The Other ABM: Always Be Marketing

Or how in a struggling market it’s important to remember the 95/5 rule…

So those ‘sunlit uplands’ are not – yet – upon us, and the world’s economies continue to try and drag themselves out of what has been a long drawn out depression. 2023 has been a challenging year but there are signs that the coming months will show improvement; 86%* of global economists believe that inflationary pressures will ease, allowing for easier investment and as a result some market stability.

The fact remains however that it’s tough out there right now, and as marketers know there is a familiar equation that comes with all of this:

Suppressed markets = lean quarters = less sales = reduction in marketing budget, resource = 80 hour weeks and a gin addiction (other addictions are available).

However, as we despairingly watch our baby sail over our heads with the bathwater, all may not be lost. Understandably marketing teams have over the last few years focused on lower hanging fruit – in many cases this is a combination of install base customers and key Target Accounts. The result of this shift has been the exponential rise of ABM as the key tactic in the marketing mix, replacing other (previously) trusted methods of reaching the audience.

In my particular orbit I’ve seen clients moving away from ‘volume-based’ routes to market such as PPC, social outreach & programmatic (unless it’s hyper-targeted as part of an ABM push) and toward more support for field marketing through events etc. The use of LinkedIn has subtly changed also, from broader audience deployments to super-specific lead lists - something backed up by LinkedIn themselves; one of their sales team told me recently they have seen a 75% increase this year in campaigns focusing on 1000 companies or below.

So far, so expected – but are we all missing a trick? If the adage rings true – that 95% of our audience are not in market to purchase at any given point, then based on the above we simply aren’t engaging with them in any meaningful way right now. Which is all well and good if your ABM strategy is working well and the mid/bottom of the funnel is currently well stocked, but not so great when that Target Account List gets exhausted (and it will – quicker than you think). Fast forward to Q2 next year and suddenly the Head of Sales is demanding to know where their pipeline has disappeared to. (Cue another gin).

Sometimes however it pays to take a step back and survey things from a distance. In the early part of this year I sat with two different clients, both of whom were in the same quandary - how to maintain presence in market while prioritising key accounts and support for Sales. In both cases they had been running digital Brand activity throughout 2022 with some success. In both cases the Board had told them it was highly likely that digital budgets would be vastly reduced this year as a result of decreased forecasts, and the focus should turn to Target Accounts (in one case it was almost exclusively so).

Both clients felt strongly that being ‘always on’ was not only important but critical to supporting all other activity and helping to build pipeline beyond key accounts. They both understood the fundamental truth around Brand awareness: the better it is, the more trust your audience has in you, the more authentic you appear. With our help they built business cases to demonstrate that the brand / awareness campaigns ran previously had directly or indirectly accounted for over 40% of all marketing-attributed revenues.

(Yes it’s true they had a good set of measurement tools in place to help their argument, and internal champions to help with the set-up of web pages regarding SEO strategies, but in both cases they convinced the business to continue to invest in awareness tactics).

The result? So far this year marketing-attributed revenues are well over 55% in both organizations, despite the fact that overall sales revenues are flat YoY.

There is of course an element of idealism here – many organisations simply don’t have the financial means to fund multiple routes to market, but it’s worth noting that in the case of our clients the budgets didn’t increase – they were simply deployed differently.

So yes, of course we have to focus efforts on the 5% - but if we ignore the rest it may well come back to bite us if (and when) those sunlit uplands finally arrive.

For more information please visit www.aegamarketing.com or message me via LinkedIn

*World Economic Forum, Sept 2023