Account-based marketing (ABM)

Traditional marketing casts a wide net and sorts whoever bites. ABM works the other way: it picks the target companies first, then builds the effort around each one. The approach was formalized in the early 2000s by ITSMA, a professional association for technology services marketing.

An 'account' is a customer or target company. In a complex sale, several people take part in the decision: an executive, an operational manager, a buyer, sometimes a technical lead. ABM aims to reach each of them with the message that concerns them.

It is a demanding approach. It fits when every potential customer is worth a lot of money, and much less when you sell a small service to thousands of freelancers.

Step one: choose the accounts. Start from your ideal customer profile, then select a short list, sometimes twenty or fifty companies, rarely more than a few hundred.

Selection criteria mix fit and potential: does the company look like your best customers, what contract could it represent, does it show a recent signal such as hiring or a funding round? A short, reasoned list beats a long one filled out of habit.

Step two: map each account. Who decides, who influences, who will use the solution? What is going on right now: hiring, expansion, a new executive, an announced project?

Step three: coordinate. Marketing produces content tailored to the industry or the account, sales contacts the right people with a message built on those issues, and both teams track the progress of each account together.

Traditional prospecting measures volume: how many contacts, how many replies. ABM measures progress within each account: how many people reached, how many engaged, where the decision stands.

The two often complement each other. A team can prospect broadly for mid-sized customers while running ABM on its twenty priority accounts.

The difference shows in the messages too. In broad prospecting, a message personalized to the person is enough. In ABM, the message builds on the company's situation and ties the different contacts together.

Metrics are read per account. Coverage: how many key people in the account have been contacted? Engagement: how many replied, visited the site or joined a conversation? Progress: has the account moved a stage in the pipeline?

Over time, compare the close rate and average contract size of ABM accounts with the rest of your business. If ABM costs more per account without bringing larger contracts, it is not worth it.

Finally, accept a longer cycle. An ABM program aimed at large accounts is rarely judged in a few weeks.

Picking too many accounts. With five hundred companies you are no longer doing ABM, you are doing traditional prospecting in disguise, without the in-depth work that makes the difference.

Talking to only one person per account. If your only contact changes jobs, you start over, and a group decision is rarely won with a single ally.

Forgetting coordination. Three reps writing to three people at the same company, without talking to each other, with three different messages, look amateurish, and the account will remember.

LinkedIn suits ABM well, because it lets you identify people at a company by role and follow what they post. A list of accounts quickly becomes a list of people to contact, each with recent context.

In MimikFlow you can import a list of LinkedIn profiles into a dedicated campaign with its own target and instructions, and write for a specific prospect a conversation playbook that applies to them alone. Do-not-contact lists by company, name or profile keep you from writing to an existing customer or to an account handled another way. Dated signals, such as hiring or a funding round, help you pick the moment.