Account Based Marketing Wins The Popular Vote The results are in: Digital Kungfu's Account Based Marketing (ABM) Survey reveals that South African ICT companies believe that the future success of their sales and marketing strategies lie with ABM.

• 51% of ICT companies are aware of the term "Account Based Marketing' (ABM)
• The addressable market for ABM is approximately 9 000 ICT companies in South Africa
• 47% or roughly 4 500 ICT companies have been actively using ABM for the past one to two years
• The number of companies using ABM has doubled over the past 12 months.

Account Based Marketing (ABM) has been gaining traction across international markets. According to ITSMA, almost 85% of marketers measuring ROI say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments.

Marketo's research backs this statistic, revealing that almost 85% of marketers said ABM provided significant benefits to retain and expand existing client relationships. 97% of marketers surveyed by the Alterra Group said ABM had higher ROI than other marketing activities.

How ABM Is Capturing Customer Attention

"We've been paying close attention to the ABM trend, both internationally and locally," says Matt Brown, CEO of Digital Kungfu, a local storytelling production company that specializes in helping tech businesses build sales ready pipelines using the power of story and data driven marketing technology.

"The sales and marketing landscape is shifting. Brands need to capture the attention of their audiences in incredibly cluttered spaces. It's getting tougher and tougher to get your message across. ABM solves this problem because it's completely individualised and specific to the customer."

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To determine how local ICT companies feel about ABM and whether they're using it, Digital Kungfu launched its ABM Survey in April 2019, and the results are in, with marketing budgets shifting towards ABM strategies and the number of companies using ABM doubling over the past 12 months.

"Goals for ABM range from driving demand and lead generation (56%) to pipeline acceleration (46%)," says Brown. "Importantly, ABM analytics are measured in terms of revenue growth (60%) and client engagement and relationships (36%), both critical factors in overall business success metrics."

Measurable Results That Drive More Sales

Digital Kungfu's focus on ABM for its clients is based on a number of key factors. "ABM is a highly-focused strategy that treats individual prospects and customers as their very own market," says Brown. "This means content and even entire campaigns can be dedicated to people associated with specific accounts, rather than an industry as a whole.

"This individual focus speaks directly to specific customer needs, challenges and concerns, and we've seen the increased sales for our tech-based clients as a result.

Related: 4 Ways To Win Over Customers And Boost Your Sales

"Internationally, more than 60% of companies plan to launch an ABM-based campaign in the next year. It's been encouraging to see our own local research support this trend. One of the challenges that we've seen time and again is sales and marketing departments that are not well aligned around the same goals.

"ABM not only solves this challenge, but drives real, measurable marketing that results in deals. We believe ABM adoption is on the rise, specifically within tech-based businesses because of this measurable ROI," he concludes.

Digital Kungfu is hosting an ABM event on Thursday, 27 June 2019 to unpack the results of the survey as well as how technology businesses can use ABM to drive leads and increase sales.

Tickets are available at Quicket.