Account Based Marketing Strategy for B2B and SME+ companies

What an account based marketing strategy actually requires

There are plenty of articles that explain account based marketing strategy in seven steps, complete with a diagram and a list of tools. We are not doing that here. This article shows what an ABM strategy actually looks like in practice for European B2B companies, what it requires from your organisation, and why most companies that claim to “already be doing ABM” are really still running lead generation in a new wrapper.

We share the approach agencies working with Sqrl use, the mistakes we encounter most often, and an honest picture of what you can expect. Not in theory, but based on what we see every day in account based marketing with industrial companies, technology businesses and professional services firms.

It does not start with ABM. It starts with a problem.

Hardly any SME+ business owner calls their agency saying “I want to do ABM.” What we do hear:

• “We are not getting enough inbound leads.”
• “The leads we get are low quality. Sales spends hours on them and nothing comes of it.”
• “We invest heavily in trade shows but the returns have been declining for years.”
• “We have ambitious growth targets but no idea how to achieve them.”
• “We are growing organically, but want to accelerate. How?”
• “We have dream clients, but no idea how to get in the door.”

These are very practical challenges. The business owner or commercial director knows that marketing is part of the answer, but not which part, and not how. Their standard playbook (trade shows, inbound, cold calling) is delivering less and less, and they essentially have no alternative.

Account based marketing is that alternative. Not because it is a trendy term, but because it provides an answer to precisely these problems: too broad a focus, too low quality, too little control over who you reach and whether it produces results.

The generational shift that changes everything

There is a shift happening in B2B that many companies have not yet fully recognised. The generation of buyers and decision-makers that dominated the market for decades is retiring. These were the people who went to trade shows to discover suppliers and picked up the phone in the first week of their buying journey. Their successors operate very differently.

Agencies working with Sqrl see this first-hand with their clients. One industrial supplier watched trade show attendance fall off a cliff. Meanwhile, email enquiries rose, online tool usage grew, website traffic climbed, and inbound requests increasingly arrived via email rather than through outbound sales. Trade shows turned into a venue for hosting existing customers efficiently, no longer a place to win new ones. For their market at least, the era of a buyer walking a trade fair to see what is out there is well and truly over.

That research now happens online. Out of sight of the companies that still think their sales team opens the deal. Research confirms this (McKinsey): younger generations (millennials, and Gen Z even more so) do far more research online and engage with sales much later in the buying journey. Where the previous generation would pick up the phone in week one, today’s buyers spend weeks or months evaluating options before any conversation happens.

ABM bridges those two worlds. You acknowledge that doing business is about people, but also that the path to that personal contact has changed dramatically. With ABM you can respond to this shift: be visible when the potential customer is doing online research, detect when they are open to a new supplier, and start the conversation at the right moment.

When account based marketing is not the right choice

Precisely because we believe in a targeted approach, we are also honest about when you are better off not starting it.

When your average deal value is low. ABM requires an investment in time and resources. If your typical contract is relatively small, that investment does not justify the return. A broader, volume-based model is a better fit. As a rule of thumb, we see a customer lifetime value of at least €5,000 as the minimum.

When sales and marketing are not willing to collaborate. ABM lives or dies by the alignment between the two teams. They need to be open to a new approach and, quite practically, get along well enough to pull in the same direction. Without that foundation, it simply will not work.

When you want leads to chase tomorrow. Looking for a stack of contact details to start calling straight away? Then you might be better off responding to the messages that land in your LinkedIn inbox every day; there is no shortage of entrepreneurs promising you exactly that. We believe in deliberately going after the ideal customers for your business, and that does not happen overnight.

When your target audience cannot be clustered. The power of ABM at scale for SME+ companies lies in shared characteristics. If genuinely anyone could be your customer, with no common thread across market, application or company type, you lack the basis for targeted segmentation.

When you do not (yet) have a distinctive story. Being consistently visible to a select group only works if you have something to say that sticks. Without a sharp positioning, you are mainly burning attention.

When you are not prepared to measure. The entire benefit of control and boardroom confidence hinges on collecting touchpoints and intent data. If you are not willing to do that, you miss out on the lion’s share of the gains.

In short, you need a certain deal value and a certain time horizon. Quick wins do not fit ABM. Patience and discipline do.

The most common mistakes in ABM

We regularly encounter companies that are already taking steps towards ABM. They may have a target account list, run targeted ads or have given their sales team a list of dream clients. But the results fall short. Two mistakes keep coming back.

