3 Must-Know Account Based Marketing Goals for Measurable Success

Imagine aligning your sales and marketing teams so seamlessly that each message delivered to a key account feels perfectly tailored to their needs. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) promises just that, but it hinges on setting clear, measurable goals. Without defined objectives, even the most personalised campaigns risk missing their mark.

In this blog, we’ll explore the three essential ABM goals that drive meaningful engagement, streamline your sales cycle, and ensure long-term growth. If you’re ready to transform your high-value accounts into lasting business relationships, these must-know goals are your blueprint for success.

 

Key Takeaways
Aligning sales and marketing under a unified ABM strategy creates consistent messaging and maximises resource allocation.
Personalising campaigns for high-value accounts: Increases engagement and fosters stronger, long-term relationships.
Targeting decision-makers directly within key accounts: Helps accelerate the sales cycle by focusing on pre-qualified leads.
Retaining and growing customer accounts: Requires clearly defined, measurable ABM objectives that align with each customer’s specific goals.
Implementing SMART goals for ABM: Ensures your campaigns drive focused, measurable outcomes that support business growth.

 

Why ABM Goals Are Essential for Driving Measurable Results

 

Clearly defined account based marketing goals are not just important—they are critical for driving measurable success. ABM campaigns are designed to deliver a high level of precision, targeting, and engagement with key accounts that align closely with your business’s ideal customer profile. But what specific account based marketing objectives should be set, and how do these goals translate into tangible results for companies across different sectors?

 

What are the goals & objectives of ABM?

Fostering Alignment Between Sales and Marketing Teams

In traditional marketing models, sales and marketing often function in isolation, leading to fragmented efforts and misaligned targets. Account-based marketing (ABM) offers a structured, collaborative approach that unites these two departments, ensuring that both teams work cohesively to address the distinct needs and pain points of each target account.

Why Alignment Matters:

• Unified Messaging: Within an ABM framework, sales and marketing collaborate to create a consistent, coherent narrative across all channels. Whether the touchpoint is a social media campaign or direct communication with a sales rep, target accounts receive uniform messaging. This consistency significantly increases the likelihood of engagement.
• Efficient Resource Allocation: By focusing exclusively on high-value accounts, sales and marketing can concentrate resources on the areas where they will make the most impact. This targeted approach eliminates wasted efforts on broad, untargeted campaigns and optimises both time and budget, thereby increasing the chances of converting key accounts.
• Deeper Customer Insights: ABM fosters a closer collaboration between sales and marketing, blending the data-driven insights from marketing with the on-the-ground intelligence from sales. This collaboration creates a fuller understanding of customer behaviour and preferences, enabling more targeted and personalised strategies that are tailored to each account’s unique needs.

Increasing Engagement with High-Value Accounts

Traditional lead generation casts a wide net, often resulting in low engagement from the accounts that matter most. ABM flips this approach by crafting highly personalised campaigns that resonate directly with the specific challenges and opportunities of high-value accounts. This method ensures that your account based marketing goals are laser-focused on driving meaningful engagement.

How ABM Boosts Engagement:

• Personalisation at Scale: With the help of advanced technology and data analytics, ABM allows for personalisation at an unprecedented scale. From bespoke email campaigns that address individual pain points to customised content that speaks to an account’s specific industry, ABM makes each high-value account feel acknowledged and valued.
• Focus on Key Decision-Makers: ABM hones in on the stakeholders who have the authority to drive purchasing decisions, ensuring that both marketing and sales efforts are concentrated on influencing the people who can push the deal forward. This focused approach eliminates the noise of irrelevant leads and accelerates decision-making.
• Building Long-Term Relationships: The targeted nature of ABM strengthens relationships between businesses and their key accounts. This deeper connection builds trust, which not only leads to conversions but also increases customer retention and paves the way for long-term account growth.

Shortening Sales Cycles

ABM provides a significant advantage by accelerating the sales process. By focusing on pre-qualified, high-fit accounts, ABM minimises time wasted on leads that are unlikely to convert. Instead, the attention is on those accounts that are most likely to see value in your offerings, streamlining the sales cycle.

