TLDR:
The TOPO Summit this year spoke about ABM— specifically moving from pilot programs to mature strategies. Many sessions emphasized segmentation, account targeting, marketing and sales alignment, personalization, and measurement. Challenges with ABM were spoken about, as well, including organizational buy-in, ABM team-building, and measurement.
The annual TOPO Summit gathers marketing and sales professionals across the board to talk about strategies to generate revenue. While this meeting of the minds, in particular, is nothing new, what is new was their topic of discussion: ABM. In fact, ABM was the centerpiece that tied all of the professional development sessions at the TOPO Summit together.
ABM has been here for a while; certainly long enough to prove its worth to marketers and stakeholders the world over. For instance, marketers using ABM over lead generation witnessed a close rate that was 10 times more successful than traditional methods.
In addition, the summit had a few crucial themes that marketers learned about.
The first of these themes was the optimization of marketing and sales team collaboration. Without marketing and sales being in-sync to the highest degree possible, they can’t form a plan to target the right accounts and divide them into the best segments. With marketing and sales working together, organizations can understand accounts across the lifecycle so they can maximize the opportunities available to them.
Marketing and sales alignment and account segmentation are only pieces of the puzzle. Personalization at scale and measurement are also factors. Delivering meaningful personalization to scale means that marketers need to be able to make informed decisions and repurpose content according to grouping target accounts based on similar characteristics.
What helps this process along is the tune-up ABM gives to the lead-centric measurement model. Instead of measuring from solely the last touchpoint, ABM hones in on the entire account throughout the buyer’s journey, focusing on metrics ranging from win rates to revenue.
Because of this focus, ABM is an agile strategy. But it’s not without its challenges. Organizational buy-in is required for ABM to work. Technology won’t help here, strategy will. This way, marketers can engage the buying teams of more accounts. One way to do that is through using Terminus.
Original article from Terminus on 23 April 2019.
