Ultimate guide to account based marketing + tactics for scale

Get your ABM marketing strategy up and running and learn how scaling ABM returns profound growth. Let’s walk you how ABM works for different businesses, the benefits ABM brings, which type you should choose and how to approach an ABM strategy.

First, let’s explain some ABM basics.

What is account-based marketing (ABM)?

ABM targets specific high-value accounts with personalized content and engagement, focusing on their unique needs. It aligns sales and marketing activity for tailored outreach for accounts. These are accounts you’ve researched and consider are most likely to want your services. The overall aim is to focus on increasing revenue strategically.

ABM stats snapshot

How account-based marketing works

Think of it as ‘VIP treatment.’ Get to know your target accounts, make them feel important and valued, and guide them toward becoming your biggest supporters.

Here’s a simple ABM framework.

1. Put your VIP list together

Pick out your most important prospects – the ones that can really make a difference to your bottom line. These VIPs are your focus.

2. Get to know them

Research to uncover their likes, dislikes and pain points. This helps you to create ABM campaigns that really speak their language.

3. Get personal

Start building specific messages and content just for them. The more customized your content is, the more engagement it will spark by encouraging VIPs to like, comment – and show interest in what you’re saying.

4. Teamwork across marketing and sales

Teams join forces to make sure ABM content is just right. As VIPs become more interested – keep building the relationship. This is where your sales team works its magic, having conversations and showing them how your business is the answer they’ve been looking for.

5. Send content that builds trust

As you drip-feed curated, personalized content, VIPs begin to trust how your solution can solve their problems.

Engagement data shows you what to send, who to send it to, and when, for a synchronized ABM journey. Use engagement signals for customer journey mapping, where you plan and create the right content for different funnel stages. A visual representation of the customer journey (the steps an account takes before becoming a paying customer), helps you better understand the needs of your VIPs.

Turtl’s guide to content mapping gives content marketers a framework for mapping content experiences to ABM funnel stages.

Top tip: ABM software makes this process easier and more effective. It enriches CRM data with account behavior, helping teams make informed decisions and boosting efficiency in nurturing and closing deals. It can offer smart ABM automation and AI-driven segmentation – and complement CRM by aligning sales and marketing intelligence.

Is ABM only for B2B?

An ABM strategy is well-suited to companies dealing with complex B2B sales cycles, where a smaller number of high-value accounts can have a significant impact on revenue. In B2B scenarios, decision-making processes often involve multiple stakeholders, making personalized engagement crucial. Due to its high-growth outcomes, outbound ABM is ideal for SaaS businesses looking to gain traction quickly.

However, the principles of ABM can also be adapted and applied in B2C contexts, although with some modifications. While B2C marketing tends to involve targeting a larger audience, certain B2C companies that have a high-value customer segment, or are in industries with a longer decision-making process can also benefit from ABM tactics.

ABM benefits span across a range of key areas within your business. As mentioned, marketing and sales teams collaborate, sharing knowledge to target and engage high-value accounts, ensuring everyone is focused on the same goals. But there’s more…

1. Improved long-term customer relationships

By focusing on individual accounts, ABM helps build stronger and more meaningful relationships. The personalized approach shows that you genuinely understand and care about their unique needs.

2. Higher conversion rates

Since ABM targets accounts with a high potential for conversion, the conversion rates tend to be higher. The tailored content and engagement efforts increase the chances of turning prospects into customers.

3. Better ROI and revenue growth

ABM’s targeted nature ensures you’re investing resources where they matter most. This results in a higher return on investment as you focus on accounts that can bring substantial revenue.

4. Shortened sales cycles

Because ABM targets accounts that are already a good fit, the sales cycle tends to be shorter. The personalized approach means you’re addressing their specific pain points and needs, making the decision-making process more efficient.

5. Increased account loyalty

The personalized attention and solutions provided through ABM create a sense of loyalty among your target accounts. This loyalty often translates into repeat business and even advocacy within their networks.

6. Better insights and use of data

ABM requires a deep understanding of each account, leading to more accurate insights about their preferences and behaviors. This data can be used to refine your strategies and drive future success.

7. Better use of resources

ABM ensures you’re investing your resources – time, energy and budget – where they have the most impact. Rather than casting a wide net, you’re focusing on the accounts with the greatest potential.

8. Meeting buyer preferences

ABM allows you to align your marketing efforts with each account’s journey and interests. This means delivering the right content at the right time and guiding them toward conversion.

Now we know how ABM can tease more business your way, you need to decide which type of ABM best suits your goals.

Let’s look at the three different types of ABM, the goals they suit best and what type of content you’d produce for each.

