What Gartner is Missing About ABM Trends in 2024

What does it mean to think like a marketing engineer? For us at Marketing Machine, it means challenging assumptions and taking bold risks. One of those risks is in analyzing leading content. So today I'm going to react to the Gartner ABM Trends that will dominate 2024. This article is ranking in Search for "ABM tactics 2024," a topic you can imagine qualifies you as someone in the B2B space. If you're looking up tactics, you're probably in the field.

~ Mark

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Okay, let's back up a second...

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account-based marketing is the business practice of targeting specific high-value accounts for nurturing through a sales pipeline. The most ubiquitous content on the subject, and Gartner's article is no exception, as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) forms the foundation of Gartner's piece.

Tactics used to achieve a successful ABM execution include: data-driven prospecting in paid media, content marketing, integrated partnerships, and event marketing activations. These are not unique to SaaS brands, anyone doing B2B sales should be thinking with an ABM mindset. Vehicles, Hospitality, Travel, Law, Healthcare, and Agencies are examples of brands that habitually practice account-based marketing in 2024.

Why use ABM for your business?

Think about this strategy as a blend of gardening and flirting. You're getting your best self out there in your finest fits, as often as possible, showing the world that you're a cool brand worthy of their time. In our opinion, being a great hang is the best quality a person/brand can have. Think about your favorite streamer or podcast like Pod Save America, Pivot, or Talkin' Baseball. While these shows are highly informative to the topic, it's the chilled, comfortable environment that keeps audience members coming back for more.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the practice of showing prospective clients that your environment (or "brand identity") is the one that clients and customers want to spend more time with. It differs from traditional e-commerce marketing slightly because of the B2B aspect. You're working to ensure the partnership of an entire organization, not just a single buyer; so your brand messaging needs to address the multiple personas that may interact with your product. In an effective ABM strategy, a variety of media should be used to convey this messaging. In the modern digital age it's not a question of if you should be making content, but which channels to use and when. In addition to great lead magnets, email sequences, and landing pages on your home domain, brands executing an omnichannel ABM strategy will also publish and advertise regularly and intentionally on Linkedin, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook/Instagram as well as in programmatic and affiliate advertising.

Lastly, and somewhat paradoxically there's a B2C human-to-human layer to the ABM discussion that much of the Gartner article neglects to mention...We'll get into that later.

In the Gartner article, they claim that:

"As acquisition managers, MarOps experts, or sales leaders, you might feel the pressure to optimize ABM programs—especially knowing that effective ABM strategies can increase pipeline conversion rates by 14%^[1] . "

My initial take on this is yes, in a world where marketing departments are being dismissed faster than an accept cookies notification, there is definitely pressure on Marketing Engineers and CMOs to constantly optimize their ABM programs; but how do they get to that 14% figure?"

But I digress...

Let's look at the trends that Gartner proposed for B2B marketers to follow last fall. First thing I noticed is that these are more of recommendations than objective "trends." No case studies are provided, so these are more opinions than actual observed trends that marketers can leverage, so we'll be looking at these in the way a client would look at a one-sheet of agency recommendations.

In this article I'm going to break down (a) whether the trend/reco is in fact a legitimate practice that we would recommend for brands in 2024 and (b) what the Marketing Machine approach on the trend should look like when put into practice.

Trend No. 1: Fuel your ABM strategy with intent data

Intent data can come in a variety of forms, though it is typically either firmographic (e.g. just received Series B funding, just opened an office in NYC) or technographic (e.g. began using a certain piece of software, or just hired an Agency-of-Record). One company we have had great success working with for technographic intel is HGInsights. Their real-time data platform helps Marketing Engineers stay abreast of developments in their ICP.

Being data-driven is a drum we have been banging for a while, however my reaction to this advice is to fuel your ABM strategy with personal and professional data. Emails, MAIDs, and Device IDs create the backbone of any addressable online advertising presence.

You can get a tailored list of professionals to email and target in your social media campaigns. By curating a streamlined list of people by their business email address, you can target them in programmatic advertising and drive them to your website.

These lists also provide a strategic advantage for creating lookalikes.

Is building a foundation of Intent Data really a legitimate ABM trend in 2024?

Yes but it requires some clarification. Firstly, it's essential for Marketing Engineers and CMOs to communicate closely with their Product Marketers to identify the key actions that will define account intent. For example, a creative agency could employ this strategy by exporting a list of law firms that recently purchased an SEO software such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz Analytics; since the action of purchasing SEO software indicates the intent to produce content and cover more keywords.

By using an intent data provider such as Bombora, you can identify the companies taking actions that indicate a growth mindset, your company can tailor digital content that approximates your specific needs and life stage, thus smoothing the path to good conversations for your sales team.

