Short answer
An account-based marketing strategy is a plan for winning a named list of high-value accounts, with sales and marketing working as one team. To build one, set a revenue goal, score accounts on fit, timing, relationships and value, and tier them one-to-one, one-to-few and one-to-many. Map each buying group, write plays for each tier, agree who does what, and measure pipeline per account against a holdout group.
- Score accounts on fit, timing, relationship and value, and let the score decide the tier.
- Map the whole buying group: Ebsta counted eight stakeholders on an average new business deal.
- Platform limits shape tiers: a LinkedIn company list needs at least 300 rows, so a tier of 10 can't be targeted alone.
- Hold out a random 20% of one-to-many accounts to prove ABM adds pipeline.
- Spend the first 90 days on setup and early signals; judge revenue after two quarters.
On this page
This guide is for B2B marketers, sales leaders and founders who have decided a named list of accounts matters more than lead volume and now need to turn that into a working program. It covers whether ABM fits, how to choose and tier accounts, plays for each tier, who does what, a 90-day launch plan, templates, and how to prove the program works. For the definition, the history and how to budget each tier, see account-based marketing.
Does ABM fit your business?
| ABM fits when | ABM struggles when |
|---|---|
| A single deal is worth tens of thousands of dollars or more | Deals are small and the sale is transactional |
| You can name the companies you want, and there are hundreds or fewer | Your market is millions of small businesses |
| Several people decide each purchase | One person buys on impulse or by card |
| Sales and marketing will agree one list and meet weekly | Marketing would run it alone |
| You can wait two quarters for revenue results | You need leads this month |
If most of the right-hand column applies, put the effort into demand generation and come back to ABM for your largest accounts later.
How to build an ABM strategy, step by step
- Set the goal in revenue terms. Decide the new or expansion revenue the program should produce from named accounts in the next four quarters, and the pipeline that implies at your win rate.
- Agree the account criteria with sales. Start from your ideal customer profile and add what makes an account worth extra effort: deal size, strategic value, a foothold you already have.
- Build and score the list. Pull every account that fits, score each on fit, timing, relationship and value (see the scoring table), and cut the list to what your team can actually work.
- Tier the accounts. The highest scores go one-to-one, the next group into clusters of similar accounts for one-to-few, the rest one-to-many. Below the cut-off, accounts stay in normal demand generation.
- Map each buying group. List the roles that decide, influence, use and sign, then mark who you know. In Ebsta's 2025 benchmarks, the average new business opportunity involved eight stakeholders and the average expansion five. A one-contact account is a risk, not a relationship.
- Research the accounts and write the plays. For one-to-one accounts, research each company in depth; for clusters, find the problem they share. At volume, the research is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in a list and writes a playbook with the people, what's happening, the angle to open with and the objections to expect.
- Agree who does what, and when. Write down who owns each account, who contacts which role, the order of touches and the weekly review. One account should hear one story.
- Set up measurement before launch. Choose the leading and lagging metrics, record a baseline, and hold out a control group so you can tell what the program changed.
Scoring and tiering accounts
Score each account from 0 to 5 on four things, then add them up (maximum 20):
| Factor | 0 | 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | Outside your profile | Matches industry, size, systems and region exactly |
| Timing | No known trigger | A dated trigger in the last 90 days (new leader, new site, contract ending) |
| Relationship | Nobody known | Executive sponsor or a past customer champion inside |
| Value | Below your average deal | Several times your average deal, with room to expand |
| Total score | Tier | What it gets |
|---|---|---|
| 16 to 20 | One-to-one | A dedicated plan, bespoke content, executive involvement |
| 12 to 15 | One-to-few | A cluster message, small events, coordinated outreach |
| 8 to 11 | One-to-many | Account-targeted ads, personalized pages, sequenced email and calls |
| Below 8 | Not in the program | Normal demand generation |
Rescore every quarter. Timing scores change fastest, so an account can move up a tier when a trigger appears and down when it fades.
