Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM) has become a buzzword in recent years. However, there is confusion among marketers concerning what it means and how to do it effectively. This guide is for those new to ABM or seeking to improve their approach.

1. What is account-based marketing?
2. Why is it important for sales and marketing?
3. What are some examples of account-based marketing?
4. How to plan and scale account-based marketing?
5. How to track the results of ABM?
6. How much budget do you need?
7. What tools are necessary to implement ABM?
8. Can you do this as a one-person team?
9. How to complement ABM with your overall marketing plans?
10. What else do you need to know?

What is Account-Based Marketing?

According to Cognism, “Account-based marketing (ABM) is a type of growth strategy where marketing and sales work together to target key accounts that showcase significant revenue opportunities. Companies utilize B2B data to create highly personalized marketing campaigns and buyer experiences for each account.”

So ABM can be used to acquire new accounts or expand business dealings with current accounts. Traditional lead-based marketing focuses on generating as many leads as possible. Unfortunately, this strategy does not always provide high quality leads to sales.

Account-based marketing operates in the reverse. Sales and marketing teams collaborate to identify target accounts (customers, in other words) who will benefit the company the most. These accounts are viewed and treated similarly to individual markets. Here is a nice image to show the differences between lead-driven and account-driven outreach.

Note: It doesn’t mean marketing needs to switch 100% to ABM. Marketing will continue to focus on the top of the funnel, and building brand awareness is still critical via inbound marketing. However, ABM makes sense when you work closely with sales; despite being different departments, you both have common goals.

Why is Account-Based Marketing Important for Sales and Marketing?

ROI is Higher and Easier to Measure 

Showing ROI is something marketers have always struggled with in the past. B2B marketers using ABM saw a 76% increase in return on investment (ROI). ABM’s narrow focus on target accounts makes it easier to measure ROI, unlike other B2B marketing methods.

How Account Based Marketing Supports Sales Enablement

1. On the surface, sales and marketing may share the same business goals, but their approaches are different.
2. Marketing focuses on the top of the purchase funnel, whereas sales focus on the bottom of the funnel.
3. While sales teams refer to customers as ‘accounts’, marketers prefer to ‘personify’ their audiences using buyer personas.
4. Marketing is concerned with awareness, creativity, and branding, but sales teams focus on closing deals.
5. Marketing concentrates on nurturing leads, and sales is focused on conversions.
6. Marketing’s nurturing is long-term. Sales also focus on the long-term, but they have a monthly quota to meet.

Account-based marketing facilitates sales enablement by combining sales’ account-centric approach with marketing know-how to meet goals. Both teams work together and start at the bottom of the funnel by identifying their ideal customer.

Maximizes Resources

By avoiding customers who aren’t a good fit for the company, resources can be conserved to build relationships with target accounts. With this method, account sales come from businesses more than likely to be open to forming long-term business relationships.

Targets Buying Committee 

B2B businesses rarely have one decision-maker in the purchasing process. SBI finds that there are (on average) 11 key stakeholders per team in 2024. Account-based marketing focuses on reaching as many of these people as possible.

Personalize to Target Account

We’re currently experiencing post-pandemic burnout, where people feel overwhelmed by the feeling of having to be “chronically online” in ways that feel generic. As a result, according to SBI, 64% of buying groups prefer in-person interactions when engaging with sellers. An overwhelming majority also find that in-person meetings create a more satisfying and productive experience in their buying journey, helping them get the support they need to make a conclusive decision.”

You’ve probably experienced it yourself. Generic sales pitches often go unanswered. Account-based marketing helps you stand out amidst the noise by personalizing all messages to the target account.

What Are Some Account-Based Marketing Examples?

Account-based marketing can take many different forms, but some examples include creating hyper-personalized content, interacting with individuals over social platforms, newsletter segmentation, and more.

Gini Dietrich’s PESO Model is a strategic framework that identifies four categories of media that marketers can use to support sales: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. Before diving into some examples, let’s discuss marketing channels.

Owned Media: Channels your company has complete control over such as websites, communities, blogs, print catalogs, and company-run events.

