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Enterprise ABM Strategy: Modern Best Practices for Targeting High-Value Accounts

Learn how to implement enterprise ABM effectively with our comprehensive guide to account-based marketing strategy, challenges, and best practices for targeting high-value accounts.

February 1, 2025 | 16 minute read


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Jonathan Costello
Senior Content Strategist, Demandbase

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What is Enterprise Account-Based Marketing?

Enterprise Account-Based Marketing (ABM) represents a strategic approach where marketing and sales resources are concentrated on a select group of high-value enterprise accounts, treating each one as its own distinct market.

Unlike traditional marketing methods that use a broader approach, enterprise ABM zeroes in on the unique needs, challenges, and goals of specific organizations—typically large enterprises with complex buying structures.

How Enterprise ABM Works

Consider a technology solutions provider targeting Fortune 500 financial institutions.

Rather than running broad campaigns about their cloud security solutions, they might:

  • Select specific key accounts (e.g., Goldman Sachs), identifying key decision-makers across IT security, compliance, and operations departments.
  • Create create highly targeted ABM campaigns addressing Goldman’s unique challenges, such as:
    • Their specific regulatory compliance requirements
    • Their existing technology infrastructure
    • Their global operational footprint
  • Orchestrate personalized outreach that might include:
    • Custom research reports analyzing their current security posture
    • Executive roundtables featuring industry peers
    • Tailored ROI calculators using their actual operational data

Growth ABM vs. Enterprise ABM Programs

Growth ABM programs are designed to drive scalable revenue expansion across a broader set of mid-market accounts. These programs typically balance personalization with efficiency.

They do this by using technology and automation to create semi-customized experiences that can be deployed across dozens or hundreds of target individual accounts all at the same time.

Meanwhile, enterprise ABM presents highly customized marketing tactics focused on landing and expanding within the largest potential accounts.

Example → In growth ABM, a SaaS company may send generic intent-based messaging to 50 mid-market companies showing interest in marketing automation tools.

In contrast, for enterprise ABM, they’d craft a unique, full-funnel strategy targeting a single Fortune 500 company with highly specific pain points and goals.

For better understanding, here’s a table that depicts what falls under growth and enterprise ABM.

Recommended → 🎙️Forging the Future of GTM: Enterprise vs. Growth ABM — with Davis Potter, CEO Forge X

Unique Challenges of Enterprise ABM

Account Complexity and Hierarchy

Enterprise accounts aren’t just bigger – they’re also more complex. When targeting these companies, you’re not dealing with a single decision-making unit, but rather a web of interconnected business divisions, each with its own P&L, priorities, and purchasing processes.

Let’s say you’re targeting a global manufacturing firm. To fully land the deal, you might have to engage the VP of Operations in North America, procurement officers in Europe, and IT heads in Asia, each requiring customized approaches to address regional and functional concerns.

This puts you in a tough spot because your messaging must now do two things;

  • address enterprise-wide strategic initiatives, and
  • speak to the specific pain points of individual divisions.

Without an account intelligence framework that can map and monitor these interdependencies, even well-crafted campaigns risk missing key stakeholders.

Data Integration

When targeting enterprise accounts, you’re often dealing with siloed data sources that paint incomplete pictures of account engagement.

You might have:

  • CRM data showing only partial opportunity history across business units
  • Intent signals missing internal buying group dynamics
  • Web analytics failing to connect anonymous enterprise traffic to specific divisions

The critical pain point is that this fragmentation directly impacts your ability to identify and act on real buying signals.

For example, if JP Morgan shows interest in your solution, how do you know/identify if you’re seeing genuine demand from a key business unit, or just routine research from a non-influential team?

It gets worse if the enterprise IP addresses mask specific department activity or different regions use varying technology stacks.

Identifying and Engaging Decision-Makers

Traditional org charts are often misleading. The titled decision-maker isn’t always the real decision-maker, and formal authority frequently differs from actual influence.

Consider a major enterprise software purchase:

  • The CIO may hold budget authority
  • But an SVP of Digital Transformation drives the strategic vision
  • While a Director of Architecture has technical veto power
  • And Regional IT heads can block implementation

The problem is that these power dynamics are fluid and often invisible from the outside.

Plus, you also need to identify and engage the hidden influencers – those without obvious decision-making authority who can either champion or silently kill your proposal. These might be technical architects, business analysts, or operations leaders whose buy-in is crucial for actual implementation.

Scalable Personalization

The traditional definition of ‘scalable personalization’ is simply swapping out company names and industry terms.

