How to Optimize Your Account Based Marketing Funnel for Success

Are your high-value prospects slipping through the cracks despite extensive marketing efforts? The problem might lie in the approach, not the prospects. The traditional marketing funnel often casts too wide a net, leaving you chasing unqualified leads. Enter the account-based marketing (ABM) funnel—a strategic shift that flips the script, focusing on quality over quantity.

By targeting specific accounts and tailoring every interaction, you’ll guide your most valuable prospects through a journey designed exclusively for them. In this guide, we’ll break down the key stages of the ABM funnel and show you how to optimise it for maximum engagement and conversion.

 

Key Takeaways
An ABM funnel flips the traditional sales approach by prioritising high-value accounts, delivering personalised touchpoints tailored to the specific needs of each prospect.
Identification is crucial: Use firmographic data and intent signals to pinpoint accounts that align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and offer the highest conversion potential.
Expand your understanding of decision-makers: Mapping out the buying committee ensures your message resonates with each stakeholder’s pain points.
Engage your prospects through a multi-channel approach: Blending inbound content, outbound outreach, and personalised digital ads nurtures accounts effectively.
The final stage of the ABM funnel: Focus on turning satisfied customers into advocates, leveraging success stories to expand within other high-value accounts.
Hyper-personalisation, collaboration across sales and marketing, and data-driven insights are the pillars of a successful ABM funnel strategy.
To boost engagement, utilise targeted content and retargeting strategies, ensuring prospects remain connected and move seamlessly through the funnel.

 

Key Stages in the Account-Based Marketing Funnel

 

Struggling to convert unqualified leads into meaningful business? It’s time to rethink your approach with an account-based marketing funnel—a strategic B2B marketing model that prioritises quality over quantity.

Picture your traditional sales funnel turned on its head. Rather than casting a wide net, the ABM funnel zeroes in on high-value accounts, delivering personalised, targeted campaigns designed to resonate deeply with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

 

What does an ABM funnel look like?

An account-based marketing funnel is the journey a targeted account undertakes to evolve from a potential lead to a paying customer. Unlike conventional sales funnels, which aim to capture as many leads as possible, the ABM funnel focuses on specific accounts, mapping their unique journey with precision.

It’s a tailored customer journey, built exclusively for your ideal clients. You start by identifying key accounts, outlining their decision-making process, and orchestrating personalised touchpoints at each stage, from the initial awareness phase through to advocacy. The ABM funnel delivers content, messaging, and engagement strategies that are customised to address each account’s specific pain points and needs.

 

Who Benefits from an Account-Based Marketing Funnel?

1. Demand Generation Teams: By narrowing your focus to high-value accounts, you optimise resource allocation and improve sales alignment, ensuring your efforts are spent on the accounts with the highest potential.
2. VPs of Marketing: Enhance your ROI by directing resources toward identified opportunities that offer the best fit for your product or service, leading to more measurable and impactful results.
3. Chief Marketing Officers: ABM allows you to align your marketing strategies with broader business goals, ensuring that your campaigns not only support business objectives but also offer clear metrics for success.
4. Account Executives: Gain a comprehensive understanding of target accounts, allowing you to personalise your messaging and better address the unique needs of each account, thereby improving your outreach success.
5. AVPs or VPs of Sales: The ABM funnel strengthens collaboration between sales and marketing teams, providing you with deeper insights and more up-to-date marketing data to refine your approach.
6. Chief Revenue Officers: ABM sharpens your team’s focus on accounts with the highest conversion potential, leading to shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, greater revenue growth.

 

Stages of an Account-Based Marketing Funnel

Understanding the account-based marketing funnel requires breaking it down into distinct stages, each playing a critical role in driving high-value accounts through a tailored buyer journey. Let’s explore the ABM funnel stages that form the foundation of a well-executed ABM strategy.

Stage 1: Identification

The identification stage marks the beginning of the ABM funnel, where the marketing and sales teams collaborate closely to pinpoint key target accounts. This process hinges on a carefully developed Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), ensuring that your efforts are laser-focused on accounts with the highest potential.

