In the world of account-based marketing, you start the sales process by selling directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts.
That means wasted time trying to market to unqualified leads who aren’t the right fit for your business. You can move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts. Talk about efficiency, right?
Account-based marketing allows you to weed out less valuable companies early on and makes sure that Marketing and Sales are in complete alignment. In return, your team can leap into the critical processes of engaging and delighting target accounts much faster.
I recently sat down with Tim Davidson and Dylan Wingrove, account-based marketers, to discuss everything relating to this strategy. Here’s everything you need to know about account-based marketing.
Table of Contents
When I asked Dylan Wingrove, Associate Director of Demand Generation at Pacvue, for his personal definition, he told me, “[ABM] is going after a set of defined strategic accounts that are large revenue opportunities for the business.”
In other words, ABM helps your business work and communicate with high-value accounts as if they’re individual markets.
Like traditional marketing, you’ll spend quite a bit of time personalizing your messaging to be as specific as possible. This means really leaning into individual pain points to directly speak to your leads’ needs.
For this post, I asked Davidson and Wingrove about the benefits of account-based marketing and how to create an ABM strategy. But first, I think it’s important that we spend a minute reviewing its relationship with another important strategy: inbound marketing.
Account-Based Marketing and Inbound Marketing
Batman and Robin. LeBron and D-Wade. Peanut butter and jelly. Arguably, some of the strongest partnerships ever to exist. These dynamic duos are forces to be reckoned with.
Similarly, when paired, account-based marketing and inbound marketing have the power to make waves (the good ones) for your business.
You might be wondering, “How exactly does this partnership work?”
Well, we just reviewed the definition of account-based marketing — as you learned, ABM is a highly targeted strategy.
Meanwhile, inbound marketing is more foundational — this methodology and growth strategy allows you to attract customers through the creation of valuable content, SEO, and a delightful customer experience.
Rather than interrupting your target audience and customers (as you would with outbound marketing), inbound marketing allows you to give your audience the information they want when they want it.
Inbound lays the foundation for a strong ABM strategy by allowing for highly targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts.
Do you need both inbound marketing and account-based marketing?
You’re probably wondering, “Do I need both inbound marketing and outbound marketing?”
I hear you. So, I asked Wingrove what he thought. He told me he would not recommend launching an ABM strategy as a standalone tactic. Instead, it works better in partnership with other marketing strategies.
Here are a few reasons to employ both ABM and inbound marketing strategies at your company:
- Inbound marketing helps you attract target accounts, and then ABM accelerates the flywheel so you can win and delight those accounts with a remarkable customer experience.
- Inbound marketing lays the foundation for a strong ABM strategy; ABM builds off of inbound by allowing for targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts.
- With this combined approach, you attract a broader group of prospects than you would while using just one method.
- Your content has a two-for-one value — you can create and use content that serves both an ABM and inbound strategy (such as adding a personalized case study for a target account that you also share on your website).
- Software — such as HubSpot’s account-based marketing tool — exists to make it easy to implement ABM and inbound strategies in a complementary way.
TL;DR: Combine ABM and inbound marketing to grow better.
As I learned by chatting with Davidson and Wingrove, there are many benefits associated with account-based marketing. I’ve made a list of the most important benefits based on what the experts told me.
1. Keeps marketing and sales aligned.
Davidson and Wingrove both made it very clear that account-based marketing aligns the sales and marketing team in a way that might not be possible otherwise.
Wingrove said it reduces the friction between teams, too. He said, “There‘s no fighting over inbound versus outbound. And everyone’s kind of working off of the same set of strategic accounts that we’re going after.”
I think we can all agree that cross-team collaboration and improved communication across any organization are beneficial to growth.
In account-based marketing, this transparency and alignment will confirm that your marketing and sales teams:
- Are focused on the same goals.
- Stick to the mutually agreed-upon budget.
- Understand the specific roles of each internal stakeholder.
