PART TWO > THE HISTORY AND STATE OF ABM A BRIEF HISTORY ON ABM Unlike “inbound marketing” that has Account-based marketing (ABM) has been around for longer than you been the standard B2B might think– it just wasn’t always called ABM. B2B companies have always marketing strategy up had target account lists of their “white whale” prospects that would receive special attention from sales and marketing teams. You may have heard this until the 2010s, ABM is referred to as “integrated marketing.” not a lead generation What changed? And when did it become called “ABM”? In the 1990s, B2B strategy. Sure, it might companies started to realize they needed to act more like B2C companies generate some leads, who were providing powerful and personalized brand experiences. The term “ABM” was coined in 2004 by ITSMA but it would take another but it’s about creating decade before the term would become mainstream. focused awareness Around the time Terminus was founded in 2014, “account-based and engagement with marketing” received enough global search traffic to show up on Google Trends. Since then, the technology that empowers B2B marketers a segment of future to provide targeted, personalized marketing campaigns to the right customers and working audiences has accelerated at breakneck speed. Looking to the future, it’s safe to say that the term “ABM” will fade into side-by-side with your obscurity and just become synonymous with “B2B marketing,” similar to sales team to create how “digital marketing” is just, well, regular marketing these days. opportunities. Blueprint to Account-Based Marketing | © 2020 Terminus Software, Inc. All rights reserved. 12