Guest post by Nicky Briggs, Global Account Marketing lead at Avanade

With a reported 60% of B2B companies planning to invest in new technologies in the coming months to drive their ABM programs, and a raft of marketing technology providers launching new propositions for ABM to meet that demand, it’s easy to suppose that there is little more to account based marketing than account-targeted advertising and intent data. This is not the case, which is why I wanted to take a moment to turn the spotlight back on the importance of content.

I have noticed in ABM circles recently that the needle is moving back in the direction of more technical content. Around 2007/8, there was a popular push in B2B technology marketing to be able to translate technical messages into business language as we sought after C- level audiences.  Being able to communicate technical benefits in business language remains an important skill to have, however in ABM, as we target different messages to different personas, we need to demonstrate that we are comfortable with the technical underbelly too. Subject matter experts have an important part to play in developing this type of thought leadership (see ITSMA – How B2B Buyer’s Consumer Information 2014 study for further reading).

It is easy in this digitally-enabled era to hope that technology will provide all the answers to help us achieve scale in our programmes, and I am extremely excited at what some of the new vendors are bringing to the market. But we must remember these are enablers, not silver bullets. As ABMers, we need to be masters of our universe – experts at everything from content to client insight, digital to delivery, facilitation to finance, and ambassadors to account managers. And that’s what I love about it!