This alignment helps make sure all communications, interactions, and content are consistent for the accounts you work with.
Meaning, no matter how long an account works with your company, your team members can pick up where others left off at any point without question — this creates a seamless and delightful customer experience.
🧡 The easiest way to support internal account-based marketing alignment is with the help of software, like HubSpot, which makes connecting your marketing and sales teams exceptionally easy.
2. Maximizes your business’s relevance among high-value accounts.
Account-based marketing requires you to personalize everything for each account you invest your resources in. You’ll create magic with:
- Personalized content
- Product information
- Clear communications
- Highly tailored campaigns
For Davidson, that means using all the tools available from personalized ads to dynamic landing pages. Through this personalization and customization, your relevance among these accounts is maximized.
That’s because your content and interactions are tailored in a way that shows them how your specific products, services, and other offerings are what they need to solve their challenges.
ABM allows you to angle your business in a way that makes it the most relevant and ideal choice for your target accounts. Or, as Wingrove told me, it keeps your business top-of-mind. So, when a prospect looks for a solution, you’re there.
3. Delivers consistent customer experiences.
For your ABM strategy to be remarkable, I cannot stress this enough: you must create a long-term sense of delight among your accounts. Each account should feel as though they’re your business’s market of one.
Tackle this by offering consistent and unique customer experiences.
Wingrove told me this approach has been integral to closing sales. He said custom offers give prospects a reason to take meetings or engage in conversation. But it takes an all-hands-on-deck approach. “Sales and marketing need to work really closely together to figure out what is important to that customer to offer them,” he said.
You’ll need to confirm that all team members know where an account is in the buyer’s journey — then, deliver personalized and prompt communication, campaigns, product information, and pricing details.
4. Measure your return on investment.
With account-based marketing, you can easily measure return on investment (ROI) for each account you invest your resources and time in.
This is beneficial because you can confirm whether certain accounts you invested in were ideal for your business.
Then, you can nurture and delight those accounts long-term to keep them, as well as recognize and target similar accounts in the future. If your ROI proves the ABM tactics you used worked, use that data to propel your strategy forward.
5. Streamlines the sales cycle.
Depending on your business, industry, and resources, the sales cycle typically looks something like this:
1) Prospect → 2) Connect → 3) Research → 4) Present → 5) Close → 6) Delight
With account-based marketing, this cycle is streamlined — by focusing your efforts on specific high-value target accounts, you save time and resources.
This means you’ll have more time to focus on the stages of the cycle that positively impact your bottom line:
1) Identify Target Accounts → 2) Present to Target Accounts → 3) Close Target Accounts → 4) Delight Accounts
ABM streamlines your sales cycle by helping you stay efficient.
Rather than experimenting with different tactics to prospect and qualify a large pool of leads, ABM confirms the accounts you target are the right ones for your business and vice versa.
The sales cycle is also streamlined by your marketing and sales alignment, as well as the consistent and personalized customer experiences you offer. And, according to Wingrove, it can also shorten your sales cycle.
I don’t know about you, but that a shorter cycle is a definite win.
6. Expands your business through account relationships.
I think the phrase “quality over quantity” safely applies to account-based marketing. The process requires you to invest significant time and resources in engaging and delighting a group of carefully chosen, high-value accounts.
This is instead of trying to close deals with less-qualified leads who may not be the best fit for your company in the long run.
By taking the time to build these trusting relationships with accounts, you’ll expand business by keeping those valuable customers longer.
Considering it costs more to obtain customers than to retain them, this will positively impact your bottom line.
Additionally, as a result of personalized, thoughtful, and consistent customer experiences, accounts will become loyal to your business over time — and loyal customers become your best marketers, promoters, and brand advocates.
In other words, your accounts will help you expand your business among their networks (for example, partners or customers) through:
- Referrals
- Word-of-mouth marketing
- Testimonials
To get started, let’s cover the framework for account-based marketing.