Earned Media: Free media impressions gained via shares, likes, byline, or non-paid media coverages, etc.

Paid Media: Paid advertising or sponsorship opportunities such as TV commercials, radio/print ads, conference sponsorships, etc.

Paid Social Media: Paid advertising via social media channels such as FB, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram paid ads, etc.

The tactics covered in these four categories can be used to:

• Create customer events for target accounts
• Send unique or customized gifts to target accounts
• Share personalized educational content with key accounts
• Implement customized email/direct postal mail campaigns
• Launch scalable targeted programmatic ads

These tactics can be used alone or in concert. Any of them is effective if chosen with the target account’s unique characteristics and preferences in mind.

Here are some examples of successful companies and their approaches to account-based marketing:

Intridea

Web product and services company Intridea had a great ABM strategy when they wanted to get the attention of Ogilvy; they hired a billboard across from the company’s Manhattan offices, and alongside a clever message, they included a personalized URL that featured silly GIFs. And guess what? The bold move worked! They landed a meeting with the CEO. If you’re worried about your budget getting in the way, you don’t have to go as hefty with your attention-grabbing ideas; all you need to focus on is going to where your targets spend time online (LinkedIn, X, Instagram, etc.) and catching their eye with an eye-catching message.

Salsify

Salsify’s ABM efforts are another example of the power of combining sales and marketing forces. To boost sign-ups for an event they were hosting in NYC, they reached out to their targets with highly personalized marketing messages, display ads, and emails. Then, sales were tagged in to follow up immediately afterward. Not only did they meet their sign-up goal, they exceeded it by nearly two dozen. This is why it’s so important to make sure sales and marketing are aligned and dedicated to working toward their common goals.

DocuSign

Electronic signature and document management company, DocuSign, has a diverse client base, making it challenging to manage leads. To solve this issue, the company’s ABM strategy involved creating buyer personas to go after hundreds of accounts through hyper-specific targeted ads that featured personalized testimonials, white papers, and case studies.

The customized content paid off in the form of a million impressions, a 300% increase in page views, a 60% improvement in their engagement rate, and a 22% increase in sales. This is the power of tailoring your content to speak directly to your target accounts.

Pizza Party During Demos and Other Ideas

Many sales teams offer pizza lunch during demos for potential target accounts. It’s nice to watch a demo and enjoy something to eat. It’s a great idea to encourage more people to attend. Who doesn’t like free lunch? Depending on the timing of your demos, you can also do brunch, coffee/snacks, or wine and cheese happy hours from the comfort of the accounts’ offices.

A Google search will provide many additional examples of companies using ABM and their unique tactics.

The key to running a successful ABM campaign for your company is to:

• Understand your own marketing elements
• Collaborate with sales
• Build a workflow in order to track measurement and execution

How To Scale Account-Based Marketing 

Planning ABM takes time and effort. As marketers, you need to understand your target accounts well. Different accounts require different approaches. The key is to ensure the appropriate processes are in place to scale. Here are the proposed steps to follow:

• Get buy-in from sales
• Identify key accounts
• Conduct research
• Identify key marketing channels
• Create a targeted outreach plan
• Monitor and track results over-time

Onboard Sales

I was asked by a client for the best way to introduce sales to ABM, because alignment with sales is absolutely key to success. In my experience, sales teams are incredibly busy. In their eyes, ABM adds to their already heavy workload because they must collaborate with marketing. So, it’s not an always easy sell to get the team on board, but it’s possible with the right approach.

Here are a few things that should be discussed with sales as you plan your ABM strategy. For starters, highlight how it will benefit them. It’s important to explain ABM and how it sets a path for sales enablement; working toward a common goal is the great unifier.

Explain how everything will be carried out and what is to be expected of them so they don’t feel blindsided. Examples of what to cover:

Value proposition: The sales and marketing teams should both agree on which products and services are suited to the target account and how they can help.

Goals: Discuss your goals and the KPIs you plan to use to measure them with the sales team.

Who will be involved: Which marketing and sales staff will be involved in the ABM campaign? This should be made very clear to both sides from the start.

