3 Global ABM Trends in 2019

Over the past couple of years, the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) market has continued to mature. A growing number of B2B companies are running ABM programs alongside their more traditional demand generation programs, to drive more sales pipeline. We’re seeing growing product maturity, as well as market understanding of the value of ABM in driving more demand.

At Kwanzoo, as we work with several mid-to-large, global, B2B enterprise customers, here are 3 key trends that we are seeing going into the new year:

1. The “New to ABM” Customer: Move Retargeted Ad Media Budgets to ABM Advertising

Are you a B2B company new to ABM? You have probably been deploying the majority of your paid media budgets on retargeting through Adroll and Google Adwords, running search ads through Google PPC, and perhaps run some direct ads through LinkedIn. A quick way to get more from your current spend is to redirect most of your retargeting media to account-based (ABM) advertising. Here you are proactively reaching and engaging the right personas across a set of target accounts that Sales wants to pursue. Your retargeted ads are specifically focused on just this high quality incoming traffic, and not all visitors to your website.

2. The “Ready to Scale” ABM Customer: Personalize Your Ad and Website Experiences

Have you been running ABM advertising programs over the past 12 to 18 months? You may now be ready to start scaling your ABM programs across global geos. You will want to consider reaching more segmented audiences, with personalized ads and website banner experiences. With the continued growth of third party targeting databases (both online B2B cookie data, and business IP data) from a range of providers - Oracle | Bluekai, Bombora, D&B, Kickfire and others, along with platform integrations into this data, there is a scale of account-level and user-level personalization now possible, something that was not available even a year ago.

3. The “Mature ABM” Customer: Beyond ABM, Map Out B2B Customer Experiences (CX)

As a mature ABM customer, you have been running ABM and traditional demand generation programs side-by-side. Your sales teams receive reports and insights across all your channels of engagement with prospects and customers. You have successfully blended your first-party engagement data on known contacts (buyers) in marketing automation, with third-party engagement data on anonymous buyers at your target accounts. You provide deep insights to Sales so they prioritize the right accounts, drive more appointments and generate more pipeline. Your next step is to extend the ABM approach beyond marketing and sales, to now consider the overall B2B buyer experience delivered across marketing, sales, customer success and paid media channels.

You will find there is much to gain by pursuing an “open APIs” and “open standards” approach to connecting and integrating all of your CX technology - martech, salestech, customer success tech and ad tech. We see this as a significant opportunity for innovation, value creation and cost savings for large, global, B2B enterprises.