What is Account-Based Marketing?
Article at a Glance
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
ABM is a B2B revenue strategy that aligns Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success around a shared list of target accounts that reflect your best customers.
Is ABM just a marketing tactic?
No. ABM is a business strategy, not a campaign or channel. It changes how teams plan, prioritize, and work together across the entire customer lifecycle.
Why does ABM only really work for B2B?
Because B2B buying involves multiple decision-makers, longer sales cycles, and higher deal values. ABM is designed to help entire companies buy.
Do you need special software to run ABM?
No. Tools can help scale ABM, but they don’t define it. Clear targeting and aligned teams matter more than your tech stack.
Is ABM about chasing big enterprise logos?
Not necessarily. The best ABM programs focus on accounts that look like your most profitable, successful customers rather than just the biggest names in the market.
Who should consider running ABM?
B2B teams with product-market fit, a dedicated sales team, higher ACVs, longer sales cycles, and real expansion potential tend to see the strongest results from ABM.
What’s the first step to getting started with ABM?
Start by defining your target accounts and aligning your teams around shared goals before launching campaigns or buying tools.
If you’ve spent any amount of time in B2B, you’ve probably heard about Account-Based Marketing.
It usually comes up right after phrases like “bigger deals” or “we should be more strategic about who we go after.” Sometimes it shows up in board decks. Sometimes it just gets dropped into meetings like everyone already knows what it means. (We promise, not everyone does.)
It’s fair to ask: Is ABM a type of marketing? A sales strategy? A fancy way to say outbound with better lists?
The short answer is that it’s none of those by themselves. It’s a little bit of all of them.
ABM exists to solve a very specific problem: How do you grow through serving your best-fit customers or clients when buying decisions are complex, deals are big, and more than one person always has an opinion?
So before you decide whether ABM is for you, it helps to understand what it is and isn’t.
A Clear, Practical Definition of ABM
Over the years, many marketers and revenue leaders have struggled to define ABM.
Short definitions sound nice, but they leave too much room for interpretation. People hear the same words and fill in the blanks with whatever they already believe ABM should be.
We landed on a definition that’s intentionally specific:
Account-Based Marketing is a B2B revenue strategy that aligns Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success around a set of shared target accounts that reflect your best customers.
Every part of that sentence matters, because it keeps ABM from turning into “just another marketing program.”
Let’s break it down a little more.
First, ABM is a revenue strategy, not a campaign. It’s about how your business grows instead of just how you generate leads.
Second, it aligns Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. Not sequentially or in silos. Together. All three teams are working from the same priorities and pulling in the same direction.
Third, it’s built around shared target accounts. We’re not talking “anyone who fits our ICP” here. We’re talking about actual companies your team agrees are worth focused effort.
And finally, those accounts should reflect your best customers. Big logos are tempting, but ABM is really about the companies that stay, grow, and get real value from what you offer.
When all of that is true at the same time, ABM becomes an operating model for how you sell and retain the right customers.
ABM Aligns Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success
The majority of revenue teams want the same thing: strong customers, smooth deals, and growth that doesn’t feel like a constant scramble.
But in a lot of organizations, the work still happens in stages.
- Marketing focuses on getting attention.
- Sales focuses on closing deals.
- Customer Success focuses on keeping customers happy.
Each team is doing the right thing for its function, but the customer experience can feel disconnected.
ABM changes the structure of that relationship.
ABM brings Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success into the same cycle. They’re aligned not just on messaging, but on which accounts matter, what success looks like, and how each team supports the customer at different stages.
That matters because modern B2B buying isn’t linear.
The average buying group involves multiple people, each responding to different content and conversations. Sometimes Marketing is educating. Sometimes, Sales is guiding the next steps. Sometimes, Customer Success is helping validate what long-term value really looks like.
And those roles shift depending on where the account is in its journey.
Aligned teams have a much easier time coordinating with one another. Marketing is booking meetings Sales actually wants to take, and Sales closes deals Customer Success is confident they can support.
Growth stops feeling like a relay race and starts feeling like a team sport.
Team Tip: If You Can’t Explain Why, It’s Not a Target Account
When we build target account lists with clients, we always ask a simple question: Why does this company belong here? Not “they’re in the right industry,” but what specifically about their situation makes them a strong fit for what you sell.
If the answer is vague or takes a lot of digging, that account goes back into research instead of into active plays.
