Account Based Marketing for Predictable B2B Growth

Sqrl: Flip the script on B2B Marketing

What’s the role of marketing in modern B2B, and how does it impact the bottom line? The reality is, most SME+ owners and executives will struggle to answer either of those questions. Their gut tells them that marketing is necessary, but they often see it mostly as a cost center while sales is driving tangible results. Because it’s hard to say to which leads and new clients marketing has significantly contributed.

With Sqrl’s Account Based Marketing approach, we flip that script. By first aligning marketing and sales to focus only on accounts that would truly matter to your bottom line. That team then develops campaigns specifically for those companies and decides on how they will subsequently nurture the DMU based on measurable intent-data. The result is an Account Based Marketing program that allocates marketing resources to what will most effectively drive sales pipeline.

We not only offer a proven program, it’s combined with our proprietary software custom made to meet the needs of SME+ teams. With the Sqrl environment, you will find all campaign data including which accounts saw what specific advertisements. And when you’ve moved on to the nurturing portion, we’re attributing touchpoints at an individual level as well, so you always know which people are ready to be contacted.

Sqrl is built for B2B companies with longer buyer journeys, larger deal sizes, and teams that need more predictability. We know markets like industrial sectors, high-tech, manufacturing, materials, IT, software, and consultancy and have tailored our program and software to meet these markets’ needs.

What is account based marketing?

Account based marketing (ABM) is a B2B strategy that enables marketing and sales teams to work together to identify a specific set of high-value target accounts and run coordinated, personalized campaigns to win, expand, or retain them.

Traditionally, Account Based Marketing has been the domain of enterprise companies. It’s recommended for large companies with huge marketing budgets looking to convert a very select group of accounts (often 1-3 other big companies). It’s a strategy that calls for hyper personalization and years of effort, but it’s worth it, because a new client to such companies is worth millions or more.

But it doesn’t work like that for SME businesses. And that’s who Sqrl is focusing on. Because SME’s don’t have infinite time and money. And most SME’s don’t have just 3 potential customers to focus on.

So we’ve developed a unique way of thinking about ABM, which you’ll read about on this page, but also in our article where we explain what account based marketing is.

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

Good question, and one we get often. Account based marketing and lead based marketing differ in where you start, not which channels you use. Lead based marketing starts wide: you attract as many contacts as possible through content, ads, and events, score them based on behavior, and pass the best ones to sales. The account behind that contact is an afterthought, what matters is the individual. Account based marketing flips that around. You decide which organizations you want to win first, and build everything else, content, ads, outreach, around those specific companies and the people inside them. The individual contact doesn’t drive the approach, the account they belong to does.
That difference in starting point is also why the two perform so differently. With lead based marketing, budget structurally leaks to companies that were never going to buy, simply because you have to cast wide to generate enough leads in the first place. With ABM, every euro goes to an organization that’s already pre-qualified, which is exactly why it tends to deliver higher ROI and far tighter alignment between marketing and sales. That doesn’t make ABM the right choice for every business though, for low-cost products with a short sales cycle, lead based marketing often still works just fine. Want the full breakdown, including when each model wins? Read our comparison of ABM and lead based marketing.

Types of account based marketing

What type of account based marketing fits your company best, is often the primary decision you’ll need to make before implementing account based marketing. And it’s also what determines which agency is best suited to help you make it a success. For example, at Sqrl, we focus on SME+ companies rather than enterprise companies, and we have our own unique approach that we call 1:cluster. So if you’re an Enterprise company looking to run 1:1 campaigns, we’re probably not the best fit. But if you’re a SME+ business with a certain ideal type of customer in mind, we might just be the one.

To figure out what best fits your business, you should read our article on the types of account based marketing.

Benefits of account based marketing

If you’re working in B2B and concern yourself with marketing or sales, you’ve probably heard about some abstract benefits that account based marketing offers. It’s a list that’s repeated often and by anyone focusing on ABM and is, again, focusing mainly on enterprise-sized companies. But do these benefits translate to SME(+) companies that embrace ABM?

That’s what we’re answering in our article on the benefits of account based marketing. We’re discussing the theory and compare it to our experiences running ABM programs for SME+ companies. Not to ruin a perfectly good article, but the advantages of Sqrl’s ABM program for SME’s are:

• Operational efficiency through our unique dual-track approach
• Efficient personalisation based on actual intent data
• Genuine alignment of marketing and sales
• Strategic timing of follow-up
• Increased ROI on marketing spend
• Keep and grow existing customers
• Integrated reporting and boardroom confidence

I will refer you to the full article to discover how we achieve these results and why that’s different from you regular Enterprise ABM provider.

Account based marketing strategy

If you’re interested in ABM, active in B2B and reading this page you’ve probably already read a few articles from enterprise-focused agencies. And they all contain practically the same list. But does it help you if you’re working in a SME+ business? Probably not. Because SME+ is a completely different environment than the one those articles are written for.

