Webinar Recap ABM in 2024: 
How It’s Changed
Our UTTR CMO Sam Viskovich was joined by Alan Zhao the Co-founder and Head of Customers at Warmly, Marcos Sanchez the Growth Marketer at Oscilar Inc., and Davis Potter the CEO of ForgeX to discuss the most relevant tactics for ABM in 2024.
The discussion revolved around the 4 pillars of ABM, the approach, the tools, the campaigns, and reporting.
Context for The Webinar
While the headline may sound like SEO clickbait, there are three influences occurring right now that are changing how we go about 
ABM in 2024.
Budgets are tight for many marketers - every dollar counts, and where we prioritize investment matters.
Sales cycles are longer - which means our ABM campaigns have to adjust to the new buying cycles.
New technologies have emerged that help improve ABM playbooks.
The Approach
The panelists spoke about their different approaches, relating them back to the following ABM pyramid (courtesy of ForgeX);
Davis set the scene, recounting that the ABM pyramid is now 8 years old and that it doesn't reflect how ABM is being implemented in the 2024 market. The current deployment models are Enterprise ABM and Growth ABM.
Enterprise ABM Deployment Model
The Enterprise ABM strategy applies in organizations with high ACV (Average Contract Value) where the investment is justified. The Enterprise ABM model branches out into;
The 1:1 Approach
with campaigns dedicated to individual accounts, where you likely have less than 10 campaigns total.
The 1:Few Approach
with designated campaign clusters for less than 25 accounts.
Growth ABM Deployment Model
The Growth ABM model is the most frequently deployed model, allowing for scaled coverage, which is a necessity for organizations with lower ACV or fewer GTM resources.
The Growth ABM deployment model is often recognized for separating accounts into account-qualification tiers based on the acquired account data as well as variations in tactical deployment and resource allocation based on Tier.
Marcos and Alan spoke about how they leveraged the growth model and prioritized accounts post-engaging with their website.
With Marcos at Zendesk, this involved deanonymizing accounts that visit the website, attributing intent, and prioritizing based on engagement. Campaigns were based off of this prioritization.
Similarly, Alan explained how they dogfood Warmly, deanonymizing the individual that comes to their site and using that data to attribute to overall account prioritization.
The ABM Tools
Which tools do you need to have for ABM in 2024?
Alan gave us a breakdown of Warmly, explaining how it works and how their best customers leverage Warmly.
Warmly is a must-have tool for any Growth ABM strategy as it helps automate a significant portion of the account-based marketing approach by deanonymizing the actual individual that comes to your site.
Traditional ABM intent tools look only at the accounts that engage with you, whereas Warmly allows you to map individuals within the account. This gives much more precision for any account-based campaigns.
Once you're set-up, Warmly will de-anonymize 15% of individuals and 65% of companies visiting your site and notify the appropriate sales representative based on the account behavior on your website.
Warmly then allows you to coordinate outreach based on these intent signals. Firstly it integrates with your existing tools, such as CRM and sales engagement. Secondly, Warmly itself has a set of tools that you can leverage for outreach coordination including automated messages, videos, or other content to target accounts visiting your web.
Alan shared how accounts that had been closed lost, that then came back to the site had a 48% closed won rate.
A powerful tool for self-guided demos, turning your product into interactive, hands-on experiences for your prospects without having to build an entire free trial experience.
Measuring impression data is crucial for ABM since not every target account will fill out and submit your forms. Fibbler is a tool that allows you to track impression data at the account level for LinkedIn Ads. You can push this data into your CRM to see the incremental lift post.
An analysis tool helping you maximize your KPIs with KPI Tracking, Root Cause Analysis, Causal Analytics, Release Impact, and Habit Journeys. Great for large campaigns with multiple factors impacting them.
The ABM Campaigns
How to create your lists and run effective advertising campaigns?
List Building
If you're building your ABM account list, choosing which segments to go after is the first and crucial step in the process. Targeting specific industries is the most common approach, but targeting product lines works too.
The ABM Webinar team discussed four key points for account targeting;
- 1.
Leverage historical data for ICP alignment.
- 2.
Newer companies who don't have enough historical data can use tools such as Keyplay.io.
- 3.
Layer in intent for account prioritization with tools such as Warmly and third-party data vendors.
- 4.
Always include a manual element of reviewing and checking into your campaigns.
Campaign Content
If you're building your ABM account list, choosing which segments to go after is the first and crucial step in the process. Targeting specific industries is the most common approach, but targeting product lines works too.
To run effective ABM campaigns you need content across the entire funnel - top of the funnel, mid funnel, and bottom of the funnel. ABM campaigns can be guilty of focusing lower in the funnel.
As Marcos puts it, you're not only competing with other advertisers, but with all types of content. That's why it's crucial to create valuable, engaging, and digestible content for your target accounts. Marcos explained how Zendesk would leverage their key reports throughout all their advertising campaigns. That one really deep piece of content that is genuinely useful to your key accounts can go far.
Alan discussed how Warmly deploy a high frequency of success story and thought leadership content on LinkedIn. Â They leverage organic distribution to get their content in front of their key accounts. How? Their execs and team are consistently reaching out and connecting with contacts at key accounts. Combined with their high frequency, this approach ensures that they are always top of mind.
Budgeting
The key to any ABM campaign is correctly assigning budgets. There are a number of inputs impacting budget assignment in ABM - how valuable is an account? How big is my list?
There are various ways to measure and assign budget and determine budget tolerance thresholds.
It's important to get directional learnings early in the funnel and build the budget later based on the acquired information.
Measure and manage your budget at various stages on the appropriate measurement framework, whether that is direct or influenced.
Set a tolerance for your budget (e.g. to start we can accept a x3 CPL) and once campaigns go outside of your tolerance, then reduce that budget down.
The Reporting
The panelists covered the attribution models and reporting you need to successfully run an ABM program.
Attribution
First, it's crucial to set up an attribution model and track accounts throughout the customer journey.
The ABM Webinar team discussed four key points for account targeting;
Influenced vs Direct Attribution: Measuring both, influenced and direct attribution is crucial to measure the true impact of ABM efforts.
Direct measurement is straightforward, allowing you to see the outcome from a specific action, event, or source. - How many accounts clicked my LinkedIn Ads, then converted further down the funnel?
But we all know that the midmarket/enterprise buying cycle is not as simple as seeing ads, clicking on ads, and filling out forms. Most prospects will view the ad and then make a decision at a later date.
This is where influenced attribution comes in. It allows you to measure the movement of accounts across the funnel and correlate it to the marketing activities occurring.Contact vs Account Attribution: Tracking only contact attribution will lead to inaccurate data with certain channels, such as paid search. Marcos said that introducing attribution at the account level gave him a clearer insight into the customer journey, reflecting what originally influenced interest for the account, and giving better credit to paid social ads.
Reporting
Once you have attribution set in place, it's important to set expectations on your reporting capabilities.
The ABM Webinar team said that reporting comes down to the specific necessities of the company, but generally, you should have account measurements at each stage of the funnel, for engagement, pipeline, and revenue, and be able to measure the performance of every channel.
Based on the necessity, you can then create reports for every ABM marketing effort.
ABM in 2024: How It’s Changed
Gain key insights from our webinar on these changes and how to adapt your ABM strategy for success in 2024.