How ABM Shortens the Sales Cycle:

• Direct Engagement with Decision-Makers: ABM prioritises direct communication with decision-makers, enabling your sales team to present tailored value propositions that address specific challenges faced by the account. This direct line to the decision-makers facilitates quicker consensus-building and speeds up the sales process.
• Pre-Qualified Leads: One of the core elements of ABM is its focus on accounts that have been pre-qualified based on their fit with the company’s ideal customer profile (ICP). This ensures that your sales team spends its time on leads that are already primed for conversion, significantly reducing the time from initial contact to deal closure.
• Operational Efficiency: By narrowing the pool of leads to only those with the highest potential, sales teams can allocate their efforts more effectively. This increased efficiency not only shortens the overall sales cycle but also allows for more personalised, attentive service, further enhancing the likelihood of closing the deal.

 

What is the best objective of account management?

In account management, the two primary account based marketing objectives are straightforward: customer retention and growth. Achieving these goals requires a shift from a transactional role to becoming a strategic partner, where your influence extends to shaping your customer’s buying decisions and long-term strategies.

To do this effectively, it’s crucial to establish clear performance targets and measurable metrics with your customers from the outset and continuously revisit them. Too often, account managers fall into the trap of assuming they understand their customers’ needs based on internal benchmarks, the success of other clients, or their own instincts. However, this is a flawed approach.

Every customer operates with their own unique set of expectations when it comes to return on investment (ROI). These expectations are shaped by their specific business circumstances, challenges, and objectives—not yours. Therefore, it’s vital to engage your customers regularly, listening closely to understand what they deem critical to their success.

Without this ongoing dialogue, you risk misunderstanding their ROI expectations, which can lead to misaligned efforts. If your understanding of their goals falters, you will struggle to manage and shape their expectations effectively, especially if they become unrealistic. Worse still, when the time comes to renew contracts, you may find yourself grouped with other suppliers that your customer perceives as mere commodities, undermining the strategic partnership you’ve worked to build.

Thus, the key account based marketing goals for any account manager should focus on maintaining clear, measurable outcomes that align with the specific needs of each customer, ensuring you remain indispensable to their business growth and success.

 

The Role of Goal-Setting in Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams

 

Aligning sales and marketing teams is essential for driving sustainable business growth. When these two departments work in harmony, the impact on performance metrics is profound. According to MarketingProfs, organisations with aligned sales and marketing teams experience a 38% increase in sales win rates, alongside a 36% rise in customer retention. On the flip side, misalignment can cost companies over 10% in annual revenue and foster an environment of tension and inefficiency, often resulting in toxic workplace dynamics.

One of the most pivotal steps to achieve this alignment is through goal-setting. Establishing clear account based marketing goals forms the cornerstone of data-driven marketing, dictating which tactics to use, what experiments to run, and how to measure success. Most importantly, setting joint account based marketing objectives ensures both teams stay focused on shared outcomes, allowing them to recenter their strategies around the bigger picture, even when facing internal challenges.

 

Sales and Marketing Collectively Setting Goals

What does effective collaboration between sales and marketing look like when it comes to setting goals?

1. Understanding Each Other’s Priorities: The first step is mutual understanding. Both teams must work to comprehend each other’s goals to create objectives that complement one another. For instance, marketing’s role in sales enablement is crucial, as their content and materials should directly support the sales team in closing deals. When both teams collaborate, marketing delivers precisely what sales needs to convert leads into customers. Although this may seem fundamental, a 2018 survey revealed that only 37% of marketers and 16% of sales teams viewed sales enablement as a top priority—a clear indication that more work needs to be done in this area.
2. Agreement on Lead Stages: One critical component of alignment is agreeing on what qualifies as a marketing qualified lead (MQL) versus a sales qualified lead (SQL). Without this shared understanding, friction arises. If marketing defines MQLs in isolation, leads passed to sales may not be sufficiently qualified, causing frustration when they don’t progress through the funnel. This misalignment results in marketing feeling their leads are ignored, while sales feels that marketing isn’t providing the right leads. By jointly setting abm campaign goals, the teams can ensure that both sides are aligned on lead qualifications, preventing this disconnect.
3. Prioritising the Customer: Both teams must set their goals with the customer at the forefront. The sales team, being in regular contact with prospects and customers, provides invaluable insights into what materials or content are needed to move leads further down the funnel. Meanwhile, marketing can analyse the funnel, identifying areas where leads may drop off and adjust messaging, content, or pricing strategies accordingly. This ongoing collaboration ensures that account based marketing goals remain tightly focused on the needs of the customer, driving long-term success.
4. Creating a Service Level Agreement (SLA): Finally, an SLA between sales and marketing formalises the responsibilities of each team. This agreement ensures that marketing delivers leads promptly, while sales commits to timely follow-ups. Additionally, it provides a framework for when leads require further nurturing, ensuring both teams remain accountable. An SLA acts as a shared playbook that keeps everyone aligned and focused on executing the agreed account based marketing objectives effectively.