Trend No. 2: Make every interaction count with hyperpersonalization

Here, Gartner gets it half right. But oddly this article is targeting "software providers" which is only a small segment of industries that might want to implement an ABM strategy.

The same creative agency in Trend 1 could create a campaign targeting the accounts they identified in the SEO software export, and serve creative that speaks directly to that need.

Our reaction: Gartner's article lays out some generic next steps, one of which is optimizing touchpoints such as social ads, emails, and chats with support but despite recommending a "deep understanding of your target accounts," and "a culture of continuous learning and improvement around your personalization efforts," they do not explain what that means in practice, and nowhere do they account for the in-person facets of an effective ABM strategy.

In our view, events (both virtual and in person) are the key to the whole puzzle.

Whether its hosting a regular webinar promoted over LinkedIn or having a booth at DreamForce, if you're not doing event marketing to supplement all of these efforts, you're missing out on the human-to-human aspect of B2B marketing. It doesn't even have to be anything mind-blowing or experiential (although these types of right-brain immersive executions do certainly resonate). Having a regular web event like a livestream or webinar and augmenting those with a physical presence at an event like Forrester B2B Conference, DreamForce, or CES enables an in-person connection that deepens the bond between your brand and your target accounts.

Now when you or your account execs follow up, you have a whole host of organic, grassroots experiences to draw upon. Maybe it was an inspiring keynote address, a panel discussion over Linkedin, a TikTok livestream, or even a conversation held over happy hour or a night out at karaoke. Whatever the shared experience, it's much easier to reduce the sales artifice of product marketing and address actual pain points when you have a shared experience and genuine human-to-human bond with someone.

For example, when we were working at NetWise (a D&B subsidiary) we performed a street team activation at SF DreamForce called "data is dope," replete with t-shirt giveaways and man-on-the-street interviews connected to target accounts in our New Logo and Brand Aware cohorts. The idea was to give a human face to the digital interactions that folks were having with our brand. We produced content that clients and target accounts were able to share on social media and in their company comms channels, producing a positive brand association and able to be easily found by followers of those accounts using strategic hashtags.

Is hyper-personalization really a legitimate ABM trend in 2024?

Sort of. It's something everyone should strive for, however it is not novel to 2024. Our spin on this would be:

The personalized content conversion arsenal is a pot of gold that marketers have been chasing for many years and Gartner uses words like "relevant to individual accounts," but doesn't say how a product-led growth campaign should be built, optimized and repurposed across ICP. Nothing about lead magnets, webinars, newsletters, or dynamic website content. Maybe you get this level of detail when you hire Gartner, but we're giving the secret sauce away for free.

This article on personalization serves as their resource link, but it feels rather outdated as much of the content is based on COVID-19 realities, when we are firmly back in a brave old world of blended marketing and advertising.

Trend No. 3: Use AI-driven tools for smarter ABM

While this is more a piece of advice than a trend prediction, it's true that the use of AI-driven tools can be a component of an effective ABM strategy. It's not essential to use artificial intelligence to automate all outreach and advertising processes, but as in many departments, AI can be a time multiplier and an effective way of culling and displaying campaign data when leveraged as part of a program that is already serving a valuable function for your organization.

Certain SaaS tools are adopting AI-based predictive analytics as well as machine learning advertising auctions. Gartner doesn't outline any specific tools beside the outbound link to 6sense. There are plenty of AI-driven tools that can assist in ABM efforts. Examples of AI-driven software includes On-Page.AI and DemandBase.

Is AI-driven tool usage really a legitimate ABM trend in 2024?

Yes, but this is kind of a layup. A byproduct of the recent rash of tech layoffs and the related consolidation of many tasks under one Content Director, AI-driven tools are having their moment in the sun. in fact, many social media and search engine marketing algorithms have been employing machine learning and AI-powered bidding for years now so Gartner isn't really giving us anything new with this recommendation.

An emergence of an "AI bubble" will inherently betoken a bidding war between the different platforms, so the integration of machine learning into everyday tools like Teams, Slack, and email feels like an inevitability.

That is to say, the AI tool you use is only as useful as the gardener who is tasked with tilling the soil.

Trend No. 4: Bridge the gap with sales and marketing alignment

Gartner actually gives a pretty good visual though few specifics are given as to what specific actions should be taken to achieve the blend that is indicated.

At Marketing Machine our version of this image by applying the "data-driven bowtie" methodology. A striped bowtie represents the steps in the process (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Retention, Evangelism, etc.) with two discrete funnels (pre-purchase funnel is Product Marketing, post-purchase funnel is Customer Marketing) and the internal company data as the hub or "knot" in the middle of the bowtie.

Bridging the gap between sales and marketing is truly a change management operation more than a fancy buzzword to throw around. It is a commitment to communication and alignment around rigid adherence to a shared standard of tool adoption, conversion nomenclature, data protocols, and project management workflows.

