Account-based marketing (ABM) is a targeted approach that prioritizes converting quality accounts over reaching broad audiences and hoping for the best. The account-based marketing process aligns sales and marketing teams and gives them the tools, data, and resources to personalize their engagement with target accounts and drive meaningful results.
Let’s walk through how to build a winning process step by step.
Importance of an Account-Based Marketing Strategy
A B2B account-based marketing strategy is powerful because it delivers results-driven outcomes. Here are some of the rewards this approach can reap for your business:
- Improved ROI: ABM focuses efforts on the high-value accounts most likely to convert. This ensures you invest resources where they’ll generate the best returns.
- Better alignment between sales and marketing: An ABM strategy fosters collaboration by uniting your sales and marketing teams around shared goals. This results in a more unified approach to winning over key accounts.
- Personalized customer experience: With ABM, you can craft campaigns and messaging that speak directly to a target account’s needs and pain points and create stronger relationships from the start.
- Efficient use of resources: By narrowing focus to priority accounts, you use resources more wisely. That way, you can ensure you’re making the most of your go-to-market (GTM) team’s time, energy, and budget.
- Shorter sales cycles: Personalized, targeted outreach that speaks to your prospects’ specific pain points accelerates the decision-making process. This helps you close deals quicker.
- Measurable success: ABM’s data-driven nature means you can track campaign performance to measure impact and adjust your strategy in real time.
Who Is Responsible for an ABM Strategy?
It takes team effort to build a winning ABM strategy. Several roles play a critical part in driving success:
- ABM managers: These leaders are the strategists that design the ABM motion blueprint to ensure that planning and execution align seamlessly. They focus on defining the ICP, analyzing what differentiates your top customers, and developing strategies to win more of them.
- Demand gen managers/directors: These are the campaign builders who transform strategy into actionable programs. From launching initiatives to optimizing them for results, these team members ensure the ABM vision becomes a reality.
- Growth marketing and marketing ops: The backbone of ABM execution, these are the enablers that manage data, tools, and insights. Their focus is on seamless integrations, workflow efficiency, accurate reporting, and actionable analytics to empower the entire team.
- Sales: With revenue as their ultimate goal, sales teams concentrate on identifying priority accounts, engaging prospects, and driving them through the funnel. They rely on marketing for qualified prospects and operations for actionable insights to accelerate conversions.
Step by Step: Account-Based Marketing Process
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of building a successful ABM campaign. These are the key steps and ABM tactics to follow to ensure your strategy is on point and delivers real results.
1. Identify Target Accounts
The first and most important step in ABM is identifying the right target accounts. These accounts provide the foundation for your account-based marketing process, so it’s critical to nail these down with precision.
Start with defining your ICP by looking at firmographic data. Think company size, annual revenue, location, and industry. An example might be US and Europe-based mid-sized tech enterprises earning $10 million ARR.
These insights help you pinpoint the businesses most likely to be a fit for your product. It’s especially important to spend time looking at your data and learning about your customer base if you’re an early stage company. This process will help you iterate on and refine your ICP to identify what potential customers look like.
Technographic insights are another game-changer; knowing what tools and tech your target accounts already use can give you a leg up in winning them over. If they use systems that integrate well with your product, they’re already a great fit.
Lastly, analyze behavioral signals to gauge buying intent. These signs show that a company is actively looking for a solution like yours. Look for things like engagement with your website, LinkedIn Ads, or webinar attendance to spot potential accounts in the market for what you're offering.
Pro tip: Start with quality data.
Good data is the backbone of any successful ABM campaign. Clean, accurate data helps you pinpoint the right accounts and build targeted strategies that really hit the mark.
2. Define ABM Goals
Without clear and measurable goals, it’s impossible to track progress or figure out whether your efforts are paying off.
Start by deciding what success means for your business. Do you want to boost revenue from your top accounts? Increase engagement with target decision-makers? Or maybe speed up your sales cycle? Whatever it is, your goals should guide your strategy and keep everyone on the same page.
This is where SMART goals come in handy. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, instead of saying, “Let’s grow revenue,” a SMART goal would be, “Close 5 deals worth $100K each within 6 months.” It’s clear and actionable, and it gives your team something concrete to work toward.
Make sure these goals tie back to the bigger picture and broader business objectives, like improving ROI, accelerating the pipeline, or expanding existing accounts. When your goals align with your priorities, it’ll be much easier to show the value of your ABM efforts.
3. Align Marketing and Sales Teams
Marketing and sales teams can’t afford to work in silos if you’re striving for ABM success. Everyone needs to be on the same page to ensure every touchpoint with a target account is seamless and impactful.
Think of it this way: marketing brings the data and strategy, while sales delivers the personal touch and insights from the front lines. Together with operations, they form a GTM team that can create campaigns that hit the mark every time.
Here’s how to keep the collaboration flowing:
- Joint meetings: Host regular GTM team check-ins to ensure everyone’s on the same page and working toward the same goals.
- Shared dashboards: Give both teams access to real-time metrics so they can see what’s working and what needs adjusting.
- Brainstorming sessions: Create opportunities to develop fresh ideas and refine strategies as a team.
- Shared project management tools: Account-based marketing software with a central dashboard keeps tasks organized and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Many think ABM requires big budgets, but it’s more about having your sales, marketing, and ops teams in sync. When everyone’s on the same page and has access to the right data, ABM can take off.
4. Prioritize High-Value Target Accounts
Not all accounts are created equal. Prioritizing your target accounts helps your sales and marketing teams focus time and energy on those most likely to deliver big wins. It’s about working smarter, not harder, and investing your resources where they’ll make the biggest impact.
