The Rise of ABX: How to Achieve True
ABM in 2023 By Mukesh Rajpurohit
VP of APAC Sales

According to a LinkedIn ABM report, 41% of marketers have difficulty proving the impact of campaigns on the sales pipeline. Also, 42% comment that creating personalised content at scale for target accounts is a challenge.

The origin of these challenges derives from most B2B organisations siloing ABM to a single department or professional, who then is responsible for launching and monitoring complex campaigns on their own.

ABM is a strategy that only works efficiently if it is cross-departmental—multidisciplinary teams must be formed with stakeholders across business functions to achieve its intended outcomes.

True ABM is, therefore, organisation-wide and must be orchestrated by multiple leaders rather than a sole marketer with a handful of creatives and salespeople. Creating an organisation-wide structure depends on not only having a cross-departmental ABM budget, but also a reasonably sized ABM team with professionals able to pool their expertise and efforts to launch and track campaigns.

Holding multiple leaders accountable not only streamlines tracking efforts, it also enables the organisation-wide alignment required for true ABM to be a success and engage accounts effectively—after all, personalisation is paramount for ABM and the amount of data and work hours required to act upon an account’s unique challenges and deliver resonating marketing campaigns is exponential.

In 2023, businesses will realise the sheer humanpower ABM requires to truly deliver results and capitalise on true ABM because of the high returns it promises by adding high-caliber accounts to the business portfolio. At a time when all marketing must be benchmarked for results, true ABM will be one of the most effective approaches.

With an organisation-wide ABM structure in place, it is easier for stakeholders to collaborate and decide in unison what determines an account as fit for the business.

In the aforementioned LinkedIn study, 43% of marketers cite that identifying the right targets is a challenge due to unreliable data, which demonstrates that many businesses are struggling to identify ideal buyers with ABM.

A clear definition of an account means prioritising targets is effortless, as the criteria will be crystal clear of what businesses to target first and foremost.

Incorporate UX and CX best practices into the buyer’s journey for target accounts. This will provide insights on user behaviour, preferences, and points of friction where buyers 'give up' the most.

By planning a buyer’s journey that prioritises interactivity and enables buyers to make decisions and inform themselves on their own terms, the brand will stay 'top of mind' with a journey that is meaningful and comfortable for buyers.

Instead of prioritising promotion via LinkedIn inMail and cold emails, promote the brand where buyers are naturally consuming professional content.

Content syndication on popular business publishers and blogs is an example of promoting brand awareness with meaningful content in a manner that is not invasive. Buyers that appreciate the content might then follow the brand on social media, providing a more natural experience of consuming content marketing.

Mapping buying committee members and leveraging psychographics is crucial for crafting campaigns at an account-level that will actively engage buyers, incentivise content sharing between them, and result in a brand and its solution being a top choice when it is time to buy.

An omnichannel approach is also paramount to ensure a seamless buyer experience across the channels that buyers access. It is imperative that you avoid repetition of content, as well as make sure that content is relevant to buyers every time.

ABX requires solutions to be custom tailored to best meet the needs of buyers. These solutions must be easily configured by marketers and salespeople, and buyers must be able to get a quote timely.

By having adjustable solutions, with features that can be added or removed seamlessly, not only will the buyer find the solution that best resolves their problems, but brands will also be empowered to offer the best experience possible.

Curation adds relevancy to what would otherwise be a generic offer, which will be paramount in 2023 as tighter budgets put pressure on buyers to make the best choices to enable growth with technology and partners.

When building the ABX buyer journey, bottlenecks will most likely emerge that hinder a seamless experience for users at target accounts. This is why developing a tech stack comes as the last and final step after problems have been identified and the requisite tools can be integrated.

After all, ABX requires a lean tech stack to make sure that marketing, ops, and sales teams can glean insights quickly and make adjustments to maintain a smooth experience. Integrations are paramount to guarantee that the data is at one point of access.

In 2023, ABX will be sustained by knowledgeable and agile professionals, who can build out a holistic brand experience guided by real-time data from buyers at target accounts.

Content, paid promotion, websites, and applications will be updated as needed at a rapid pace—expect B2B companies to further their A/B testing, proactively making changes to the layout, messaging of assets, and platforms similarly to how Meta and Alphabet manage their product roadmaps (for example, Whatsapp is updated every two to three months).