Account-Based Marketing Framework
ABM works differently from a traditional sales funnel. Though ABM can be put in place across different industries and types of businesses, a general framework needs to be followed to guarantee its effectiveness.
Here are the key parts of an account-based marketing framework.
Marketing-Sales Alignment
Aligning your sales and marketing team is critical for the success of your ABM strategies. When I talked with Davidson and Wingrove, both stressed that in a comprehensive approach to ABM, marketing and sales must be on the same page.
Davidson said, “Ideally, everything you’re doing from the sales and marketing sides, you’re doing together.”
When trying ABM, sales and marketing organizations will need to agree on:
- Resource allocation for each target account
- Roles and responsibilities to create a seamless transition for the customer between marketing and sales activities
- How to measure the success of ABM efforts
Account Qualification
How does your company decide what a high-value account is? This is something you’ll need to sit down and discuss during a planning meeting with both sales and marketing.
Creating an ideal customer profile for the accounts your company wants to target is key to answering this question and creating an ABM framework.
As you figure out what qualifies a potential account, consider these factors:
- Financials — With your company’s sales goals in mind, consider how much revenue can be generated from an account.
- Scalability — Based on what you know about the potential account’s business performance, is there potential to grow the account in the future? Consider extra offerings your company could provide to retain and grow the account.
- Competitive Landscape — Who are your competitors selling to? Understanding who is in the market for products and offerings like yours can help you figure out future account opportunities.
Go-to-Market Approach
Once marketing and sales are aligned on approach and which accounts to target, it’s time to map out a go-to-market plan.
Understand exactly how a new customer would move through the sales process using an ABM approach.
While preparing to go to market, you may find areas of friction that need to be addressed or areas of poor communication that can be strengthened.
Because a personalized experience is so important in account-based marketing, your team will want to be on the lookout for extra ways to add value and deliver a premium experience to these accounts.
Source
Account-Based Marketing Strategy
You’ll need a sound strategy to get the most out of an account-based marketing approach. I think it’s important to mention that you don’t need to go full force with your ABM strategy from the start.
Wingrove suggested that a small, slower pace might be best for getting your ABM program off the ground. Consider following these steps to create an effective account-based marketing strategy.
1. Use a strategic account planning template.
To unify your account-based marketing team, use a strategic account planning template. I like this free template because it will help you outline your initiatives for each unique account, such as the following sections:
- Business overview.
- Key business initiatives.
- Customer relationship landscape.
- Customer products and revenue.
- Account competitor analysis.
- Buying process and selling points.
- Relationship goals and strategy.
- Sales opportunities, targets, and risks.
- Action plan.
Download the Free Account-Based Marketing Plan Template
2. Secure organizational ABM alignment.
Executive Alignment
One of the most important account-based marketing tactics is pretty straightforward — getting alignment.
Instead, it means getting all internal stakeholders on board with your account-based marketing strategy.
Wingrove and Davidson both mentioned that if your stakeholders, like your executives, are accustomed to seeing large numbers of leads on various reports, a more tailored list might be shocking.
Davidson explains it like this: “Often what happens is if you go the ABM route and you‘re doing maybe the demand generation route before that, you’re getting in front of fewer accounts, less number of people. So, your leads and your volume are going to go down. If you don‘t have those conversations with your executive team, your numbers will look bad to start. And that’s going to be a bad conversation.”
Having these conversations beforehand will make it easier for your business to create consistent experiences for accounts. It will also ensure your strategy is as efficient and streamlined as possible.
And it removes any potential disappointments and surprises.
Marketing and Sales Alignment
I know I’ve mentioned this many times already, but marketing-sales alignment is crucial. To create a custom buying experience, a customer must have a seamless transition from becoming a lead through the final sale.
For example, your VPs of Marketing and Sales should secure organizational alignment. This will help spread awareness for:
- Marketing and sales team members who are directly involved in the strategy.
- Account-buying committee members and any other account stakeholders.
