“The State of B2B Advertising” is the name of a recent report from ABM advertising, customer intelligence and data platform Demandbase. But what about the state of B2B marketing itself? People don’t seem to be sure what works anymore.
“It’s our new reality, that’s for sure,” said Kelly Hopping, Demandbase’s chief marketing officer. “It’s definitely a moving target in terms of what works today versus what worked six months ago.”
In particular, there is a growing question mark over what constitutes successful demand generation. A channel-to-close conversion rate of around 20-30% was once considered a good average. “Now it’s between 12 and 17 percent,” Hopping said. “You need twice as much pipeline as you thought you needed to achieve the same revenue. And that pipeline is harder to get than before. People are smarter; they know not to click on items, so attribution is difficult; they do more research before putting their heads above water.
Indeed, Hopping says just over half of companies (54%) are meeting their pipe goals.
When Hopping was at Gartner, just a few years ago, the simple way to grow the pipeline was to grow paid search. This is no longer an easy solution. “As Google’s SERPS are completely dominated by genAI, your organic goes down, your pay goes down. Google doesn’t work as hard as it used to,” she said.
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Account-based marketing is not the silver bullet
Chris Golec founded Demandbase in 2006, under the ABM banner, and, along with competitors like Engagio and Terminus, set out to explain the importance of an account-based approach to the B2B marketing audience. The message got through. In 2019, Terminus co-founders Sangram Vajre and Eric Spett published a book with the triumphant title “ABM is B2B”.
Indeed, while almost all B2B operations organize their strategy around accounts, ABM has undoubtedly become obvious. Hopping had recently attended an event hosted by GTM Partners (of which Vajre is now CEO). One of the slides presented read: “Is GTM the new ATM? »
“Everyone is operating on an account,” Hopping said, “whether it’s on a platform like Demandbase or putting together an unbundled solution — that data source, that intent source, that AI for read, combined with this messaging platform, like trying to DIY your ATM Looking at Google searches, Hopping found that the number of queries around the term “account-based” decreased slightly; “put on the market », although lower, is increasing.
“We talked about account-based GTM [at Demandbase]”, Hopping said. “Really, I think it’s all about automation, efficiency and knowledge of GTM. B2B, GTM, AI – if I could add 12 more acronyms, that seems like the likely direction It’s not a question of abandoning ABM. On the contrary, it remains “obvious for your go-to-market strategy”, as Hopping says. But we have the feeling that a new category is developing.
Part of it is that pesky “M” in ABM. “This implies that it is a marketing function rather than a go-to-market function with a critical element of sales-marketing alignment,” she said. Indeed, Demandbase adopted the term ABX (account-based experience) several years ago and, to some extent, it has caught on; Hopping remembers meeting with ABX directors. The idea behind ABX was “to include marketing, sales, RevOps and the entire engine. I’m trying to tone down that weird “M”.
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What works in 2024
Despite all the challenges above, Demandbase has identified strategies that are proving beneficial in the B2B space. Hopping ran through some highlights.
Cross-channel and CTV campaigns
“We use all channels and we encourage our customers to do the same,” Hopping said. “I think CTV has been really interesting because it functions as a branded channel with the attribution and metrics you get from digital.” What’s important, she says, is to look at the impact of this channel when combined with other channels. “So if a client uses CTV, Display, LinkedIn and paid search, is the combination working harder than any individual combination, so that CPC goes down but ROI goes up? »
She added that B2B needs quality, CTV-appropriate video content and doesn’t always have it.
Syndication
A cross-channel strategy immediately leads you to think about syndicated content. “I really push my content team to mine content for all it’s worth,” Hopping said, “by creating every derivative you can possibly create from a piece of content. If it’s an eBook, can you create a webinar series, can we make it a video, can it be a carousel on LinkedIn, can it be a CTV commercial? »
The impact of influencers
The role of influencers in the B2B marketing space has continued to grow. “A few years ago, it was mostly B2C and it was pretty random – like someone who got fired from ‘The Bachelor’ doing unboxing videos. You went where the followers go. B2B is different. “It’s a channel of authenticity; it almost serves as a G2 or a Peer Insights, a third-party evaluator, although you can see that influencers are paid to some extent. It allows you to reach a segment of the market that you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise,” she said.
Influencers make a difference for Demandbase itself. “We are an account-based marketing platform, so we combine sales and marketing. The reality, however, is that our brand recognition is primarily among marketers. We really need commercial adoption to keep the product ultra-sticky. The solution: work with influencers who have a large number of sales. “They’ll trust this guy, unlike the Demandbase brand – which is all about marketing and they don’t really listen to marketers.”
The manual gives way to the programmatic
“Maybe five to eight years ago,” Hopping said, “programmatic was really just a crapshoot on what inventory was left. Do you remember that? An ad could appear in a search for fried chicken at 3 a.m. or in a real B2B article from the New York Times. Now it’s so focused.
With Demandbase’s advertising solution, you can serve an ad to 100 customers with pinpoint accuracy, Hopping told us. “Programmatic has become a much more intentional targeting model compared to the old pray-and-spray model. Programmatic is probably our number one differentiator compared to our competitors. We built the DSP ourselves specifically for the B2B audience of SMEs and enterprises. Our competitors tend to use The Trade Desk, so you attract consumers.
Finding the right account-based audience
When B2B buyers retreated to remote locations during the pandemic, there was concern that IP addresses were no longer useful identifiers. “They weren’t answering the office phones anymore,” Hopping observed. Now the cookies disappear. But, says Hopping: “Demandbase has built mitigation into the product that allows us to target people in many more ways. It contains enough robust data that even without cookies you can reconstruct a robust identification.
Intimate events
Finally, something that works at least for Demandbase is events. Hopping identifies them as the main driver of the company’s pipeline, although she also says they support deal acceleration rather than prospecting. “Not so much the trade shows bringing together 20,000 people as the small, intimate dinners. » Or the ABM certification courses that have long been a Demandbase signature.
The Complete Report on B2B Advertising in 2024 can be downloaded here (registration required).