To achieve precision, businesses rely on sales intelligence tools to analyse firmographic and technographic data, such as company size, industry, and technology stack. Additionally, they utilise visitor acquisition and intent data to understand the behaviour of B2B prospects, including the marketing channels driving traffic and content engagement. This data allows the ABM team to build a highly refined list of target accounts, enabling the team to move into the next phase with confidence.

Stage 2: Expansion

Once the key accounts are identified, the focus shifts to the expansion stage, where you delve deeper into understanding the decision-makers within each account. In B2B scenarios, it’s rarely just one individual making purchasing decisions, but rather a collective known as the buying committee.

Here, the team identifies the specific roles and buyer personas involved, considering their individual goals, pain points, and their stakes in the success of your solution. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for crafting personalised messaging and targeting the right people. Tools such as SMARte assist in gathering contact details and further refining your engagement strategy during this stage.

Stage 3: Engage

The engage stage is where your ABM strategy truly comes to life. This stage focuses on creating meaningful interactions with targeted accounts through a mix of inbound and outbound tactics.

From outbound strategies like cold calling and tailored email outreach to inbound activities such as content-driven SEO and targeted digital advertising, every method is chosen to meet the needs of the specific account. The goal is to build a multi-channel engagement approach that includes social media, email campaigns, virtual events, and even remarketing efforts to nurture these accounts further along the funnel. Aligning these activities with your broader account-based marketing funnel strategy ensures that every interaction is relevant and timely.

Stage 4: Advocate

At the bottom of the ABM funnel lies the advocate stage, where the focus turns to transforming satisfied customers into brand advocates. These advocates can become powerful assets in helping you expand your reach within other high-value accounts that share the same characteristics as your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Key actions during this phase include exploring up-sell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts, addressing any potential issues through customer success management, and leveraging success stories and case studies as content for future campaigns. Furthermore, amplifying these successes through social media and other channels can help attract similar high-value accounts to engage with your brand.

 

Key Components of the Account-Based Marketing Funnel

 

The account-based marketing funnel is designed to serve your ideal clients, not broad audiences. Every element is meticulously tailored to specific accounts, from highly personalised messaging to strategic data use, and an integrated approach across sales, marketing, and customer success. The focus is on fostering long-term, high-value relationships rather than seeking quick, transactional wins.

Let’s delve into the core characteristics of an account-based marketing funnel:

Hyper-personalisation

Every experience within the ABM funnel is crafted to align with the specific needs and challenges of individual accounts. Personalisation goes far beyond generic messaging—each touchpoint is fine-tuned to resonate with the unique circumstances of your key targets.

Data-driven Decisions

Using firmographic data, intent signals, and behavioural insights, the ABM strategy ensures precision in targeting and messaging. By leveraging data, your marketing efforts become more focused, reaching the right accounts at the right time with highly relevant content.

Team Collaboration

One of the hallmarks of an effective account-based marketing funnel is the seamless collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Together, they deliver a unified experience across the customer journey, ensuring that all interactions are consistent and aligned with the overall strategy.

Quantifiable Impact

ABM isn’t just about guesswork—its success is measurable. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website visits, engagement rates, and deal velocity are tracked to demonstrate the tangible value that the account-based marketing funnel delivers.

Dynamic Adaptation

An ABM funnel must remain flexible, evolving as feedback and market conditions change. Continuous optimisation, driven by real-time data, helps refine strategies and maximise account engagement at every stage of the funnel.

Long-term Focus

The true power of an account-based marketing funnel lies in its ability to build lasting relationships. Rather than focusing on short-term gains, the ABM approach prioritises sustained engagement and advocacy, cultivating partnerships that deliver value over time.

 

Tactics for Optimising Your Account-Based Marketing Funnel to Boost Engagement and Conversion

 

To maximise the effectiveness of your account-based marketing funnel, each stage requires tailored strategies that focus on driving engagement and conversion. Below are actionable steps that marketers can adopt to improve outcomes during the ABM funnel integration process.