- Your business’s point-of-difference for each target account.
- ABM budget and resources.
- ABM goals and KPIs.
Both teams must commit to clear communication and find a middle ground. This will help you make sure that the marketing team is acquiring qualified leads for the sales team.
Besides marketing and sales, don’t forget to choose other internal key players — such as customer success reps — who should be aware of and aligned with your ABM strategy.
3. Build your ABM team.
If you’re just starting with ABM, Wingrove and Davidson both told me the best way to do it is to create a small task force with one marketer and one salesperson. They can work together to find potential issues and generate ideas before focusing on executing your ABM strategy.
As your efforts scale, this marketer could support more salespeople. On average, one marketer can typically stay aligned with up to 10 salespeople, and each salesperson can manage up to 10 accounts.
A minimum of one marketer and one sales rep should be completely dedicated to the accounts you work with at all times.
These people will create and publish content for accounts. They’ll also work to manage and close business deals with each account’s buying committee.
4. Research and pick your ideal set of target accounts.
Once you‘ve selected your team and aligned on the approach, it’s time for your company to target the correct accounts and personas.
I asked Davidson how he does this. He said he starts by looking at the data in his CRM or another data provider. Then, you’ll better understand which accounts to target and can create customer personas…
When creating customer personas for an account-based marketing approach, marketers should consider:
- The mission, vision, and business objectives of their ideal customer.
- If any high-value accounts are already engaging with your company’s Inbound approach.
- The current stage of business maturity, company size, and growth trajectory.
- Revenue model and spending patterns.
- The tools and platforms that their ideal customer is using.
Next, review your findings and pick your ideal set of high-value target accounts to invest your time and resources in.
There are countless ways to choose key accounts. Here are some recommendations on how to get started:
- Set search alerts for your ideal customer profile on LinkedIn.
- Create a workflow that filters incoming qualified leads based on specific criteria (such as company size or industry) and tags them as an ideal customer type in your CRM .
- Ask, “If we could replicate one deal from last year, what would it be?” Then, use the characteristics of that deal (such as industry, company size, value) to help you find other good-fit customers.
- Pick target accounts based on a particular industry or geographical location.
- Review major companies and leads who are using and engaging with your inbound content but don’t have a deal attached (yet!).
- Find the lighthouse accounts you could use for reference.
- In this stage of the process, what’s most important is that marketing and sales agree on which accounts to target.
According to HubSpot Academy professor Kyle Jepson, “If your marketer is targeting one list of companies, and your salespeople are working a different list, you’re going to end up with an account-based mess.”
Check out this post to learn more about choosing the right AMB accounts.
5. Finalize account plans.
After deciding which accounts to target, it’s time to build account plans. In this step, your marketing and sales teams will work together to map out:
- Potential leads they’ll need to attract to reach their target accounts
- What content do they need to produce to engage with this audience
Account-based marketing is a team effort.
Each account plan should be able to answer two important questions:
- Who makes the buying decision for this sale?
- What content do you need for each member of this buying committee?
So, make sure marketing and sales ask the following questions while they work on account plans:
- Who will we need to know at each account? Who are the buying committee members, decision-makers, influencers, blockers, end-users, and account stakeholders?
- What content will we need to attract and engage account-buying committee members (and any other stakeholders)?
- Which channels will we use to share content with the right people at each account?
- How will we (marketers and sales reps) offer the right type of support throughout each stage of the strategy and sales process?
- How will sales help at the outset and how will marketing support in the later stages?
Note: Store your account plans as pinned notes in your HubSpot CRM, Google Docs, Asana Boards, pinned messages in Slack, and more to allow for easy access and collaboration.
Here are a few other tips and best practices you can use to make your ABM plans successful:
- Connect your different sales and marketing applications to make sure all your ABM apps are aligned.
- Make sure marketing and sales align on your product or service’s value proposition for every account.
- Use a marketing plan template to make sure your plan includes the details your plan needs to be effective.
