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Writer's pictureSamuel Hall

ABM Answered Incubator: December Updates

Hello noble ABMers,


We've had a busy couple of months so I thought I would begin writing up monthly reports/blogs to keep you up to date with what's going on but mainly to keep us organised 🙃.


December ABM Incubator Insights & Milestones:

  • We've added two new team members to the ABM Answered team members. Jaque Stein and Hajar Boulagjam:

    • It got to the point where the majority of my time each week was spent editing the recorded interviews to get them ready fro distribution. As much as we were getting relatively good feedback, design and content are not my natural skillset so it made sense to bring in others to support with it. They have both hit the ground running and are very talented. More on this next month!

  • With Mixed Reality Rooms, we launched Katun's Mixed Reality Showroom where they will be delivering account-based experiences for their customers and partners.

    • Within their first month they have:

      • Successfully run 13x events in English, Italian, German, and French.

      • Hosted 75 high-value prospects,

      • Captured great feedback and already closed their first sale.

  • We welcomed the legend that is, Vasilios Kospanos as one of our Cybersecurity advisors. Vas will be helping us shape the ABM products within our ecosystem to suit cybersecurity companies.

  • Launched ABM Battlecards.


December: New ABM Products Launched

  • ABM Battlecards, designed by Henry Clark and Eleanor Barlow over at SecurityHQ.

  • Battlecards allows you to beat your competition in seconds.

    • The challenge: previously was that detailed competitive research takes weeks and in some cases months when you factor in all the different channels. Furthermore, every company we interviewed was only able to conduct this research once a year and within this time, just like you, the competition evolves.

    • The solution: ABM Battlecards allow you to conduct all the relevant research in seconds. It is also pre-programmed to your niche eg. for Cybersecurity it pulls in information on when they last had a major threat breach, do they have a SOC2, customer services etc. and it even analyses the conversations happening on Reddit - as particularly within Cyber, this is where the honest conversations are happening, not G2. The data and information is refreshed monthly but you also have the ability to manually refresh this data when you are conducting the research,


ABM Content Library:

  • We added 563 new videos this month to the ABM Answered Library.

  • Frequently Asked Questions:

    • We still intend on keeping this to invite only and no for the foreseeable future.

    • We do not intent on monetising this as a product; this is a resource that we have built that serves account-based-marketers.

    • We don't want people living in it like a Slack group. It should be treated as a directory, come to it when you have a problem, get quick solutions, and follow up with the relevant marketer if you want more information.

    • ABM Answered will be open to all guests that have contributed to the library from January 2025. 1 year in the making!





What's Trending with ABM in December 2024:

This is a bit of a montage of things of several clear and key trends emerging in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) within the last couple of months:


1. Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is increasingly being utilized to enhance ABM strategies. Having posed the AI question to the last 30 guests I have interviewed the majority of them are using AI for research and preparation as opposed to execution ie. prospecting. Personally, and I built the first 5 years of my career on outreach, I am still sceptical by these all in one AI, auto-pilot prospecting solutions. Fortunately most marketers are using AI to analyse historical data and behavioral patterns. There are some good AI tools out there that can predict which accounts are most likely to convert, allowing marketers to prioritize their efforts and allocate resources more effectively.


2. Emphasis on Account-Based Experience (ABX): ABX focuses on delivering personalized and meaningful interactions at every touchpoint, ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach to customer engagement. Personally I prefer the term ABX to ABM but ABX Answered doesn't quite flow as nicely off the tongue.... Anyway, according to SalesMark Global, ABX has been shown to increase customer retention rates by 30%.


3. Scepticism over Intent Data: it's not surprising that a lot of marketers are waking up and starting to question the validity of intent data. In separate interviews with both Erika Smith and Matt Laybourn, they both mentioned that in the early days it felt that companies like 6Sense, Demandbase, and Bombora were selling it as a "golden-bullet" to all ABM campaigns but that it's simply not the case. Overall sentiment, is that most intent data is outdated and there needs to be more transparency as to where this data comes from if these companies are going to win back their credibility with the wider marketing population. That said there are publications out there saying it helps boost conversion rates by 70% so maybe not one one to shelf completely.


4. Hyper-Personalization: Tailoring content to address the specific challenges and needs of target accounts has become a cornerstone of successful ABM strategies, with 56% of marketers emphasizing its importance.

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Overall, these developments highlight once again, the ongoing evolution and ever growing need for ABM. It really does feel that personalisation is the best way for companies to grow as we enter the age of unlimited tools and tech.


ABM Answered: On-the-road


As always, we like to do our part in indoctrinating the next generation of ABMers.


This month we did a two in-person talks including one the below in London to 70 masters students visiting from Belgium; arranged by the Belgium Embassey, Wallonia Investment Group, and Insider London.


In general, I'd say it's fair to say that B2B marketing is often overlook by Universities and Colleges. When you apply to study marketing you always think of those sexy B2C brands like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola. Very little time is ever given to teach them that these very brands also make a lot of their money from selling to other businesses (B2B).


Once we covered, the basics, we dived deeper into how to market products and services by creating awesome Account-Based-Experiences (video games) using Mixed Reality Rooms. B2B doesn't have to mean boring-to-boring after all.



Community & Collaboration:


Seeing as this is the first ABM Answered summary I figured it would be good to share an overview of some of the awesome people we have supporting this community.


New members include:







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