What is account based marketing?
Everything you need to know

Sqrl: change course in your B2B marketing

What role does marketing actually play in modern B2B, and what does it deliver in the end? Most SME+ entrepreneurs and directors will be unable to answer both questions. Their gut feeling says marketing is necessary, but in practice they mostly see it as a cost item, while sales bring in the tangible results. Simply because it is difficult to pinpoint which leads and new customers marketing has truly contributed to.

With Sqrl’s account based marketing approach, we reverse that. First, we align sales and marketing, focused only on those accounts that really matter for your results. That team then develops campaigns specifically for those companies, and determines based on measurable intent data how they will nurture the DMU afterwards. The result is an account based marketing program that deploys your marketing budget precisely on what drives your sales pipeline strongest.

Sqrl combines a proven method with its own software, tailor-made for the needs of SME+ teams and the agencies that work for them. In the Sqrl environment you find all campaign data back, including which accounts saw which ads exactly. And as soon as you are ready for the nurturing phase, we also link touchpoints at the individual level, so you always know which people are ready to be approached.

Sqrl is built for B2B companies with longer buying journeys, higher order sizes, and teams that need more predictability. We know markets like industry, high-tech, manufacturing, materials, IT, software, and business services, and have tailored our program and software to the needs of those markets.

What is account based marketing?

Account based marketing (ABM) is a B2B strategy where marketing and sales together choose a specific group of valuable target accounts, and run coordinated, personalized campaigns to acquire, grow, or retain them.

Traditionally, account based marketing is the domain of enterprise companies. It is recommended for large companies with substantial marketing budgets who want to acquire a very select group of accounts (often 1 to 3 other large companies). It is a strategy that requires hyper-personalization and years of work, but it pays off, because one new customer is worth millions for such companies.

But it doesn’t work like that for SMEs. And that is exactly where Sqrl focuses. Because SMEs don’t have infinite time and money. And most SME companies don’t have just 3 potential customers to focus on.

That’s why we developed our own way of thinking about ABM, which you can read more about on this page, but also in our article explaining what account based marketing is.

What is the difference between account based marketing and lead based marketing?

Good question, and one we often get. Account based marketing and lead based marketing differ in where you start, not in which channels you use. Lead based marketing starts broad: you attract as many contacts as possible via content, ads, and events, score them on behavior, and pass the best to sales. The company behind that contact is secondary; it’s about the individual. Account based marketing reverses that. You first determine which companies you want to win, and then build everything—content, ads, outreach—around those specific companies and the people within them. The approach is driven not by the individual contact but by the account that person belongs to.

That difference in starting point immediately explains why the two perform so differently. In lead based marketing, budget structurally leaks to companies that would never buy anyway, simply because you have to cast a wide net to get enough leads. In ABM, every euro goes to a company that is already pre-qualified, and precisely for that reason it usually delivers a higher ROI and a much tighter collaboration between sales and marketing. That said, ABM is not the right choice for every company; for low-threshold products with a short sales cycle, lead based marketing often still works fine. Want the full story, including when which model wins? Read our comparison of ABM and lead based marketing.

Types of account based marketing

Which type of account based marketing best fits your company is often the first decision you have to make before starting with account based marketing. And it also determines which agency is most suitable to make it a success. At Sqrl, for example, we focus on SME+ companies instead of enterprise, and use our own approach, ABM at scale: the relevance of 1:1 or 1:few at the scale of 1:many. So if you are an enterprise company wanting to run 1:1 campaigns, we are probably not the best match. But if you are an SME+ company with a certain ideal customer type in mind, then we might be exactly the account based marketing agency you are looking for.

To determine what best fits your company, we recommend reading our article about the types of account based marketing.

Benefits of account based marketing

If you work in B2B and are involved in marketing or sales, you have probably heard of some abstract benefits that account based marketing would offer. It is a list often repeated by everyone involved with ABM, and here the focus is mainly on enterprise companies. But do these benefits also translate to SME(+) companies starting with ABM?

That is exactly what we answer in our article about the benefits of account based marketing. We discuss the theory and contrast it with our own experiences running ABM programs for SME+ companies. Not to spoil a great article, but the benefits of Sqrl’s ABM program for SMEs are:

• Operational efficiency through our unique two-track approach
• Efficient personalization based on real intent data
• Genuine alignment between sales and marketing
• Strategic timing of follow-up
• Higher ROI on your marketing spend
• Retaining and growing existing customers
• Integrated reporting and peace in the boardroom

For how we achieve these results, and why it is different from your average enterprise ABM provider, I gladly refer you to the full article.