Is bridging the sales-marketing gap really a legitimate ABM trend in 2024?

Analyzing customer feedback is a goldmine; it was a key component to our success growing the NetWise pipeline and the Data-Driven Marketer community. Always record your sales engineering calls. Whether via Hubspot, Constant Contact, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or Gong, your team should be archiving all Customer Success and Sales interactions with current and potential clients. Always be analyzing calls. Set up a dedicated time for sales and marketing to analyze the needs that the customer communicates. This will not only give Sales and Product teams valuable insights into that specific account and the upsells that may be beneficial to them, but your marketers can regurgitate these thematic elements in their top-of-funnel advertising and middle-funnel activities to show prospects that you're on top of their biggest concerns.

We'll get more into the specifics of regurgitating pain points as emotional appeals in a later deep dive. For now we move on to the final emerging ABM "trend" that Gartner identified last fall.

Trend No. 5: Optimize full-funnel metrics

The Gartner ABM article talks about "guiding potential clients through the funnel," but beyond "collecting input," it does not describe the specific task-based processes or real-life applications of this concept.

Their Stakeholder graph begins to approach what we call "the Decision Committee" aspect of account-based marketing by laying out intent data use cases and key metrics pursuant to the Stakeholder (RevOps, Demand Gen, Biz Dev, etc.) but the action steps, quick wins, and long-term gains are very basic. They tell you to optimize but don't tell you how, so we will.

When creating an ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) it's not enough to think about converting one specific persona, like "Sales Steve." Even though this might be the guy responding to emails and jumping on the zoom calls. While the Sales Director and his team may be the one ultimately responsible for using a tool (such as ZoomInfo) we've observed that Sales Steve answers to "Finance Fred," who actually signs the checks as well as "VP Veronica" who is in charge of the budgets, headcount, and overall productivity of the team using the product or agency in question. Since you never know for sure how many employees at a target company are auditing your product, we recommend including a variety of job functions and seniority levels in your targeting lists. This way a broader swath of your ICP will be exposed to your programmatic and social media advertising campaigns.

But the targeting data is only as powerful as the reporting and feedback loop you create internally as your company's Marketing Engineer using your internal CRM, data lake and data warehouse.

Is optimizing full-funnel metrics really a legitimate ABM trend in 2024?

Yes, but they don't tell you what it means to optimize, only what the key metrics are for a specific Stakeholder. More accurately this section should be called "what metrics to look at for ABM in 2024" or "metrics by marketing role 2024."

Here at Marketing Machine we want to rip open the curtain and give you something actionable so you're not just observing the trend like Jason Momoa throwing open a folding chair or Stephen Colbert munching on popcorn. You get to jump in the pool. Get in the game. Rescue the princess.

When it comes to metrics at Marketing Machine, we believe that working leads through the funnel is not just a matter of promoting an MQL to SQL, it is a matter of setting specific growth targets for each KPI by channel.

For every campaign I run, I make sure to adhere to 'the principle of tenths;' this means that each of the metrics need to improve by at least 0.1% per week in order to be considered a successful test. If four weeks go by without a tenth of a percent increase, the asset or campaign in question should be either paused to move budget elsewhere, or modified with optimization actions taken.

"The Principle of Tenths"

The Principle of Tenths is a conversion optimization standard I have used in assessing A/B test performance before moving an asset, ad group, or activation into what we call "production phase" from "testing phase."

Simply put, at each step in the funnel, success should be measured in tenths of a percent growth per week. Each unique metric should carry a unique expectation, defined and memorialized at the beginning of each campaign for the marketing, data analytics and product teams to constantly refer back to.

Impression to click level, click-to-conversion level, and free trial-to-paid subscriber level should each carry a unique benchmark for success and if you can improve each level by 0.1% per week in each, you can reliably view your optimizations as moving the needle in the right direction. Especially when running omnichannel advertising campaigns, these benchmarks for your production level campaigns will ensure that budgets are being spent efficiently and effectively. For your PPC campaigns, for example, performance against a particular keyword can be improved by implementing new ad copy, a new landing page, or a new bidding strategy.

The way to gauge the success of the optimization action being, "did it beat the control by a tenth of a percent or more?" Tests that maintain a 0.1% growth for four straight weeks are considered to be successful and moved into production.

Conclusion:

Gartner's article is throwing darts onto the board but we want to help you hit the bulls eye and win the game. Employing the recommendations suggested here, Marketing Machine is confident you'll not only get your account-based marketing (ABM) game closer to where your competition is in 2024, you'll start seeing better return-on-ad-spend and return on your events marketing investments.

Thanks for reading and let us know below if you found these recommendations helpful. What are some trends that Gartner (and maybe we) missed entirely? Email us, we love chatting with our readers and listeners.

Until next deep dive...

Always Be Marketing (ABM)!

Mark