How To Implement an Account Targeting Strategy for ABM Success
What is an account targeting strategy?
An Account Targeting Strategy is a focused B2B marketing and sales approach where your marketing efforts are centered on identifying, prioritizing, and engaging a defined list of high-value companies (or target accounts) that are most likely to convert into customers.
This model completely reverses the traditional funnel. Rather than starting with individuals or broad audiences and working your way up, you begin by identifying the right companies first, then zero in on the key decision-makers within those accounts.
The primary goal of an account targeting strategy is to drive pipeline and revenue more efficiently by focusing your resources where they’ll have the highest return.
Here’s a practical example:
Let’s say you sell cybersecurity software for enterprise companies. Instead of marketing to thousands of random companies, you narrow down a list of 200 financial services firms with over 500 employees.
You further filter the list by:
- Companies showing online intent for “zero trust security” or “data breach prevention”
- Ones already using tools you integrate with (like Okta or Splunk)
- Those that recently hired CISOs or are expanding IT teams
Now, instead of sending generic marketing emails, you:
- Launch personalized ads referencing recent industry regulations (e.g., “How XYZ Bank can prepare for new SEC cybersecurity rules”).
- Send targeted LinkedIn messages from your sales team referencing that company’s challenges
- Invite their CISO to a virtual roundtable on risk mitigation in financial tech
This highly personalized, account-specific approach ensures your time, budget, and content are aligned with key accounts that are actually worth pursuing.
Related → Why Your ABM Is Only as Good as Your Target Account List
What’s the difference between account targeting strategy and account-based marketing (ABM)?
Account targeting strategy
This is the process of identifying which accounts you want to go after. It’s a strategy that focuses on selection and prioritization, i.e., figuring out which companies are the best fit for your solution, based on factors like revenue potential, industry, buying signals, and alignment with your ICP.
It’s like building a guest list for a private event and you’re curating the right attendees.
Account-based marketing (ABM)
Once the right accounts are selected through targeting, ABM takes over. ABM is the broader, ongoing marketing and sales strategy that uses personalized, multi-channel campaigns to engage, nurture, and convert those target accounts.
ABM includes content creation, sales alignment, campaign orchestration, measurement, and revenue attribution—all tailored to each account or segment.
So in summary:
- Account Targeting Strategy = Who you’re going after.
- ABM = How you engage them.
You can’t run effective ABM without a solid account targeting strategy. But targeting alone won’t move the needle unless it’s followed by well-executed, personalized ABM campaigns.
Related → The 40 Best Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Solutions for 2025 (Based on Real User Reviews)
What is target account selling?
Target Account Selling (TAS) is a structured and strategic B2B sales methodology where your sales team focuses its energy, time, and resources on a carefully selected list of high-value, high-potential customer accounts.
It’s built on the idea that not all leads are equal. So instead of chasing volume, TAS prioritizes quality engagement with high-value accounts that are most likely to convert, renew, and expand over time.
The goal is to deeply understand the decision-makers within each target account, their business pain points, and tailor your interactions accordingly to build a long-term relationship with them.
Key characteristics of target account selling
- Selective Account Focus. TAS starts with a curated list of high-priority accounts based on revenue potential, industry fit, or strategic value.
- Deep Account Research. Reps use detailed data (company structure, challenges, recent news, org charts) to understand each account’s environment before initiating outreach.
- Multi-Stakeholder Mapping. TAS emphasizes mapping out the buying committee (decision-makers, influencers, gatekeepers) and tailoring communication to each person’s priorities.
- Personalized Sales Approach. Messaging is specific to each account’s goals and pain points, often referencing their company initiatives, recent changes, or industry trends.
- Team-Based Collaboration. TAS is not a solo sales effort. It also involves close coordination between sales reps, SDRs, marketers, and even customer success teams to present a unified front.
- Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel Execution. Sellers use a combination of emails, calls, social media (e.g., LinkedIn DMs), events, and personalized content to engage the account from different angles over time.
- Longer Sales Cycle Management. TAS acknowledges and prepares for extended sales cycles common in enterprise deals. The process is more consultative, structured, and strategic.
- Pipeline Predictability. Because it’s highly targeted and repeatable, TAS often results in a more predictable, measurable pipeline, with fewer deals, but higher win rates and larger deal sizes.