- Customize each plan to the needs of that particular account.
- Create personalized content — or update existing content — so it’s tailored to each unique account.
- Customize your allocated resources and budget for each account.
6. Attract contacts associated with high-quality target accounts.
Next, you’ll want to attract the buying committee members and stakeholders of your target accounts.
You can attract contacts from your high-quality target accounts in a few ways. I feel it’s important to mention two key tactics now (but don’t worry, I’ll cover a few more later): leaning into your employees and using your resources.
Employee Networks
Depending on how long you’ve been in business and any previous ABM work you’ve done, you may or may not already have contacts for specific accounts.
If you don’t have contact, look to your team. Wingrove mentioned that your team members likely have an in, whether from professional connections on LinkedIn or former colleagues at new companies.
Wingrove said that when his company can increase the number of contacts, they close 20% more sales. So, don’t sleep on your team members’ networks!
Inbound Marketing and Personalization
Ideally, using the Inbound methodology will help you attract contacts associated with your target accounts by ensuring your company is visible and represented in these spaces.
The key to successfully attracting high-quality accounts is to personalize content to those accounts. This will help you elevate brand awareness and maximize relevance among audience members.
Trying to get your company‘s visibility through all available avenues can be tempting. But you’ll get the best results through the most relevant channels to your target accounts and contacts.
Here are some GDPR-compliant recommendations for attracting high-quality accounts:
- Ask current contacts, accounts, and customers for referrals.
- Engage accounts on social media. Figure out which platforms they’re on, join the groups they’re in, contribute to conversations they’re a part of, and share helpful and relevant content you’ve created.
- Send direct messages through social media, email, or post.
- LinkedIn is a popular platform for businesses. Communicate through LinkedIn InMail outreach without ever leaving HubSpot with the LinkedIn integration.
- Produce a podcast or video series and invite a leader from the account to be a special guest. (Davidson mentioned being a guest or a host is a great way to attract target accounts!)
- Sponsor a booth at a target account’s conference or event.
- Share industry content, such as blog articles or newsletters, across channels that are relevant to each account. Use your website, social media, and magazines — and make sure that your messaging is where your target customers are.
- Invite contacts to (physical or digital) events and ask attendees to invite their colleagues.
- Build custom landing pages tailored to the needs, questions, and concerns of accounts.
- Offer gifts for engagement and interaction (such as prizes, swag, and discount codes).
- Create targeted ad campaigns to target different factors such as location, skill, and job title.
7. Forge strong relationships with the account’s buying committee.
Once you’ve attracted high-value accounts, it’s time to forge strong relationships with their buying committees.
This is something your team will likely work on over an extended period of time. Keep in mind that it often takes months and even years to develop these bonds. Even though it takes time, it’s effective.
Use executive connections.
Wingrove told me, “We’ve found it effective to get our offer in front of the right people by using our exec team and exec sponsors on these large accounts.” To do that, he, again, turns to his team and asks, “Does someone have a connection or know someone through a board seat or something?”
Forging strong relationships with the account’s buying committee requires you to be a little creative. Your primary goal is to delight your accounts, and you can never stop the process of delight.
Get creative to forge strong relationships.
Here are some thoughts on how you can forge strong, long-lasting relationships with an account’s buying committee.
- Offer education around the value of your business and your product/ service.
- Create and share personalized content like case studies to show how you’ll exceed expectations and resolve challenges.
- Communicate one-on-one when possible to make buying committee members feel like they’re your only priority.
- Host events with and for account members (such as dinners, lunches, or social meetups) so they get to know your brand and team on a personal level.
- Stick to organized, well-timed meetings.
- Use email sequencing to enhance all communication, be professional, and stay consistent.
Use tools.
HubSpot’s ABM Software Target Accounts Home and Account Overview features will help you forge strong relationships.
Tools like Enlyft give you insight into details such as recent funding dates and the technologies prospects are using to help you better understand and solve the problems your prospects face.