Identify Key Accounts (New or Existing) 

Partner with your sales team to create an ideal customer profile (ICP). This will be used to identify target accounts.  Utilize firmographics such as:

• Annual revenue
• Industry
• Company size
• Location

Consider whether these accounts present opportunities for new revenue, upsell, or cross-sell.  After creating an ICP, develop workflows within CRM software to identify target accounts in the future.

Conduct Research

Identify those involved in the target account’s decision-making process. Remember, ABM is about winning over the account, not an individual. LinkedIn can be useful for identifying company employees and their job titles.

Identify Key Marketing Channels

Where do decision-makers in each target account spend most of their time? What marketing channel will be most effective in reaching these people? LinkedIn is a popular choice for B2B marketing as many companies and their employees have a profile there.

Create Targeted Outreach Plan

Develop a plan to reach out to these decision-makers. Use your research to personalize campaigns. Simply listing off features is not enough. Remember, your content and messaging should convey how your products and services can help the target account. Case studies are one way to do this. Choose or create a case study that showcases how your products/services have helped companies like the target account in the past.

Monitor and Track Results 

Monitoring the results of your account-based marketing strategy provides information on whether your campaign has been successful. This information can be used to improve future campaigns.

Some useful KPIs to measure are:

• Percentage of deals closed
• Number of account sales
• Deal value
• Engagement with messaging

How to Measure Account Based Marketing 

It’s important to track not only the end results of ABM but also the progress of your campaign. While the exact metrics measured will vary according to the type of ABM tactics used, there are some metrics every campaign should measure. Here are my top four below, but you should also check out nine key ABM metrics to take a look at in 2024, according to xGrowth.

Account Coverage

Account coverage entails examining the quality versus quantity of data you’ve gathered on target accounts and their decision-makers. This metric will help you find any holes in your information about a target account. Some questions to ask yourself are:

• How much power do the decision-makers you’ve identified have?
• Have you identified all the decision-makers within the buying committee?
• How often do decision-makers touch base with your company?
• What is their intent when interacting with your company?

Brand Awareness

It’s important to gauge brand awareness among your target accounts. This knowledge will enable you to tailor content accordingly. How well do target accounts know your brand, and what it can do for them?

These questions can be answered by looking at the number of events, product demonstrations, and kinds of content they’re engaging with. Make sure everyone on the buying committee understands what you do and how it can help. Web traffic is an excellent indicator of brand awareness among target accounts. Use IP reverse lookup tools to separate target accounts from overall web traffic.

If a target account is not well acquainted with your company, then you’ll need to introduce them to you and then tie that into how you can help them. On the other hand, a company that already understands your products and services will need to be told and/or reminded of what makes you different.

Account Engagement

Engagement is key for identifying those target accounts responding well to your campaign. With this information, you’ll be able to determine where to allocate your time. Some factors to consider are:

• How much time are they spending on meetings and speaking with sales?
• Are they engaging with your social media and website content?
• Are they referring others to your company?

Account Reach

Account reach may sound similar to engagement, but it tells us what marketing channels are working. How you measure account reach depends on the type of marketing tactics being employed. For example, if your webinars are seeing high responses but social media ads are not you may need to focus more on webinars.

How Much Budget Do You Need for Account Based Marketing?

Every company is different, so it’s hard to give a clear estimate here as you’ll need to consider a variety of factors, such as the size of the target account, how many decision-makers are involved, and how much competition you have. Here are some jumping off points from B2B Marketing as you determine a realistic budget to tackle ABM. Also, here are two ways to help estimate a budget for ABM.

Cost of Past Marketing Campaigns

Consider how much your last event, paid ad campaign, or television commercial cost. Pricing isn’t stagnant, especially considering things like inflation, but it’s a good measure to give you a ballpark estimate moving forward.

Cost Per Acquisition

This is how I prefer to approach budgeting for ABM.  Estimate the cost of converting target accounts. If you are only targeting one account, then decide which marketing tactics will be used. With this information, you’ll be able to estimate how much the marketing tactics will cost.  For ABM campaigns targeting more than one account, the process does not differ very much.

