Definition
Account based marketing (ABM) is a B2B approach where sales and marketing choose a short list of named companies first, then research, message and sell to the people inside each one. Instead of reaching thousands and qualifying whoever replies, you decide who you want before anyone hears from you.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
Most B2B deals are bought by a handful of people at a handful of companies. If your product suits a few thousand businesses in the world, sending to everyone and waiting for hands to go up wastes most of the effort. ABM flips the order. Fewer accounts, far more work on each one.
It pays most when deals are large, sales cycles are long and the list of possible buyers is short. Account based selling is the same idea run by the sales team: the rep owns a named list and does the research on each account before the first email. Agencies run it for their clients too, which is how lead-gen agencies use Mason.
The hard part is the list
Most ABM guides tell you to pick accounts by industry, size, revenue, your CRM history and intent data. That tells you who could buy. It does not tell you who is buying now.
So ask one question about every account. Why would this company take a call this month? If the list cannot answer that, ABM becomes a nicer name for a target list, and the personalised work goes into companies that were never going to move.
A worked example
Say you sell warehouse software to mid-size distributors. Here is how a list narrows when every account has to carry a reason to buy now.
From a market to an ABM listExample
- 2,000companies
Distributors that fit on size, region and product. This is your market, not your list.
- 80companies
Did something dated in the last 90 days that creates the need: opened a new warehouse, won a large retail contract, or advertised for a head of operations.
- 25companies
You can also name the person who owns the problem. This is the ABM list. Research each one by hand.
The 25 are worth more than the 2,000. Each one has something that happened to it, so the first message is about them, not about your product. That is the whole point of ABM: the list does most of the work before anyone writes a word. You will see the same pattern in most good account based marketing examples.
The dated event usually sits in a public place: a job ad, a press release, a new office or site, a funding round, a company filing. Our approach to research shows how we find and check these on real accounts.
Common mistakes
- 1Treating firmographics as the reason. Industry and headcount say a company fits. They never say why now.
- 2A "target account list" of 500. If you cannot research every account by hand, it is a segment, not ABM.
- 3Padding to hit a number. If only 30 accounts have a reason to buy now, ship 30. Weak accounts dilute strong ones, and the reader cannot tell which is which.
- 4Searching the category to find buyers. Search a category keyword and you mostly get the category's own vendors. Start from what buyers do, not the words sellers use.
- 5One message per tier. If two accounts in the same tier get the same email, the research did not make it into the message.
A quick test for your ABM list
Pick five accounts at random and answer three questions for each:
- What happened at this company, and on what date?
- Where is that written down, by the company itself or a public body?
- Who at the company owns the problem that event creates? Not your buyer persona: the actual person.
If you cannot answer all three for most of the five, the list needs work before the messaging does.