With enterprise ABM, this isn’t far off, but with extra steps. The only difference is — here, you’re tasked with delivering relevant insights at both the enterprise and business unit level while maintaining consistency across hundreds of touchpoints.

To get practical and explain this complexity, let’s imagine targeting Microsoft’s cloud division. To do this, you’d need content that:

  • Addresses enterprise-wide cloud strategy
  • Speaks to Azure-specific technical challenges
  • Reflects their competitive position against AWS and Google

The real challenges here are:

  • Developing insights relevant to specific business units without losing enterprise context
  • Balancing automated personalization with authentic customization

Cross-Functional Collaboration

The reality is that marketing can’t execute in isolation. Success relies on seamless interaction across teams that often have conflicting priorities and different success metrics.

For example:

  • With sales — different compensation models drive competing behaviors
  • With product — roadmap priorities don’t align with account-specific needs (e.g., custom feature requests).
  • With customer success — account health metrics conflict with new sales priorities

With everyone having their own approach, enterprise ABM becomes a series of disconnected tactics rather than a unified account strategy.

Long Sales Cycles and Nurturing

Enterprise ABM faces a timeline tension — and this is maintaining momentum across 18-24 month sales cycles while stakeholders change, priorities shift, and budgets get reallocated.

Patience alone won’t cut this. It’s more on strategic nurturing that keeps your solution relevant as the account goes through different phases.

Say you’re nine months into engaging Citibank’s treasury division when:

  • Your executive sponsor moves to another division
  • Q4 budget gets reallocated to regulatory compliance
  • A new CTO starts questioning existing technology choices

Approaching any of these without proper knowledge is a dicey situation because you have to maintain relevance without appearing desperate. In some situations, you might even have to re-educate new stakeholders to keep the engagement going.

Measuring Impact Across the Account

Traditional marketing metrics fail in enterprise ABM because they miss the complexity of account-wide impact.

Consider a scenario with a Healthcare company, where:

  • Marketing engages their AI division
  • But the sale starts in radiology
  • While real growth potential is in cardiology
  • And the ultimate decision comes from enterprise IT
  • Yet implementation begins in Asia-Pacific

This complex web of interactions and influence extends far beyond simple attribution.

When impact manifests differently across regions and value creation spans multiple opportunities, traditional ROI models fail to capture the true depth of account relationships and long-term value potential.

Related → How to ABM Like a Boss (Part 6): Measure with Account-Based Marketing Metrics

12 Best Practices for Enterprise ABM Implementation

1. Analyze Revenue Sources

ABM success begins with understanding that your ‘potential revenue’ goes beyond basic pipeline analysis.

Rather than just looking at top-line numbers, you need to look at revenue patterns across your enterprise accounts to uncover hidden growth opportunities and potential risks. You can start by mapping revenue distribution across business units, product lines, and geographical regions.

For instance, you might discover that while your largest enterprise account shows strong numbers in North American operations, you’re barely penetrating their EMEA divisions, indicating significant untapped potential.

The key is connecting revenue analysis to account strategy. If you notice that accounts with strong adoption in one division tend to expand to specific other divisions within 18 months, this pattern should inform your account planning and resource allocation.

DB Nuggets → Create a “Revenue Opportunity Matrix” for each major account that maps:

  • Current revenue against total addressable spend by business unit
  • Historical expansion patterns of similar accounts
  • Product adoption sequences that led to the highest account penetration

2. Understand the Enterprise Ecosystem and Your Target Accounts

Similar to what we discussed earlier, the enterprise ecosystem goes beyond the obvious org chart. You need to thoroughly understand the series of initiatives, and power dynamics that drive account behavior.

Let’s say you want to analyze a company like Adobe. You should know that understanding their martech isn’t enough — you need to know;

  • How their technology decisions flow across divisions,
  • Which systems are considered strategic versus tactical, and
  • Where your solution fits in — in terms of long-term growth.

All of these strengthen your ability to build sustainable customer relationships across business units.

Next, get familiar with their internal influence networks. In this case, using the engagement data from Demandbase, you can identify:

  • Which business units consistently lead innovation initiatives
  • Where technical evaluations typically originate
  • Which departments have the strongest track record of driving enterprise-wide adoption
  • How budget decisions flow through the organization

With this data, you can easily correlate multiple data sources to strengthen your strategy.

For example, if Demandbase shows increased research activity around specific topics from multiple business units, overlaid with engagement data from key stakeholders, you can identify emerging opportunities before they become formal initiatives.

