ABM Grows, but Limits Persist
Account-based marketing continues to grow as a B2B strategy, but companies are approaching ABM in very different ways, Forrester Research concludes in a recent report.
According to the Forrester 2024 State of ABM Survey, not all organizations are applying ABM well or effectively. While some ABM in general has seen growing adoption, a significant number of marketers have yet to deploy the available cross-functional tools, according to the research firm.
“A surprising percentage of firms continue to practice ABM in name only, without implementing the tried-and-true elements of an ABM approach,” Forrester says. Some companies “have embraced the personalized, integrated, and insights-driven approach that makes ABM successful, but many organizations are just starting ABM.”
Currently, many companies have been involved in large account marketing for more than five years, though many others have been doing it for less than a year, and one in five still don’t have any sophisticated ABM processes in place.
One of the reasons for the relatively slow uptake of ABM is budget limitations, though insufficient staff, and data and performance issues were additional challenges cited by survey respondents.
To demonstrate ABM’s value, marketers need to track and feature incremental value throughout the opportunity’s life cycle, according to the research firm. However, the use of specific key performance indicators is inconsistent. While most are measuring market engagement and influence, only half are measuring marketing lift and only one-fifth are monitoring lifetime customer value and post-sale metrics for these accounts.
The Forrester report added that automation has become more prevalent in ABM efforts over the past couple of years, but customer data platforms (CDPs) have for the most part been left out of ABM initiatives. This suggests that companies aren’t focusing their ABM investments across the full opportunity cycle, according to the research firm.
Thirty-six percent of respondents said they are using sales engagement platforms and would continue to do so, up from one quarter of respondents who said the same in a similar 2022 survey by Forrester..
Changing Challenges
The top ABM challenges have changed noticeably since the 2022 report, according to Forrester. The top challenge now, which wasn’t even mentioned in the previous report, is insufficient staff, cited by 37 percent of respondents. The top challenge in 2022 was insufficient budget, cited by 22 percent of respondents. The insufficient budget challenge has grown; it was cited by 35 percent of respondents in the current report.
Some of the other top challenges cited in the 2024 report include data usability issues (cited by 22 percent, up from 19 percent in the 2022 report); inability to measure performance (cited by 20 percent), which wasn’t even included in the 2022 report; an inability to customize for ABM accounts (18 percent in 2024 compared to 13 percent in 2022); and a lack of sales buy-in (18 percent in 2024, up from 17 percent two years ago).
ABM Best, Worst Practices
“There is a strong relationship between marketing and sales alignment on key ABM tasks and meeting or exceeding revenue or growth goals,” Forrester says. “This holds true across a range of activities, including shared planning workshops, target account criteria, workflow orchestration and data insights and sharing. The alignment of sales and marketing and performance outcomes is most pronounced for large accounts.
But nearly 20 percent of all firms have yet to define what ABM means within their organizations.
“Notably, those who reported hitting or exceeding their growth goal were most likely to apply best practices of an ABM approach,” Forrester says. “Not only were they more likely to collaborate with sales, but they were also more likely to invest in content creation and customization and to personalize content across a range of variables.”
The research firm adds that firms that hit or exceeded their revenue targets were almost twice as likely to invest in ABM training than those that didn’t.
The Forrester report faulted firms for failing to measure ABM success based on lifetime customer value, noting that only 20 percent of them are tracking lifetime sales and post-sale metrics.