Account based marketing strategy

If you are interested in ABM, active in B2B, and reading this page, you have probably already read a few articles from enterprise-focused agencies. And they almost all contain the same list. But does that help you if you work in an SME+ company? Probably not. Because SME+ is a completely different environment than the one those articles were written for.

That’s why we wrote a substantial article about account based marketing strategy for B2B and SME+ companies. We explain why there is a shift in how B2B organizations buy, how it integrates with your existing marketing efforts, and what it delivers in 3 months. We even made a list of reasons to specifically not choose an ABM approach, believe it or not.

Ultimately, we think account based marketing is a no-brainer for most SME+ companies. And if you have read this article, you probably agree with us. If not, please let us know.

Creating an account based marketing plan

Once your strategy is set, the next question is how to actually turn it into something your team can work with. We call this the Sqrl method: five phases in three months, from assembling the right Business Development Team to a complete campaign plan, always the same structure, because that makes it repeatable for a small team without its own ABM function. Read the full elaboration in our article about creating an account based marketing plan (with template).

The ABM benchmark and calculating the ROI of account based marketing

For sales leaders or marketing managers who want to convince others in their company of the role account based marketing can play as one of the business growth engines, we wrote two extensive articles.

The first is our article about the Sqrl ABM benchmark. The summary of that article is not complicated: within 18 months, 20% of the Target Account List becomes a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Of those SQLs, 25% grow into generated sales pipeline. That means from 50 potential customers on your Target Account List, you probably sign 4 new customers. And not just any customers, but customers you yourself have identified as your ideal customer in terms of work, revenue, profit, or whichever KPI you find important. We go into this extensively in the article. So definitely read it if you want to know more.

But to build a business case, you probably need more than just the numbers above. And that’s what our second article is for. In it, we explain how to calculate the ROI of account based marketing, what factors weigh in, and why. Sounds simple, but we didn’t write it because it was easy. We go beyond the numbers and also include other metrics that matter beyond ROI, and that really give your business case substance.

Any questions, or are you looking for some practical examples? Let us know.

ABM KPIs: what you measure, and what you do when it changes

Knowing the benchmark is one thing. Knowing what you look at every two weeks, and which decision is tied to each number, is the part most ABM content skips. We measure along two tracks: the always-on campaign (account level, reach, engagement, intent signals) and the nurturing track (individual level, touchpoints per buying persona, buying group coverage, SQL progression). Every metric earns its place by triggering a specific action; if a number can move without anything changing in what happens next, it doesn’t belong on the dashboard. The complete working model, including the thirty-minute biweekly review that runs the program and a realistic reporting timeline from month two to month eighteen, is in our article about ABM KPIs and measuring success.

Target Account List

How do you actually determine who belongs on that list of potential customers? Once the ROI case for account based marketing is clear, the next question naturally follows: which accounts do you focus on? This is where most ABM programs earn their return or quietly burn the budget you just painstakingly justified; the choice of your accounts determines almost everything that follows.

Building a Target Account List starts with a clear ideal customer profile (ICP), then you apply your total addressable market against it, and you end with a deliberately short, active list instead of a long one. Market research quickly yields several hundred companies that fit your profile in some way, but that number describes your market, not your campaign. The art lies in reducing that group to the accounts a business development team can actually work with, grouped by what they have in common rather than spread over enterprise-like tiers that assume a much larger team. Read the full story, including a real example from industry, in our guide to building your Target Account List.

Decision Making Unit (DMU) and ABM

Once an account shows intent, who do you actually need to talk to?

Getting an account on your Target Account List answers one question. The next question it doesn’t answer: once that account actually starts showing attention, who do you talk to, and what should each of them hear? A target account is not a person; it is a company, and somewhere inside it is a group of people who together decide whether you win the deal. Marketing teams that skip this step do all the hard work to generate intent, and then give sales one name hoping it will work out.

That group is called the Decision Making Unit, or DMU: the deciders, influencers, buyers, gatekeepers, and users involved in a purchase, none of whom carry equal weight, and most of whom you will never find in an organizational chart. The classic mistake here is not lack of effort; it is fixating on job titles. We’ve lost count of how many clients were convinced the CEO was their decider without any proof, while the person actually steering the decision was two levels down and off everyone’s radar.

We don’t map that chart for every account on the list; that would mean researching DMUs for accounts that haven’t shown the slightest buying signal yet, a lot of wasted effort for very little return. We wait until an account becomes a focus account, and then build out the buying groups and buying personas within it, using AI to surface candidates and a human on the team to judge who really belongs. Curious how that works in practice? We go through the whole model, the classic six roles, the most common mistake companies make, and why we deliberately build the DMU late instead of early, in our article about the Decision Making Unit and buying groups.