 

Awareness (Top of the Funnel or TOFU)

At the top of the ABM funnel stages, your goal is to introduce your brand to high-value target accounts and highlight what sets your offering apart from competitors.

Identify Target Accounts

Start by pinpointing accounts that align with your business objectives. Use advanced data and analytics to identify those most likely to convert, leveraging firmographic data and intent signals to ensure precision targeting.

Craft Compelling Messaging

Create clear and compelling messages that highlight the unique value and benefits of your product or service. Tailor each message to address the specific pain points and challenges of the personas within your target accounts.

Effective Advertising

Invest in paid media that resonates with your target audience. Channels like display banners, mobile ads, paid social media, and streaming videos should align with your audience’s preferences, ensuring that your message is delivered to the right people.

Implement ABM Tactics

Personalise every touchpoint, such as display banners that highlight account-specific value propositions. Use ABM frameworks to guide your audience along a structured knowledge timeline, moving them from awareness to deeper engagement. For example, personalised banners can build stronger connections by showcasing your company’s value propositions, going beyond generic awareness campaigns.

 

Engagement (Middle of the Funnel or MOFU)

As prospects move further into the account-based marketing funnel, the focus shifts towards building meaningful connections through tailored content and strategic retargeting.

Create Personalised Content

Develop content that addresses the specific challenges and needs of each account. This helps demonstrate why your product or service is the best solution for their problems and strengthens your positioning as a leader within your industry.

Use Retargeting Strategies

Leverage retargeting to engage users who have previously interacted with your brand. Invite them to account-specific webinars, or offer relevant content that directly addresses their needs. By tailoring your retargeting efforts based on their earlier interactions, you can further nurture these relationships.

Optimise Website Interactions

Tools such as ZoomInfo WebSights can be used to create customised audiences based on your website traffic. Additionally, retarget users with ads that feature similar content, offer webinar invites, or promote high-value downloads like eBooks tailored to their needs.

Enhance Personalisation with Video Content

Engagement can be further strengthened through personalised video content. Highlight how your product or service can solve the specific issues facing each target account, reinforcing your overall ABM strategy by delivering a uniquely tailored experience.

 

Conversion (Bottom of the Funnel or BOFU)

At the bottom of the funnel, the objective is to convert engaged prospects into customers, providing a clear demonstration of your ROI and delivering tangible value to your accounts.

Refine Targeting Parameters

At this stage, fine-tune your targeting using third-party data and intent signals to focus on prospects with the highest likelihood of conversion. Precision is key, so use all available data to narrow your focus and prioritise the best-fit accounts.

Develop Conversion-Focused Ads

Create ads designed specifically for conversion, offering account-specific incentives such as personalised discounts, free trials, or exclusive offers. In the ABM framework, “conversion” goes beyond simple purchases; it encompasses other valuable actions such as scheduling demos, signing up for trials, or requesting personalised solutions.

 

Common Bottlenecks in the Account-Based Marketing Funnel and How to Overcome Them

 

Even with a well-structured account-based marketing funnel, common challenges can still arise that hinder its effectiveness. Below, we explore some of the most frequent bottlenecks and how to overcome them, ensuring that you’re continually optimising your ABM funnel for better engagement and conversions.

 

1. Poorly Defined Target Audience

One of the most critical mistakes is targeting a broad audience that doesn’t align with your offering. Some businesses attempt to appeal to everyone in hopes of increasing sales. However, without focusing on the right audience, your marketing becomes too generic and fails to resonate with anyone.

How to fix this issue
Start by conducting in-depth market research to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Identify who your target audience is, the specific challenges they face, and how these issues impact their business. Delve into their past attempts to solve the problem, their goals, preferences, and pain points. The best way to gather this information is to ask them directly through surveys or tools like ScoreApp, which can be used to create strategic quizzes for market research.

Once you’ve gathered this data, use it to inform your account-based marketing funnel. Instead of trying to cater to everyone, focus your marketing efforts exclusively on your defined ICP. Tools like ScoreApp can also help you segment your audience, allowing you to nurture each group in a more personalised and effective way.

