Account-based Marketing: How to Create Better ABM Strategies

Slack equipped its internal champions with the tools and motivation to spread the message, creating social proof at scale. Slack did not rely primarily on paid advertising to grow into one of the most dominant B2B communication platforms. It proved that B2B products can be marketed with the same creative ambition as consumer brands. Documentary-style content that explores real questions your audience faces creates deeper engagement than conventional product marketing ever could. The series was entertaining, educational, and deeply relevant to their target audience of marketers evaluating video tools. The report synthesizes survey data from thousands of customers and analyses support trends that executives reference in board meetings and practitioners use in daily work.

Done right, this builds familiarity, increases trust, and helps accounts self-navigate deeper into the funnel. Warmly monitors first, second, and third-party signals at the person level, not just the account level, pulling in everything from product usage and web behavior to social activity and job changes. According to Salesforce, 73% of B2B buyers expect vendors to personalize their engagement to their needs, and that number is probably going to increase, so keep that in mind. These will help you think bigger, test smarter, and sell more effectively, regardless of whether you’re refining your current ABM motion or building one from scratch.

For instance, one report found that showing existing customers additional value can increase revenue by up to 43%. If you have a “land-and-expand” business model or multiple product lines, use expansion ABM from day one of the customer relationship. Customer marketers, account managers, and ABM marketers work together here. This goes hand-in-hand with Lifecycle ABM, but deserves its own focus because the tactics can be specialized for expansion goals.

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In practice, teams often burn through those resources by trying to prove the model at full scale too early. Account-based marketing strategies require significant strategizing and data gathering to identify the prospects you should be targeting. By building strong, authentic relationships with prospects, you will have the solid foundation needed to nurture them into loyal, long-term customers. Leadfeeder then used its own tool to track website visitors and identify potential high-value accounts. Gartner reports that ABM increases overall account engagement by 28%.

Monitoring customer service metrics like average reply time, average wait time and response volume can help your social customer care team identify what’s working well and spot opportunities for improvement. With a social media management tool, you can distill those messages into actionable insights for your product or merchandising teams. You’ve probably received quite a few feature or product requests while managing your brand’s social inbox. Across ages and genders, honest and unbiased content stops audiences mid-scroll, while aspirational content is least likely to catch their attention. The two most important qualifications for content creators working with brands are their experience with the product or service and their authenticity.

ID-size and enterprise companies with a budget for ABM tech will find predictive ABM greatly increases efficiency (no more guesswork on who’s ready to talk). So, I went all in to document all the types that elite B2B marketers are talking about and have listed them out here (along with how ZenABM can help you execute them on LinkedIn). Through the Account based marketing strategies effective use of AI and analytics to measure the business, B2B companies can learn which channels and tactics have the highest rate of success, and predict which ones have the biggest impact on future campaigns. Aligning your internal teams around common and visible goals helps create transparency and accountability.

Instead, everyone touching the account, such as BDRs, AEs, CSMs, marketers, etc. works from a shared source of truth. Teams use AI to generate context-aware outreach at scale, but pair that with human insight where it matters (e.g., for high-tier accounts or C-level personas). They’ve built always-on, cross-functional growth engines that embed account-based thinking across their entire revenue strategy. The best programs track not just clicks and opens, but pipeline influence, sales velocity, and account engagement over time.

To ensure your ABM strategy is focused on the right opportunities, you must prioritize accounts with the highest revenue potential. From focusing on the right accounts to monitoring your campaign results, here are some actionable steps businesses need to implement to turn ABM into a powerful growth engine. The campaign reversed the traditional outreach model, requiring prospects to contact BillingTree instead of the other way around. Instead of casting a wide net, BillingTree focused on its top 100 high-value prospects with an unconventional direct mail campaign to create curiosity and engagement. Frontline employee experience platform Harri needed a more targeted, data-driven marketing strategy to effectively target high-profile accounts.

ABM’s personalized approach ensures that every piece of content, every campaign, and every communication is crafted with the specific account in mind. The clear definition of roles and mutual understanding of objectives under ABM minimizes conflicts and enhances productivity, fostering a culture of teamwork and shared success. By focusing on a set of predefined accounts, both teams work towards a unified goal, ensuring that all efforts are highly targeted and consistent. Alignment between marketing and sales is critical for the success of any business, and ABM serves as the perfect conduit for this alignment.

The companies that study what works and adapt those principles to their own context will be the ones that develop successful new products and capture market share in the years ahead. The B2B marketing examples in this article are not just historical case studies — they are blueprints for building campaigns that earn attention, generate trust, and drive measurable business growth. Platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, and industry-specific forums are becoming primary discovery channels for B2B buyers.

One of the biggest benefits of account based marketing is higher ROI. Most effective programs start with a narrow operational layer — a small set of accounts, limited workflows, and tightly aligned teams. However, ABM does not begin with scale.

One-to-one ABM, also known as an strategic account based marketing strategy, involves highly personalized marketing objectives directed at individual high-value targets. One-to-one ABM focuses on unique content tailored to high-value good-fit accounts, requiring significant resources and attention. Continuously refining ABM tactics can lead to a 32% increase in post-click conversion rates, demonstrating the impact of continual optimization. Key metrics to track include account churn rate, sales cycle length, and customer acquisition cost (CAC), which provide insights into process efficiency and spending effectiveness.

• With our help, STANLEY Security not only gave VIP prospects personalized experiences, but the team also continued providing value as those people became customers, and eventually, advocates.
• The insight, as the team told Marketing Dive, came from research showing personalization at scale was the top pain point for their advanced users.
• Following up through multiple channels (email, phone, LinkedIn, even direct mail) increases your chances of getting noticed and staying top of mind.
• By combining efforts and resources, marketing and sales can more efficiently engage and convert accounts.
• Marketing, Sales and Customer Success align on targeting existing accounts with personalized campaigns to drive product adoption, upsells, cross-sells, and renewals.
• Account-based marketing strategy is considered by B2B business organizations, which tend to generate revenue by identifying and driving best-fit leads or prospects.

That means the channels and offers you choose will entirely depend on your approach to ABM — the level of investment in each account. Often, marketing owns the setup and execution of campaigns, while sales focuses on following up with and converting target accounts. The collaboration between marketing and sales doesn’t end after the target account list is finalized. Without aligning with sales from the start, you lose the opportunity to select the target accounts that they agree reflect the company’s ICPs.

Sales teams have direct interactions with customers and prospects, providing valuable insights that can refine your ABM approach. This insight can help you identify pain points, industry trends, and opportunities to engage with content that addresses their current interests or challenges. Pay attention to any mergers, leadership changes, expansions, or other events that might influence their needs. This step outlines the characteristics of companies that best fit your product or service.