What is account-based marketing?
In short
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is treating a small number of named companies as individual markets rather than running one campaign at everyone.
On this page
The definition
ABM inverts the usual order. Instead of generating leads and finding out which companies they came from, you choose the companies first and then work out how to reach the people inside them.
The unit of planning is the account, not the individual, and success is measured in accounts engaged rather than leads collected.
When it beats volume outbound
When your deal size justifies the research. Spending several hours understanding one company only makes sense if winning it is worth five or six figures a year.
It also fits markets where the total number of possible customers is small. If there are three hundred companies in Europe that could buy from you, a volume approach is aimed at a list you could research individually.
What it actually costs
Time, mostly. Real ABM means reading the annual report, mapping the buying committee, and writing to each person about something specific to them.
Teams that call a slightly personalised mass campaign ABM get the cost of volume outbound and the results of neither approach.
The committee problem
Enterprise decisions involve several people with different concerns, and a message that persuades the operations lead may worry the finance director.
Mapping who is involved before writing is most of the work, and skipping it is why so many ABM programmes stall after the first positive reply.
Frequently asked
What is account-based marketing?
When does ABM make more sense than volume outbound?
What is the most common ABM mistake?
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