 

2. Weak Lead Generation

At the heart of a successful ABM funnel is a robust lead generation process. However, if you’re not attracting the right prospects or generating enough leads, your pipeline will suffer.

How to fix this issue
To strengthen your lead generation efforts, diversify your strategies. Don’t rely on a single channel. Instead, use a mix of content marketing, SEO, social media, and paid advertising to reach your target audience. Additionally, using a quiz lead magnet can complement and enhance all your lead generation tactics. For instance, include it as a call-to-action on your blog posts and social media content to convert website visitors into subscribers.

Pre-qualify your leads to avoid wasting time on prospects who are unlikely to convert. Use your lead generation system to assess the level of interest and suitability of each prospect. For example, ask pre-qualifying questions through a ScoreApp quiz, such as, “What’s your budget for X?” or “Do you already have Y in place?” This allows you to focus on high-potential leads while nurturing the others through strategic engagement.

 

3. Ineffective Lead Nurturing

Once a lead enters your account-based marketing funnel, it’s essential to nurture them effectively. If done well, many leads will convert into customers. If not, they’ll fall through the cracks.

How to fix this issue
Personalise your nurturing strategy. Today’s buyers are more selective about the content they engage with, and a one-size-fits-all approach will no longer suffice. Personalisation has been shown to boost sales by up to 20%. Segment your leads using data from quizzes or other tools, and send each group tailored content that speaks directly to their needs and situation. This personalised approach can also be used to reference their specific circumstances when inviting them to a call.

Automate your nurturing sequences to ensure you’re consistently delivering the right message at the right time. Automation can eliminate human error, such as forgetting to follow up, while ensuring your prospects receive a personalised journey. Tools like ScoreApp allow you to set up automated, personalised email sequences, so your messaging remains relevant and timely without requiring manual effort.

 

4. Poor Conversion Rates

You might be generating a high volume of traffic, but are those visitors converting into leads? Alternatively, perhaps your account-based marketing funnel is successfully filling the sales pipeline, but only a minuscule percentage of those prospects turn into paying customers.

The optimal conversion rate can vary by industry and business goals, but a solid conversion rate for a well-functioning sales funnel typically falls between 3-7%. If your numbers are falling short, it’s time to make some adjustments.

How to Fix This Issue

First, examine your lead generation KPIs to pinpoint where your funnel is underperforming. Are visitors landing on your lead magnet page but not signing up? Are they unsubscribing from your nurturing emails, avoiding calls, or disappearing after initial conversations with your sales team? By understanding the specific drop-off points, you can address the weak spots. Tools like ScoreApp allow you to easily monitor funnel performance, revealing where prospects are exiting the funnel and why.

Strengthen Your Copy

Ensure that your landing page copy effectively sells your lead magnet, even if it’s a free resource. Every touchpoint—from landing pages to email sequences—should be relevant, valuable, and directly aligned with the needs of your audience.

Run A/B Tests

Testing different versions of your messaging is crucial to see what resonates best with your target accounts. Run A/B tests on your landing pages and emails to determine which versions drive higher engagement and conversion rates within your account-based marketing funnel.

Improve Your Sales Process

If your ABM funnel is functioning well up to a point but fails to convert prospects into customers after a sales call, the issue may lie in the alignment between marketing and sales. Misalignment between these teams is a common culprit for low conversion rates, and addressing this will significantly improve your results.

 

5. Misalignment Between Sales and Marketing

One of the clearest signs of this issue is when your marketing team successfully generates a steady flow of leads, nurtures them until they’re ready to engage—but your sales team struggles to close the deal.

How to Fix This Issue

Marketing and sales teams must work closely together throughout the ABM funnel stages. For example, marketers should understand the most common objections and questions that salespeople encounter. This insight allows them to create content that answers these queries and smooths the prospect’s journey through the funnel.

Leverage Sales Enablement Content

Sales enablement content, such as case studies, spec sheets, and comparison articles, equips your sales team with the resources they need to close deals. Marketing teams can integrate these resources into automated email sequences, priming leads with valuable information ahead of a sales conversation. By doing so, your prospects receive consistent and relevant messaging, which will help improve your conversion rates.