Here’s how you can rank and prioritize accounts:
- Deal size: Bigger deals mean bigger rewards. Relevant accounts with higher potential revenue should move to the top of your list.
- Strategic importance: Some accounts hold more value than just revenue, like helping you break into a new market or boosting your credibility in a key industry.
- Engagement levels: Are prospects interacting with your content or reaching out to your team? Higher engagement often signals stronger interest.
- Insights signals: Look for customers who are hiring for one of your key buyer personas or who are already using tech from one of your partners.
- Firmographic data: Seek out customers that fit your ideal profile in terms of size, revenue, industry, and location.
- Tiering system: Group accounts by value. High-value accounts get top-tier treatment, while mid- and lower-value accounts get scaled efforts.
- Account scoring: Use a scoring system to weigh factors like fit with your ICP, engagement, and readiness to buy.
Pro tip: Pay close attention to intent data.
Intent data reveals when accounts are actively looking for solutions like yours. By using intent signals, you can approach accounts when they're most likely to convert, improving your chances of success.
5. Choose a Platform for ABM Campaigns
A good ABM platform helps you manage accounts, personalize messaging and track performance—all in one place. Instead of juggling multiple website personalization tools and losing time, you can focus on more important things, like building meaningful connections with your target accounts.
This is where Userled can help. The platform combines powerful account insights with easy-to-use campaign tools—making it a breeze to create, execute, and measure ABM strategies. You can build campaigns tailored to your high-value accounts and access real-time analytics to guide your next moves.
Most importantly, Userled brings sales and marketing teams together. Its shared dashboard means no more back-and-forth or miscommunication, and built-in collaboration features keep your team aligned from start to finish.
6. Develop Personalized Content
Personalization is about creating content that speaks directly to the needs, goals, and challenges of the decision-makers in your target accounts. When people feel seen and understood, they’re much more likely to engage.
Start by getting to know your prospects and their pain points. Use that intel to create content that positions your product as the perfect solution. For example, share an industry-specific whitepaper or case study showing how you’ve helped a similar business achieve its goals.
Mapping content to the buyer’s journey is another must. For early-stage prospects, think educational content like blog posts or guides. For those closer to a decision, create 1:1 personalized landing pages, tailored demos, and ROI calculators. The idea is to give them the right information at the right time to move them forward.
Remember, personalized content is about building trust and starting a relationship—not just closing a deal. With the right strategy, your content becomes less of a sales pitch and more of a conversation starter.
7. Use Multi-Channel Outreach
You can’t rely on a single touchpoint with prospects during the ABM process. Being present with a multi-channel outreach strategy ensures you meet decision-makers where they are. This increases your visibility and reinforces your message at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Here are the channels to prioritize:
- Landing pages: Design personalized landing pages that resonate with specific accounts, contacts, industries, or personas. Targeted messaging and customized offers help your prospects understand the value your solution could bring to them.
- Outbound: Craft account-specific emails that address the unique needs and goals of the recipient and target account. Highlight their potential pain points and provide tailored solutions to capture their attention and interest.
- Social media: Leverage platforms like LinkedIn to connect with decision-makers directly. Share insightful posts, comment on their updates, and engage with them in industry-related conversations to build trust and rapport.
- Targeted ads: Use LinkedIn or Google Ads to deliver your message directly to accounts. Personalize these messages to reflect their specific challenges or industry trends and ensure they resonate.
- Events and webinars: Host exclusive events or webinars tailored to the interests of your target accounts. This provides value while enabling direct engagement with key stakeholders.
Account-based GTM strategy is about meeting your prospects wherever they are and driving pipeline through hyper-personalized, omni-channel campaigns.
8. Set Up Analytics
You can have a solid account-based marketing strategy in place, but without tracking your performance, you won’t know if it’s working. Analytics help you measure results and fine-tune your approach as you go.
The first thing to track is engagement rates. This tells you if your content is landing with your target accounts or if it’s time to change things up. You should also keep an eye on your pipeline value. This shows how your accounts are moving through the funnel and if they’re showing enough interest to convert.
Conversion rates are also crucial, which measure whether your efforts are turning into tangible results. Lastly, ROI is the big one. If your ABM strategy isn’t driving a positive return, you definitely need to adjust.
These account-based marketing metrics give you the insight you need to optimize your strategy for better results.
Once you’ve got the data, look at what content and approaches drive the best engagement and conversions and build on those strengths. Optimizing your campaigns based on performance data ensures you're always improving and getting better results.
Pro tip: Treat testing and optimizing campaigns as a core part of your ABM strategy.
Successful ABM is all about constant iteration and optimization. With each campaign, you’ll get smarter, faster and more efficient in reaching the right accounts.
If you’re serious about ABM success, track what matters. These numbers keep us focused on engaging our ICP and driving meaningful opportunities.
Refine Your Account-Based Marketing Process With Userled
A successful ABM process is the result of careful planning, clear goals, and continuous optimization. Identifying the right target accounts, creating an aligned GTM team, and crafting tailored content are all key steps in driving engagement and accelerating sales.
But even the best strategies need the right tools to bring them to life. That’s where Userled can really make a difference. With a suite of features for streamlining campaign execution, personalizing outreach and measuring performance, Userled ensures your ABM efforts are efficient, data-driven, and impactful.
Author
Generated £1.3M pipeline by focusing on UTM parameters personalisation.
Generated £1.3M pipeline by focusing on UTM parameters personalisation.
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