Many industry experts agree; the idea of collective data will be a driving force moving forward into 2017. Proprietary data and walled gardens for individual publishers aren’t cutting it anymore, there is new content daily and new iterations of the same data thousands of times per day.
Consolidation and convergence giants such as Forbes have been ahead of the curve in the B2B market, with most smaller publishers consolidating in the B2C market. However, smaller brand data collectives with an emphasis on the B2B market are now a viable option, with platforms aggregating data from CRM platforms and industry analysts alongside traditional publishers.
The Takeover of Account Based Marketing (ABM)
2016 saw some very interesting changes in B2B, mostly because of the takeover of account based marketing. ABM was not a new technology; however, 2016 was the year that it became viable for the average business to use.
The market for ABM is now in its consolidation stage. Marketers are not looking to purchase a separate dashboard for each product, especially when networks are converging and providing more data in one place at once.
Where is Business Truly Converging?
The convergence of ABM platforms is all about sales and marketing teams converging as well. There is less of a gap between the two disciplines, as well as a new outlay of business specific metrics that are creating a shorter distance between acquisition, visibility, and revenue.
The marketing qualified lead (MQL) went the way of the dinosaur in 2016, and experts are still debating what the replacement metrics will be in 2017 and moving forward. Some of the metrics that are being tested include target account engagement level, brand exposure, opportunity for acquisition, and campaign sales funnel depth per target account.
Will Ownership Be Socialized?
In 2017, the notion of owning data may also move in favor of the collective pool of data that is useful to all partner companies. There are already efforts to develop a Universal ID standard that will be used to identify different audience profiles. The precursor for these developments was proven to be profitable in the B2C market, prodding the big budgets associated with B2B to move on the issue in 2017.