Here’s an example:
Imagine you sell a compliance software solution to healthcare companies. Instead of chasing thousands of hospitals, your team selects 50 large healthcare networks where your solution could make the biggest impact.
With TAS, you:
- Research each hospital group’s compliance risks and regulatory needs.
- Identify key roles like Chief Compliance Officers, IT Directors, and Procurement Heads.
- Customize outreach for each role, highlighting ROI for executives, ease of deployment for IT, and risk reduction for compliance leaders.
- Engage over time through a mix of email sequences, webinars, LinkedIn connections, and personalized demos.
- Collaborate internally to move the deal forward—with marketing feeding valuable insights and content, while sales closes in with tailored proposals.
TAS is a high-effort, high-reward approach. Meaning, it goes ‘deep’ using insights, coordination, and personalization to win over complex accounts that matter most.
While it takes more upfront work than traditional selling, it often leads to larger deal sizes, better account fit, and stronger long-term customer relationships.
Why is an account targeting strategy necessary for successful ABM?
Enables better personalization across channels
The quality of personalization in your ABM strategy depends on how well you know your audience. When you’ve already done the work of researching and segmenting your target accounts, you can create tailored content, messaging, and touchpoints that speak directly to their pain points, specific needs, and industry challenges.
Example: Say you’re a cybersecurity vendor targeting fintech companies, you can create custom reports, landing pages, and case studies that reference industry-specific threats and regulations.
Aligns sales and marketing around the same accounts
ABM only works when sales and marketing move together. An account targeting strategy ensures both teams are working from a shared, prioritized list of accounts, avoiding wasted effort or misaligned messaging.
Sales knows who marketing is engaging. The marketing team also knows who sales is chasing. That mutual focus builds consistency and efficiency.
Example: Instead of marketing running ads for one set of accounts and sales calling another, both teams focus on the same 200 companies. This drives up deal velocity and engagement rates.
Related → Enterprise ABM Strategy: Modern Best Practices for Targeting High-Value Accounts
Provides a clear framework for measuring ABM success
When you know who you’re targeting from the start, it becomes easier to measure what success looks like. You can track account-level engagement, pipeline contribution, deal acceleration, and revenue—all tied back to your predefined list.
Example: Instead of measuring random metrics like website traffic, you can now answer: “How many of our Tier 1 accounts visited the product page last month? How many booked a demo?”
Lays the foundation for scalable ABM programs
You can’t scale chaos. A defined targeting strategy gives you a repeatable process for selecting accounts, running plays, and optimizing outreach. As your business grows, you can add new verticals, segments, or geographies to optimize your outreach and scale with precision.
Example: Once you have a framework that works for fintech accounts in the U.S., you can replicate it for EU markets or expand into healthcare with the same approach.
Related → How to Measure Account-Based Marketing (+ABM Metrics)
How to implement an account targeting strategy (best practices)
Get internal alignment from the start
Account targeting is less of a “marketing strategy” and more of a company-wide go-to-market (GTM) motion.
Without early alignment across sales, marketing, product, and customer success, even the best targeting strategy will collapse under conflicting priorities and disconnected execution.
To do this, start by bringing all stakeholders into a planning session to define
- why you’re targeting specific accounts,
- how success will be measured, and
- what each function is responsible for.
For example, if the GTM motion is “land and expand”; into a fintech enterprise, product must ensure roadmap readiness, CS must build expansion playbooks, sales must focus on multi-threading, and marketing should craft messaging that reinforces long-term partnership value.
Best Practice: Establish Revenue-Based SLAs Across Teams
Tie each team’s performance to revenue outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
For instance, don’t evaluate marketing on MQLs or campaign engagement. Instead, the focus should be on pipeline contribution from target accounts.
And the same goes for sales. Rather than tracking calls made, track the progression rates of targeted accounts through each funnel stage.
Also structure these SLAs with progressive accountability:
- Month 1 focuses on activity metrics to ensure execution.
- Month 2-3 shifts to engagement and progression metrics across the sales funnel (ensuring early traction translates into pipeline movement).
- Month 4+ becomes purely revenue-focused.
This gives teams time to build momentum while maintaining accountability.