Mistake 1: the content is generic

This is by far the most common mistake. Companies go through a number of ABM steps, but they do not tailor their content and messaging to the specific target audience. They produce advertising-style communication that does not differentiate them from the competition, does not stand out, and is not relevant or interesting to the accounts they are trying to reach.

More often than not, this comes down to an organisation’s inability to step outside itself. They communicate from the perspective of their own product rather than from the challenge of the potential customer. But ABM requires exactly that: putting the customer at the centre and building your entire approach around them, including your content. If you do not do that, you can use as many ABM tactics as you like, but if your resources and overall approach remain the same as always, you will not notice the difference.

Mistake 2: the target audience is too broad

The second mistake is choosing a target audience that is too broad or too large. Companies often do not want to choose. Because choosing means that you also do not do many things. That you do not actively pursue certain potential customers. And that is uncomfortable.

But if you do not make tough choices, you can never achieve the focus that determines ABM’s success. A list of 500 accounts “because they could all be interesting” is not an ABM strategy. That is lead generation with a fancy label. That is why we emphasize the creation of a target account list, a selection of Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) that embody your ideal customer.

How does account based marketing fit alongside your existing marketing?

Most SME+ companies that start with ABM already have marketing in place. They have a decent website, perhaps run some ads and post regularly on LinkedIn. They publish the occasional article and are reasonably visible in their network. That foundation is usually in order.

But that foundation does not drive growth. To grow, you need to do more, go further. That is what ABM does: you step outside the proverbial pond you have been fishing in for years. You go directly to the companies you want to serve, instead of waiting for them to find you by chance.

In fact, without that marketing foundation it is harder to be successful with ABM. If a brand already has strong market awareness, the return on ABM is even higher. ABM does not replace your existing marketing. It builds on it and gives it direction.

In practice, the agency always tries to deploy the client’s existing resources and activities within the ABM programme. Is the client already publishing content on their website and LinkedIn that is relevant to the target audience? Then it can be used in the campaign. Does the client already have an event planned? Then the agency looks at whether a small adjustment can make it relevant for the target accounts as well, without existing guests missing out on anything.

One agency working with Sqrl has a client targeting IT consultants. That client already had plans for a customer event, but by jointly adjusting the timing and content, the event suddenly became highly relevant for the target accounts too. The same applies to article series or existing campaigns: they get shaped so they also work within the ABM programme. The sooner the campaign materials are ready, the sooner the campaign can start producing results. Working with what already exists beats starting from scratch every time.

Is the client already running Google Ads? Those campaigns simply continue. Google Ads targets keywords, not specific accounts, so it is hard to reach an ABM audience with them. But they contribute to broader visibility. Existing LinkedIn posts and blogs keep appearing as normal. The ABM campaign adds a targeted layer on top, not a replacement.

The Sqrl method: from foundation to running campaign

Turning this strategy into a running programme follows five phases over three months. After five weeks, the first brand awareness campaign is already live. In short:

• Phase 1: onboarding (week 1). A Business Development Team that combines sales and marketing and includes the managing director or owner, with reporting lines, success criteria and a timeline.
• Phase 2: ABM Fundamentals (week 2 to 3). A workshop that defines the parameters for the Total Addressable Market and the Ideal Customer Profile, and delivers 5 to 10 ideal customers as the basis for the Target Account List.
• Phase 3: Target Account List (week 4 to 8). The team expands that seed list with the Sqrl software into a Target Account List, sized to the client’s question and goal.
• Intermediate step: the always-on campaign goes live (week 5 to 7). A brand awareness campaign aimed at the entire list, which brings the first intent to the surface.
• Phase 4: Decision Making Unit (week 9 to 13). For the accounts showing intent, the DMU is mapped in three to five groups.
• Phase 5: campaign plan (week 14 to 16). How you engage the people within accounts showing intent, step by step, until they are sales qualified.

One strategic choice in that sequence deserves emphasis: the director is involved from day one. A director who says “I see no results, let us pull the plug” after two months undermines the entire programme. The same director who helped shape the strategy understands how it works and can ask pointed questions about progress.

The full elaboration of each phase, including a template for the plan itself and the optional validation interviews, is in our article on creating an account based marketing plan. For the DMU step, see our article on the Decision Making Unit.

Personalisation at scale: account based marketing at scale

One of the most important strategic considerations in ABM is the level of personalisation. Traditional enterprise theory prescribes building a fully customised campaign for every account: bespoke content, dedicated landing pages, tailored messaging. For an SME+ company with 50 accounts on the list, this is simply not feasible. Your marketing team would collapse within a month.

