2020’s B2B Marketing Virtual ABM Conference
Account based marketing (ABM), it’s not a term that’s new to B2B marketers and it certainly isn’t going anywhere, which was made clear in 2020’s B2B Marketing Virtual ABM Conference!
Two days packed full of insightful, thought-provoking and engaging content that saw many a B2B marketer scramble to take notes and think: “How can I apply this to my ABM strategy?”. With Breakout sessions you didn’t want to miss, Keynote talks that had you leaning in to hear more, and a strong theme of a united sales and marketing front, the ABM conference was as engaging as ever. Although taking what is usually a face to face event online should have its challenges, the event was almost entirely problem free, much to the attendees’ delight!
Day 1
To kick off day one, we had a great introduction from Joel Harrison and some great discussions in the morning Keynote stage with Peter O’Neill, Shane Redding, Robert Norum, Andrea Clatworthy and Paul Gibson, before the Breakout sessions began. A standout session in the Data and Insight category was led by Head of Marketing – Strategic ABM and Advocacy at O2, Mark Larwood, discussing how they took ABM to the next level with more-focused exec engagement programmes. This was full of wisdom on how their strategy looked to overcome their customers’ current mindset of O2 and transition this into one that understood their wide range of capabilities. Mark made it clear that when it comes to ABM, you shouldn’t be afraid to challenge your customers’ viewpoints and be assertive in your messaging, but that they should always be tailored according to customer insight, especially when on a 121 basis. He went on to mention that using a tiered approach, with broad activities, allowed O2 to better align their channels – however not without difficulty, which he also pointed out! A key takeaway from this talk was Mark’s mention of the 3 Rs – Revenue, Relationships and Reputation, which are the three things he see’s as critical to success and what you should be measuring against.
Moving into the afternoon and after some fun Speed-networking chats, a particularly interesting Breakout session began in the Content and Campaign Execution category. This was from Renaye Edwards, Co-Founder And Marketing Account Director at Digital Radish and Jonathan Ridley, Senior Enterprise Marketing Manager at UKI Veeam. They discussed how Veeam kept things personal during a pandemic, providing six great points everyone should consider when planning any ABM strategy. Their first point was to start with a smaller programme, used to learn from and test to see which strategy is going to work best for you, before scaling it. Getting the strategy right was the second point, which encouraged marketers to consider if the strategy they wanted was worth the investment and if not, is it necessarily the strategy you need? Point three was all about getting in the right mindset, stating that a quantity vs quality mindset needs to be addressed. Point four encouraged triggers and milestones resulting in a company entering or leaving a certain ABM strategy to be set from the beginning. With point five instructing that a small and concentrated, but flexible team focused on the same targets should also be formed at the start. Finally, point six highlighted that value exchange is greater than ever, meaning that a deep understanding of your audience in 121 campaigns, allows you to focus on what the companies care about and can be truly personalized.
Day 2
Day two began with another great Keynote talk to kick us off from Joel Harrison, Shane Redding, Robert Norum, Alisha Lyndon, Bev Burgess and Chris Wickson. That morning, it was Webeo’s turn to deliver some insight on personalization, with Webeo CEO, Kirsty Dawe’s talking about the missed personalization opportunities you don’t even know you’re making. Kirsty highlighted the top 4 reasons for pursuing personalization, which included, driving engagement, conversions, brand loyalty and deepening relationships. This received great engagement from attendees and was followed by a live demo of our software by Fraser Clilverd, and a great talk on ‘help me’ and ‘recognize me’ personalization by Rachel Palmer in our booth later on.
A Breakout session that simply cannot go unnoticed was from Chief Science Officer at Corporate Visions, Dr Carmen Simon, where that afternoon saw our eyes opened to how decision science can lead to better content. This highly interactive session saw attendees wowed by the factors that can influence our decision making, how memory plays an integral role and reminded us that although we target businesses, we are still marketing to real people. Filled with wisdom on how contrasting content is better processed by the brain and aesthetically pleasing content can prime the brain for duller content that may follow, many left this session with new knowledge and a newfound inspiration. Dr Carmen’s session was followed by a discussion of Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, who presented a thoroughly engaging Keynote talk about the psychology of customer content, and how you should be matching your message to the moment in the customer deciding journey. Tim highlighted the importance of creating two separate funnels for ABM, one to acquire new customers and one to retain your existing customer base. Tim made it clear that these separate strategies should receive separate content and entertainingly described the best ways to peak engagement with convincing and informative content, while also imploring that a united sales and marketing team and the involvement of customer success in the ABM process is critical!
Although each session was superb and provided learnings that each marketer is sure to takeaway and implement into current and future ABM campaigns, mentioning them all in detail would turn this blog into a book! What should be taken away from this is the fantastic B2B marketing community we share. Everyone was involved, interacting and engaged. The conference, in our eyes at least, was a huge success and we look froward to what Marketing B2B will be presenting us with next year.
Webeo is a dynamic, real-time website personalization software — made by B2B marketers, for B2B marketers. With Webeo, you can give your visitors a personalized welcome, curate content that makes it as easy as possible to find what they’re looking for, and move them through the buyer journey faster than ever before. It’s the next stage of the personalization evolution — don’t get left behind. Learn more…
Written by Lauren Lee