Define and validate your ideal customer profile (ICP)
The ICP represents the types of companies most likely to become high-value customers. Here you’ll want to layer in a mix of multiple data points to paint a vivid picture of what your target audience looks like:
This includes something like:
- Firmographics: Industry, company size, revenue, HQ location
- Technographics: Tools and platforms they currently use
- Behavioral signals: Buying signals, engagement history, product usage patterns
- Business characteristics: Growth rate, funding rounds, regulatory landscape
- Challenges & pain points: Specific problems your product solves for them (Why did they buy? What pain points did they have?)
For example, say you’re a B2B cybersecurity platform. You might discover that your best customers are North American fintech companies with 200–1000 employees, SOC 2 compliance needs, and an internal IT team of 5+.
Best Practice: Conduct Win/Loss Analysis with Revenue Weighting
Analyze your closed-won and closed-lost deals from the past 18 months, but weight the analysis by deal size and customer lifetime value.
- Start by segmenting your analysis: high-value wins, low-value wins, high-value losses, and low-value losses.
- Interview key stakeholders from each segment (including existing customers) to understand the underlying factors that drove their decisions.
Let’s say 70% of your deals come from small companies, but 70% of your revenue comes from enterprise accounts, your ICP should skew toward enterprise characteristics, even if they represent fewer total customers.
Build your target account list, then segment it
Once your ICP is set, identify potential accounts that match it using tools like Demandbase, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or your CRM. You can filter by revenue, location, demographics, industry, and technology usage to generate a curated list of companies that fit your criteria.
Next is to segment your list into tiers:
- Tier 1 (High Priority): 1:1 marketing approach. High revenue potential, strategic value, buying intent.
- Tier 2 (Mid Priority): 1:Few approach. Still a strong ICP-fit but with moderate intent or strategic fit.
- Tier 3 (Low Priority): 1:Many approach. Lower revenue potential, but still within ICP.
Best Practice: Layer Multiple Data Sources for Account Intelligence
Don’t rely on a single tool or data source when building your target account list.
Combine first-party data from your CRM with third-party intelligence from platforms like Demandbase to create a comprehensive view of each account. Next, cross-reference technographic, firmographic, and intent data to ensure accuracy.
This multi-layered approach helps you catch accounts that might be missed by relying on just one source and reduces the risk of targeting companies that appear to fit your ICP on paper but lack genuine buying potential.
Related → The Undeniable Impact of Account Tiering for a Modern ABM Strategy
Map key decision-makers and buying committees
Most B2B deals involve a complex sales process where you have anywhere from 6 to 10 stakeholders required to make a decision. This is why mapping the buying committee helps you de-risk deals, multi-thread early, and tailor messaging to each person’s priority.
Here’s an example of a committee to map:
- Champion: The internal advocate who pushes for your solution.
- Economic buyer: The one who signs the check (CFO, VP-level).
- Technical evaluator: Ensures compatibility and feasibility (IT, engineering).
- End user: The day-to-day user whose buy-in is critical.
- Blocker: Someone who may resist due to budget, risk, or change aversion (e.g., legal, compliance).
In addition, for each account, you need to identify what matters to them. For example,
- A CISO wants risk reduction and compliance.
- A Head of Ops wants a good customer experience and to save cost.
- A Product Manager wants feature alignment and flexibility.
The aim is to make each person feel seen and understood, with messaging crafted around their unique needs in the buying journey.
Best Practice: Develop Stakeholder Influence Mapping
Create detailed influence maps that show who the decision-makers are, how they influence each other, and what their internal relationships look like.
You can use LinkedIn to understand how committee members are connected, who they’ve worked with before, and what their professional backgrounds suggest about their priorities.
A CFO who came from a consulting background might be more process-oriented, while one with an operations background might prioritize efficiency gains.
This intelligence allows you to sequence your outreach strategically. In some instances, you might need to convince the technical evaluator before approaching the economic buyer.
Related → How To Engage Buying Committee Decision-Makers Through Account-Based Marketing
Craft messaging that matches context and persona
Generic messaging that talks about “saving time and money” won’t cut it. You need messaging that reflects the context of each segment or vertical, and the role of the person you’re talking to.
For instance, a compliance officer at a fintech firm might care about audit trails and data privacy, while a digital transformation lead at a retail company wants speed and scalability. You need to evaluate both angles.
Best Practice: Build Messaging Matrices Across Vertical + Buyer Persona
For every vertical-buyer persona combination, map out: pain point → value proposition → proof point → CTA.
This matrix becomes the template for landing pages, email sequences, and ad copy. It also aligns sales and marketing with a shared source of truth.
