36 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2020

As marketers, we have become experts for our target groups. We know their typical population, what they like, which platforms they spend time on and what they value about a product.

But unlike sales reps who talk to our biggest prospects every day and learn from them, we don’t always know tiny but crucial details about the brands or people we’d most like to sell. This could be why only 28% of salespeople say marketing is their best source of leads.

So how can we bridge the gap to help our sales teams sell better to high priority customers? The answer to this question could be account-based marketing (or ABM).

Rather than just marketing to a broad audience and hoping someone would call your sales reps, ABM is a strategy where sales and marketing teams team up from the start to create campaigns tailored to their most qualified leads and current customers .

For example, as part of an ABM strategy, sales reps can offer marketing teams data from customers, prospects, and customers who haven’t purchased a product so marketers can create a targeted campaign that reinforces why and how their product is valuable can help target the daily Navigate pain points.

While inbound marketing is crucial in attracting general audiences and demographics to your website, service, or business, account-based marketing can help you attract potential customers or qualified leads who are most likely to buy your product.

To show you how beneficial account-based marketing can be, while also keeping you informed of the challenges it presents, here are 36 statistics you should know in 2020.

36 account-based marketing statistics for 2020

General ABM statistics

• 67% of brands use account-based marketing. (HubSpot)
• “Researching Accounts” and “Identifying Target Contacts” are the two main tactics used by marketers within an ABM model. (HubSpot)
• Just a year ago, the top five account-based tactics were salespeople, digital advertising, direct mail, marketing email, and events. (TOPO)
• Additionally, marketers agree that personalized content (56%) and advanced data management (43%) are keys to ABM’s success. (Ranger)
• Most organizations purposely only track 38% of their target accounts at a time. (TOPO)
• By 2019, 55% of marketers rated their ABM strategy as “established,” compared to just 43% in 2018. (Forrester)
• In 2019, companies spent 29% of their marketing budget on ABM. (Engagio)
• It is estimated that ABM budgets increased by an average of 41% in 2019. (TOPO)
• 57% of professionals say their companies aim for 1,000 accounts or fewer with ABM. (TOPO)

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• At the beginning of 2018, only 18% of users had two years of experience in account-based marketing. (TOPO)
• In 2018, 18% of account-based programs were conducted against current customers (larger companies with more than $ 1 billion in revenue ran approximately 50% of these programs.)TOPO)
• The most common metric marketers used to track ABM are revenue. (HubSpot)
• Two other metrics marketers most commonly track to measure ABM efforts are the number of pipelines created and account retention. (Engagio)
• In 2019, 7% of marketers reported a decrease in the number of employees for ABM teams. This shows that this strategy is becoming mainstream and implemented in regular processes. (ranger)
• In 2019, 40% of the average marketing team was dedicated to ABM. (Engagio)
• 57% of marketers say their organizations have been implementing ABM for more than a year. (TOPO)

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Advantages and challenges of ABM

• Marketing and sales teams that share an ABM approach are up to six percent more likely to exceed their sales targets than teams that are less ABM-advanced. (Ranger)
• 62% of marketers say they have seen positive impact since the inception of ABM. (Ranger)
• 80% of marketers say ABM improves customer longevity while 86% say it improves win rates. (TOPO)
• 87% of account-based marketers say ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments. (ITSMA)
• Every fifth account contacted through ABM is considered a qualified opportunity. (TOPO)
• Organizations with a strong Ideal customer profile (ICP) – that’s similar to a buyer personality – Get 68% higher account win rates. (TOPO)
• More than two-thirds (69%) of the top performing account-based organizations now have a dedicated account-based leader. (TOPO)
• 70% of companies that started account-based initiatives in the first half of 2019 have dedicated ABM leaders. (TOPO)
• 42% of businesses that have missed their account-based goals lack dedicated leadership. (TOPO)
• The most common challenge with ABM is delivering a personalized experience. (HubSpot)
• The top three challenges in implementing ABM are creating a scalable multi-account strategy, creating custom content, and coordinating programs between marketing, sales development, and sales teams. (TOPO)

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ABM technology

• By 2021, more than half of all sales calls will be analyzed using software. (TOPO)
• The conversational intelligence market was expected to grow threefold in 2019. (TOPO)
• Voice assistants will account for at least half of automated data entry by mid-2020. (TOPO)
• An estimated 55% of sales data entry has been eliminated through 2020 through automation. (TOPO)

Advantages and challenges of smarketing

• Companies with closely coordinated sales and marketing teams see a 36% higher customer retention rate. (MarketingProfs)
• The most common measure of success for content marketing programs is total sales. (HubSpot)
• 85% of marketers with an SLA think their marketing strategy is effective. (HubSpot)
• Only 7% of sellers said the leads they received from marketing were of very high quality. (HubSpot)
• Only 28% of sellers said marketing was their best source of leads (HubSpot).

Create an effective ABM strategy

As a marketer, it is important to know what makes ABM techniques successful and how they differ from other target audience marketing tactics.

In addition, you want to learn more about the companies you want to market to, much like you would like to learn about an audience. For example, before creating an ABM campaign, do some research on the weaknesses of companies in your industry, corporate missions, and the value of their key decision makers for a product or service.

When you’ve found valuable data on the accounts you want to market to and feel ready to start a campaign, check out our ultimate guide to account-based marketing.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for completeness.