So, we’ve written up a huge article that discusses Account Based Marketing strategy for B2B and SME+ companies. We explain why there’s a shift in how B2B organisations purchase, how to combines with your existing marketing efforts and what it will deliver in 3 months. We’ve even made a list of reasons NOT to choose an ABM approach for your business, can you believe it?

Ultimately, we think account based marketing is, for most SME+ companies, a no-brainer. And when you’ve read this article, you’ll probably agree. If you don’t, please let us know.

Creating an account based marketing plan

Once your strategy is set, the next question is how you actually build it into something your team can execute against. We call this the Sqrl method: five phases in three months, from assembling the right Business Development Team through to a complete campaign plan, the same structure every time because that’s what makes it repeatable for a small team without a dedicated ABM function. Read the full breakdown in our article on creating an account based marketing plan.

ABM Benchmark and calculating the ROI of Account Based Marketing

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

The first is our article detailing the Sqrl ABM benchmark. The summary of that article is not complex; within 18 months, 20% of the Target Account List becomes a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Of those SQLs, 25% develop into generated sales pipeline. That means that out of 50 potential customers on your Target Account List, you will likely sign up 4 new clients. And not just any client, clients you’ve identified as being your ideal client in terms of work, turnover, profit or whatever KPI you prefer. In the article, we expand on this substantially. So, read it if you want to learn more.

But to build a business case, you’re probably going to 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 and what factors into it and why. Seems simple, but we didn’t write it because it’s easy. We go beyond the numbers and have also included the metrics that matter beyond the ROI, which will flesh out your business case for sure.

Still have questions or do you need some practical examples? Just let us know.

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

Knowing the benchmark is one thing. Knowing what to look at every two weeks, and which decision hangs on 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 (person-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 changing what happens next, it doesn’t belong on the dashboard. The full operating model, including the thirty-minute biweekly review that runs the programme and a realistic reporting timeline from month two through month eighteen, is in our article on ABM KPIs and measuring success.

Target Account List

How do you actually decide who belongs on that list of potential customers? Once the ROI case for Account Based Marketing is clear, the obvious next question is: which accounts do you point it at. This is where most ABM programs either earn their return or quietly burn the budget you just built a case for, the account selection step determines almost everything that happens afterwards.
Building a Target Account List starts with a clear Ideal Customer Profile, then mapping your Total Addressable Market against it, and ends with a deliberately narrow, active list rather than a long one. A market mapping exercise can easily surface several hundred companies that match your profile in some way, but that number describes your market, not your campaign. The discipline is in narrowing that pool down to the twenty to a hundred accounts a small business development team can genuinely act on, grouped by what they have in common rather than spread across enterprise-style tiers that assume a much bigger team. Read the full breakdown, including a real example from the industrial market, in our guide to building your Target Account List.

Decision Making Unit (DMU)

Once an account shows intent, who exactly are you supposed to talk to?

Getting an account onto your Target Account List answers one question. It doesn’t answer the next one: once that account actually starts paying attention, who do you talk to, and what do they each need to hear? A target account isn’t a person, it’s a company, and somewhere inside it sits a group of people who’ll collectively decide whether you win the deal. Marketing teams that skip this step end up doing the hard work of generating intent, and then handing sales a single name and hoping for the best.

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’ll never read about in an org chart. The classic mistake here isn’t a lack of effort, it’s fixating on job titles. We’ve lost count of how many clients were convinced the CEO was their decider, with zero evidence to back it up, while the person actually driving the decision sat two levels down and never made it onto anyone’s radar.

We don’t immediately build this map for every account on the list, that would mean researching DMUs for accounts that haven’t shown the slightest sign of buying intent, a lot of wasted effort for very little return. We wait until an account becomes a focus account, then build out its buying groups and the buying personas inside them, using AI to surface candidates and a human on the team to judge who actually 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 rather than early, in our article on the Decision Making Unit and buying groups.

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

ABM techniques and tactics

There’s plenty of articles with wide ranging lists and generic stories about the various techniques and tactics you could implement in your ABM strategy. But most of these are not useful to SME+ companies, or even practical for any company. It’s often mostly a theoretical exercise, with little real world usefulness.

Which is why we’ve written an article discussing the actual ABMtechniques and tactics that we at Sqrl use to run the ABM programs of our clients, how we implement them, when we use them, and how we measure the results. I promise you, it’s very practical.