Also, before you roll out messaging at scale, test variations using paid channels.
You can run A/B tests across segments (e.g., “Reduce SOC 2 audit prep time” vs. “Accelerate compliance workflows”) to determine which angles drive higher engagement.
Use results to refine marketing tactics, adjust messaging, and align better with what your target accounts respond to.
Related → ABM Content Strategy: Top 3 Mistakes Marketers Make and How to Fix Them
Launch coordinated, multi-channel campaigns
Now that you have the accounts and contacts, build coordinated engagement programs that reach them across multiple channels. The goal is to stay visible, valuable, and relevant throughout the buying journey.
For example, you can run coordinated plays across different channels in two weeks:
- Advertising: IP-based ads, LinkedIn sponsored content, retargeting
- Email: Personalized outreach or nurture sequences
- Sales touchpoints: Cold calls, LinkedIn InMail, direct mail
- Web: Personalize landing pages or CTAs by account
| Day | Touchpoint | Message Type |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Email 1 | Personalized intro + value hook |
| Day 3 | LinkedIn connect + note | Social proof or content |
| Day 5 | Email 2 | Use case or competitor comparison |
| Day 7 | Phone call | Voicemail referencing recent ad or page |
| Day 10 | Video message | Personalized pitch |
| Day 14 | Email 3 | Case study or urgency CTA |
The key is to ensure every touchpoint is connected and consistent to deliver a unified story regardless of where the buyer interacts with your brand.
Best Practice: Provide Sales Enablement Essentials
- Provide battle cards, account intel, and recent engagement logs.
- Align SDR talk tracks with marketing campaigns and ad themes.
- Use calendaring tools or priority alerts to act fast on surging accounts.
Related → What is B2B Display Advertising in ABM? | Demandbase
Score, prioritize, and route engaged accounts
Once campaigns are live, not all engaged accounts will be ready to talk, and not all engagement indicates genuine buying intent. This is where scoring and prioritization come in.
Using fit + intent data + timing, you can build a scoring model to identify which accounts are heating up.
Fit vs. Intent vs. Timing
- Fit = Are they the right kind of account?
- This is your ICP: industry, size, tech stack, use case fit.
Even if there’s interest, poor-fit accounts often churn early or delay implementation.
- Intent = Are they showing interest now?
- This is measured by behavioral signals (on your site or third-party).
High-intent accounts are researching your category, viewing competitor content, or engaging with your brand.
- Timing = Are they ready to act now?
- Just because an account is a good fit and has shown interest doesn’t mean the timing is right.
Indicators like recent funding, job changes (new decision-maker), or an active RFP can point to the right window.
In terms of scoring, assign numerical weights to firmographic and behavioral traits.
Here’s an example:
- +10 for revenue $100M+
- +5 for using Salesforce
- +15 for viewing your pricing page
- -10 for poor historical conversion rate in that industry
When you align all, you have a high-probability opportunity that sales should prioritize immediately.
For example, if a Tier 2 account starts visiting your product pages, downloads a case study, and the decision-maker opens three emails, add up the points they’ve accrued to decide if it’s worth pursuing or not.
Best Practice: Set up an Integrated Data Flow System
- CRM should be your single source of truth, syncing with MAP, ABM, and enrichment tools.
- Intent signals should push into the CRM and MAP to trigger scoring and outreach.
- ABM platforms should write engagement data back to CRM (e.g., “Account X clicked ad, visited landing page, and downloaded whitepaper”).
For example, a Tier 1 account visits a landing page → Bombora flags new intent on “data governance” → Demandbase updates account score → HubSpot triggers a nurture → Drift routes the next visit to a live SDR → SDR sends a personalized case study and books a call.
Review, analyze, and refine continuously
As your campaigns run, some accounts will convert, others won’t. There’s also the possibility that your market will shift and the product will evolve. In all of these, you need to continuously adapt.
Here’s what to do:
Run quarterly reviews to understand,
- Which accounts progressed through the funnel?
- Which content or tactics worked best?
- Are there new accounts to add or remove?
You might discover, for instance, that one vertical is generating meetings but not converting to revenue. Or that a new industry you hadn’t considered is performing better than expected. Use this data to refine your account list, adjust messaging, and reallocate budget or effort where it drives the most impact.