The difference is that you must first determine the number of accounts you wish to convert. Then, choose your marketing tactics and estimate the cost per conversion. The closer an account gets to becoming a customer, the amount spent on personalizing campaigns and reaching out may merit an increase.

Remember – Try to be creatively thrifty, like updating existing pieces of content to appeal to your target accounts without starting from scratch. Artificial intelligence is also a great way to scale down on costs; you’ll still need to run quality control, but using free AI tools like ChatGPT can help get the ball rolling with the right prompts.

What Tools are Necessary to Implement Account Based Marketing?

The account-based marketing tools and platforms needed for your martech stack will ultimately be determined by your workflow and marketing tactics. Hosting an event may need a registration platform or landing page, for example. But there are a few steadfast tools that can be useful for any campaign.

Predictive analytics tools powered by machine learning will be key to your account-based marketing strategy, because they can help identify which accounts have the highest likelihood of conversion. Focusing on the accounts where the odds are most in your favor will allow you to save a lot of time and energy, and these tools will only continue to improve over time.

Similarly, using ABM technology platforms will help you boost your efficiency, from keeping your workflows running smoothly to helping track and measure successes and setbacks with hard, accurate data.

Meanwhile, AI tools like ChatGPT allow you to hyper-personalize your content at scale; if you use the right prompts, you should succeed in at least developing a first draft to be vetted by an actual human.

And social platforms are another valuable tool that you’re likely already using. You can directly interact with key members of target accounts, which boosts personalization in marketing and helps build and strengthen professional relationships and share content to keep people interested in your perspective.

Can You Implement Account Based Marketing as a One-Person Team?

In general, the answer is no you cannot implement ABM as a one-person team. Once again, ABM is a lot of work, even with the assistance of ABM-specific platforms. Although the technological advances available today theoretically make it possible for a one-person team to manage account-based marketing campaigns alone (it’s a lot of work), it’s always better to divide and conquer with the help of a larger team.

Again, as someone who supports joining forces with sales to achieve common goals, your best bet as a marketer is to enlist help where you can. For a one-person marketing team, I recommend aligning your marketing objectives with your company’s business goals. What team members do you need if you do have a marketing team?

Leader

Decide who will be the directly responsible individual (DRI) for the campaign. This person will spearhead the campaign and report to upper management

Dedicated Sales Reps and Marketers

How many sales representatives and marketing members will be dedicated to each target account? Consider things like whether or not you’ll need one salesperson and four marketers.

Marketing Operations

Depending on your ABM strategy you’ll probably need someone to help everything run smoothly. This person does in the real world what a third-party integration tool does for a martech stack. Their job is to help everyone work together and assist with organizing the campaign.

How Account Based Marketing Integrates With Your Marketing Plan

An important thing to note is that you can’t have account-based marketing without first focusing on your general inbound marketing strategy. While account-based marketing is tailored more towards specific target audiences, inbound marketing should try to capture the interest of those target audiences in a more generalized manner. This will broaden your prospects and essentially lay the groundwork for targeting crucial accounts later through the customer experience.

When you are integrating ABM with inbound marketing, your focus should be on creating great content (which can be fine-tuned as needed once you’re reaching out to targeted customers), as well as providing a great customer experience across the board.

However, it is important to remember to remove target accounts from your typical marketing campaigns. If this is not done, they may be overwhelmed by both ABM and conventional outreach, and you may lose them.

What Else do you Need to Know?

ABM is more labor intensive than some other B2B marketing strategies as it requires support from upper management, sales, and other parties to execute it effectively. This cannot be done completely alone, even with the help of new technologies. If you’ve decided to approach it, make sure you have a plan and the resources to support it. Be realistic with your ABM budget as well. Most importantly, have a way to track the results and report them. If done correctly, ABM can pay dividends for your company.

That said, this is an ever-evolving space; it’s essential to keep your head in the game as tools and methodologies only grow stronger and more complex.

You need to learn to understand your target accounts well by evaluating a myriad of data. ABM only works well if you understand the target accounts well before you craft creative outreach.