Once you know who you are actually talking to, the next question is how to reach them.

ABM techniques and tactics

There are plenty of articles with extensive lists and general stories about the different techniques and tactics you could use in your ABM strategy. But most of those are not useful for SME+ companies, or even for any company. It often remains a theoretical exercise with little practical value.

That’s why we wrote an article about the actual ABM techniques and tactics agencies working with Sqrl use to run their clients’ ABM programs, how they apply them, when they use them, and how they measure the results. I promise you, it is very practical.

Ideas for account based marketing campaigns

Most “ABM campaign ideas” lists are either enterprise cases you can’t afford (celebrity partnerships, Fortune 500 microsites) or generic frameworks that never become concrete. We keep it practical: campaign ideas categorized by track, always-on ideas cheap enough for an entire Target Account List, nurturing ideas that build as intent increases, and a real example of how an always-on campaign took a client of an agency working with Sqrl from a legal change to orders within days. Read the full list in our article about ABM campaigns and campaign ideas.

Account based marketing on LinkedIn

Once you know which tactics you will use, the next question naturally follows: where do you run them? For most account based marketing campaigns, that is LinkedIn. It is the only major advertising platform where you can target your account list with real precision, matching companies instead of guessing an audience, making it the natural engine for the always-on brand awareness campaigns from the previous section.

But LinkedIn is a starting point, not the whole game, and treating it as a complete channel strategy is exactly where many ABM budgets quietly leak away. The high cost per impression goes together with remarkably little waste once you target a defined account list, organic posts and paid ads do truly different work, and once an account shows genuine interest, the relationship building that follows usually happens outside LinkedIn rather than on it. We explain exactly how to set up a campaign, which ad formats are worth your budget, and what realistic costs look like in 2026, in our complete guide to account based marketing on LinkedIn.

Sales and marketing alignment in account based marketing

Most alignment advice assumes you have two large departments that need to be sewn together via SLAs, shared dashboards, and regular meetings. For an SME+ company where marketing consists of one or two people and sales of a handful, that solves the wrong problem. The real problem is not that the teams disagree on lead definitions; it is that marketing has never had a way to visibly and measurably contribute to a specific deal. Our answer is not more meetings; it is one team: a Business Development Team that operates as one unit from day one, with shared decisions, shared visibility, and no handoffs to negotiate. Read how that works in practice, including why sales often comes on board faster than marketing, in our article about ABM and sales alignment.

Automation in account based marketing

More automation is not automatically better. Within the Sqrl software, an AI agent does the heavy preliminary work at three specific points: finding candidate accounts, grouping people into buying groups, surfacing intent, but the agency and the client stay in control of which accounts qualify, who really matters within a buying committee, and when an account is ready for outreach. How much of the execution runs automatically is up to them: LinkedIn outreach can be automated, for example, but many teams deliberately send by hand to keep oversight. Sqrl itself never decides or sends anything on its own initiative. Read the full reasoning in our article about ABM automation.

ABM software: what it is, and why most is not built for SME+

Every ABM platform promises the same: find the right accounts, personalize at scale, track engagement, and report on results. What distinguishes the categories is scale and price. Enterprise platforms like Demandbase or 6sense cost €60,000 to €250,000 per year and assume a dedicated ABM team, while the alternative most SME+ companies actually consider, bundling ABM features in HubSpot, has its own mismatch: you pay for a platform priced and built around thousands of contacts, while your entire strategy revolves around keeping your list deliberately small. What the category includes, what it really costs in the market, and where a healthy dose of realism is needed, is in our article about ABM software.

A quick jump to our page about our own account based marketing software for SME+ is also worth it.

Everything about account based marketing

The basics

• What is account based marketing
• The benefits of account based marketing
• ABM versus lead based marketing
• Types of ABM: 1:1, 1:few, 1:many
• Ideal customer profile and account selection
• Decision Making Unit (DMU) in ABM

Strategy and execution

• Account based marketing strategy
• Creating an ABM plan (with template)
• ABM techniques and tactics
• ABM campaigns and campaign ideas
• Account based marketing on LinkedIn
• Account based marketing automation
• The role of data in ABM
• Personalization in ABM
• ABM and sales alignment
• Account based marketing training

Getting started

• ABM software
• Account based marketing agency
• The ROI of account based marketing
• ABM benchmark
• ABM customer case
• ABM KPIs and measuring success

Frequently asked questions about account based marketing

What is account based marketing?