That is why the Sqrl method works with what we call ABM at scale: the relevance of 1:1 or 1:few, at the scale of 1:many. Instead of personalising per account, you group accounts based on their dominant shared characteristic: the same market, the same challenge, the same type of buying process. Within that group, you develop content and campaigns that are relevant for the entire group, without the unaffordable overhead of 1:1. The software does the work that used to make that overhead unavoidable: finding the accounts, mapping buying groups, measuring intent and activating each buying persona.

One group per campaign is the starting point. How many accounts it holds depends on the client’s question and goal, not on a fixed number. What does set a natural limit is the number of relevant people within the average company. The larger the DMU, the more complex the campaign quickly becomes. For accounts with up to around 2,000 employees, the DMU is typically manageable enough to work in one group. For truly large enterprises with complex DMUs, each account is a campaign in itself, and that is enterprise ABM, not the Sqrl approach.

Where does the personalisation come in, then? In the person-to-person communication. All campaign materials (ads, articles, videos) are aimed at the group as a whole. But as soon as you send a case study to a person, you do so with a personal message in which sales explains why this is relevant for that particular account. Connection requests, invitations, physical mailings: that is individual and genuine. This is how you combine the efficiency of group communication with the impact of personal contact.

How do you select and prioritise accounts?

The power of ABM lies in focus. But how do you determine which accounts to target, and whether all accounts deserve the same attention?

Selection starts with the Ideal Customer Profile: which type of company is the best fit for your proposition? You determine this based on criteria such as sector, company size, application area, potential deal value and existing relationships. This is not a theoretical exercise. It is a conversation between Sqrl, which knows the parameters for a successful campaign, and the client, who knows their market better than anyone.

In principle, the Sqrl method works with a group of companies with equal priority, without separate tiers. Especially when measuring intent in an always-on campaign, it is difficult to put more focus on certain accounts than others.

But in practice, it is sometimes necessary to supplement the group. A good example: a client of one agency working with Sqrl develops software for a very specific market. The campaign targeted companies that the client knew would need to switch from a competing package that is being discontinued within three years. However, that group was not large enough for an efficient campaign and would have put too much pressure on a limited set of accounts that might not yet have been ready for a next step. So the agency searched for other accounts in the same market that face similar challenges. That second group had comparable potential deal values and could be incorporated into the same campaign.

Account selection is therefore always a joint effort. The agency brings the methodological framework of the Sqrl method (group size, campaign efficiency, spread), the client provides the market knowledge and account information. Combining the two produces an approach that aligns with the reality of the market.

Content that actually works

Earlier we named generic content as the most common mistake. But what does content look like when it is done right?

Successful ABM content aligns completely with the client’s world. If you serve a very practical target audience, or a very technical one, then polished advertising-style communication is pointless. It can even undermine the intent you are trying to build.

What does work: tapping into the themes that affect specific companies at a specific time. Share a case study from a company that is very similar to the potential client, with a personal letter explaining why you are sharing this with that particular person or account. Or send a barbecue package to decision-makers, just before the weather turns warm. The Sqrl method comes with a full toolkit of proven tactics.

The difference is not about big budgets or clever funnels. It is about genuine interest and the willingness to go the extra mile. People respond well when you dare to be genuinely personal. No email blasts or automated outreach sequences, but real communication, from and with real people.

The same goes for the always-on campaign. Skip the polish. Say what people in the market are actually thinking. Call things what they are. Think like a customer, not like a marketer or a salesperson.

Content and channels per track

The strategy runs on two tracks, and content and channels follow from that. In the always-on campaign, all materials are aimed at the group as a whole. LinkedIn is often the starting point, because it makes it possible to focus exclusively on your target accounts, and agencies working with Sqrl almost always start by testing video and single image ads to set a benchmark for performance and cost. Once accounts show intent and become focus accounts, the content shifts from broad to personal: case studies from comparable companies, relevant documentation, invitations to events and physical mailings with a personal letter.

The effort scales with the intent an account and person are showing:

• Low-intent touchpoints: the always-on foundation of ads, articles and social posts.
• Medium-intent touchpoints: connection requests, personalised mailings, and a relevant article or case study with a personal message.
• High-intent touchpoints: an invitation to a roundtable with other industry leaders, a demonstration, a training session or a direct phone call.

