Account-Based Marketing: Keys to a Winning ABM Strategy

Roughly 20 years into its evolution, the popularity of account-based marketing shows no signs of slowing. In a widely cited survey, B2B marketing leaders agreed that account-based marketing produces better pipeline growth, revenue growth, and return on investment than competing approaches.

But there's a catch: Without a strong data foundation, even the most thorough account-based marketing strategies will likely fail.

In order to effectively unlock insights and engage customers at scale, go-to-market (GTM) teams must infuse data and insights throughout their account-based marketing programs, tailor their tactics to the most effective channels, and keep a keen eye on the metrics that matter.

What Is Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the process of identifying high-value target accounts and engaging them with customized campaigns tailored to their specific business needs and buying committees. Instead of building campaigns for broad personas, ABM treats each account as a market of one, with messaging and tactics designed for the specific stakeholders at that company.

Success depends on both personalization and timing. Data tells you who to target, but intent signals tell you when they're ready to buy.

The typical ABM motion looks like this:

• Creating ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and identifying customer accounts you want to target based on firmographic, technographic, and intent data.

• Applying those ICPs to build relevant messaging that addresses their top concerns and pain points.

• Delivering that messaging and interacting with your leads' most-used marketing channels, on an ongoing basis to deepen customer relationships.

• Measuring campaign success and iterating based on what moves pipeline and revenue.

It's important to note that account-based marketing is at its most potent when paired with an account-based selling (ABS) strategy that picks up leads that have gone through the ABM funnel. Simply dropping leads out of the high-touch ABM environment into an antiquated sales funnel, where reps know little about their specific needs and don't prioritize their experience, will hurt your chances of closing the sales cycle.

Benefits of Account-Based Marketing for B2B Companies

ABM requires upfront investment, but the ROI proves the model works. Here's what you get:

Higher ROI and deal size: Hyper-targeted campaigns eliminate wasted spend on unqualified leads. You focus resources on high-value accounts, which increases average deal sizes and win rates.

Faster sales cycles: Highly-targeted content makes buyers feel understood, which speeds up the sales process. Personalization eliminates the discovery phase.

Better retention and expansion: ABM works for both new business and existing customer growth through land-and-expand motions. As customer acquisition costs rise, expanding current accounts becomes more valuable than constantly chasing new ones.

Sales and marketing alignment: ABM requires sales and marketing alignment to identify and target agreed-upon accounts. This eliminates conflict over lead quality because both teams define and work toward the same goals.

ABM vs Inbound Marketing and Traditional Demand Generation

Account-based marketing flips the funnel. Traditional demand generation casts a wide net, captures as many leads as possible, then qualifies and nurtures them down the funnel. ABM starts with a target list of accounts and builds everything around them.

Here's how the approaches differ:

Most high-performing GTM teams don't choose one or the other. They run ABM for their highest-value accounts and use inbound or demand gen to fill the rest of the pipeline. The key is knowing which accounts deserve the ABM treatment and having the data infrastructure to support personalization at scale.

Types of Account-Based Marketing (One to One, One to Few, One to Many)

Not all ABM programs look the same. The level of personalization and resource investment varies based on account value and volume. Here are the three main types:

One-to-One (Strategic ABM): Highly customized programs for a small number of strategic accounts, typically 5-15. Each account gets its own unique strategy, content, and campaigns. This approach demands significant resources but delivers the highest ROI for your most valuable targets. Use this for enterprise accounts with seven-figure deal potential.

One-to-Few (ABM Lite): Personalized campaigns for clusters of similar accounts, typically groups of 10-100. Accounts are grouped by industry, use case, or business challenge. Content and messaging are tailored to each cluster but not to individual accounts. This balances scale with personalization and works well for mid-market accounts.

One-to-Many (Programmatic ABM): Technology-driven personalization at scale for hundreds or thousands of accounts. Uses automation and intent data to deliver relevant experiences across digital channels. Less personalized than other tiers but still more targeted than traditional demand generation. Best for building pipeline from a large total addressable market.

Most mature ABM programs run all three tiers simultaneously. The key is matching the right approach to the right accounts based on deal size, strategic importance, and resource availability.

Account-Based Marketing Strategy: Step-by-Step

Strong data is fundamental for a successful account-based marketing strategy. And it's important to consider the quality, coverage, and sourcing of your data. ABM based on bad or incomplete data really won't give your team the payoff it needs to succeed. While some platforms rely on CRM data, which can be notoriously incomplete and inaccurate, the most advanced platforms allow marketers to use first-party data alongside a comprehensive, constantly updated third-party data source.

Here's how to build your ABM program:

Identify Target Accounts

An extremely important element of ABM strategy and campaigns are the accounts themselves. The key to identifying and targeting high-value accounts is developing or refining an ideal customer profile.

Analyze your best customers to identify common characteristics:

• Industry and company size

• Revenue and location

• Average purchase size

• Tech stack

Review your ICP quarterly. As markets shift, so do ideal customer profiles.

