Section 9:
The 3 "R's"
How do confidence levels differ according to the 3 R’s of ABM?
On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your confidence level in tracking success in terms of reputation, relationships and revenue? 1 (Least confident) — 10 (Most confident)
of our survey respondents reported "Difficulty in sustaining momentum over time" as a core challenge.
Percentage (%) of scores with confidence rating under 8/10:
Reputation
Relationships
Revenue
As ABM is all about building long-term account engagement, the path to ROI can be lengthy, with 28% of our survey respondents reporting difficulty in sustaining momentum over time as a core challenge. By breaking a strategy down into the 3 R’s – Reputation, Relationships and Revenue, it’s easier to identify which stages require intervention to keep efforts on track.
Overall, it appears ABM campaigns are being tracked with a high level of competency across the three key areas. However close up, our research shows nearly a quarter (23%) of marketers rate themselves below 8/10 when it comes to measuring relationships.
Let's take a deeper look...
Relationships
As our research previously revealed, 32% of our panel cited determining which accounts to target as a key challenge and over half of marketers do not implement predictive analytics to identify ideal customer profiles (ICPs).
Effective targeting is the crucial foundation for long-term relationship building and best-in-class targeting strategies leverage high-quality data and advanced technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify their total addressable market (TAM) and best-fit accounts. This ensures a high level of relevancy is set right from the beginning and paves the way for better quality (and lucrative) relationships.
Personalization also plays a key role in relationship building, and as such, companies need to develop highly targeted content that speaks directly to the pain points and needs of their target accounts and the individual stakeholders within. However, 60% of marketers in both regions struggle to tailor content to individual buying committee stakeholders.
This can result in missed opportunities to personalize content effectively enough to sustain relevancy and long-term value exchanges. Considering nearly half (49%) of our survey respondents cited Customer Retention as one of their top three KPIs, if businesses are to maintain strong engagement with key accounts and the influencers within, they need to evolve their data and content strategies.
Our research highlights a further obstacle when it comes to relationship building, 51% report Lack of visibility over which buying committee members have been engaged by sales efforts as a key challenge when engaging a target account. The misalignment between sales and marketing can damage efforts on both sides and emphasizes the need for transparency and clear lines of communication between both functions.
On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your confidence level in tracking success in terms of relationships? (UK vs.US) 1 (Least confident) — 10 (Most confident)
Reputation
Reputation is usually associated with top of the funnel activity, where companies are looking to establish brand awareness and familiarity among their target accounts. Historically, tracking these metrics has been challenging, therefore it's encouraging to see that 61% of our survey respondents feel confident in their ability to track reputation, rating their confidence as 9/10 or higher.
Our US vs UK comparison shows the UK lags slightly behind, with 41% rating themselves 8/10 or under.
As our survey results previously showed, 38% of marketers are not currently leveraging account-based advertising (ABA) to reach their target accounts. This indicates that many companies are missing out on the potential benefits of this tactic for building brand awareness and reputation among specific accounts.
However, for those who are using programmatic display advertising and content syndication, it is becoming easier to track and monitor reputation metrics. By targeting specific accounts with personalized messaging and content, these tactics can help to establish brand awareness and reputation among key decision-makers, including notoriously hard to reach C-suite members.
The ability to track engagement and interaction with content through content syndication also provides valuable insights for optimizing ABM efforts and improving outcomes. Overall, while more companies could benefit from incorporating ABA into their ABM strategy, those who are using it in combination with other tactics are well-positioned to track and improve their reputation metrics.
On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your confidence level in tracking success in terms of reputations? (UK vs. US) 1 (Least confident) — 10 (Most confident)
Revenue
Our research indicates that most survey respondents (85%) rate their ability to track revenue success as 8/10 or above, which is a positive sign for ABM campaigns. However, it's important to note that 26% of respondents identified misunderstanding the time to see ROI from ABM efforts as a key challenge. This could explain why some marketers in both the UK and the US (14% and 16%, respectively) have reported lower ROI from their ABM activities compared to other marketing tactics.
Our research shows that revenue tracking from ABM poses the greatest challenge for marketers scaling up their ABM approach. This could be due to limitations in available technology and tools and internal skills gaps and resource constraints, as cited as top challenges in planning and executing an effective ABM strategy.