Though this stage is typically led by sales, marketing should be ready to support. Be sure to develop valuable materials to reinforce messaging.
Learn how to showcase your company’s success using compelling case studies with a free case study creation kit.
8. Measure and analyze your ABM results (and iterate as needed).
Once you’ve put your account-based marketing strategy in place, it’s crucial to track the success of your tactics.
Here’s my best tip: Continuously review and analyze your ABM results to find any gaps or tactics that you want to update. This will allow you to make your strategy more effective for your business, marketing and sales teams, and accounts.
To measure the health of an ABM strategy, marketing and sales teams can use the following metrics:
- Find the buyers associated with target accounts and track interactions with these buyers.
- Data points related to the health of the deal—creation date, velocity, and close rate.
- Revenue attributed to target accounts.
- Account penetration (net new contacts added to an account).
- Account engagement.
- Net-new revenue.
For support with your analysis, enlist the help of HubSpot’s library of 12+ ABM reports and pre-built ABM reporting dashboard to gain valuable insight into how to modify your ABM strategy for greater success.
Refining your ABM strategy makes it easy for your marketing and sales teams to attract and retain high-value customers. You can also automate your ABM strategy to scale your winning results.
Account-Based Marketing Tactics
ABM tactics are the building blocks of your strategy. As I’ve previously mentioned, customization is key. So, review the following tactics and decide which approaches will work best for each of your target accounts.
Tailored Value Proposition
Top-of-funnel marketing strategies are broad and brand-focused. However, account-based marketing needs to offer a specific value proposition to each account.
This doesn’t mean you can’t create top-of-funnel content. Wingrove told me his team focuses on the whole funnel, but especially the top, as it helps keep their company at the top of mind when target accounts begin looking for solutions.
The trick: Craft a compelling value proposition that addresses each target account’s unique challenges and goals.
This message should clearly articulate the value your product or service brings to the organization and its impact on their specific pain points.
To create each value proposition, make sure you understand:
- Detailed pain points
- Target account’s needs
- Goals of each account.
Be sure to highlight how your product or service addresses those specific challenges. This can help you avoid generic messaging while staying consistent with your brand.
Try these value proposition templates to create useful and targeted value propositions for each of your target ABM accounts.
Download the Free Value Proposition Templates
Stakeholder Mapping and Engagement
Once you know the key stakeholders within each target account, map their roles, responsibilities, and influence.
This deep dive into your stakeholders can help you develop relevant communication strategies. This level of personalization can help you engage and build relationships with these decision-makers.
If you’re not sure how to figure out all stakeholders or map specific roles, start with communication tracking. Keeping track of every interaction can help you better understand stakeholder relationships.
Lead management and email tracking software can make it easier to connect these conversations.
Web Personalization
Connect with accounts online with customized website experiences.
For example, you can use a free landing page builder to create landing pages for each target account. Personalize landing pages for each account, adding relevant content, like case studies, and calls-to-action that engage decision-makers.
Or, if you don’t want to create individual landing pages, consider using dynamic landing pages. Dynamic landing pages automatically personalize content based on who is looking at it.
Wingrove and Davidson told me these kinds of landing pages are the secret weapon for creating a message that sticks.
To create quality landing pages, it‘s important to collect accurate data. That said, make sure the content isn’t so personal that it feels overwhelming. These tips on website personalization can help you find the right balance.
Account-Based Social Selling
One thing Davidson mentioned to me is the power of LinkedIn and social selling. Encourage your sales team to use social media platforms to engage and build relationships with target accounts.
Linked and similar platforms simplify sharing personalized content, adding to relevant discussions, and networking with key stakeholders.
Attention to detail is essential with this B2B account-based marketing tactic. First, you need to choose platforms where your target accounts are active and engaged. Next, you want outreach to feel authentic.
Pro tip: If you have a hard time reaching out on social media, these discovery call questions are great inspiration.
