Account-based marketing (ABM) has evolved remarkably over the years, transforming from a niche strategy into a best practice for many organizations. Initially, its concept was straightforward: identify and target high-value accounts, ensuring marketing spend focused on key prospects to increase revenue.
Today, marketers have access to advanced technology and an almost endless expanse of data. As a result, they can expand the foundational ABM strategies to personalize at scale.
What does the future of ABM hold? To anticipate what’s next, we must understand where it started.
What is ABM?
If you’re new to ABM, let’s take a second to review the basics. ABM is a coordinated marketing and sales approach that focuses on a small number of high-value accounts rather than trying to market to a huge number of potential customers across an entire industry. With this focus, brands send these accounts highly tailored marketing content and sales outreach to close the initial sale and grow the account.
It’s important to note that ABM is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s rarely a strategy that’s set-and-forget. However, when done well, ABM can help a company target tiers of prospective accounts and focus tactical changes only as/where needed.
ABM in the Past
ABM emerged in the late 90s and early 2000s to help align marketing resources to high-priority sales accounts. It was a way for marketers to ensure they were focusing both outreach and lead management where it mattered most.
Back then, marketing was focused on traditional media like radio and print. The sales team may cold call a large list of prospects and/or go on-site to potential clients to make an introduction. The ability for marketers to cast a wide net was limited. ABM helped marketers ensure traditional media and sales prospecting was focused on those accounts that had the highest propensity to buy. ABM marketers of the past only dreamed of the data intelligence and digital abilities today’s marketers have.
ABM Today
The demand for ABM has increased with the shift from traditional to digital marketing strategies. Marketers still look to ABM to allocate resources and prioritize accounts. However, they’re able to cast a wider net than ever before.
Many marketers continue to focus on their highest-priority accounts by assigning a dedicated sales rep and marketing spend – just like in the past. But today’s marketers now leverage additional strategies, such as tiered ABM, to increase engagement across the board.
Tiered ABM allows marketers to organize accounts based on the priorities of the organization, and market to each in a way that makes sense for their stage.
Think of it like a pyramid: a handful of your highest-priority accounts get the most specialized, white-glove content designed to close; your mid-level accounts get personalized content designed to nurture; and your low-level accounts get educational content designed to increase interest. How those tiers are organized, and what makes an account fall into one versus the other, is unique to every organization; industry, revenue, or company size are common rankings.
And with the help of technologies like CRM, marketing automation, and customer data platforms (CDPs), data can be orchestrated so that all tiers receive the same level of personalized content across channels – not just the high-priority accounts. Industry tiers can receive case studies via email, company-size tiers can receive data sheets via social media, and conversion-ready accounts may get a faster call from the sales team.
ABM in the Future
While tactics will surely evolve, future marketers will likely continue to leverage ABM as a mainstay of marketing strategy. At the forefront of its evolution is the emergence of Generative AI.
While we don’t have a crystal ball, Generative AI will likely allow marketers to leverage ABM to personalize at scale with fewer resources, customizing each account’s experience based on data machine learning.
Perhaps we’ll see a shift to strategies of old, using AI to manage lower-tiered accounts, freeing up sales to focus more one-on-one efforts on relationship-building with priority-accounts most likely to convert.
In the end, we don’t know exactly what lies ahead for ABM. But understanding its evolution with the help of advanced technology can help marketers better adopt its efficiencies.
The views expressed on this blog are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.
Kaitlin Reno, Senior Expert Consultant, Oracle Experience Digital Agency
