92% of marketers believe ABM is a ‘must-have’

Ninety-two per cent of marketing companies claim account-based marketing (ABM) is a ‘must-have’ and essential to improve sales and marketing alignment, a Demandbase study has shown.

The 2015 State of Account-Based Marketing Study shows 60 per cent of companies are planning to invest in technology for ABM in order to better align sales and marketing departments over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, the research revealed that all companies practicing ABM claim to be at least somewhat aligned with sales, with 34 per cent saying they were ‘tightly aligned’.

In addition, organisations are willing to try ABM, with 52 per cent of respondents currently having pilot programmes in place. Sales involvement is also high; 74 per cent of marketers are working with sales to define account goals and plans, and 67 per cent receive help from sales on account insights.

Still, 47 per cent of companies surveyed say they don’t feel their ABM team have the skills needed to carry out ABM and that marketing teams need more support to succeed at ABM.

Peter Isaacson, CMO at Demandbase, explained: “B2B marketers are realising that marketing to large quantities of individuals doesn’t result in quality sales opportunities.

“ABM is fast becoming the B2B strategy of choice because it truly aligns sales and marketing while focusing their teams on the highest-value accounts. I expect adoption to grow rapidly as companies that have made this switch have seen tremendous results by focusing their efforts on attracting, engaging, converting and measuring the accounts that are most likely to buy.”

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