Spotlight State of Marketing 17 Account-Based Marketing Helps Personalize to B2B Audiences B2B Marketers Take a Closer Look at Personas Over the past 18 months, 60% of B2B marketers have become more focused on improving As previously stated, business buyers show even audience segmentation and personas. higher expectations for personalization than Percentage of B2B Marketing Leaders Who consumers. However, in a B2B marketing scenario High Performers vs. where your decision-maker is not an individual Strongly Agree or Agree with the Following Statements* Underperformers but a group, how do you achieve that level of 93% personalization? This issue is one that account- Marketing and sales share 69% 2.1x based marketing (ABM) aims to solve. ABM is common goals and metrics 45% more likely the practice of marketing and directing content 92% to targeted accounts, instead of a traditional I understand how marketing’s efforts 70% 2.1x top-of-funnel approach. impact individual accounts/customers 44% more likely The success of ABM hinges on a healthy High performers Moderate performers Underperformers relationship between marketing and sales. High-performing B2B* marketing leaders are 2.1x more likely than underperformers to be aligned with sales on goals and metrics. They’re also 2.1x more likely to understand how their efforts impact individual accounts. 60% Top B2B marketers are 2.9x more likely to extensively use data targeting and segmentation. of B2B marketers say they’ve been While data targeting is a foundation, it’s not as far more focused on improving along the personalization spectrum as it could be. audience segmentation and Top teams are looking to emerging technologies personas over the past 18 months to move the needle. High-performing B2B marketers who use or plan to use AI are 1.7x more likely than underperformers to say it will have a transformational impact on customer segmentation/lookalike audience modeling. * B2B also includes respondents who identified as B2B2C. Salesforce Research