3 Trends B2B Marketers Should Know in 2022
Positive change and adaptation come to mind when we think of 2022. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said we can’t step into the same river twice. The water is flowing and the river changes moment to moment. Much like our digital world, if you stepped into it two years ago or even just a few months ago and reentered sometime later, you may feel lost.
B2B Marketing continues to evolve and integrate with the latest digital technology, so we decided to put together a list of three trends to inform your ABM program in the new year. We delve into how these trends, driven by technological advances in AI, machine learning, and intent-driven insights, enhance how B2B marketers activate data to create buyer-centric and seller-friendly ABM programs.
1. A Fresh Focus on Buying Groups
As B2B marketers, we spend countless hours developing ideal customer profiles to inform content and campaigns that resonate with likely buyers. However, buyer personas are a more individualistic approach to addressing the multidimensional decision-making process embodied by large accounts. An account has a series of decision-makers who must clear a purchase before a signature meets the dotted line. This year, B2B companies will refresh their focus on buying groups – a collection of personas that addresses not one, but all, decision-makers in a purchase decision.
Targeting buying groups over a lead-centric marketing model
In a recent survey of tech buyers, Gartner found that the average buying group has anywhere from 6 to 10 active participants. With the introduction of marketing automation platforms (MAPs) roughly 17 years ago, marketers started to focus on marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), disregarding that buyers start as a group long before they show purchase intent. Historically, MAPs have relied heavily on MQLs; however, this often overlooks most of the buying group’s behavior and interest.
When sales and marketing concentrate solely on MQLs, outreach efforts ignore relative organization size and the role of the MQL, among other criteria. ABM programs address these pitfalls by providing contextual insights about the buyer group. With a look into intent topics that the account is researching and intelligent account scores activated by AI-based algorithms, sales and marketing can be first to the conversation with the right message. These insights allow marketers to orchestrate multi-touch, multi-stage campaigns that engage high potential buyer personas within an account.
Detecting data signals from buying groups
Focus on buying groups requires B2B marketers to group multiple contacts from an account into a buying group and connect all buying group contacts to opportunities and revenue. For this to be possible, marketing and sales teams rely on a source of intent data signals to act upon. These signals tell a story of the groups’ purchase journey and allow marketers to capitalize on strategic messaging across the entire account, not single prospects. This approach enables sales and marketing teams with an ABM program to generate selling opportunities with a buyer group that expects relevant and personalized messaging.
2. Prioritizing First-Party Intent
First-party audience platforms are becoming more valuable. Why? Because there is a known opted-in audience that allows for better targeting – first-party data. Marketers should begin experimenting with ad targeting on open content networks and social media sites. Open content networks, like Foundry (formerly IDG Communications), are large media companies with multiple properties. The strength of these networks is they fit a specific audience profile. For example, Foundry has multiple tech-focused publications which marketers could utilize to target tech audiences.
Explore alternative targeting methods
Why establishing a privacy-first data model is crucial for long-term success
At the start of 2020, Google announced the decision to phase out third-party cookies by 2022. However, it seems the death of the third-party cookie won’t become a reality until 2023. This is terrific news if you’re a marketer who thrives on third-party data. Marketers and advertisers have time to plan out how to shift towards a privacy-first digital ecosystem. In a 2021 Kingpin Communications webinar about preparing for a cookie-less future, 63% of marketers reported not having an alternative for third-party cookies. The end of third-party cookies is part of a more significant effort surrounding privacy solutions for consumers who demand transparency. The result is an environment where marketers may have trouble gathering data in the way they have thus far. Now is the time to experiment with new solutions for a changing privacy landscape.
For example, KickFire, a first-party intent data and account intelligence company has a cookieless, privacy-compliant technology that allows B2B marketers to understand account-level engagement across their website. Forward-thinking B2B organizations with experience using first-party data will target the right accounts and drive revenue, while others will be left sorting out anonymous data.
Currently, only 10% of web visitors are authenticated with third-party cookies and about 40% are anonymous. When third-party cookies are gone, 15% will be authenticated and 0% recognized – making 85% of web visitors anonymous. (Permutive)
In our webinar, ABM Campaigns in a Post-Cookie World, Triblio’s Founder Andre Yee explains what marketers should do to “future proof” their ABM programs.
For more resources on the end of third-party cookies, check out our content hub.
3. Adopting Insight-Driven Sales
Insight-driven sales involves leveraging customer and seller insights to help organizations drive business and ultimately increase revenue and productivity (Harrell, 2021). With this method, sales teams utilize purchase intent data to determine their next best action. Sales teams are equipped with knowledge about prospects’ pain points, allowing them to engage and nurture accounts with relevant and personalized messaging throughout the buyer's journey. Across the board, more reps close more deals with the power of insight-driven sales plays.
Insight-driven sales is a cross-organizational effort that requires buy-in from multiple teams to achieve the method’s full potential. Once integrated, sales teams can operate more cohesively and strategically.
“With an insights-driven sales system fully implemented, artificial intelligence will automatically send next-best-action recommendations to reps and tell them what they should be working on every day to drive productivity” (Harrell, 2021).
The trajectory of AI & ABM
As AI and machine learning ABM platforms continue to expand overall performance capabilities and further integrate, marketers should think about adopting these new technologies. Early adoption of the latest advances in ABM technology will aid in solidifying a sound, insight-driven sales program.
“In 2022, ABM platforms will truly start to move from systems of campaign activity to systems of intelligence that use machine learning to assist and automate program activity. The technology is finally able to deliver on the promise to intelligently trigger campaign activity, funnel progression and data-driven analysis.” Triblio Chief Customer Officer, Andrew Mahr, Observation for the Year Ahead.
AI and machine learning improve ABM’s ability to:
- Determine propensity to buy, driving real-time account activation in campaigns
- Model the stages of a prospect’s buyer journey, allowing for automated multi-stage campaign execution
- Learn the best-performing content and channels, enabling automated optimization the longer a campaign runs
Conclusion
2022 will be a transformative year for B2B organizations as marketers navigate constant changes in the digital ecosystem. As intent data, AI and machine learning provide more context around account activity, marketing and sales teams will get a more robust view of the buyer's journey and buying groups. A revival of first-party data and contextual insights will continue to offer advertisers and consumers the privacy-first experience they expect.
Gearing up for ABM in 2022? Talk to one of our experts
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