A B2B approach where you choose a defined list of ideal accounts and approach them directly with sales and marketing aligned, instead of chasing individual leads.

Who is ABM suitable for?

For B2B companies with longer buying journeys, higher order sizes, and multiple decision makers per deal, for example in industry, high-tech, manufacturing, IT, software, and business services.

How quickly do I see results?

The program up to and including the campaign plan takes three months, but the first brand awareness campaign goes live already in week five, and we start generating and measuring intent.

What is the difference between ABM and lead generation?

In lead generation you fill the funnel broadly; in ABM you choose the right accounts upfront and focus your attention on them.

Account based marketing terms, explained

Account based marketing has its own jargon. Below are the terms you encounter on this page and in the rest of our content, explained in plain language.

What is TAM (Total Addressable Market)?

TAM is the entire universe of companies that could theoretically buy from you, before any filtering on fit or priority. A handy number to understand how big your market is, but it is not your campaign list. The majority consists of companies you would drop once you apply your ideal customer profile. Read more in our guide to building a Target Account List.

What is an ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)?

An ICP describes the type of company that benefits most from what you offer, based on factors like sector, size, region, and buying behavior. It is different from a buyer persona, which describes the individual you want to reach within that company. The ICP is the filter you apply to your TAM to find the accounts worth targeting. How we create one, you can read in our Target Account List guide.

What is a TAL (Target Account List)?

The TAL is the actual list of companies you run an active campaign on, with no fixed size: the right size depends on the question and the goals of the company. It is a deliberately narrow selection from your TAM, tailored to what a small business development team can realistically handle, instead of a long list that dilutes your message. The full story is in our Target Account List guide.

What is a focus account?

A focus account is a target account that has started showing real buying intent, through engagement with content, website visits, interest in an event, or other measurable signals. Once an account becomes a focus account, it moves from the always-on brand awareness track to targeted, intent-driven nurturing. More about this in our Target Account List guide.

What is the DMU (Decision Making Unit)?

The DMU is the group of people within an account who influence or decide on a purchase, rather than a single buyer. We split it into specific roles: deciders, users, initiators, influencers, buyers, gatekeepers, and champions. Within a DMU, we also group people into buying groups (people with a similar motivation to buy) and buying personas (the specific job titles within each group). We go deeper into mapping a buying committee in our article about what account based marketing is.

What is a BDT (Business Development Team)?

A BDT is a combined sales and marketing team that works from day one from the same account list, the same data, and the same definition of a qualified lead. It removes the well-known handoff problem where marketing generates leads and sales only discovers what that means afterwards. Read more in our article about account based marketing strategy.

What is a SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)?

In an ABM context, a SQL is an account with a demonstrable buying need, enough context to understand that need, and a logical moment for follow-up, not just a filled form. In our benchmark, about 20% of a Target Account List becomes a SQL within 18 months. See our article about the ABM benchmark for the full numbers.

What is ABM at scale?

ABM at scale is how the Sqrl method delivers the relevance of 1:1 or 1:few at the scale of 1:many. You group accounts by one dominant shared characteristic: the same market, the same challenge, the same type of buying process, and run one targeted campaign for the whole group. The software takes over the work that used to make that impossible. It is not the same as 1:many (broad and diluted), and it is not a middle layer between 1:1 and 1:many. It replaces the three-way split: there is no separate 1:1 layer for a handful of top accounts and no separate 1:many layer for the rest; each account in the group gets the same relevant campaign. The full explanation is in our article about the types of account based marketing.

What is intent data, and what is a touchpoint?

A touchpoint is any measurable contact moment: an ad impression, a website visit, a download, an event visit, a QR scan. Intent data is the pattern that emerges from those touchpoints, showing that an account is really moving rather than just being visible. We use this to determine when a target account becomes a focus account, ready for personal follow-up. More about this in our article about calculating ABM ROI.

What is an always-on campaign, and what is nurturing?

These are the two tracks we run in parallel. The always-on campaign builds brand awareness across your entire Target Account List, with a message that changes every four to six weeks, so we see which accounts respond. Nurturing only starts once an account shows real intent, after which we map the DMU and work towards a SQL. You can read the full model in our article about what account based marketing is.

What is ABX (Account Based Experience)?

ABX extends the account-focused targeting of ABM beyond the first sale, to onboarding, renewal, and expansion. A reasonable idea for enterprise companies that already struggle to keep marketing, sales, and customer success aligned on the same account view. For most SME+ companies, just getting sales and marketing to agree on a shared account list is the bigger milestone, so we treat ABX as a later consideration rather than a starting point. More about this in our article about what account based marketing is.