IMPORTANCE OF ABM GROWS AMONG B2B MARKETERS, BUT HURDLES REMAIN

A report released today from Dun & Bradstreet has shone a light on the increasing prevalence of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) among B2B businesses, and the importance of technologies and data in their marketing and advertising stack.

The global 2019 Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising Outlook report of B2B marketers and their agencies shows that 71% consider ABM important to their organisation’s marketing efforts; 4 in 10 companies believe ABM to be at least “very important”. Currently, 37% of B2B marketers are already doing ABM in their company with a further 22% planning to next year.

Yet marketers identified clear barriers to succeeding with ABM. The biggest challenge is an unclear ABM strategy (35%), followed by a lack of time/resources (31%) and a lack of understanding about ABM (29%).

“As more B2B organisations turn to ABM to better address complex customer journeys and processes, they need a data strategy that reflects this shift,” commented Anudit Vikram, SVP of Audience Solutions for Dun & Bradstreet. “Having a solid data foundation connected across sales and marketing and a complete 360 degree view of the customer is imperative to executing ABM effectively and maximising its potential.”

The survey also identified advertising and marketing tactics B2B marketers use to drive targeting, insights and personalisation; the top tactic marketers are currently using is creating actionable data-driven insights (56%). Looking further into the future, marketers are looking to implement predictive analytics over any other technology in the next 12-24 months (49%).

Like with ABM, there are clearly obstacles to overcome in succeeding with data-driven marketing. The biggest obstacles for marketers were siloed/inaccessible customer data (32%) and integration of marketing and sales platforms (32%). Marketers then cited incomplete customer data (30%) and lack of data expertise (30%) as the next biggest challenges.