That way, an account is increasingly well qualified before sales enters the conversation. How these tactics work in practice is covered in our articles on account based marketing techniques and tactics, ABM campaign ideas and account based marketing on LinkedIn.

Intent data: which signals do you track in ABM?

Intent data sounds abstract, but in practice it comes down to very concrete signals that show whether an account is moving.

Website visits. Sqrl identifies visitors at company level. For conversions (a form submission, a download, a request), it attaches a complete conversion path, so you know exactly what that person’s journey looked like.

Campaign responses. Clicks, comments, likes, but also more passive signals: has a company seen a particular campaign or individual ad? This way you can not only measure whether there is interest, but also which themes generate more interest than others. That in turn influences the next campaign.

Conversions on communication. Whether through direct mailing, ad campaigns, phone calls or any other channel: the Sqrl software registers and links all signals as automatically as possible to both accounts and individuals.

In the Sqrl account based marketing software, every client has their own environment. Beyond the headline campaign KPIs, you can drill down to the finest detail: who saw what, where and when, including activity on your own website. Think of the software not just as the engine of the ABM campaign, but as a pre-CRM system that makes sure no account or person slips through the cracks.

From intent to focus accounts: when do you shift gears?

The always-on campaign is running and generating visibility across the entire TAL. But not every account is ready for intensive follow-up. The question is: when does an account move from the first track (brand awareness) to the second track (targeted engagement)?

That is partly a qualitative call. Has a company been steadily exposed to your brand and started to respond? Then you can cautiously ramp up. But there is a quantitative side too: if an account has seen plenty of campaigns but nobody has engaged, that company probably is not ready yet.

That decision lies with the Business Development Team, meaning marketing and sales together. The accounts that move to the second track are called “focus accounts”: accounts from the TAL that are showing intent and that the team is therefore focusing on.

Measuring and adjusting

Most agencies working with Sqrl meet their clients every two weeks, sometimes monthly. They work from the software and discuss the results: intent, touchpoints, progress per account. And of course whether the campaign is on the right track.

If progress stalls, the agency and the client figure out together what needs to change. Warning signs include too few new touchpoints, certain accounts proving hard to reach, or specific ads and actions falling flat. In most cases you can adjust within days and see improvement quickly.

The whole point of ABM compared to traditional marketing is that you can see exactly what is happening: per account, per person, per touchpoint. That turns course corrections into concrete decisions rather than gut feelings.

How that review works, and which metrics trigger which decision, is covered in our article on ABM KPIs and measuring success.

Start with one group of accounts as a pilot

A common concern is: “Do we have to overhaul our entire commercial strategy straight away?” No. An ABM programme focused on one group of accounts is a pilot in itself.

Most SME+ companies have somewhere between three and seven primary markets they focus on, and they often have a clear ideal customer in each of those markets. In practice, each of these markets (Ideal Customer Profile plus the dominant shared characteristic) often contains a valid target audience for an ABM campaign.

By running an initial pilot in the most promising of those markets, the method and approach can prove itself. And once it has been proven: why would you not roll it out across all your markets? Companies that have successfully run an ABM programme often cannot wait to set it up for other target audiences and achieve success there too.

The predictability of the sales pipeline that an ABM approach makes possible is too significant an advantage for almost any SME+ company to sit on.

How to get started

Most B2B companies don’t run this on their own. They work with an agency that implements Sqrl and the Sqrl method: the agency brings the execution capacity, Sqrl brings the platform and the methodology. Want to start? Get in touch and we will connect you with an agency that fits your market.

Run an agency yourself? Then you can try Sqrl free for the first six weeks, with training in the Sqrl method and onboarding in the software included.

The result: a running ABM programme with a validated Target Account List, the DMU mapped out, a complete campaign plan and a campaign that is already generating visibility.

What ABM delivers after three months

At the end of the programme, you will have:

• A Target Account List of companies that represent your ideal customer.
• The Decision Making Unit mapped per account, including personas, pain points and ambitions.
• A Business Development Team in which sales and marketing work towards the same goal.
• Brand awareness among your target accounts and a benchmark for further campaigns.
• A complete campaign plan for approaching, following up and converting prospects into Sales Qualified Leads.

In nearly all campaigns run with the Sqrl method, the first real sales qualified leads come in within three months. But perhaps more important than the deliverables is the shift in how you work. ABM is not a one-off project. It is a flywheel: once it is running for one market, the same method can be applied to the next. That turns it into a structural growth engine rather than a campaign with an end date.

If you want to keep on learning about ABM, visit our central page.