Explore Demandbase Account Intelligence →

3. Prioritize Data Integration and Hygiene

Consider this scenario: Your technology company targets IBM. Marketing sees growing interest in your AI solutions from their cloud division. Meanwhile, your sales team is actively engaged with their consulting arm, and customer success is managing expansion within their research division.

Without integrated data, you’re not running three coordinated plays – you’re running three separate, potentially conflicting campaigns.

To address this, implement a unified data management system that consolidates inputs from all relevant channels. This ensures that your teams operate from a single source of truth when crafting account-specific strategies.

Beyond integration, data hygiene practices are equally essential. Regularly validate, clean, and standardize your datasets to remove redundancies, correct inaccuracies, and fill in gaps.

4. Develop a Multi-Tiered Targeting Strategy

A multi-tiered targeting strategy enables you to balance focus and scalability by categorizing accounts based on their value and alignment with your business objectives.

For large enterprises, this approach ensures that resources are allocated where they’re most effective while still addressing a diverse range of account types.

Start by segmenting your target accounts into tiers. For example:

  • Tier 1: Strategic accounts that warrant full customization and high-touch engagement.
  • Tier 2: High-potential accounts that receive semi-personalized strategies with scalable elements (e.g., industry-specific webinars or shared case studies)
  • Tier 3: Emerging accounts targeted through broader, programmatic ABM tactics.

This tiered approach enables you to maximize impact without spreading your resources too thin. Tailoring your strategy at the tier level ensures you’re addressing their unique needs effectively.

DB Nuggets → Use predictive analytics to dynamically reassign accounts between tiers based on changes in their behavior or potential value. Regularly review tier assignments to ensure your marketing efforts are aligned with the most promising opportunities.

5. Cultivate Executive Relationships

Engaging high-level decision-makers, such as CEOs, CFOs, or VPs, requires a thoughtful approach that goes beyond typical ‘let’s pick a time and discuss’. 

Your goal isn’t to just get a meeting — it’s to become a trusted advisor who shapes how executives think about their business challenges.

For example, instead of pitching your cloud security solution to a bank’s CIO, share proprietary research on how leading banks are approaching zero-trust architecture in multi-cloud environments. This positions you as a strategic resource rather than just another vendor.

Remember that executive attention is your scarcest resource. Every interaction needs to deliver clear strategic value. A 30-minute executive briefing should provide insights they can’t get elsewhere, not updates they could get from their team.

6. Segment Target Accounts

Begin by analyzing key dimensions, such as organizational maturity, revenue potential, geographical presence, and decision-making structures.

For example, segmenting accounts based on their readiness to adopt your solution (e.g., early adopters versus risk-averse organizations) enables you to tailor your approach accordingly.

Within each segment, identify common pain points and priorities. In this case, multinational conglomerates might prioritize solutions that ensure global compliance, while regional enterprises may focus on scalability within their specific markets.

This level of segmentation allows you to craft precise value propositions and engagement tactics that resonate with the unique needs of each group.

In practice, your segmentation strategy should also be dynamic, evolving as market conditions and account behaviors shift.

DB Nuggets → Combine qualitative insights (like stakeholder interviews) with quantitative data (from CRM or analytics platforms) to build robust, multi-dimensional account segments.

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7. Leverage Intent Data

For enterprise ABM, leverage intent data at both macro and micro levels.

  • At the macro level, analyze trends across your account list to identify common pain points or opportunities within specific industries or regions.
    • For example, if a cluster of accounts is researching “cloud migration,” you can create industry-specific campaigns focused on that topic.
  • At the micro level, monitor account-specific behaviors to tailor your outreach.
    • If a high-value account is researching ‘compliance automation’ while engaging with your LinkedIn content, use these insights to craft personalized messages addressing their compliance challenges.

Integrate this intent data with your CRM and digital marketing platforms to trigger timely actions, such as deploying personalized ads, sending account-specific emails, or notifying sales teams about warm leads.

DB Nuggets → Combine third-party intent data (e.g., Demandbase) with first-party data (e.g., website analytics) for a more comprehensive view.

Try Our Free Website Tracking Tool →

8. Create Hyper-Personalized Content and Campaigns

To do this, start by leveraging account-specific data, such as industry trends, organizational pain points, and individual preferences, to inform your messaging.

For example, if targeting a healthcare organization, highlight how your solution addresses regulatory compliance and improves patient outcomes. Use customized case studies, account-specific landing pages, and tailored videos to create a sense of exclusivity.