Download Sales Call Templates for Outreach
Paid Advertising
Advertising platforms can help you deliver personalized ads to key individuals in your target accounts. This can help increase brand awareness and engagement while staying top of mind.
For this tactic to be effective, be sure to tailor ad messaging to specific pain points and goals. In fact, Davidson suggested creating one-to-one ads.
One-to-one ads are paid advertisements that speak directly to a target, often calling them out by name. The trick here is that you need to be as specific as possible in your messaging, or you risk missing the mark entirely.
This guide to ABM advertising can help you refine your tactics, too.
Retargeting
Retargeting is useful for converting stakeholders who have already shown interest in your offer. Retargeting can help you optimize your ads with relevant content across channels.
This can help you further target account decision-makers to take desired actions, such as visiting a website again or downloading a resource. It also reinforces your value proposition and maintains brand visibility.
Events and Experiences
Host targeted events, webinars, or roundtable discussions just for your key accounts. Davidson is a fan of hosting small dinners for a more personal approach.
You can customize the content, agenda, and attendee list to address each account’s specific pain points and objectives.
For this tactic to be effective, your events need to add value. Offer:
- Unique experiences
- Networking opportunities
- Valuable content that aligns with the interests and needs of target accounts.
Post-event, be sure to follow up and continue relationship building.
Targeted Content
Targeted content is more than phone calls, personalized emails, and social media interactions.
Create an outreach cadence that combines multiple touchpoints and channels. Maintain a consistent presence to nurture relationships and keep your brand top-of-mind.
Create high-quality targeted content assets that speak directly to each account’s pain points, industry trends, and desired outcomes. Consider content like:
- Blog posts
- Industry reports
- Case studies
- Videos
Then, ensure that the right content reaches the stakeholders in your target accounts.
You’ll also better target your entire audience when you do this effectively. Wingrove said, “As a result of creating this custom content for ABM accounts, we could just templatize this and produce more content for that space. So, it‘s a dual strategy if we’re going after ABM, but it’s also serving our wider target audience.”
Download Content Marketing Planning Templates
Account-Based Marketing Tools
ABM automation tools allow your business to target key customers with a customized approach to seamlessly move them through the sales process. Account-based marketing training can also give your team an edge.
Before we dive too far into account-based marketing tools, I think it’s important to mention that ABM is not solely tech. Davidson told me that with his first B2B account-based marketing strategy, he thought “it was just tech.” And, this thinking cost him and his team.
Instead, tech is a tool — and it should be used as such. As you move target accounts through sales, the right tools help streamline ABM efforts.
When looking for account-based marketing software, make sure your platform makes selling easy. Look for:
- Identification. It should accurately find potential customers and accounts with templates and AI-powered features.
- Collaboration. Shared tools will help your company keep conversations between teams and potential customers going.
- Analytics. You’ll need access to relevant data to understand how well your approach is performing.
Here are a few tools I think are worth checking out:
HubSpot’s ABM Software
If you’re already using HubSpot for your CRM, trying out HubSpot’s ABM software only makes sense.
The thing I love about this software? I can easily set up workflows to help me identify high-value accounts, making it much easier to create my list of priority targets.
Plus, the tool is collaborative. If there’s one thing I’ve mentioned many times in this post, it’s that your sales and marketing teams need to align to make your ABM strategy sing. This tool helps you by giving everyone access to the same pertinent information to make better strategy decisions.
DemandBase
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When I’m looking for a new tool, the user interface is one of the first things I evaluate. If a tool is too confusing to use, I’m out.
Thankfully, DemandBase is user-friendly and makes account-based marketing much more manageable. This tool allows for collaboration across the sales and marketing departments.
What I like about it (besides the user interface!) is that I can search for target accounts with recent intent signals. With this feature, my target account lists are up-to-date with the most recent information, helping me and my team craft better messaging and understand when we should reach out to targets.