 

What is the Biggest Challenge Salespeople Face When Closing Deals in the Final Stage of the Account-Based Marketing Funnel?

 

One word: Urgency.

In over 95% of deals, urgency is simply not present. There’s no immediate pressure for most customers to make a purchase today, this month, or even this quarter. In fact, the world won’t come to an end if they decide to delay their decision by a few months, or even a year. They may like your software or service, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into an immediate need to buy it.

This lack of urgency is what often differentiates mediocre sales reps from high performers. Mediocre reps have plenty of “great conversations” that fill their pipeline with potential deals, but these conversations rarely lead to actual closes. It’s important to keep this in mind when evaluating sales performance based solely on pipeline volume.

Top-performing sales reps don’t just wait for urgency to materialise—they actively create it. Whether through well-timed discounts, exclusive offers, or structuring an irresistible pilot programme, they inject urgency into the buying process. By manufacturing urgency, these reps are able to close significantly more deals, even if their pipeline is smaller than their peers. It’s not about having more leads; it’s about turning the right leads into closed deals by compelling prospects to act now.

 

Strategies for Measuring ABM Funnel Effectiveness and ROI

 

Measuring the effectiveness of an account-based marketing funnel can be complex, as success often hinges on factors outside your direct control. Marketing strategies, customer behaviours, and competitive actions are constantly evolving, which means that the outcomes of your efforts must be evaluated against a shifting landscape.

Your ability to measure success will ultimately depend on the quality of your marketing strategy. A flawed approach will lead to flawed analytics, making it vital to get things right from the outset. This is why laying a solid foundation for your ABM funnel stages is critical to success.

 

Top of the Funnel – Seeking Awareness

The top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) stage is all about generating brand awareness. At this point, your prospects may be engaging with your brand for the first time, so the focus should be on addressing their needs rather than promoting your product directly.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for TOFU:

• Engagement: Are people engaging with your content? Are they taking specific actions in response?
• Open Rates: For email outreach, track how many recipients are opening your emails and whether they take any further action.
• Clickthrough Rates: If the goal is to drive prospects to your website, monitor the clickthrough rates from various channels. While visibility is important, your ultimate aim is to generate demand by encouraging prospects to take action.
• Additional Metrics: Consider tracking metrics such as user sessions, time spent on site, bounce rates, and the number of repeat visits.
• Awareness: Since building awareness is the primary objective at this stage, you’ll need to monitor how your brand’s visibility evolves over time.

 

Middle of the Funnel – Seeking and Considering Solutions

At the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) stage, prospects are actively considering solutions to their problems. Your goal here is to nurture them with content that positions your product or service as the best solution, moving them closer to making a decision.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for MOFU:

• Engagement: Continue to monitor how prospects are engaging with your content as they progress through the buyer’s journey.
• MQL to SQL: One of your main objectives at this stage is to transition prospects from marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs), ready for activation by the sales team.
• Customer Contacts: Track whether your content is generating inbound calls or requests for additional information. These touchpoints are crucial indicators of interest and engagement.
• Demo or Sales Inquiries: Monitor requests for product demos or other sales inquiries. These actions are usually clear precursors to a purchasing decision, so tracking them is vital to understanding what’s driving conversions.

 

Bottom of the Funnel – Ready to Buy

At the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) stage, prospects are nearing the decision point. The content at this stage needs to clearly communicate why your product or service is the best fit for their business, aiming to turn qualified leads into customers.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for BOFU:

• Funnel Conversion Rates: Track conversion rates at each stage of the buyer’s journey. At this point, you’re focusing heavily on sales conversion, so healthy funnel conversion rates are necessary to demonstrate the ROI of your ABM efforts.
• Average Contract Value: As account-based marketing targets high-value customers, you should expect to see higher-than-average contract values. This metric is an important indicator of success in ABM.
• Sales Cycle Length: One of the goals of ABM is to shorten the sales cycle by targeting the right prospects. As B2B sales cycles are often long, monitoring reductions in cycle length will help measure the impact of your ABM strategy.
• Win Rates: ABM tends to deliver higher win rates because it focuses on the best-fit accounts. Tracking this metric will help ensure your approach is meeting its objectives.
• Pipeline Velocity: Pipeline velocity measures the speed at which qualified leads move from one stage to the next. Tracking this will reveal which activities are accelerating the buyer’s journey and contributing to faster deal closures.