Additionally, align your content marketing approaches with the decision-making journey of different stakeholders within the account. A CTO might prefer technical whitepapers and ROI calculators, while a procurement manager values budget-centric proposals.

DB Nuggets → Use dynamic content tools to automate personalization at scale. These platforms can adjust email subject lines, landing page content, or ad creatives based on account data, ensuring every interaction feels personal without overburdening your team.

9. Orchestrate Cross-Functional Collaboration

Create clear protocols for how teams share account intelligence:

  • Marketing shares engagement patterns and intent signals that help sales time their outreach.
  • Sales provides account context and relationship insights that help marketing personalize campaigns.
  • Product teams share roadmap details that inform account messaging.
  • Customer success provides implementation insights that shape solution positioning.

This collaboration ensures alignment between sales, marketing, and product teams to build a unified go-to-market strategy.

10. Evaluate Engagement Levels (Continuously)

This involves analyzing how stakeholders interact with your content across social media, newsletters, webinar and other channels —  and using these insights to refine strategies in real time.

You can begin by establishing clear engagement metrics that reflect account progress, such as content downloads, event participation, email response rates, and website activity.

Next, segment these metrics by stakeholder roles to understand which parts of the account are actively engaged and which require additional focus.

Note → Understand that context determines meaning especially when you’re dealing with complex signals across enterprise accounts.

Think about engagement at a company like PwC. High content engagement from their consulting practice might indicate a potential service offering development, while similar patterns from their IT team could signal an internal transformation initiative.

Regularly share these engagement insights across teams so you can capitalize on opportunities to deepen relationships within the account.

11. Measure Impact Across the Enterprise

Unlike traditional campaigns, enterprise ABM involves multiple stakeholders, touchpoints, and objectives, making it essential to use a comprehensive approach to measurement.

One pro tip is defining KPIs that align with both short-term and long-term goals. These might include:

  • Pipeline Metrics. Revenue influenced, deal velocity, and conversion rates.
  • Engagement Metrics. Content consumption, meeting participation, and cross-department interactions.
  • Account Health Indicators. Stakeholder satisfaction scores and product usage statistics for existing accounts.

For better results, use your preferred attribution model to connect marketing and sales activities to outcomes. Multi-touch attribution, for instance, can help identify which touchpoints played a significant role in moving accounts through the pipeline.

Combine these insights with qualitative feedback from sales teams to paint a complete picture of your impact.

DB Nuggets → Consider non-traditional metrics like SEO performance within targeted accounts to gauge the impact of your digital presence.

12. Continuously Optimize and Iterate on Your Strategy

Think of optimization as constant recalibration. Say your target account accelerates their cloud migration timeline, shifts their marketing strategy, or reorganizes their technology division, your strategy needs to adapt swiftly and purposefully.

This could be quarterly review cycles for your ABM initiatives. During these reviews, analyze performance data, including engagement metrics, conversion rates, and ROI, to identify areas of strength and those needing improvement.

Another thing to consider is experimentation. Test new content formats, messaging strategies, or engagement channels to uncover untapped opportunities.

For example, if webinars are underperforming, consider shifting to shorter, high-impact videos or interactive experiences tailored to specific accounts.

eBook →The Hidden Costs of Doing Nothing: Why B2B Enterprises Need an ABM Platform 

Elevate Your Enterprise ABM Strategy with Demandbase

Enterprise ABM has evolved far beyond simply targeting a list of accounts. Today’s buyers expect more – much more.

They want personalized experiences at every touchpoint, relevant content that speaks to their specific challenges, and engagement that feels natural, not forced.

This is where most ABM platforms fall short, leaving you to piece together multiple solutions and hope they work together.

Demandbase transforms how enterprise ABM works by giving you everything you need in one unified platform:

  • True Account Intelligence. Know exactly which accounts are ready to buy with AI-powered intent signals that predict real buying behavior.
  • Seamless Orchestration. Deliver consistent messages across every channel – from advertising to web to sales outreach.
  • Enterprise-Ready Scale. Handle complex global accounts and multiple business units without missing a beat.
  • Predictable ROI. Track impact from first touch to closed deal with crystal-clear attribution.

Your marketing team gets the tools they need to execute sophisticated programs, your sales team knows exactly when and how to engage, and your leadership gets the clear ROI metrics they demand.

Ready to see what modern enterprise ABM looks like?

 

Join Leading Enterprise Teams → Try Demandbase


Jonathan Costello Headshot

Jonathan Costello
Senior Content Strategist, Demandbase