The more confident your team is in why an account is a fit, the more confident they’ll be in engaging them (and that confidence shows up in every conversation that follows).
Amanda Palmarchuk
Scrappy ABM
What ABM Is Not
Now that we’ve talked about what ABM is, it’s just as important to clear up what it isn’t.
Let’s level-set.
ABM Is Not a Channel
Running LinkedIn ads to a list of companies isn’t ABM. It’s advertising to a list.
Ads can absolutely play a role in an ABM program, but ABM itself is about coordinating multiple touchpoints across channels and guiding accounts forward based on how they engage.
Think of it this way: channels are ingredients. ABM is the recipe.
ABM Is Not a Piece of Technology
ABM didn’t start with software, even if software companies helped popularize the term.
You don’t “buy ABM” the same way you don’t buy inbound marketing or customer success. Tools can support those things, but they don’t define them.
Platforms like Demandbase or 6sense can help teams scale what they’re already doing. But they can’t replace alignment, targeting, or clear plays.
Strategy first. Tech second.
ABM Is Not a One-Off Campaign
ABM isn’t something you turn on when pipeline gets tight and turn off when things look better.
Instead, it’s an ongoing way of engaging your best accounts before, during, and after they’re actively buying.
The real power of ABM shows up over time, as relationships deepen and accounts move through multiple buying cycles. Consistency is what creates momentum.
ABM Is Not Just “Personalization at Scale”
Swapping logos into ads, landing pages, or email templates isn’t the strategy.
Personalization matters in ABM, but meaningful personalization goes beyond surface-level details. It’s about addressing real account priorities and delivering messages that feel relevant to their situation.
If everything looks customized but still sounds generic, your accounts will notice.
ABM Is Not a Sales Prospecting List
Targeting accounts more intentionally doesn’t turn outbound into ABM by itself.
If Sales is running sequences to cold accounts that have never engaged with your brand, and Marketing isn’t part of the motion, that’s still outbound, just with better targeting.
ABM works when Marketing and Sales are moving accounts forward together. As they operate in sync, response rates improve and deals move faster. That’s the difference.
Who ABM Is For
ABM can be incredibly effective, but it’s not the right next move for every company.
ABM requires focus, coordination, and enough deal value to justify the effort. When those pieces are in place, ABM compounds. When they’re not, it can feel heavier than it needs to be.
In our experience, ABM tends to work best for teams that look like this:
B2B with real product-market fit
You’ve proven you can win customers consistently, and now you want to double down on the ones who matter most.
A dedicated Sales team already doing outbound
ABM sharpens sales activity. If your team already knows how to prospect, ABM gives them better accounts and warmer conversations.
A Marketing team with enough capacity to execute
You don’t need a massive department, but you do need people who can run programs, repurpose content, and support account plays consistently.
Average contract values around $50K or higher
ABM takes focused effort. The deal sizes need to justify that level of investment.
Real expansion potential with existing customers
When upsell and cross-sell are on the table, ABM becomes a growth engine rather than a net-new motion.
Longer, more complex sales cycles
If deals take 90+ days and involve multiple stakeholders, coordinated engagement across teams makes a big difference.
A clearly defined market
ABM works best when you know exactly who you want to serve and why. “Anyone with a budget” is not a strategy.
Could teams outside of this run ABM successfully? Sure, there are always exceptions. But if you’re missing most of these pieces, you’ll see better returns by focusing on other growth motions first and coming back to ABM when the timing is right.
Turn Strategy Into a Real Plan
At its core, ABM is about deciding, as a business, who you’re best equipped to help, and then aligning your teams around winning and keeping those customers.
If you’re thinking about bringing ABM into your organization, the best place to start isn’t with ads or even personalization. It’s with clarity around your target accounts and how your teams will support each other.
That’s what our ABM Program Planning Template is built to help with.
It walks you through:
- Defining and prioritizing your target accounts
- Mapping the plays you’ll use to engage them
- Finding the channels that support each stage
- And choosing the signals that tell you what’s working
It’s a practical way to turn strategy into a plan your team can execute. Grab your copy here!
Mason Cosby
Mason is the founder of Scrappy ABM and a longtime believer that smart strategy beats shiny tools. He's sourced $25M+ in revenue, delivered 16x ROI, and helps teams do more with less through practical, personalized ABM.
