Peter Isaacson

Peter Isaacson, CMO of Replicant and one of the originators of Account-Based Marketing (ABM), shares the process of creating the marketing technology category that we know today as ABM.

Most marketers are familiar with the concept of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). It’s not new. However, the definition of ABM has evolved extensively in the last decade, largely led by the efforts of Peter Isaacson.

Isaacson is a longtime B2B marketing leader and currently serves as the CMO of conversational AI company Replicant. Taking a cue from Isaacson, Replicant’s company mission is to transform the way consumers interact with the world, starting with customer service and human-to-machine conversations.

In this episode of Change Agents, Issacson talks about:

• How he typically explains the core tenets of ABM, and how B2B marketers can leverage ABM successfully.
• Why B2B marketers should focus on the synchrony ABM offers marketing, tech, advertising, and sales teams instead of arguing about the semantics of the term.
• What B2B marketers should do to stay ahead of upcoming ABM trends, and how they can pursue organizations that will impact their business growth and bottom line.

Isaacson was creating categories before “category creation” was cool. After presenting a seminar on ABM at a tech conference in 2014, Issacson was surprised to have several people come up to him to share how much it resonated with their business model.

At the time, Isaacson was CMO of Demandbase; after the positive feedback, he immediately returned to his team and decided to double down on ABM messaging.

“That’s the category. That’s our message. That’s what we’re going to focus the company on,” he told them.

Within a few years, enough companies embraced the concept of ABM that it became a full-fledged category in the martech space. Isaacson believes that the future of ABM is deeply rooted in the personalization that comes with nurturing an account. Sales and marketing teams may differ in their approach to personalization—and may often be at odds with one another because of it—but ultimately, the goal is the same: to offer customers the best consumer experience possible.

No goal is without its challenges, however.

For the B2B marketing community, balancing skill specialization with full-stack marketing experience can be difficult. ABM provides an opportunity for someone to plug into an account and operate in various capacities to offer multifaceted solutions to the company they’re working with.

Watch the interview to learn more about how Isaacson spearheaded ABM as a martech category and continues to be a beacon for B2B marketers looking to engage and strengthen the relationships they have with account-based customers.