RollWorks
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If you’ve been in marketing for a while, you know your ICP is everything. What if you had an ABM tool that helped you identify accounts that match your ICP? It would be a game changer, right?
I have good news for you: RollWorks.
I like this tool for a couple of reasons. RollWorks is an ABM software that allows users to create their ideal customer profile to quickly identify target accounts that match it. This means you spend less time sorting through your data and more time connecting with the right targets.
I like this tool because it also allows users to run digital ad campaigns and automate certain sales functions, like outreach. Plus, it works across multiple platforms.
And the best news? It integrates with HubSpot. With the RollWorks and HubSpot integration, your ABM strategy is set up for success.
ABM automation tools allow your business to target key customers with a customized approach to seamlessly move them through the sales process. Account-based marketing training can also give your team an edge.
Check out this post if you want to learn more about ABM software.
Account-Based Marketing Examples
Now that you understand the fundamentals of an account-based marketing strategy, let’s walk through a few examples of how B2B account-based marketing has worked for real businesses.
1. Restaurant Furniture Plus
This wholesale restaurant furniture supplier relied on search traffic and paid Google ads to attract new customers.
But after identifying its ideal customer (scaling chain restaurants), the company employed an account-based marketing strategy to get in front of restaurant owners who were a good fit for its products.
This strategy has helped Restaurant Furniture Plus save money on paid advertising, and increase its base of recurring customers.
2. HealthLink Dimensions
Healthcare data company HealthLink Dimensions partnered with marketing agency Acclaro to create an account-based marketing strategy.
HeathLink Dimensions sought to expand its offerings to health insurance providers and ran into challenges getting new contacts in its funnel.
After working with Acclaro to use an ABM strategy, HealthLink Dimensions experienced a 234% increase in its new customer pipeline.
3. BlueYonder
BlueYonder is a supply chain management company that helps businesses optimize their supplier activities.
In 2019, the company began testing an ABM approach with a small group of accounts. This initial test leveraged advertising and personalized content for the initial group of accounts and resulted in $10 million generated in the pipeline.
B2B Account-Based Marketing
B2C companies typically focus their marketing efforts on touching a pain point or desire of the end-user, with hopes that the individual will decide to buy. B2B account-based marketing works a little differently.
When selling to other businesses, there is rarely one person making a purchasing decision. Depending on the size of the company you’re selling to, there may be an entire group of people who all give input on the final buying decision.
An ABM strategy can be particularly helpful for B2B companies that are looking to build long-term relationships with key accounts.
In fact, 81% of marketers who used ABM in 2024 reported an increased ROI compared to other forms of marketing.
LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing
84% of B2B marketers said they believe LinkedIn delivers the best value. This is why many companies use LinkedIn to connect. LinkedIn can be a beneficial platform for targeting accounts, especially for B2B companies.
LinkedIn has a feature called Company Targeting that allows you to use LinkedIn’s directory of over 13 million company pages for your ABM efforts.
With this tool, you can upload a list of companies you’d like to reach and create ad campaigns that can specifically target individuals at these companies.
Additionally, LinkedIn can help you create a more personalized experience for your target accounts through genuine relationship-building with your buying committee.
Using LinkedIn to find and engage with the right decision-makers at the companies you’d like to work with can be a helpful, thoughtful alternative to using third-party data to find potential contacts.
Here’s how Adobe used LinkedIn to support account-based marketing efforts.
Grow Better With Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. As Wingrove explained, it’s more about “where your company is in its phase of growth and how much money can you afford to go and spend and experiment on ABM.”
Although ABM can be pricey depending on the tools you use, Davidson mentioned that you don’t need to spend much of your budget on ABM. You can start with a simple spreadsheet and your CRM.
Don’t forget, you need buy-in from leadership, alignment from your sales team, and one willing sales rep to help you get started with this strategy.
By working through the tactics we’ve listed above and using software for your marketing and sales team to use together, you’ll find valuable accounts more efficiently, reduce any friction impacting your flywheel, and grow better.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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