find that our customers use our platform for lead generation, customer retention, and new business generation.
Companies starting with ABM typically focus to a higher degree on lead generation. 42% of respondents in the early stage of ABM said they were utilising ABM within a lead generation strategy, compared to only 10% underway with mature programs.
This is an important observation, as it gets at how ABM might best be used. The progression here suggests that account engagement, new business generation and customer retention are goals to which ABM can be applied more effectively, and that teams might be learning about this application as they go.
Is Intent Data the Secret Sauce?
Many Marketing experts and companies have realised that the secret sauce to a successful ABM strategy is intent data. Buyer intent data empowers businesses to create targeted and effective marketing strategies. This data helps to identify your best-fit prospects and their buying stage based on signals from online behaviour across thousands of local-language data sources, giving sales and marketing the insights they need to create effective content, messaging and advertising.
As The ABM Report explains in this article, an effective intent data strategy can enhance your ABM strategy.
Expandi Cyance makes it easy to engage prospects by automatically triggering campaigns based on their changing interests. Our platform also measures the impact of these campaigns to help with ongoing refinement, making the whole ABM process smooth, centralised and precise.
If you dont believe our words – here some top books you can read on the subject.
Aligning marketing and sales
It’s one of the most talked about features of ABM – the way it brings sales and marketing together, working towards a unified goal and even talking the same language.
In a LinkedIn survey of 800 B2B marketers from around the world – 82% said that “ABM greatly improves the alignment between marketing and sales at their company”.
ABM reduces the friction between sales and marketing by increasing lead quality and adding efficiency to the lead generation process.
Does ABM deliver real value?
Compared to other marketing investments 84% of businesses using ABM say it delivers higher ROI. ( LinkedIn report ) while 87% of B2B marketers surveyed by ITSMA reported that ABM initiatives outperform other strategies.
It’s not only revenue that is impacted, with ABM affecting all of the “three Rs”: Revenue, Relationships and Reputation. ABM is an incredibly powerful tool for customer retention, a key market for the latter two “Rs”, and 80% of marketers report improved customer lifetime values as a result of ABM.
And what are our customers saying? They have been reporting:
- 30% reduction in ‘Time to opportunity’, 8-10% increase in revenue due to ‘opportunity to close time’ reducing by one month and 300% increase in engagement with outreach and conversations
- 2,600% ROI on PPC media spend and £155k pipeline influenced
- 400% improvement in pipeline – valued at 7 figures and 74% engagement with priority contacts
- 100% MQL to SAL acceptance rate with first 20 leads and 72% of the SALs became Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
- 8 new client wins and 25% of current active pipeline is from Cyance accounts
- £1.5m million in sales qualified opportunities
- €40m+ increased contract values from sub €10m and 5.6% unprecedented growth for international business
Find out how Cyance can help you boost your ABM strategy.