This weekend I found myself thinking more about ABM Orchestration and the intent of what we conceived back in Q4 2015. I
Through this, it became apparent to me that the term is beginning to be misused, to describe a lower level of maturity and results. Today, I thought it appropriate to again discuss the base idea of what ABM Orchestration is and what it is that we’ve learned since we conceived strategy several years ago.
Terrible first version of the graphic, but it had a lot to say
When I created this infographic, it was late Spring of 2015. ABM had a ton of hype but little foundation for understanding how to execute the strategy successfully. Most notable, I conceived the idea that there was something between selecting accounts and delivering messages. This gap was, and may still be, the greatest area for misunderstanding.
Why ABM Orchestration is necessary:
- Relevance is paramount – Messages that don’t deliver an understanding of needs or relevance are nothing more than a “push” strategy… it erodes brand and engagement.
- Scale insight before messages – Scaling messages without this understanding scales opt out and pushes people away.
- Content is critical – It’s the vehicle that delivers value based upon needs, done right people call the content relevant. You need more than one piece of content, or ad. Needs exist across issues as well as stage of understanding or engagement.
Orchestration demonstrates the human factor of marketing
Let’s be crystal clear, the human factor of marketing has everything to do with the audience and absolutely nothing to do with the marketer or their delivery platform.
Funny, but even this basic concept is getting a lot of bad interpretation these days. Getting this wrong requires a complete lapse in marketing approach. Knowing your audience and their needs is just a base foundation of marketing competence. Expanding personas about the buyers and influencers helps to put a face on them.
Deciphering the digital exhaust of your marketing efforts and identifying when and what an individual buyer needs and acting upon that need is the response to the human factor of marketing!
Human factor of marketing has everything to do with audience, nothing to do with marketer or their delivery platform. #ABM Orchestration Share on XABM Orchestration by the Numbers
ABM Orchestration delivers relevance to your target accounts. It’s the ligament that ties Target Account Data / Needs / Plan so you can know the right content, deliver it through the best channel and progress your buyers through their purchase decision process.
In the groundbreaking research we did 18 months ago, we found that ABM Orchestration is one of the key determinants of high performance ABM. In this research we found:
- 90% of high performance ABM programs produce versioned content to address specific account objectives
- 85% of high performance ABM programs can change content to reflect account engagement and advancement through their program.
- >50% of high performance ABM programs use 2.5X the channels and have lower dependency on display advertising
In the same research we also found that 82% ABM programs perform at a low level of revenue impact.
This isn’t a trivial point… it’s based upon analyst research of 500 ABM programs around the world.
The common element of these lower performing programs was the desire to scale the number of messages to a target account, a “push” strategy. Here, the number of channels and means of distribution took precedence over the value of those messages.
Don't get your #ABM Orchestration wrong, it means the difference between low and high performance! Share on X