The future of B2B experiences is full-funnel and always-on.

Due to the siloed nature of sales and marketing teams, a lot of B2B marketers have lost sight of the entire customer journey. Often, marketing is tied to generated revenue, which lends itself to lower-funnel programs. As a result, brand efforts are deprioritized by the organization. With most marketers focusing their efforts on generating demand or leads, the importance of creating brand awareness and connection with buyers is almost nonexistent.

For many companies, account-based programs look like this: get a list of companies to target, buy some media that can target these companies, push out some ads, capture a few names, maybe nurture them (or maybe not), and then distribute these leads to the sales department. Organizations have begun referring to these account-list-based programs as ABM, but what is described here is account based targeting (ABT). ABM requires some orchestration/comms between sales and marketing, with efforts beyond paid media. ABX takes that orchestration one step further toward a full-funnel experience.

Companies do get leads for sales, and some leads convert to purchase, which is good. The dilemma is that these are lead generation moments in time. Taking this approach means you are only getting leads from people in the market for your offering right now. In a couple of months, when your campaign has ended, your competitors will be running a lead generation campaign of their own, and they’ll be the ones getting those timely leads.

The future of B2B experiences is full-funnel and always-on.

What is ABT?

Account-based targeting (ABT) is a marketing strategy that focuses on account segmentation. It is a method of targeting prospects by creating a select list of accounts and adding them as a segment to a current campaign.

What is ABM?

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a go-to-market strategy based on targeting certain accounts with a synchronized, continuous set of marketing and sales activities. ABM activities engage those accounts and individuals through all stages of the buying journey. The goal is to accelerate the pipeline while also expanding penetration (and therefore revenue) within those accounts.

What is ABX?

Account-based experience (ABX) is a more expansive and impactful approach that adopts practices from customer experience management to go beyond account targeting, demand generation, and nurture. The focus is the entire funnel. ABX leverages data and insights from across the organization to deliver highly orchestrated and fully connected customer experiences at an account and individual level that are personalized, frictionless, and integrated across marketing, sales, commerce, and service, throughout the entire lifetime of the account.

The power of brand advertising

While focusing on lead generation delivers results, the problem is that it’s not a strategy. It’s a tactical approach that only creates short-term lift. How many of the companies on your list of 500 are actually seeking a solution during the two months you will run your media campaign?

Research shows that companies change their providers of services such as banking, legal advice, software, or telecoms around every five years (1). Only 20 percent are in the market for those services or products in a given year and just five percent in a given quarter – meaning the other 95 percent are not in the market at all.

Ultimately, brand building creates more value than sales activation. That’s why companies need to think about the entire customer experience – from a long-term to short-term perspective and from a broad to focused perspective (Figure 1, next page). Everyone knows the benefit of sales activation: it increases short-term sales. Brand building creates many more benefits than sales activation, which are under-discussed in the industry. For a company, upper-funnel efforts allow the brand to stay relevant and top-of-mind as the buyer enters the research and decision phases of the journey.

20% in the market for those services or products in a given year and just 5% in a given quarter.

(1) Valentine, Matthew. “Ehrenberg-Bass: 95% of B2B Buyers Are Not in the Market for Your Products.” Marketing Week, July 16, 2021. https://www.marketingweek.com/ehrenberg-bass-linkedin-b2b-buyers/.

Figure 1 – Benefits of Brand and Activation (2).

(2) Weinberg, Peter, and Jon Lombardo. “2030 B2B Trends.” 2030 B2B TRENDS Contrarian Ideas For The Next Decade. Business Solutions on LinkedIn. Accessed February 24, 2022. https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/2030-b2b-trends.

Combining brand and demand to activate more sales

When you engage in brand building, you create a situation where your company is always on. You can reach potential buyers before they are in buying mode and connect with them when they are in the market to buy your specific product. Companies that combine brand and demand programs achieve as much as 6X higher conversion than they do by focusing on activation alone (3). And, in a world where buyers are influenced to buy from brands they know, keeping your voice in the market is an important investment, even if measurement is harder and sometimes elusive.

ABX is an essential tool in building these kinds of always-on, full-funnel experiences. As we’ll explore in the following section, ABX orchestrates account experiences across the entire buying cycle – from before the account is even aware of the vendor, to first contact, to nurturing long and mutually beneficial relationships beyond the first and even hundredth sale.

(3) Weinberg and Lombardo