Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is A go-to-market strategy that targets specific high-value accounts with coordinated, personalized campaigns rather than casting a wide net with broad lead generation. Marketing and sales work the same account list.
ABM flips the funnel. Instead of generating thousands of leads and hoping some of them are good, you start with a list of accounts you actually want to win and build campaigns specifically for them. It's fishing with a spear, not a net. And it works: ITSMA research consistently shows ABM delivers higher ROI than any other B2B marketing strategy.
The key shift is from lead-level thinking to account-level thinking. In traditional demand gen, success means "we got 500 MQLs this month." In ABM, success means "we engaged 4 new stakeholders at Acme Corp and moved them from awareness to evaluation." The unit of measurement changes from individual leads to accounts and buying committees.
ABM in Practice
- Account selection: Use ICP data, intent signals, and sales input to build a tiered target account list
- Personalization: Custom landing pages, tailored content, account-specific ads, personalized outreach sequences
- Orchestration: Marketing and sales coordinate touches across channels and stakeholders within the same account
- Measurement: Account engagement scores, pipeline influenced per account, and deal velocity on target accounts vs non-target accounts
The Tool Layer
ABM at scale requires tooling. Demandbase and 6sense provide account identification, intent data, and advertising. CRM and MAP integration (Salesforce, HubSpot) connects account-level engagement to pipeline. RevOps builds the plumbing that makes account-level reporting and lead-to-account matching work.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many accounts should an ABM program target?
It depends on your tier. Strategic (1:1) ABM works with 10-50 accounts. ABM Lite (1:Few) targets 50-200 accounts grouped by segment. Programmatic (1:Many) ABM can reach 500-1,000+ accounts using technology. The mistake is trying to do 1:1 at 1:Many scale. Start with your top 20-50 accounts for strategic ABM and expand from there.
What's the difference between ABM and demand generation?
Demand gen casts a wide net to build awareness and capture leads at scale. ABM targets specific accounts with personalized, coordinated campaigns. Most mature B2B teams run both: ABM for enterprise and strategic accounts, demand gen for mid-market and SMB. They aren't competing strategies; they serve different segments of your market.
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