Your ICP will serve as the blueprint for your account-targeting process. Once you've developed your ICP, you can target accounts with similar parameters.

"Without strong data driving your ICP, you'll miss the mark," says Hussam AlMukhtar, senior director of customer expansion at ZoomInfo. "You won't be able to identify the right accounts, and you'll be back to spraying and praying."

Map Buying Committees

Accounts buy, but people decide. If you've identified your target accounts but can't reach any key contacts within them, you won't be able to convert those targets into customers.

Timing matters as much as fit. A perfect ICP match won't buy if they just signed with a competitor or they're not in an active buying cycle.

Intent data tells you who's actively researching solutions like yours. Prioritize high-intent accounts for immediate sales outreach and nurture low-intent accounts before competitors reach them.

Leading ABM teams also track broader buying signals like leadership changes, tech adoption, or expansion announcements. These real-time signals catch accounts earlier in the buying journey.

You also need contact data for the full buying committee: decision-makers, influencers, end users, and budget holders. Map the org chart. Understand who needs to say yes and who can say no.

Define Value Propositions

Your message must speak directly to each account's specific challenges and priorities. Use your data to answer:

• What problems are they solving?

• What goals are they chasing?

• What's blocking them?

Connect your solution to outcomes they care about: revenue growth, cost reduction, efficiency gains, or competitive advantage. Skip generic product pitches.

Select ABM Channels

Channel selection matters. You need to meet your target accounts where they already spend time and engage with content.

Match content to intent level:

• Low intent: Nurture with educational content like thought leadership, trend reports, or problem-solution storytelling.

• High intent: Deploy solution-focused content like product comparisons, case studies, ROI calculators, and direct CTAs.

• Event signals: Use leadership changes, M&A activity, tech shifts, or funding announcements to personalize timing and messaging.

These signals reveal why an account might be ready to buy and what pain points to address.

The more relevant and personalized your message is to their current situation, the more likely they are to convert.

Orchestrate Account Campaigns

ABM campaigns coordinate multiple channels and buying committee members simultaneously. You're orchestrating ads, email, social, web, and direct outreach, not running single-channel sequences.

Build playbooks that define sequence, cadence, and content for each channel. Use marketing automation to trigger actions based on account behavior. The goal is cohesive engagement, not random touches.

Measure Results and Iterate

Track performance at the account level, not the lead level. Measure account engagement, pipeline contribution, and influenced revenue.

Test messages, offers, and channels. Double down on what works. Kill what doesn't.

Sales and Marketing Alignment for ABM

ABM fails without tight sales and marketing alignment. Both teams need to agree on target accounts, messaging, and handoff processes before any campaign launches.

Here's what alignment looks like in practice:

• Shared target account lists: Sales and marketing collaborate to build and maintain the list of target accounts. No surprises. No mismatched priorities.

• Agreed-upon ICPs: Both teams use the same criteria to define ideal customers. This prevents marketing from generating "leads" that sales won't touch.

• Account ownership and territory alignment: Clear rules on which sales reps own which accounts. Marketing tailors campaigns to support each rep's book of business.

• Lead-to-account matching: Every contact maps to a parent account. This gives both teams visibility into total account engagement, not just individual lead activity.

• Shared metrics: Revenue teams measure success using account-level KPIs like pipeline from target accounts, account engagement scores, and deal velocity rather than vanity metrics like MQLs.

ABM can be the starting point for a modern go-to-market approach. When done right, it aligns every business unit around a strategy that drives account sales and retention through experiences that actually matter.

ABM Tactics and Channels That Drive Engagement

Ready to run your new ABM strategy? Start with these three tactics for maximum impact:

Personalize Web Experiences

Your ABM strategy doesn't end when targets land on your website. It starts there.

Use account identification technology to recognize visitors from target accounts, then dynamically adjust content, messaging, and CTAs to match their profile and buying stage.

Personalize the experience:

• Show industry-specific case studies

• Surface content about their known pain points

• Highlight features relevant to their role

• Use A/B testing to optimize in real-time

Web personalization turns your website from a static brochure into an account-specific experience that moves deals forward.

Run Account-Based Ads

Account-based ads target named accounts and buying committee members, not broad audiences. Upload your target account list directly to ad platforms. Use IP targeting and retargeting to focus budget on accounts that have engaged with your brand or match your ICP.

Create account-specific creative when deal size justifies it. Otherwise, customize messaging by industry, role, or use case cluster.

Activate Social Selling

Social selling isn't just for sales reps. It's a critical ABM tactic for building relationships with buying committee members before they're ready for direct outreach.

Identify key stakeholders within target accounts on LinkedIn and other platforms. Engage with their content. Share relevant insights. Build familiarity before asking for a meeting.

Coordinate social engagement across sales and marketing teams. When multiple people from your company engage with multiple people at a target account, you're multithreading the relationship and increasing response rates.

ABM Measurement and ROI Metrics

Planning and executing an ABM strategy won't matter much if you can't measure what's working and what missed the mark. To measure the success of your tactics, start by defining what success means for your team.

