Account based marketing without an enterprise budget

Account based marketing is a strategy, not a software category. You can run it with a spreadsheet, your CRM, LinkedIn and a properly briefed sales team, and for most businesses under a few hundred target accounts that is the sensible way to start. The expensive tooling solves a scale problem you probably do not have yet. What you do need is a defensible account list, a way to reach a buying group rather than a job title, and a measurement model that does not wait for revenue.

Why does ABM get sold as an enterprise purchase?

Because the people writing most of the guidance sell the platforms.

That is not a criticism of the platforms, which do real work once you are running hundreds of accounts across several regions with a sales team large enough to need routing rules. It is a criticism of the sequencing. A great deal of published ABM advice starts with intent data, orchestration and account scoring models, and skips the part where you decide which forty companies you are actually trying to win and why.

If you have a target list of 30 to 200 accounts, the constraint on your ABM programme is not tooling. It is that nobody has agreed which accounts matter, and that marketing and sales are quietly working different lists.

How do you choose accounts you can actually win?

Four filters, applied in order. Most lists fail at the third.

Fit. Do they look like the customers you already serve well? Sector, size, technology in place, regulatory position, geography. Build this from your closed won data, not from ambition. The single most useful exercise here is listing your best fifteen customers and finding what they have in common that is not obvious from your website.

Need. Is there a reason for them to change this year? Trigger events do most of the work in B2B: a new head of function, a funding round, a merger, a compliance deadline, a supplier being acquired. Arrow's VMware work sat directly on one of these, because the Broadcom transition put a large group of technical buyers into an unplanned review at the same time.

Reachability. Can you actually get to the buying group? A perfect fit account where you know nobody, have no partner relationship and cannot get past the switchboard is a worse bet than a decent fit account where your channel partner already sells three other products.

Winnability. Is the incumbent beatable? Ruthlessness here saves the most money. If an account renewed a five year contract eight months ago, it does not belong in your tier one list this year, however much you want it there.

Run those four filters honestly and most target lists shrink by half. That is the point. A list of 200 accounts nobody can name is a wish, not a plan.

What are the three ABM tiers, and what do they cost to run?

The standard model, with realistic effort attached.

One to one, roughly 5 to 15 accounts. Named account, bespoke everything. Custom research, a tailored point of view, content written for their specific situation, and often a physical element. Budget the time honestly: this is several days of senior effort per account per quarter, which is why the list is short. Reserve it for accounts where a single win changes your year.

One to few, roughly 20 to 60 accounts, in clusters. Grouped by shared situation rather than shared size. Everyone facing the same compliance deadline, everyone on the same platform being sunset, everyone in the same sector. The content is built once per cluster and personalised lightly at the edges. This is where most businesses get their best return, and where the least advice exists.

One to many, 100 or more accounts. Programmatic, targeted by firmographic or intent signal, personalised only by segment. Closest to conventional demand generation, with the account list as the targeting layer.

If you are starting and have no ABM programme running, start with one to few. It is the tier where a small team can do genuinely good work, and it produces enough repetition to learn from.

What does this look like without an ABM platform?

Everything below is achievable with tools most B2B businesses already pay for.

Account list: your CRM, with an account tier field added. Not a spreadsheet that lives on someone's desktop, because that is how marketing and sales end up on different lists by March.

Reaching the buying group: LinkedIn company targeting, run against your account list, layered by job function so the engineer and the finance director get different messages. Paid social is the practical substitute for expensive account based advertising at this scale.

Content: one strong asset per cluster, not one per account. The point of one to few is that the shared situation does the personalisation for you.

Outbound: sequences built per cluster, referencing the trigger event rather than your product. This is where most programmes waste their advantage, sending generic outbound to an account list they spent three weeks selecting.

Website: at minimum, a landing page per cluster that matches the message they arrived on. Full website personalisation is a nice to have and a long way down the priority list.

Measurement: account level engagement in your CRM, plus the signal ladder below. This is the part worth doing properly even when everything else is scrappy.

How do you reach a buying group rather than a job title?

This is where most ABM programmes are weakest, and it is the part platforms do not fix.