The three types of ABM

One-to-one ABM: Strategic ABM

ABM goals: Do you have target accounts that are most likely to move the revenue needle? These will be highly researched or known accounts that you know are the best in terms of fit and future opportunities.

This intensive operating model targets single high-value accounts at a time, so needs a highly personal, human element. One person in your team will handle a very small number of these strategic accounts, focusing heavily on existing opportunities.

Types of content: Highly customized account-specific thought leadership, individual emails, private events, and one-on-one meetings.

One-to-few ABM: ABM lite

ABM goals: In ABM lite, a small group of accounts or a handful of similar accounts are clustered together for targeted campaigns. There might be five to ten accounts in each cluster, with each cluster receiving very similar content.

Focus is split roughly 50/50 on existing and new opportunities with programs being arguably as resource-heavy as 1:1 ABM. The goal is to deepen relationships with a small number of new and existing accounts and identify key accounts.

1:few has a flexible approach that can pivot according to results, so it’s perfect for companies with agile resources. Often an ABM manager will handle around 20 1:few accounts at a time.

Types of content: Customized long-form content, email marketing, one-to-one meetings, and retargeting campaigns.

One-to-many ABM: Programmatic ABM

ABM goals: 1:many ABM targets multiple accounts (think hundreds or thousands) at the same time, relying on technology to support complex, automated campaigns.

You’d start with firmographic data (things like job title, industry, tech used, revenue and client base) to target accounts and can build on content intent signals to refine campaigns. This is because once engaged with and data around touchpoints is collected, you’ll see how to pivot campaigns to gain more traction.

Types of content: Customized long-form content, ebooks, thought leadership, email marketing, blogs, social media, webinars, podcasts, one-to-one meetings, and retargeting campaigns.

1:many ABM is perfect for those looking to boost inbound lead generation, conversions and brand awareness.

Let’s dive into the details…

1. Identify your target accounts

Pinpoint high-value accounts aligned with your business goals, considering factors such as industry, company size, and challenges. Make sure your marketing and sales teams are involved.

Tools that reveal high-value accounts include:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms Salesforce and HubSpot manage and analyze customer interactions.

• Data enrichment tools such as Clearbit enhance customer profiles with additional information. Intent data platforms such as Bombora and 6Sense identify accounts displaying buying signals.

• Social listening tools Brandwatch and Mention monitor account activity and sentiment.

Using these tools can be like putting on your glasses – suddenly you have a much clearer idea of what your VIPs look like, helping you prioritize and target them better.

2. Conduct in-depth research

Thoroughly researching a target account’s online presence for ABM involves strategy.

• Begin with their official website, exploring products, leadership and news
• Analyze their social media profiles to understand engagement and company culture
• Scrutinize LinkedIn for key stakeholders and connections
• Investigate content consumption patterns and industry involvement, gauging interests
• Assess competitor online presence to grasp the competitive landscape
• Monitor online reviews for reputation insights
• Use technology tracking tools to identify their tech stack
• Use social listening tools to gauge public sentiment
• Consider event participation for industry insights

This research is as crucial to your ABM strategy as a sleigh is to Santa. Without it – you get nowhere.
Use your research to personalize your outreach – it will increase the likelihood of meaningful engagement and conversions.

3. Develop account profiles

Create detailed profiles for each target account. Identify key decision-makers, influencers and their roles. Document their challenges and goals to really get to grips with each account.

4. Create custom content

Your research has laid the foundations. Now it’s time to build personalized content for each account. Craft content such as emails, blog posts, videos and social media messages that address their challenges head-on and waffle-free. Hit that nerve and prescribe them your solution.

5. Select effective communication channels

Choose the most appropriate communication channels to reach each account. This might include email, LinkedIn, X (was Twitter ), or even personalized direct mail, depending on their preferences.

6. Initiate engagement

Begin conversations with your target accounts by distributing your tailored content. Engage with their social media posts, share relevant insights and send interactive, personalized emails to kickstart conversations.

7. Collaborate between marketing and sales

Determine the best strategies in which your marketing and sales teams can engage accounts and guide them through the process.

8. Offer personalized solutions

Develop special offers or deals tailored to the unique needs of each account. Provide solutions that align with their requirements and demonstrate your value.

9. Analyze and measure results

Use analytics tools to track engagement and responses from your ABM efforts. Identify which accounts are showing the most interest and assess the effectiveness of your strategies. Do you need to make any changes?

10. Cultivate long-term relationships

Continue nurturing leads even beyond the initial engagement. Send personalized follow-ups and relevant updates to showcase ongoing support. Segment and tag your audience by interest and funnel stage, and send them timely content that you know they’ll prefer.

11. Celebrate achievements

Acknowledge your successes when target accounts convert into loyal customers. Share these stories internally to motivate your team and refine your ABM tactics for future campaigns.