Account based marketing on LinkedIn

Once you know which tactics you’re going to deploy, the obvious next question is where you actually run them. For most Account Based Marketing campaigns, that’s LinkedIn. It’s the only major advertising platform that lets you target your account list with real precision, matching companies rather than guessing at audiences, which makes it the natural engine for the always-on awareness campaigns covered in the previous section.
But LinkedIn is a starting point, not the whole game, and treating it as the entire channel strategy is where a lot of ABM budgets quietly go to waste. The platform’s high cost per impression is matched by unusually low waste once you’re targeting a defined account list, organic posts and paid ads do genuinely different jobs, and once an account starts showing real intent, the relationship-building that follows usually happens off LinkedIn rather than on it. We break down 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 stitched together through SLAs, shared dashboards, and regular meetings. For an SME+ company where marketing is one or two people and sales is a handful, that’s solving the wrong problem. The real issue isn’t that the teams disagree on lead definitions, it’s that marketing has never had a way to contribute visibly and measurably to a specific deal. Our answer isn’t more meetings, it’s one team: a Business Development Team that operates as a single unit from day one, with shared decisions, shared visibility, and no handoff to negotiate. Read how that works in practice, including why sales tends to get on board faster than marketing, in our article on ABM and sales alignment.

ABM software: what it is, and why most of it isn’t built for SME+

Every ABM platform promises the same four things: find the right accounts, personalize at scale, track engagement, and report on results. What separates the categories is scale and price, enterprise platforms like Demandbase or 6sense run $60,000 to $250,000 a year and assume a dedicated ABM team, while the alternative most SME+ companies actually consider, bundling ABM features into HubSpot, comes with its own mismatch: you pay for a platform priced and built around thousands of contacts while your entire strategy depends on keeping your list deliberately small. We cover what the category includes, what it actually costs across the market, and where a much-needed dose of realism belongs, in our article on ABM software.

Everything about account based marketing

Foundations

• What is account based marketing
• The benefits of account based marketing
• ABM vs. 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
• 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 client case study
• ABM KPIs and measuring success

Frequently asked questions about account based marketing

What is account based marketing?

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

Who is ABM suitable for?

For B2B companies with longer buyer journeys, larger deal sizes, and multiple decision-makers per deal—for example, in industrial sectors, high-tech, manufacturing, IT, software, and consultancy.

How quickly will I see results?

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

What is the difference between ABM and lead generation?

With lead generation, you fill the funnel widely; with ABM, you select the right accounts upfront and focus your attention there.

Account based marketing terms, explained

Account based marketing comes with its own vocabulary. Here are the terms you’ll run into across this page and the rest of our content, explained in plain language.

What is TAM (Total Addressable Market)?

TAM is the full universe of companies that could theoretically buy from you, before any filtering for fit or priority. It’s a useful number for understanding how big your market is, but it isn’t your campaign list. Most of it consists of companies you would deprioritise once your Ideal Customer Profile is applied. Read more in our guide to building a Target Account List.

What is ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)?

An ICP describes the type of company that benefits most from what you offer, based on factors like industry, size, region and buying behaviour. That’s different from a buyer persona, which describes the individual person you’re trying to reach within that company. The ICP is the filter you apply to your TAM to find the accounts worth pursuing. See how we build one 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 against, typically twenty to a hundred accounts for an SME+ business. It’s a deliberately narrow subset of your TAM, sized to what a small business development team can genuinely act on, rather than a long list that dilutes your message. Full breakdown 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, event interest or other measurable signals. Once an account becomes a focus account, it moves from the always-on awareness track into focused, intent-driven nurturing. More 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 break it down 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 on what account based marketing is.

What is a BDT (Business Development Team)?

A BDT is a combined sales-and-marketing team that works from the same account list, the same data and the same definition of a qualified lead, from day one. It removes the usual handoff problem where marketing generates leads and sales finds out what that means after the fact. Read more in our account based marketing strategy article.

What is an SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)?

In an ABM context, an 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 form fill. In our benchmark, roughly 20% of a Target Account List becomes an SQL within 18 months. See our ABM benchmark article for the full numbers.

What is 1:cluster?

1:cluster is Sqrl’s own model for grouping accounts by one dominant shared characteristic, the same market, the same challenge, the same type of buying process, and running one focused campaign for the whole group. It sits between the classic 1:1 model (fully bespoke, enterprise-only) and 1:many (broad and diluted), without the overhead of the first or the thin messaging of the second. Full explanation in our article on 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 content download, an event attendance, a QR scan. Intent data is the pattern that emerges from those touchpoints, signalling that an account is genuinely in motion rather than just visible. We use this to decide when a target account becomes a focus account, ready for personal follow-up. More in our article on 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 messaging that changes every four to six weeks, so we can see which accounts respond. Nurturing only starts once an account shows real intent, at which point we map its DMU and work it toward becoming an SQL. Read the full model in our article on what account based marketing is.

What is ABX (Account Based Experience)?

ABX extends ABM’s account-level targeting beyond the initial sale, into onboarding, renewal and expansion. It’s 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, simply getting sales and marketing to agree on a shared account list is already the bigger milestone, which is why we treat ABX as a later consideration rather than a starting point. More in our article on what account based marketing is.

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