Gartner's B2B buying research puts a typical complex purchase in the hands of six to ten people. They have different concerns, different vocabulary and different reasons to say no. The engineer worries about whether it works with what they already run. The finance director worries about the total cost over five years. The head of operations worries about the fortnight when it is being installed.

A single piece of content addressed to "decision makers" reaches none of them properly.

The practical fix is not complicated. For each cluster, write down every role likely to be in the room, what each one is afraid of, and what evidence would settle it. Then make sure something in your programme speaks to each. It does not need to be a separate campaign per role. It needs one asset that visibly answers all of their questions rather than one that answers the buyer's question and hopes.

On the HMS Networks programme this took the form of proper localisation as well as role targeting, because a German engineer searching PROFINET and an American engineer searching EtherNet/IP are the same role having a different conversation. Getting that right is part of why cost per qualified lead fell from around £760 through trade events to around £72.

How do you prove ABM is working before revenue arrives?

You watch account behaviour, not lead volume.

ABM produces fewer leads than conventional demand generation. That is the design. If you judge it on lead count you will conclude it has failed, cancel it, and never see the pipeline it was building.

Read it on a ladder instead:

• Same day to one week: engagement from the target accounts specifically. Are the right companies showing up in your analytics and your outbound replies, or just more companies?
• Two to four weeks: buying group coverage. How many distinct people from a target account have engaged? One is a curious individual. Four is a buying group forming.
• One to two months: meetings held with target accounts, and sales accepted leads from the list.
• Two to six months: pipeline created from target accounts, and average deal size against your non ABM baseline.

Two rules make this hold. Decide which layer you will judge the programme on before you launch, because a threshold moved after the numbers arrive is a negotiation with yourself. And carry a guardrail: if account engagement rises while the quality of the accounts engaging falls, you have widened your list without noticing, which is the most common way an ABM programme turns back into ordinary demand generation.

The three things that break ABM programmes

Sales and marketing on different lists. Marketing runs the campaign against 60 accounts, sales works 40 of them plus 20 of their own. Nothing reconciles and everyone concludes ABM does not work. Put the tiering in the CRM, review the list quarterly, and let sales veto accounts they know are unwinnable.

A list too long for the resource behind it. 150 accounts with the effort available for 40 produces 150 accounts receiving a slightly personalised newsletter.

Judging it on lead volume. Covered above, and it kills more ABM programmes than any other single cause.

Where to start

Take your closed won deals from the last two years, find the fifteen best, and write down what they share. Build your first cluster from that. Choose 25 to 40 accounts that fit it, get sales to strike out the ones they know are dead, and run one properly built programme against what is left.

That is a quarter's work with the tools you already own, and at the end of it you will know whether the tooling conversation is worth having.

Our account based marketing strategy work starts with the account selection exercise above, and our account based marketing programmes run to the tiering and measurement model described here.

Frequently asked questions

What is account based marketing? Account based marketing treats individual organisations as the unit of targeting rather than individual leads. Marketing and sales agree a defined list of accounts, then build activity aimed at the whole buying group inside those accounts. It suits businesses with high value, considered purchases and a buying group of several people.

Can you do ABM without an ABM platform? Yes, and for lists under a couple of hundred accounts it is usually the sensible starting point. A CRM with an account tier field, LinkedIn company targeting, cluster level content and disciplined outbound will run a one to few programme properly. Platforms solve a scale and orchestration problem that only appears once you are running hundreds of accounts across multiple regions.

How many accounts should be in an ABM programme? It depends on the tier and the resource behind it. One to one work supports roughly 5 to 15 accounts because each takes several days of senior time per quarter. One to few typically runs 20 to 60 accounts in clusters. One to many runs 100 or more. The most common mistake is choosing a list longer than the available effort can serve.

How do you measure ABM before revenue arrives? Watch account behaviour rather than lead volume. Engagement from target accounts within days, buying group coverage within weeks, meetings held and sales accepted leads within a month or two, and pipeline from target accounts at two to six months. Deciding which layer you will judge on before launch is what stops the programme being cancelled early.

What is the difference between ABM and demand generation? Demand generation aims at a market and captures whoever responds. ABM aims at a named list of organisations and works the whole buying group inside each one. ABM produces fewer leads by design, with higher average deal values, and the two usually run alongside each other rather than as alternatives.