What I Took Away From B2B Marketing’s 2019 ABM Conference

Last week, I went to B2B Marketing’s annual ABM Conference. It was a day for B2B marketing professionals to share their experiences of executing ABM strategies. From the conversations, it was clear that “true ABM” is still relatively new and immature, but that the key to success in the future is sharing our experiences and lessons now. Businesses have been doing ABM-style marketing for a while. It’s the concept of focusing marketing resource and budget on small groups of high-value potential customers and designing personalised campaigns around them. However, true ABM goes one step further, providing more definition and guidance around what ‘small groups’ are and what level of ‘personalisation’ they should have. ABM gets you to think about planning campaigns at each level of the ‘ABM triangle’… The statistics At the beginning of the day, B2B Marketing’s Head of Content, Mary-Ann Baldwin, spoke about some of the findings from their ABM research report — including adoption maturity, costs and return on investment (ROI). ABM maturity:

37% of marketing professionals are at stage one: understanding
24% of marketing professionals are at stage two: preparing
29% of marketing professionals are at stage three: delivering
5% of marketing professionals are at stage four: upscaling
5% of marketing professionals are at stage five: perfecting

ABM costs:

The average set up cost for ABM strategies is £11,600
The average cost of executing a one to one programme is £10-50k per account
The average cost of executing a one to few programme is £30-50k per account
The average cost of executing a one to many programme is £50-100k per annum
In 2017, on average, 30% of marketing budgets were spent on ABM
In 2018, on average, 32% of marketing budgets were spent on ABM

ABM ROI:

On average, it took 12 months for businesses to see a return on investment
On average, the USA saw returns on investment after 9.8 months
On average, the UK saw returns on investment after 13.3 months

The statistics spoke volumes regarding a theme that would become even more evident throughout the day: As a defined strategy, true ABM is still something relatively new for B2B marketers. The six-step process Throughout the day there were talks about everything ABM-related, from MarTech to mishaps, pilot programmes to processes. However, everyone agreed that a solid framework is the first step to getting the ball rolling. Here’s an example: