If you're like "WAIT!?!? What happened? What did I miss?" then be sure to catch up with the Who Killed ABM? murder mystery before charging ahead! 

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It turns out, what we thought was a terrible tragedy was more of a temporary hiatus. Because now, ABM is back and she’s better than ever. But while that makes for a satisfying ending to a story, what does that mean for what ABM looks like at your company, today? 

It’s time for us to break the fourth wall: Our whole fictional murder mystery is based on a real-life case study of how one company completely revamped and ultimately saved their ABM program. And if you tackle these seven “suspects” (aka the problems most likely to be responsible for your ABM program falling apart), you can too. 

The basics of great ABM are the same. Everything we covered in Who Killed ABM? still holds true. But once you have your foundation in place, there’s more to explore. For those of you who are ready for the next level, allow us to introduce you to ABM’s Second Act. In this series, we’ll cover advanced-level topics for what’s new and what’s next for ABM. Here’s a high-level overview. 

Lesson 1: The Demand Continuum

Beginner practitioners often ask “where does ABM fit into my demand gen strategy?” But this is the wrong question. The real question is: “How much revenue do I need to generate this year and how will I get there?” That’s why we created the Demand Continuum—it’s a tool you can use to map out your anticipated revenue sources and plan the programs you’ll need to reach your goals. 

In this article we’ll explore what the Demand Continuum is, how to use it to capture marketing’s revenue responsibilities, and how it can help get sales and execs aligned with marketing on one revenue generation plan. And of course, we have a downloadable template that you can use to follow along. 

Learn how to use the Demand Continuum and get your free template →

Lesson 2: Buyer experience 

Imagine trying to get ten of your most opinionated coworkers to come to a unanimous decision on what to order for lunch. Then, picture that same group trying to make a decision that involves evaluating 4+ vendors, takes 10+ months, and puts potentially thousands of dollars on the line. Now you’ve got a pretty good idea of what the modern buying journey looks like. 

Yesterday’s demand gen strategies aren’t going to work on a group that’s so overloaded with requests. Instead, you need to understand how today’s buyers think and what moves you need to make at each phase of their journey to give you the best shot of closing the deal. Luckily, we’ve got that all planned out for you. 

Learn how to navigate the modern buyer’s journey (and learn a trick for figuring out whether you’re the buyer’s top pick) → 

Lesson 3: Signal-based marketing

As the buying journey has gotten longer and more complex, it’s also gotten less direct. Research from 6sense shows that buyers don’t want to have direct contact with your sales team until they’re about 70% of the way through their journey—and they’ll take the personal initiative to reach out when they’re ready. 

To use an oft-invoked dating metaphor, this means successful marketing is less about making eye contact with a cute stranger across a crowded bar and more about making your profile stand out on a crowded dating app. It’s harder—but still possible—to pick up your customers’ signals, and there’s a lot you can do to ensure success. In this article, we’ll tackle how to reconcile what you’re looking for (your ICP and other qualifying criteria) with your different sources of first, second, and third-party data to give you the best chance of making a great match. 

Learn how to rationalize your buyers’ signals into a meaningful score → 

Lesson 4: The role of content in ABM

The state of B2B marketing is—how do we put this kindly?—sometimes less than inspiring. And we’re not pointing fingers, we’ve been there too. Years of volume-based search-engine optimization plays have had us all spewing out less-than-top-tier content answering basic questions in the hopes of competing for clicks. But what we lost along the way was deep, interesting, opinionated pieces that actually moved the conversation forward for our buyers. 

It’s time for us to turn our focus inwards. In this piece, we get meta and analyze our own case study: the campaign Who Killed ABM. We explore the creation process, review our results (including the boost to our web traffic, social media engagement, and target account activity), and share what we learned about how to create great content.  

Read our deep dive and apply our learnings to your own content strategy → 

Consider this your ABM 201 course

And class is now in session. So what are you waiting for? Dive into these in-depth articles to discover how to take your ABM from good to great—using the best that modern technology and strategy has to offer. After all, it’s not the 2010s anymore. ABM has moved on, and so should you.