Plays by tier
| Tier | Channels | Content | Sales role | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-to-one | Personal email and calls, executive meetings, direct mail, custom events | Written for the account: a point of view on their business, a tailored business case | The account executive leads; executives join | Weekly account plan review |
| One-to-few | Small roundtables, cluster email sequences, targeted ads, LinkedIn outreach | One piece per cluster on the problem they share, such as an industry benchmark | SDRs and account executives run coordinated outreach | Cluster review every two weeks |
| One-to-many | Account-targeted ads, personalized landing pages, email and call sequences | Segment content with the account's name and situation inserted | SDRs follow up on engagement | Monthly review |
Ad platforms have minimums that shape these choices. LinkedIn's company targeting lists need at least 300 rows to upload and must match at least 300 member accounts before an ad set can run; LinkedIn recommends 1,000 or more companies. A one-to-one tier of ten accounts can't be targeted alone, so either fold it into a larger list for ads or rely on personal outreach for that tier.
Who does what
| Role | Owns |
|---|---|
| Marketing | The list and scoring, cluster content, ads and pages, measurement |
| Account executive | The account plan for one-to-one accounts and the relationships with senior buyers |
| SDR | Research and outreach for one-to-few and one-to-many accounts, follow-up on engagement |
| Sales or marketing leader | Agreeing the list, settling disputes, protecting the time it takes |
| Customer success | Expansion accounts: usage, health and introductions to other teams |
Templates
Account: [company, domain] Owner: [account executive] Tier score: [x/20] WHY THIS ACCOUNT, WHY NOW [the trigger, with its date and source] THEIR PRIORITIES THIS YEAR 1. [from filings, leadership interviews, job ads] 2. OUR POINT OF VIEW [the problem we think they have, and what solving it is worth to them] BUYING GROUP (see map) Decision maker: [role, name or unknown] Champion: [role, name or unknown] PLAYS THIS QUARTER [touch, owner, date] x 4 to 6 GOAL FOR THE QUARTER [e.g. discovery meeting with the operations director and the CFO by 15 December]
Account: [company] ROLE | NAME | KNOWN? | WHAT THEY CARE ABOUT | WHO CONTACTS THEM Economic buyer | [name or ?] | [yes / no] | [budget, risk, return] | [AE / exec] Owner of the problem | | | [the day-to-day pain] | [AE] Technical evaluator | | | [fit with current systems] | [sales engineer] User lead | | | [workload, ease] | [SDR] Procurement or legal | | | [terms, supplier risk] | [AE, later] Influencer or blocker | | | [their own agenda] | [decide] Gaps to close this quarter: [roles with no name or no contact]
Cluster: [e.g. plastics manufacturers adding a second plant] Accounts: [8 to 15 names] THE SHARED PROBLEM [one sentence, in their words] PROOF [a customer story or benchmark relevant to the whole cluster] THE OFFER [e.g. a roundtable, a benchmark report, a site assessment] SEQUENCE Week 1: [ad + email to problem owners] Week 2: [call + LinkedIn note] Week 3: [invitation to the roundtable]
The 90-day launch plan
| Weeks | Work | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Agree the goal, criteria, roles and weekly review | Signed off by sales and marketing leaders |
| 3 to 4 | Build, score and tier the list; choose the holdout | Tiers and control group fixed |
| 5 to 6 | Map buying groups; research one-to-one accounts; write cluster briefs | A plan for every one-to-one account and every cluster |
| 7 to 8 | Build content, pages, ad lists and sequences | Everything tested and scheduled |
| 9 to 12 | Run the plays; weekly account reviews | First readout of coverage, engagement and meetings |
Judge the first 90 days on leading indicators: buying group coverage, engaged accounts and meetings with the right roles. Pipeline and revenue need two quarters or more.
Worked example: an IT consultancy builds a Midwest ABM program
Illustrative example. The consultancy, its scores and its results are fictional; the market counts are real Census figures.
Kestrel Systems (kestrelsystems.example) is an IT consultancy that implements and supports production and ERP systems for manufacturers. Its average first-year deal is $90,000, and it wants $2.7 million of new revenue from named accounts in four quarters.
The universe. The Census Bureau's Statistics of U.S. Businesses for 2022 counts manufacturing firms with 100 to 499 employees operating in each state: 945 in Ohio, 815 in Michigan and 608 in Indiana, 2,368 in all. (A firm with plants in two states appears in both counts.)