Also track real engagement and pipeline using metrics such as:
- Account engagement rate
- Meetings booked per segment
- Pipeline generated per tier
- Win rate, deal velocity, and ACV
Best Practice: Establish Cohort Analysis for Account Performance
Analyze your account targeting performance by cohorts based on;
- when accounts entered your target list,
- which campaigns they were exposed to, and
- what characteristics they shared.
This approach reveals patterns that aggregate analysis might miss.
For example, you might discover that accounts added to your target list in Q1 have a 40% higher conversion rate than those added in Q3, suggesting seasonal factors in your market.
Or you might find that accounts exposed to your new messaging framework convert 25% faster than those who received the old messaging.
Related → How to Measure Account-Based Marketing (+ABM Metrics)
How to measure the success of your account targeting strategy
Account engagement metrics
These are leading indicators of interest. They help you assess whether your target accounts are interacting with your brand meaningfully.
Key Metrics to Track:
- Account coverage: Number of contacts engaged within each target account
- Content engagement: Downloads, video views, webinar signups, etc.
- Web engagement: Unique visits from target accounts, time on site, bounce rates
- Email/Ad engagement: Open rates, click-through rates, ad impressions/clicks per account
Marketing qualified accounts (MQAs)
This is the ABM version of MQLs. An MQA is an account (not just a contact) that meets your predefined engagement and fit criteria, indicating it’s ready for sales outreach.
Key Metrics to Track:
- Number of MQAs generated monthly/quarterly
- % of target account list converting to MQAs
- Average time to MQA status after initial targeting
Pipeline contribution and velocity
This reflects how well your targeting strategy turns engagement into actual sales opportunities.
Key Metrics to Track:
- # of new opportunities sourced from target accounts
- Pipeline value from target accounts ($ value of active opportunities)
- Sales cycle length (time from MQA → Opportunity → Close)
- Conversion rates (MQA to Opportunity, Opportunity to Deal)
If your account targeting is precise, it should result in higher-quality opportunities and shorter sales cycles, especially for Tier 1 accounts.
Win rate and deal size from target accounts
This is your ROI moment. A good targeting strategy should improve win rate and increase average deal value because you’re selling to accounts that fit your product and are more likely to expand.
Key Metrics to Track:
- Win rate: % of target accounts that became closed-won deals
- Average deal size/ ACV: Higher deal size from Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts
- Close rate vs. Non-target accounts: Comparative performance between accounts you targeted vs. those you didn’t.
Related → How to Use Advertising Performance Metrics to Elevate Your Account-Based Strategy
Account penetration and expansion
Once you’ve landed a deal, how well are you growing within that account?
Key Metrics to Track:
- Number of contacts added over time
- Cross-sell/upsell revenue
- Number of business units touched
- Engagement post-sale (customer webinars, support content, CSM check-ins)
This is the part where Demandbase does its thing
Demandbase identifies your ideal accounts, reveals intent signals when prospects are actively researching solutions like yours, and orchestrates personalized campaigns across every channel.
Here’s what that looks like:
- Real-Time Intent Signal Detection. Demandbase constantly monitors your target accounts across the web, surfacing buying signals before your competitors even know there’s a deal in motion.
- Account Prioritization That’s Actually Smart. Demandbase uses predictive analytics to score and prioritize your TAL, helping you engage the right accounts at the right time.. This way, sales knows who’s hot, and marketing knows who to nurture next.
- Personalization at the Account Level. Show each account a different message, offer, or experience (on your website, in your ads, and across your content) without writing 300 custom campaigns. Demandbase automates everything, so your team can focus on strategy.
- Full-Funnel Visibility with Account-Based Analytics Tools. Measure what matters: engagement by account, pipeline velocity, opportunity creation, and revenue influence. Demandbase connects every touchpoint to outcomes.
- Sales and Marketing, Finally on the Same Page. With shared insights, signal alerts, and engagement dashboards, Demandbase aligns both teams around a unified go-to-market motion.
- Plug-and-Play Integration with Your Stack. Whether you’re using Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, or Outreach, Demandbase fits right in and streamlines your workflows, making your current stack smarter.
“With Demandbase, we effectively transformed advertising spend into qualified opportunities. Through precision targeting and actionable insights, we’ve strengthened cross-functional alignment, accelerated pipeline growth, and delivered measurable impact in the areas that matter most.”
Growth Marketing Manager at League
Read Case Study → How League increased meeting bookings by 41% using Demandbase
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