What Are the Top 5 ABM B2B Strategies For 2024?

What Role Will Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Play in 2024?

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is well and truly having its moment.

Coined by Momentum Itsma back in 2003 (somehow that's over 20 years ago now!), ABM as a marketing strategy has become one of the biggest areas of growth for B2B marketers, with no sign of stopping.

Think of Account-Based Marketing as the B2B equivalent of a B2C company asking for your birthday or your interests, so they can get to know you better. You know, that feeling when a retailer entices you with a personalized discount code? ABM is sort of like that, working to identify and target the most relevant accounts for your products and solutions.  

So what makes ABM so popular? It's the fact that it allows you to tailor your marketing precisely to specific companies and individuals. We live in an era of high personalization: being able to hit your targets with the right messages, at the right times, is often what will see your efforts succeed.

One of the most effective uses of Account-Based Marketing is ABM lead generation. Having a Target Account List (TAL) at the beginning of your lead generation campaign gives you a major head start, and encourages cooperation between your sales and marketing teams, leading to a higher ROI.

In fact, overall, the leads you generate through ABM are more likely to see a good return on investment.

77% of marketers in Momentum Itsma's survey reported revenue growth thanks to ABM, and using ABM lead generation as a KPI allows you to accurately measure your ABM strategy's maturity.

As another example, At Headley Media, we find the majority of our technology clients run their lead generation campaigns with an account-based marketing TAL.

What Is ABM?

Momentum Itsma also states that ABM is the number one priority for B2B marketers, reporting that 28% of a marketer's budget is dedicated to ABM.

But what is ABM? Well, ABM is a type of marketing that focuses heavily on individual businesses and personnel. ABM marketing uses data to personalize communications and target new customers more effectively.

By engaging specific target accounts that are likely to be the best fit for your product or service, you can better tailor your messaging. In turn, targeting best-fit accounts can lead to faster results, greater efficiency, and a higher ROI for your marketing efforts.

However, ABM results take time, effort, and of course money. ABM isn't easy to implement, you need resources for intensive data management and reporting, and time for your ABM strategies to mature.

Lead generation is considered the top ABM performance indicator by 42% of ABM marketers, according to Terminus. New business generation, customer retention, and pipeline acceleration are some of the other major ABM KPIs. Therefore, there are plenty of ABM metrics you can track to measure the success of your campaigns and plenty of good reasons for implementing an ABM strategy.

Some ABM tactics and strategies work better than others when optimizing your Account-Based Marketing efforts. Here are six of the most powerful ABM B2B marketing strategies based on our industry experience for you to try in 2024.

ABM Strategy #2: Content Syndication

Syndicating your educational marketing content – such as eBooks, whitepapers, case studies, and research reports – via websites you don't own helps you attract a wider audience. Content syndication is one of the most effective methods of lead generation, and holds big advantages in ABM vs. traditional marketing.

Choosing the right content syndication platforms and websites to syndicate your content on is crucial. You should only syndicate your content on relevant, well-used content libraries from reputable lead generation companies or publishers. Working with a trusted lead generation solutions partner can be particularly effective.

The provider will publish your content to the right audiences via platforms they own. As a result, they own the data generated and can verify it to a high standard. The leads they generate via your ABM content syndication campaigns are of higher quality and more likely to engage.

Take a look at our Reader Journey as an example, which includes a breakdown of our lead validation process.

ABM Strategy #3: Data Validation

You've likely heard the term Garbage In, Garbage Out (also known as GIGO if you’re particularly techy and love an acronym). GIGO essentially means that the quality of your data output is only as good as the quality of the data you input. Makes sense really, doesn’t it?

Well, unsurprisingly the GIGO concept is also true of target account list data. Account data quality changes all the time: individuals change jobs, people get promoted, companies move offices. ABM data management is a continuous process that is easy to overlook.

That's why it's best to use a trusted Account-Based Marketing lead generation supplier to both generate leads using your TAL, and then validate them by checking the data is accurate and up to date.

And it's not just contact data. The best ABM strategies make intensive use of audience intelligence and intent data, giving you loads of ABM analytics that you can use to assess how close your targets are to buying.

Data validation for your target account list is super important. Afterall, it's your TAL that allows you to personalize your communications to make them more effective: the success of your ABM campaign relies on it being accurate.

ABM Strategy #4: Sales Team Collaboration

Every ABM playbook recommends you align your Marketing and Sales teams. Not only will it help you to work towards the same goals, but it will also allow you to communicate more clearly and design a compelling customer journey.

A study by DemandMetric found that 70% of ABM users have completely aligned their sales and marketing teams, compared to 51% for non-ABM users. It's also been proven that businesses with aligned Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams generally see more revenue growth.

A good Sales team can provide the criteria for Marketing's target account list, while the Marketing team can provide data, messages and content for the Sales team contacting the lead.

At the same time, sharing information means that anyone in Sales or Marketing can look at an account and know exactly where they are in the ABM funnel and what next steps to take.

HubSpot recommends your teams agree on resource allocation for each account, as well as which team members will have which responsibilities.

ABM Strategy #6: Demand Generation

Demand generation vs. ABM: Why not both? Personalization and lead nurturing don’t have to wait until after you've generated your B2B leads.

ABM works really well with inbound marketing, which is what demand generation is all about.

Demand generation is when your customers come to you, organically (as opposed to lead generation, which counts as outbound marketing).

By putting out valuable content for potential future customers to use, optimizing your SEO, and providing a good customer experience, you create a very warm environment in which to nurture your targeted accounts.

If they're already aware of your brand when you start your lead generation campaign, it's easier to move them along the marketing funnel.

The best ABM campaigns effectively utilize both demand generation and lead generation, helping you to nurture your targeted accounts toward a purchase.

Working with an ABM Lead Generation Supplier

As we said before, creating an ABM strategy that works and matures is tricky to do, and resource-heavy.

Fortunately, a lot of the hard work can be handed over to a 3^rd party ABM specialist.

An ABM specialist can help you with:

1. Expanding your TAL with lookalike audiences.
2. Syndicating your content to their owned content hubs, such as Headley Media's content syndication platforms.
3. Validating your data, by providing transparent lead validation services.
4. Nurturing your leads (take a look at Nurture Track campaigns as an example).
5. Understanding the common pitfalls of ABM, and how to avoid them.

As B2B marketers, our time is often very limited and we’re pulled in hundreds of different directions almost daily.

Implementing an ABM strategy would feel like a mammoth task if you tried to do everything in-house but luckily you can call upon a high-quality lead generation agency (like us!) to help you deliver your ABM campaigns.

Working with an ABM specialist leaves you free to work on your ABM strategy, aligning your sales and marketing teams, and implementing any necessary ABM tech solutions.

If you’re planning to run ABM content syndication campaigns it’s important to choose a trustworthy ABM lead generation supplier.

Ask your supplier about their Reader Journey, which should reflect their lead generation process. If an ABM lead generation supplier can’t tell you exactly where they get their leads, or how they authenticate them, don't use them. They should be able to answer any of your ABM questions.

Take a look at our Quality Lead Generation Checklist for some guidance on what to ask your ABM suppliers.

The key to Account-Based Marketing is quality: putting time and resources into targeting the companies your business most wants to work with and supplementing your customer service with plenty of valuable, personalized content and messaging. Find a B2B ABM agency that can work alongside you with the same values.

Need a quality ABM checklist? An ABM strategy template? Or help getting started with ABM? Alternatively, why not get in touch with our friendly team today, and let our ABM specialists guide you through the process!