The list. Kestrel keeps the sub-industries it knows (plastics, fabricated metal and machinery) and drops firms running systems it doesn't support, leaving 610 accounts. Scoring puts 12 in one-to-one, 48 in one-to-few (four clusters of 12) and 300 in one-to-many. The other 250 stay in demand generation.
The holdout. Before launch, Kestrel randomly sets aside 60 of the 300 one-to-many accounts as a control group that gets only normal marketing. The other 240 get the program.
After two quarters:
| Group | Accounts | Opportunities opened | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-to-many program | 240 | 24 | 10% |
| Control | 60 | 3 | 5% |
The program added about five opportunities per 100 accounts: (10% − 5%) × 240 = 12 extra opportunities. At Kestrel's 25% win rate and $90,000 deal, that's 3 extra wins and about $270,000 in first-year revenue, against a tier cost of $72,000 ($300 an account). With only three opportunities in the control group, chance could explain part of the gap, so Kestrel treats the result as encouraging rather than proven, keeps the holdout for another two quarters and checks again.
Self-check
- Sales and marketing leaders have signed off the same account list.
- Every account has a score, a tier and a reason it's in the program.
- Every one-to-one account has a plan and a buying group map with named gaps.
- Each tier's channels respect platform minimums.
- One owner is named per account, and the weekly review is in the calendar.
- A baseline and a control group were set before launch.
Common mistakes
- Tiering by company size alone. A large account with no trigger and no relationship can score lower than a smaller one with both.
- Launching ads before sales agrees the list. Engagement nobody follows up on is wasted spend.
- Personalizing the logo, not the problem. Putting the account's name on a generic page isn't ABM; talking about its situation is.
- No control group. Without one, every win gets credited to the program and nobody knows what it changed.
- Changing the list every month. Accounts need a full quarter of plays before you judge them. Rescore quarterly.
Next step: turn a one-to-one account into a working plan with the account plan template.
Sources
- 2022 SUSB Annual Data Tables by Establishment Industry (U.S. and states, by enterprise employment size), U.S. Census Bureau, accessed 26 October 2026
- Requirements for company targeting lists in Campaign Manager, LinkedIn Help, accessed 26 October 2026
- GTM Benchmarks 2025, Ebsta, March 2025
Written by the Bebop team at Blackpearl Group. Last updated .
Questions people ask
What is an account-based marketing strategy?
It's a plan for winning and growing a named list of high-value accounts, with sales and marketing working together. It sets a revenue goal, chooses and scores the accounts, groups them into tiers (one-to-one, one-to-few and one-to-many), maps the buying group at each one, defines the plays and who runs them, and measures pipeline and revenue per account rather than lead volume.
What are the steps of an ABM strategy?
Set a revenue goal, agree account criteria with sales, build and score the list, tier the accounts, map each buying group, research the accounts and write plays per tier, agree who does what and when, and set up measurement with a baseline and a control group before launch. Then review accounts weekly and rescore the list each quarter, moving accounts between tiers as their timing changes.
How many accounts should be in an ABM program?
As many as your team can work properly. A one-to-one account takes real research and senior time, so small teams usually manage 5 to 20. One-to-few clusters often hold 8 to 15 similar accounts each, and one-to-many can run to hundreds. Platform minimums matter too: LinkedIn company targeting lists need at least 300 rows, and LinkedIn recommends 1,000 or more companies.
How long does ABM take to show results?
Expect the first 90 days to go on setup and early signals: buying group coverage, engaged accounts and meetings with the right people. Pipeline usually needs at least two quarters, and revenue depends on your sales cycle, which for large B2B deals often runs several months. Judge the program against a control group over the same period rather than against last year.
How do you measure whether ABM is working?
Compare accounts in the program with similar accounts outside it. Before launch, randomly hold out part of a tier as a control group, then compare opportunities, pipeline and wins per account after two quarters. Track leading indicators along the way: buying group coverage, account engagement and meetings. Small control groups are noisy, so treat early differences as directional and keep the test running.