 

Steps to Ensure Marketing and Sales Goals Are Set for Success

To guarantee that your marketing and sales teams are aligned, you need to establish a clear framework built on shared account based marketing goals. The following steps outline how to set these goals and ensure both teams remain focused and accountable.

1. Set Your North Star Goal

The first step in aligning your teams is establishing a North Star goal. This goal should align with your company’s overarching objectives and include a trackable metric. It could be something like a revenue target or a customer acquisition goal. The critical factor is that this goal becomes the focal point for both teams. By setting this goal jointly, you ensure everyone stays hyper-focused on the bigger picture. Once your North Star goal is in place, you can work together to align on the drivers that will support it.

2. Identify the Drivers That Impact Your Goal

Next, you need to determine the drivers that contribute to achieving your account based marketing objectives. Breaking down the North Star goal into smaller, measurable steps often involves creating a funnel to outline the journey towards the goal.

For example, if your North Star is a revenue target, you will need to calculate how many customers are required within a specific timeframe and how much revenue each customer should generate. From there, you can work backwards to determine that, for every 10 customers, the sales team will need to engage with 100 prospects, which, in turn, requires marketing to reach 500 potential leads.

This approach breaks down the overarching goal into actionable steps for each department: the number of customers, prospects, and audience size. By staging your funnel in this way, you create accountability across both teams, ensuring that everyone understands what is needed to achieve the abm campaign goals.

3. Use the Funnel to Forecast

Once you have measurable goals for each stage of the funnel, you can begin to forecast the outcomes. Forecasting is essential as it provides a projection of whether you are on track to achieve your goals within the set timeline.

For example, if your goal is to onboard five new customers, marketing needs to be generating enough engagement to facilitate 50 communications with potential customers each week. Out of these, 10 might convert into qualified prospects. Based on historical data, if your sales team closes one in four prospects, you can forecast that two new customers will emerge from this week’s efforts.

This forecasting method gives both sales and marketing transparency into how realistic their goals are. It also helps identify which stages of the funnel need optimisation, providing data-driven insights into where tactics or goal-setting might require adjustment to keep everyone aligned with the account based marketing goals.

 

 

Strategies for Setting and Tracking Effective ABM Goals

 

Having clear account based marketing goals is essential to ensure your business stays on course and achieves meaningful outcomes rather than chasing vanity metrics. Without these well-defined objectives, your efforts can become unfocused, resulting in short-term gains that don’t support your long-term business growth.

Why You Need to Set Marketing Goals

Simply aiming to increase likes, engagement, or followers on social media doesn’t necessarily align with your overall account based marketing objectives. While these metrics can be indicators of activity, they don’t always translate to business success. For example, if your goal is to convert more followers into paying customers—one of the more relevant abm campaign goals—then you should focus on driving traffic to your website and guiding potential leads through the marketing funnel. Likes and comments alone won’t achieve this.

To ensure that your account based marketing goals are effective, strategic planning through SMART objectives is highly recommended. These goals cover all the necessary aspects of a successful ABM strategy.

 

SMART Goals: A Framework for Success

1. Specific: Your goals need to be clearly defined. Be precise about what you want to achieve and what success looks like. For example, instead of aiming to “increase website traffic,” you should aim to “increase website traffic by 15% from targeted accounts within three months.”
2. Measurable: It’s crucial to know how you will track your progress. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be set to monitor whether you’re moving towards your account based marketing objectives. Understanding if your efforts are paying off is vital, particularly when it comes to revenue generation. For example, with certain digital marketing efforts—like social media—it may be more challenging to draw a direct link to revenue, but having measurable outcomes is key.
3. Achievable: While it’s important to aim high, your abm campaign goals must be realistic. Ambition is essential, but goals that are impossible to meet can lead to frustration. Ask yourself if the targets you’ve set are within reach or if you’re setting yourself up for failure.
4. Relevant: All your account based marketing goals should tie back to your core business objectives. Your marketing strategies are designed to drive growth, so it’s crucial to keep this top of mind. Always ask, “How does this goal help our business grow?”
5. Time-bound: Every goal needs a deadline. A clear timeframe helps you benchmark your performance and evaluate how each campaign is progressing. Establishing a timeline ensures you stay accountable and can adjust your tactics if needed, to optimise future campaigns

 

How to Set Marketing Goals Based on Business Objectives

To ensure your account based marketing goals are aligned with your broader business objectives, it’s essential to follow a structured approach. Below are seven steps that will help you define well-rounded marketing goals that support your company’s growth.

