TLDR:
The basic principles that underpin ABM will continue to dominate the data collection and B2B marketing sectors as more marketers realize ABM’s worth.
Although change does not happen instantly, even in fast-paced areas like marketing communications, it’s important to stay on top of trends in the marketing technology sector. It allows marketers to be able to predict changes in this field.
The first of these trends is a shift from quantity of data to quality of data. Traditionally, marketers would rely on massive amounts of data in their CRM to meet their sales goals. With the emergence of Account-Based Marketing, the quality, not quantity of data is important in determining a target account list.
In keeping with improving the quality of data, marketers can expect to see new privacy rights and regulations get introduced. Even legislation, such as Europe’s GDPR, aim to prioritize the customer regarding their data. In that same spirit, ABM tends to cut down on the data by honing in on a set of strategic accounts.
Speaking of the emergence of ABM, it reveals another trend in the ever-changing marketing landscape. Even though ABM is relatively new, it has already proven its worth many times over. The general success marketers far and wide are having with ABM seems to indicate that it will go into the mainstream in the foreseeable future as the premier B2B marketing methodology.
The focus of ABM is to improve and maintain lifetime customer value. The need to create engagement that actually means something—is relevant to the customer—will increase in prevalence. The customer is more centralized, decreasing the need for a huge database.
As the list of targeted accounts becomes narrows, and the data that once supported a burgeoning list of leads decreases, the amount of applications in marketers’ tech stacks will lessen. The overwhelming collection of technologies in marketers’ current tech stacks hinder their ability to use them effectively. Marketers will likely turn to platforms that have the abilities of the apps in their stacks as an alternative.
Marketers seeking alternatives also seek other, simpler choices to last-click measurement. Vanity metrics will become outdated as marketers will look for models that actually drive revenue. Generally speaking, this means omnichannel adoption. It would also mean that it creates a massive amount of data to sort through.
Data, that can be managed much easier with the adoption of AI-powered marketing technologies.
Original article from MarTech Series on 11 February 2019.
