Account-based marketing (ABM)

How account-based marketing works

Account-based marketing reverses the usual funnel. A lead-first program attracts as many people as possible and then works out which companies they belong to. An ABM program picks the companies first and then works out who inside them to reach.

Gartner defines ABM as a go-to-market strategy in which a supplier targets a set of named contacts and accounts, representing significantly higher expansion or growth opportunities, to receive tailored marketing and sales support 1. ITSMA, which coined the term in 2003, puts it more briefly as treating individual accounts as markets in their own right 2.

Gartner describes four steps for running ABM at scale 1.

• Establish target accounts. Teams choose a discrete set of high-priority accounts, using an ideal customer profile and input from sales.
• Identify objectives. Teams study each account's business priorities, the needs of the stakeholders who influence the decision and the tasks the buyer must complete to purchase.
• Tailor personalized experiences. Content and outreach follow the needs of the target accounts and the commercial goals of the program.
• Scale what works. A tiered approach gives each tier a different depth of personalization.

The account list is where most of the work starts. Firmographics such as industry, size and location narrow the total addressable market to companies that fit. Technographics can narrow it further for software products. Sales input then adds what the data cannot show, such as existing relationships and past deals.

Behavioral data can sharpen the order of work. Gartner's Rick LaFond notes that more B2B brands use engagement or behavioral data to anticipate a customer's journey needs, and that this is often referred to as intent data 1. Such data can help decide which target accounts to prioritize this quarter. It does not replace the fit criteria that put an account on the list.

Once the accounts are chosen, the team maps the people inside them. A single deal often involves several roles, so ABM plans messages for each one rather than for one contact per company.

The three types of ABM

ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance describe three main types of ABM, and their 2022 benchmark found a balance of investment across them 2.

One-to-One ABM gives a single strategic account its own program. The content, events and outreach are built for that account, and the sales team is closely involved. It suits a small number of very large deals or existing customers with large expansion potential.

One-to-Few ABM groups a handful of similar accounts, such as companies in one industry with the same problem. The messaging is tailored to the cluster rather than to each company.

One-to-Many ABM covers a larger set of accounts with lighter personalization, often by segment. The 2022 benchmark notes that One-to-Many programs rely mainly on digital tactics 2.

Collaboration with sales falls as programs widen. On a 5-point scale, marketers rated their collaboration with sales at 4.0 for One-to-One, 3.6 for One-to-Few and 3.4 for One-to-Many 2. That pattern matches the work involved, since a one-account program cannot run without the account owner.

Budgets are significant. The same benchmark reports that ABM budgets average more than a quarter of all marketing spend 2. Maturity is lower than spend suggests, since fewer than 20% of programs reported being fully embedded in the business 2.

Many teams mix types. A company might run One-to-One for its top five accounts, One-to-Few for a vertical and One-to-Many for the rest of its target list.

Example of an account-based marketing list build

A software company selling to logistics firms builds a One-to-Few program for a set of named carriers. Marketing and sales agree on the list together, then need the people inside each account. RichAPI's employee search playbook is built for this case, with account-based outbound across 20 to 200 named companies 3.

Account list to contact list
  agreed account list              named carriers, owner per account
  linkedin_company_employees_search page each company until elements is empty
  role map in your own code        operations, finance, IT and the economic buyer
  email_finder on mapped roles     misses return billed false
  email_verifier on hits           route on the verdict
  CSV per account                  hand to the account owner and the ad team

The search bills 0.1 credits per result, including people the role map discards 3. That makes the role map the main cost control, because a narrow query costs less than a broad pull filtered afterward 3. The email_finder step costs 5 credits per call and its misses are free, while email_verifier costs 2 credits per call 3.

The output is a contact map for each account. Marketing uses the roles to plan content for each stakeholder, and the account owner uses the same file to plan personal outreach. RichAPI has no sending or sequencing product, so outreach and ads run in the team's own tools 3.

The program then measures account progress. Useful questions include how many target accounts have engaged, how many have an open opportunity and whether deal sizes grew. Lead counts matter less here, because a program can succeed with few leads if the right accounts move forward.

Account-based marketing vs lead generation

Both feed the sales pipeline, but they start from opposite ends. Lead generation starts with people who show interest, and ABM starts with companies the team has chosen.