Wrap Your Head Around ABM With These 24 Statistics

24 Statistics To Wrap Your Head Around ABM

Once criticized as another marketing buzzword, curious marketers began dabbling in account-based marketing (ABM) to try their luck with targeted marketing. Now, ABM has solidified its place in many marketing departments as an effective go-to-market strategy.

With 87% of marketers declaring that ABM delivers a higher ROI, it’s no wonder why the method is capturing attention. ABM is now being applied to the entire customer lifecycle, supporting the interests of customers and objectives of customer success teams. By applying the principles of ABM the customer life cycle, marketers are changing account-based management into account-based engagement (ABE).

To understand the impact ABM has on the marketplace, we’ve compiled a few stats to give you a better understanding of its scale, impact to businesses and where the method is headed next.

What ABM Has Delivered so Far

Account-Based Marketing works. Of its current practitioners, its return on investment and value to the organization is remarkable.

1. ABM continues to deliver a higher return on investment. With 77% of marketers achieving 10% or greater ROI from ABM, 45% achieving more than double the ROI from ABM.
2. It doesn’t stop at ROI. Companies using ABM generate 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts.
3. And it isn’t just marketers who prefer personalization. A survey by CEB found that individual stakeholders who perceived supplier content to be tailored to their specific needs were 40% more willing to buy from that supplier than stakeholders who didn’t.
4. It’s also good news for teams trying to reach high-level buyers. SiriusDecisions found 30% of marketers that worked in an account-based manner reported greater than 100% engagement increase with their C-level targets.

ABM Brings Sales and Marketing Together

Get ready for some high-fives. Marketing and sales alignment is one of the most significant benefits of ABM, thanks to the increase in closed deals.

1. Misalignment is an expensive problem to have. Hubspot notes that wasted marketing efforts due to misalignment between marketing and sales cost $1 trillion a year.
2. Unproductive prospecting is the problem. One component of that cost is unproductive prospecting, which historically causes sales to ignore 50% of marketing leads and waste 50% of sales time. Ouch.
3. ABM brings sales and marketing closer. Thankfully, ABM boosts sales and marketing alignment. Seventy percent of ABM users report their sales and marketing organizations are mostly or completely aligned and 83% of marketers say ABM increases in engagement with target accounts, making the marketing and sales process more efficient.
4. Aligning sales and marketing is when the money rolls in. According to Forrester, companies with aligned marketing and sales organizations achieved an average of 32% annual revenue growth.
5. ABM can improve contract value. According to Madison Logic, companies using ABM primarily see revenue growth through a 171% increase in their Annual Contract Value (ACV).
6. ABM can inspire better deals. SiriusDecisions agrees ABM can lead to bigger deals, reporting that 91% of marketers that use ABM have indicated a larger deal size, with 25% stating their deal size being over 50% larger.
7. Better revenue and deals can lead to more opportunities. An increase in revenue can create an environment for a greater number of deals overall. According to Gartner, ABM programs show a 70% increase in the number of opportunities created.

ABM Demands Content

The magic is in the marketing strategy. Marketers are reimagining how they can create experiences to delight customers while balancing scale.

1. ABM is breathing new life into content. ABM’s impact is so measurable that 95% of the nearly 200 B2B CMOs identified “better tailoring of content” as a top priority for their teams.
2. Creators are in demand. Developing campaign assets designed to be easily customized and scale is one of the top four challenges organizations face in ABM programs.
3. Teams are learning new skills. Managers are investing in their team’s skill sets to help, with 49% saying content creation and tailoring is a priority, and involving 40% of their marketing teams in ABM efforts.
4. Marketing automation needs to be a part of the plan. Digital is easing the content pain as well, with 71% of ABM marketers using Marketing Automation to support ABM and with 41% using personalized webpages.
5. The budget for ABM is growing. Five years ago, companies practicing ABM dedicated 15% of their marketing budgets to ABM. Today, that percentage has nearly doubled to 28%.
6. ABM results improve with age. Eighty percent of marketers doing ABM for three years or more reported significantly higher ROI, compared to 45% of marketers less than three years in.

ABM’s Next Evolution

ABM results don’t stop when the deal closes. Often, the customer experience is even more critical.

1. Moving ABM to ABE works. Targeted ABM experiences are leaving great impressions, with 67% of marketers saying ABM accounts have greater customer success than other accounts.
2. ABE means better retention and expansion. Success with ABE has led 84% of ABMer’s to believe that ABM provides significant benefits for retaining and expanding current client relationships.
3. ABE marketers are playing catch-up. To capture retention now, 61% of ABM marketers are focusing their efforts on existing clients. Only 39% are focusing on new accounts.
4. ABM also drives up customer advocacy. Sixty-six percent of marketers say ABM accounts are more likely to provide positive references and advocate than other accounts.
5. Better advocates provide better research. Strong advocates lead to improved product research and development. Fifty-seven percent of account-based marketers say collaboration with ABM accounts led to the development of valuable new solutions for their companies.
6. Customer experience centers are growing. Realizing that ABM applies to the complete customer lifecycle, Gartner reports that by 2018, more than half of companies will redirect investments towards customer experience innovations.
7. ABM MarTech will boom. Overall, projections show the market spend on ABM technologies will grow from $651.9m in 2018 to $1,196.9m by 2023.

While many marketers are still refining the best practices and operational components for ABM, it’s clear that it has a positive impact. But like any movement, its practitioners are starting to ask what it will do next.

Analysts like Ovum and Forrester predict the next chapter of ABM will be a renewed focus on ABE (Account-Based Engagement), providing engaging experiences throughout the customer journey.

Want to learn more about the evolution to Account-Based Engagement? Read Forrester’s Report, “ABM Must Evolve Into Account-Based Engagement.”