 

How to Measure Your Entire Account-Based Marketing Funnel

 

Understanding how to measure the effectiveness of your account-based marketing funnel is essential for optimising every stage of your campaigns. From identifying target accounts to tracking opportunities created, each metric provides key insights into your funnel’s performance and highlights areas for improvement.

 

Target Accounts

Your target accounts are the cornerstone of any ABM strategy. This may range from a broad list of companies with shared characteristics, such as ‘manufacturers in the US’, to a more niche list of high-priority accounts.

How to Measure Target Accounts:
This is straightforward—count the number of accounts on your target list. The more precise your list, the better the chances of driving meaningful engagement.

How to Optimise Target Accounts:

• Run a Content Audit:
  Take stock of your existing marketing content and assess which industries or personas it resonates with. The key here is to be ruthless in your evaluation. If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re effectively marketing to no one. This audit will help you refine your list by filtering out accounts that don’t align with your content, ensuring a more focused ABM approach.

 

Engaged Accounts

Engaged accounts are those showing digital interaction with your brand—whether they’re clicking on ads, visiting your website, or opening emails.

How to Measure Engaged Accounts:
The metric to watch here is the ratio of engaged accounts to your total target list:
Engaged Accounts / Target Account List

How to Optimise Engaged Accounts:

• Advertising Reach:
  Not all advertising vendors are created equal. The match rate (the percentage of accounts you intend to target versus the accounts successfully targeted) can fluctuate. Factors like the quality of data, the automation keeping that data fresh, and the method used (IP versus cookies) all play a role. In today’s remote-first world, match rates have become even more variable, so ensure your ad vendor is capable of adapting to these new dynamics.
• Advertising Creative:
  Creativity is where ABM truly shines. The design and copy of your ads are vital for driving engagement. Experiment with your messaging, visuals, and calls to action to find the combination that resonates best with your audience.

 

Opportunities Created

Opportunities arise when engaged accounts express a deeper interest in your product or service. These accounts are qualified as legitimate revenue opportunities and should be nurtured accordingly.

How to Measure Opportunities Created:
Track the number of open opportunities relative to the number of engaged accounts:
Opportunities Created / Engaged Accounts

How to Optimise Opportunities Created:

• Ad Retargeting:
  Retargeting ads to those who have already visited your site keeps your brand top of mind. This cost-effective approach increases the likelihood that your marketing and sales teams can engage with these prospects in a timely, meaningful way, converting more of them into active opportunities.
• Account Engagement Modelling:
  Just as traditional marketers have MQL criteria, ABM practitioners should develop criteria for defining an ‘engaged account’. Work closely with your sales team to agree on what constitutes sufficient engagement. For example, does a single click count, or is more sustained interaction required? Having a clear, shared definition smooths the path to creating qualified opportunities.

 

Sales Velocity

Sales velocity is the speed at which an opportunity moves from creation to close. Faster velocity means more deals are closing in a shorter period, boosting overall revenue.

How to Measure Sales Velocity:
Measure the average number of days it takes for an opportunity to close. You can also create cohorts based on company size, industry, or other factors to track the velocity of different types of opportunities.

How to Optimise Sales Velocity:

1. Remember the Double Funnel:
   Once an opportunity is created, treat it with the same care as your ABM target accounts. Whether the lead originates from your ABM programme or an inbound channel, it deserves the white-glove treatment to accelerate its journey through the funnel.
2. Develop Stage-Based Campaigns:
   Coordinate your marketing efforts with the sales cycle stages. As opportunities move closer to a close, shift your marketing focus from awareness-building to ROI-driven content, such as case studies and customer reviews. Also, consider targeting late-stage personas within the buying committee, like procurement or finance leads, to support your sales team in closing deals faster.