New Study Shows ABM Gaining Strong Traction at B2B Companies
Account-based marketing (ABM) has accentutated one of the greatest challenges facing B2B and life science growth: aligning marketing and sales around a set of accounts most likely to drive revenue. However, a 2026 study by Global Spec finds that marketers have made considerable progress in embracing ABM’s value.
Nearly 80% of the study’s respondents said their organizations are actively executing ABM strategies, while the rest of the respondents said they are planning to incorporate the strategy soon. Overall belief about ABM effectiveness was positive with 52% of the participants characterizing their efforts as effective and 23% saying they were exceeding expectations. However, implementation challenges still exist. Respondents cited integrating AI with the existing marketing technology stack and the lack of specialized internal AI expertise as key issues.
The study showed that ABM is primarily being pursued to accelerate growth-focused business outcomes. new account acquisition and account expansion were cited as other leading priorities.
Other interesting findings included:
- Firmographic data, sales team selected accounts, and buyer intent data/signals were the top sources used to build account lists.
- ABM teams struggled with core execution issues, including sales and marketing alignment and proving attribution and ROI. Only one third of the participants said sales and marketing agree on their ideal customer profiles.
- The highest ROI ABM tactic was personalized content, selected by half of the respondents. Executive events were second. Most important content formats were white papers, B2B case studies, articles and blog posts, and video content.
- Account engagement was the primary ABM focus of two-thirds of the participants, followed by pipeline velocity.
TW’s Take
The participants in the Global Spec study were skewed towards high-technology, software, and financial services ¬ industries that have strongly embraced ABM. There was little representation among manufacturing, healthcare, and professional services firms. However, the research demonstrated that ABM has moved well beyond the pilot stage for many B2B organizations and is now an established part of the modern go-to-market mix.
TW’s experience suggests that several issues continue to limit ABM adoption: the large amount of high-quality content required to fuel an ABM program, poorly aligned sales and marketing efforts, and CRM/marketing automation databases that are not set up or maintained to manage ABM activities. These problems must be overcome to ensure ABM effectiveness and success.
For a copy of the study, contact [email protected].
