Marketing

From the Experts: How to Double Down on ABM in the New Year

As marketers, we have always been called on to adapt and change. But these last few quarters? Whoa. We made it through a pandemic only to find ourselves heading straight into the belly of a recession while being asked to be more efficient and nimble than ever, run leaner organizations and continue to hit aggressive ROI goals. The ABM space is primed for some exciting things. We asked some of the best marketers that we know what they see coming as the calendar flips to the new year.

Sarah Pease, Chief Marketing Officer at FinLync is excited about blending a demand creation strategy along with their demand generation plan in the new year.

“I see these as two distinct approaches. Demand generation is your classic gated ebook type of strategy that marketing has been doing for eons,” Sarah says. “While there’s still a place for this in 2023 marketing, I see demand creation as the future of marketing strategy.”

By blending in a demand creation strategy, FinLync will be promoting ungated, high value assets in exchange for a first party cookie. “That allows us to retarget the audience with different, higher-bar offers moving forward, like ‘Request a Demo’ to better identify those people who are actually in a buying cycle vs. just researching/learning. It’s a better way to create awareness and trust in your brand overall, but it also helps safeguard against dependence on third party cookies. Best of all, I expect it to result in higher intent demo requests which will increase conversion rates and hopefully more closed/won deals.”

Kallie Bonnell, Global Senior Marketing Manager at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, understands that marketing budgets are more scrutinized than ever and changes need to be made to best quantify ROI.

“We are focusing on being more efficient with the budget,” says Kallie. “One idea is to audit and better align a media plan, basically ensuring we assess whether the mix of channels and publishers reaches the intended audiences. There is also a focus on customer experience and ensuring that we are providing the most seamless and frictionless experience we can.”

Alignment is the name of the game in 2023 for Beckman Coulter. “We are focused on more inclusive marketing, internally getting better alignment across sales, service and marketing, as well as across regions/geographies. Also being more customer centric, by being purposeful and inclusive of content that puts our customers and their success stories into each marketing initiative. Going beyond marketing tactics and what we are doing, and ensuring we are aligned on the why of the marketing priorities.”

Annie Jackson, Marketing Operations Manager at Reviewtrackers, believes that aligning their paid demand generation strategy with their ABM strategy is the key to maximizing their budget.

“There’s a lot of research and time that goes into some of the strategic and highly contextual campaigns we put together so we’re utilizing those learnings to target similar audiences with search and other advertising,” says Annie. “We saw a good amount of success this year driving target accounts to connect with us just via the website, so we are hoping this improves on what we saw this year.”

At Reviewtrackers, they’re aiming to stay consistent or go bigger on an SEO strategy as well. “We continue to have a social strategy but personally, the volatility on social lately shows the value of the going back to search.”

Terminus Chief Marketing Officer, Natalie Cunningham sees a 2023 full of consolidation and martech tool overlap. “More than ever, CMOs need to pay attention to their spend, choosing to invest in software that actually drives efficient revenue growth and ROI,” Natalie says. “Gone are the days of dozens of point solutions. Platforms that power cross-functional strategic priorities, like ABM, are the places to double down and remove the point solution noise.”

Advertising spend is one of the largest budget line items for most CMOs. But under budget scrutiny, marketers cannot afford to miss the mark on ad performance. “At Terminus, we understand that if ads aren’t driving much revenue, it’s time to keep testing new channels, new messaging, and use what you learn to adapt and grow. But don’t pull back altogether. Pair your advertising with an ABM strategy to drive efficient and effective ad targeting, maximize spending, and drive meaningful ROI and revenue impact.”

We’d love to know your predictions for ABM in 2023. Hop over to our LinkedIn post to continue the conversation.