1. Identify the Revenue You Need from Digital Marketing Efforts

This is the foundational step. For instance, if your business achieved £2 million in sales last year, and your CEO sets a goal to grow the business by 30%, you now have a clear target. With £1.8 million already expected from existing contracts and other marketing efforts such as trade shows, you are left with a £600,000 gap to fill through your digital marketing strategies over the next 12 months.

2. Determine the Number of Sales Needed to Reach Revenue Goals

Once you’ve identified the revenue gap, calculate how many new sales are required. For example, if the target is £600,000 and your average sale value is £50,000, you will need 12 new customers. If your average sale is £500, then you would need 1,200 sales to hit the target. For the sake of this example, we’ll work with the 12 new customers.

3. Identify Your Closing Rate and Opportunities Needed

Next, calculate how many opportunities (or ‘ops’) you need to hit your sales target. Let’s assume your closing rate is 25%. To secure 12 new customers, you will need 48 qualified opportunities. This step helps you reverse-engineer your sales pipeline to align with your account based marketing objectives.

4. Identify the Number of SQLs Required

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospect ready to engage with your sales team. However, not all SQLs will convert into opportunities. If you don’t have historical data, a good estimate is to assume that 50% of SQLs will convert into opportunities. This means, to generate 48 opportunities, you’ll need 96 SQLs. As with all metrics, you can refine this figure over time as you gather more data.

5. Determine How Many MQLs Are Necessary

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is someone who has shown interest but is not yet ready to talk to sales. MQLs may need additional nurturing through targeted campaigns before they are sales-ready. Again, assuming that 50% of MQLs convert into SQLs, you would need to generate 192 MQLs over the year to produce the 96 SQLs required to hit your abm campaign goals.

6. Calculate the Total Number of Leads Required

Not every lead that enters the top of your funnel will become an MQL. Some might be too early in their buyer’s journey or simply not the right fit. Therefore, when estimating how many total leads you need, remember that only a fraction will convert into MQLs. This final calculation is crucial for ensuring your account based marketing goals are backed by realistic lead generation targets.

 

Measuring ABM Goals After Launch

Once your account based marketing goals have been set and the campaign is underway, the next crucial step is measuring performance to ensure that these goals are driving real results. To refine your account based marketing objectives and improve future outcomes, you need to apply a structured approach to measurement, such as using the “Ten Measures Design Tests.” This framework helps ensure that your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are accurately assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.

To evaluate whether your KPIs are effectively measuring your abm campaign goals, ask the following questions:

1. The Truth Test: Are we measuring what we truly set out to measure? Ensure that the KPIs reflect the actual objectives of your campaign and align with your overall business goals.
2. The Focus Test: Are we solely measuring what is necessary? Avoid overcomplicating the data by ensuring that your KPIs focus only on relevant aspects of your account based marketing goals.
3. The Relevancy Test: Is this the right measure for tracking the performance we want to assess? Ensure that the metrics chosen are directly tied to the success factors of your ABM campaign.
4. The Consistency Test: Will the data be collected in the same manner, regardless of who is responsible? Standardise your data collection processes to ensure consistent and reliable results across different teams and time periods.
5. The Access Test: Can the data be easily located and captured when needed? Ensure that your data collection is efficient and accessible, enabling you to make timely adjustments to your strategy if necessary.
6. The Clarity Test: Is there any ambiguity in how the data will be interpreted? Ensure that your metrics are clear and leave no room for misinterpretation, so that the insights gained are actionable and meaningful.
7. The So-What Test: Can the data be acted upon? Are the insights practical and actionable, enabling your teams to adjust course or double down on successful strategies?
8. The Timeliness Test: Can the data be accessed quickly and regularly enough to make a difference? Your data needs to be available at a frequency that allows for timely decision-making, ensuring you can optimise campaign performance in real-time.
9. The Cost Test: Is the effort or expense of measuring this data justified by its value? Ensure that the cost of measurement is proportionate to the insights it delivers, especially for resource-heavy metrics.
10. The Gaming Test: Could this measure incentivise undesirable or inappropriate behaviours? Ensure that the KPIs you select do not encourage teams to focus on hitting targets in ways that undermine the true objectives of your ABM strategy.