HubSpot – offers insights into campaign performance and lead interactions.

Demandbase – is an ABM, advertising, sales intelligence and data company. It provides B2B companies sales and marketing support that helps users discover, manage and measure target audiences.

Terminus – provides account-level metrics and engagement data. This tool helps go-to-market teams identify and understand their next best customers, prioritize accounts based on intent, engage buyers across the most native channels and measure pipeline and revenue impact across the entire lifecycle.

RollWorks – offers a complete ABM platform to help you identify ideal accounts, engage with them and measure the effectiveness of your ABM programs.

Turtl – our content creation platform can personalize highly engaging content at scale.

Turtl Analytics helps users see intent signals and engagement metrics at a significant level. You can integrate Turtl with CRMs to automate lead scoring and trigger personalized content workflows.

Check our full list of ABM software. 

Content platforms have evolved to support the latest ABM tactics for effective, smart 1:many ABM. Fasten your seatbelt, we’re about to give you the low-down on the secret weapon to ABM at scale: automated personalization.

Why use 1:many abm/one-to-many abm?

What’s in a name? 1:many ABM, one-to-many marketing, one-to-many ABM, programmatic ABM – whatever term you use, the results are sweet. As 1:many ABM needs to reach a high volume of accounts, it relies on technology and automation to work. And really smart 1:many automates content workflows from live triggers on the go.

Like all account-based marketing, 1:many ABM uses personalization to capture prospects’ attention, though to a lesser extent than the other two types of ABM.

Buyers in the awareness or engagement journey stage typically benefit from 1:many ABM, but as they move down the funnel into MQL/SQL stages, marketing and sales teams can apply a 1:few or 1:1 campaign approach to suit specific journeys.

1:many ABM is the most cost-efficient option for companies looking to ramp growth through ABM efforts. Investing in new technologies can be daunting but it’s an essential step to reaping the rewards of ABM.

A clearly defined strategy that all stakeholders and executors are aligned to and mitigate the risk involved in adopting new tech.

Other than the initial investment in new technology, the resources needed for 1:many ABM are relatively low. This makes it ideal for smaller companies wanting quick growth.

Because the technology is doing the heavy lifting through automation, there’s no need to create individual campaigns for each account – which reduces the manpower needed to create assets.

1:many ABM is well-suited to:

• Companies with limited resources
• Companies that want to ease into ABM at scale
• Lead capture and lead management
• Go-to-market strategies and product-led growth
• Educating prospects on existing products

1:many ABM for acquisition, cross-sell, and upsell

Set goals for these different opportunities across your business. One-to-many ABM works for lead acquisition because you’re releasing content to a large pool of people.  But you can also use ABM for your current database.

Cross-sell and upsell are ideal streams for 1:many, which gives you a framework to organize, segment and scale upsell campaigns across thousands of contacts at once. If you’re looking to sell into new departments and teams, 1:many ABM delivers personalized offers based on the intel you already have about your existing customers.

Get creative and encourage user-generated content or social sharing. Perhaps your customers would like your product to have a new feature?

You could invite fresh target accounts to a new beta launch of your product – once you’ve built it, of course! Maybe you have a compelling case study? Use quotes or a testimonial video in your case study content and send it to new target accounts in the same organization.

Get sales, marketing and customer success on the same page

Silos has left the building. All too often, there’s a disconnect between your internal teams –  but for your ABM to be successful, cohesion between these teams is essential.

Deciding on which accounts to target should be collaborative, using clear, shared commercial objectives that underpin your ABM strategy.

Sales know every battle-tested objection and exactly why people are keen to become your customers. Customer Success understands why people churn or why they advocate.

These teams know what drives buying committees and users to your brand better than anyone. They can survey people for marketing intelligence and introduce the best candidates for testimonials.

A fluid discourse between all teams will neatly direct better handovers, CRM – and future acquisition.

Intent data for a richer data stack

Input from sales and marketing is invaluable but data should ultimately inform decisions about target accounts.

Best practice is to use a variety of data points, so don’t just rely on your CRM for the answers. See first-party intent data from engagement and use other third-party data sources to see a clearer picture of who to pursue.

By asking the right questions, it’s possible to tease more intel so be sure to use a feedback strategy and use surveys and polls in your content to gain valuable first-party data from users.

Create tailored offers for specific accounts

With a smaller pool of accounts, delivering high conversion rates on campaigns is critical. One way to drive up conversions is by creating tailored offers for target accounts.

Understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas within your target accounts helps you present them with offers you know will pique their interest.

Diversify your target contacts

Ideally, we want to start conversations with C-suite and decision-makers because they hold the keys to the kingdom. But don’t discount more operational-level contacts. Users of your offer will become fans who influence budget-holders.