Your ABM objectives could include:

• Developing new revenue streams

• Generating fresh sales opportunities

• Reviving opportunities that stalled out

• Boosting customer lifetime value (CLV)

• Building measurable retention

To measure performance on those goals, track account-level metrics that connect to revenue outcomes:

Since you'll be using a variety of strategies, tactics, and channels in your ABM efforts, understanding the impact of each of these approaches will be essential to know where to spend your time. Things to think about when measuring how specific ABM campaigns are doing include:

• Content consumption: Are target accounts reading and interacting with the content and campaigns you're serving? For how long? Which elements are they engaging with the most and which can you remove?

• Email engagement: If you've invested in email marketing, are the customized messages you're sending being opened, read, and acted upon? What parts are generating this engagement and how can you improve them?

• Social media activity: Are you connecting with your target accounts on their chosen communication channels? At what rate are they sharing, liking, and commenting?

• Click-through rate (CTR): CTR measures the percentage of people who interact with content and arrive at the intended end-point. Measure CTR on ads, in-content buttons, and links to track the impact and success of your messaging and targeting.

The shift from lead-centric to account-centric measurement is critical. Stop counting marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and start counting engaged accounts and pipeline from target accounts.

ABM Tools and Software Requirements

Running ABM at scale requires the right technology stack. You need tools that can handle data enrichment, account identification, intent monitoring, campaign orchestration, and measurement.

Here's what to look for in an ABM platform:

• Comprehensive B2B data: Access to accurate contact and company data for target account identification and buying committee mapping. Look for platforms with deep coverage across firmographics, technographics, and org charts.

• Intent data and buying signals: Real-time signals that indicate when accounts are in-market. This includes web activity, content consumption, tech adoption, hiring patterns, and other behavioral indicators.

• CRM and marketing automation integration: Clean data flow between your ABM platform, CRM, and marketing automation tools. Lead-to-account matching that automatically connects contacts to parent accounts.

• Account identification and web personalization: Technology that recognizes visitors from target accounts and adapts website content in real-time.

• Advertising and outreach capabilities: Built-in tools for running account-based advertising campaigns and coordinating multi-channel outreach sequences.

• Account-level analytics: Reporting dashboards that show engagement, pipeline contribution, and ROI at the account level, not just the lead level.

The best ABM platforms consolidate multiple capabilities in one place, reducing the complexity of managing disconnected tools and giving your team a single source of truth for account data and activity.

Account-Based Marketing Examples and Plays

ABM works across different business scenarios. Here are proven plays that drive results:

New account acquisition: Identify high-fit accounts that match your ICP but have no existing relationship with your company. Build multi-channel campaigns that introduce your solution and establish credibility. Use intent data to prioritize accounts showing active buying behavior. Run personalized ad campaigns, deliver account-specific content, and coordinate sales outreach to key stakeholders.

Pipeline acceleration: Target accounts with open opportunities that have stalled or are moving slowly. Use buying signals to identify when new stakeholders enter the conversation or when the account takes actions that indicate renewed interest. Deploy content that addresses common objections, showcase customer success stories from similar companies, and enable sales with account-specific battle cards.

Customer expansion: Focus on existing customers with expansion opportunities through cross-sell, upsell, or whitespace analysis. Map current usage and identify additional departments or use cases that could benefit from your solution. Build land-and-expand campaigns that educate new buying committees within the account about relevant capabilities.

Competitive displacement: Go after accounts currently using a competitor's solution. Monitor for signals that indicate dissatisfaction, contract renewal timing, or changing requirements. Create comparison content, ROI calculators, and migration resources that make switching easier. Coordinate account teams to build relationships across the buying committee.

The key to successful ABM plays is matching the right accounts to the right campaigns at the right time, then executing with precision across marketing and sales.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Choose Target Accounts With Data, Not Guesswork?

Build an ideal customer profile from your best customers, then layer in firmographic data, technographic data, and intent signals to score and prioritize accounts that match your ICP and show active buying behavior.

Which ABM Metrics Prove Impact to Revenue Leaders?

Track pipeline contribution from target accounts, influenced revenue, average deal size, win rate, and deal velocity. These metrics connect ABM activity directly to revenue outcomes and sales efficiency.

How Does Buyer Intent Improve ABM Performance?

Intent data shows when accounts are actively researching solutions, so you can prioritize outreach when they're ready to buy. This improves conversion rates, shortens sales cycles, and makes messaging more relevant based on what topics they're researching.

Automate and Upgrade Your ABM with ZoomInfo

Modern tools like ZoomInfo Copilot and ZoomInfo Marketing simplify ABM at scale by unifying data, automation, and engagement in one place. Run advertising campaigns, marketing emails, and sales engagement in parallel, all driven by a single source of truth.

Because both products are built on ZoomInfo's GTM Intelligence Platform, your teams won't reconcile conflicting datasets. Focus on efficient ABM that drives growth, not tech stack management.

Ready to make your ABM strategy smarter, faster, and more effective? See how ZoomInfo Marketing and Copilot can help. Request a demo today or start your free trial.