In a recent B2B Marketing roundtable in association with Integrate, senior marketers came together to discuss the blurring lines between demand gen and ABM, and how they intend to continue building an integrated growth strategy.

The challenges

For one attendee, their organisation conducts one-to-one ABM for a small number of strategic accounts, but also spends a lot of effort on a list of a few hundred high-potential companies. For these non-ABM organisations, they don’t really have the in-depth knowledge required for ABM, and arguably they just don’t have the time and/or money to learn and act upon this anyway, but there’s still a lot of potential there that they don’t wish to miss out on.

Currently, for these high-potential, non-ABM prospects/customers, their organisation relies heavily on metrics, such as MQLs, but they want to become more strategic and focused in their marketing. In this case, it appears that narrowing the gap between ABM and classic demand generation is the aim. In other words, ensuring that all targets, whether ABM or otherwise, are targeted with relevant and suitable marketing.

This was a common theme throughout the roundtable.

Indeed, one attendee argued that both ABM and demand generation have now reached a state where, really, they’re one and part of the same overarching strategy – or at least they need to be. No longer are marketers necessarily looking at one strategy or the other, but rather how they can use both in a way to target all buyers in a relevant manner.

For one attendee, the challenge has been trying to take the success they’ve had through ABM and merging this with traditional demand gen. Currently, their next stage is to take the high engagement rate they’re having with content, and do some light-touch ABM.

Quality, not quantity

Another theme that came up in the roundtable was the clear agreement that the quality of leads generated by demand gen efforts is not enough. Generating leads may be a marketer’s bread and butter, but it’s not much good if these leads are unlikely to go anywhere.

There was a general agreement that traditional demand gen needs to mature, so that the leads it brings in are actually relevant and actually have a chance of converting into sales.

The way to do this? Better targeting. Ultimately, it all comes back to the idea of bringing ABM and demand gen closer together. In fact, one attendee joked (or perhaps stated) that one-to-many ABM may be the new demand gen! If we continue with the demand gen status quo, we’ll be wasting hours, days and years on empty leads. Instead, we need to learn more about our buyers – and not just those on the ABM list – so that we can target them effectively, and ensure the leads brought in are valuable.

Right place, right time

One attendee pointed out that the job of marketing is to know when and where to engage with buyers. With the martech tools at our disposal today, we have capability to understand where buyers want to engage and when they want to engage – and not just those ABM-targeted customers.

Learning how, when and where to engage with customers will be key to bringing demand gen into the new age.

Final thoughts

The overriding theme of the roundtable was one of positivity. We’ve got out of the marketing automation era, and ABM has surged in popularity and importance. Now, we’re seeing those worlds collide, and we have to ensure both ABM and demand gen merge together seamlessly in order to target all of our prospective buyers with relevant and effective messaging.

However, this won’t be easy. As one attendee noted, the challenge is finding who’s in market, targeting them, and taking them on a journey that shares content over time, and increases engagement. Engagement is clearly the way to go, but the path is not straightforward.