Any kind of attention from target account organizations is positive so keep this audience in mind when creating ABM campaigns and doors may open in ways you don’t expect.

Reassess your target accounts frequently

Deciding on target accounts isn’t a one-and-done exercise. Monitoring engagement and performance regularly helps you to identify which accounts should be downgraded and which should move up to a more deeply personalized journey. Successful ABM hinges on prioritizing the right accounts.

Lean into paid advertising and retargeting

Use the expertise of your digital and email marketing teams to keep your company in your target accounts’ eyeline.

Strategic paid advertising efforts and well-timed retargeting campaigns improve brand recall and nudge your prospects in the right direction.

Personalize as much of the journey as possible

The fundamentals of ABM are relevance and personalization. Prospects don’t just want tailored experiences, they expect them.

Personalized content marketing, landing pages, and email marketing show prospects that you understand their interests, needs and frustrations.

Depending on your resources and a prospect’s priority, you can create tailored content that incorporates data about interests. Or you can create something that’s super-relevant based on what others with the same buyer persona have previously engaged with.

Personalization is a hot topic but practically speaking, what does it mean? Put simply, it’s about showing your prospects that you know who they are and what they care about.

Personalized content experiences are the cornerstone of ABM – without it, high-value accounts take significantly more time and effort to close.

By personalizing content, we open conversations with prospects by showcasing our knowledge and understanding of them. Our personalization report shows exactly how impactful personalized content is.

Personalized content performs better. We’d like to show you how our clients use Turtl for outstanding ABM.

First, let’s look at what 1:many ABM can do for your business.

1. Better access to target accounts

Target accounts for 1:many ABM are usually found at enterprise-level organizations – notoriously fast-paced environments. Prospects don’t have time to sift through pages of information about your company.

They want quick access to relevant content, a clear value proposition, and an incentive to engage with you again. These accounts often need several touchpoints before taking any action. Using personalization in account-based marketing helps to make the journey quicker and smoother.

2. Higher propensity for conversion

The best ABM tactics incorporate personalization to build credibility with your prospects.  Personalized content helps you to showcase products that are relevant for the specific business and decision-makers there, making it more likely they’ll book that demo/call. Tailored recommendations make your offering seem like an easy choice.

3. Efficient use of ABM resources

Personalization in one-to-many ABM puts the onus on technology to drive targeted content creation. With machines at the wheel, wasted efforts are reduced.

Capacity is opened up to work on refining ICPs, brainstorming creative campaign ideas, improving strategy – and collaborating across the business. This is how you reach the most desirable outcomes – to ensure the outcome of ABM personalization is increased conversions and high ROI.

Watch to understand how personalization works in Turtl.

One thing you should know – you can’t get  good results from ABM without personalization. In fact, a staggering 77% of B2B buyers won’t make a purchase without personalized content (Gitnux).

The power of ABM personalization is not to be underestimated. Let’s check out companies who’ve used account-based marketing tactics for superb results.

GiveSmart’s increased engagement

Fundraising and donor management company GiveSmart used automated personalization in Turtl to transform the content journey for prospects at the bottom of the funnel – and to seriously scale ABM.

Previously, post-demo prospects were sent a generic follow-up document that saw low engagement levels. But, by adopting account-based marketing campaigns, they began sending content that included only relevant information to each individual prospect.

The result? Their bounce rate dropped by 50% and read time skyrocketed within 2 weeks of using one-to-many ABM.

A profitable pipeline for Redstor

Redstor is the leading UK provider of data management, offering cloud backup, disaster recovery, archiving, search, and data migration to partners across the globe.

By adopting personalization with Turtl, Redstor streamlined content production for one-to-many ABM campaigns.

The issue Redstor faced was needing to scale ABM campaigns while continuing to personalize in as much detail as they did for 1:1 ABM programs.

Using Turtl’s Personalization Engine, they reached key target personas within each target account without any restrictions around scale.

As a result of automated personalization, the size of the pipeline generated for the business increased, as did the volume of booked business after the first program.

Hyper-segmentation = success for strategicabm

ABM allows you to create content and messages tailored to the exact needs and challenges of each target account. This personal touch increases the likelihood of capturing interest and engagement.

Strategicabm catapulted ABM results using Turtl. Normally, scaling personalized content to hundreds or thousands of accounts isn’t possible due to time constraints and the complexity of having segmented prospects at varying funnel stages.

Our patented Personalization Engine can scale personalized content for super-targeted ABM automation in minutes. You can read how strategicabm did this – and integrated tools to help teams create better content for different audience segments.

Our guide shows you how to get your ABM strategy up and running. With a little planning and a collaborative team, ABM might just be the best way to grow your business this year.