Mastering Target Accounts: A Strategic Guide for ABM Success

Aligning your marketing and sales teams around the right target accounts is crucial. But how do you ensure you’re focusing on the accounts that truly matter? Many businesses struggle with wasted resources and misaligned efforts, leading to missed opportunities and suboptimal ROI.

The solution lies in a structured approach to account selection. In this blog, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide to mastering the art of targeting the right accounts in your ABM strategy. From setting clear criteria to scoring and ranking accounts, you’ll discover how to create a cohesive strategy that drives results and enhances collaboration across your teams

 

• Key Takeaways
  • Set clear criteria for account selection: Establish well-defined parameters to identify target accounts that align with your strategic goals and offer the highest potential for ROI.
  • Utilise data analytics for informed decisions: Leverage data-driven tools and insights to evaluate and score potential accounts, ensuring your resources are directed toward the most valuable opportunities.
  • Foster cross-functional collaboration: Align your marketing and sales teams around shared objectives and target accounts to enhance coordination and improve overall campaign effectiveness.
  • Regularly review and refine your target account list: Continuously assess and update your target account list to adapt to market changes and evolving business priorities.
  • Integrate account insights into broader marketing strategies: Ensure that insights gained from your target accounts inform and enhance your wider marketing initiatives, driving consistent and scalable growth.

 

How many Target accounts should you have

 

When establishing the right number of target accounts for your ABM strategy, there’s no universal solution. The ideal number is highly contingent on various factors, including the scale of your sales team, available resources, and the complexity of your product or service. The key to effective account targeting strategy lies in balancing these elements.

For smaller businesses, focusing on a limited number of target accounts may be more realistic and effective, while larger enterprises might be able to handle a broader list of target accounts. However, regardless of your company’s size, it’s generally wise to start with a smaller target account list. This allows your team to build expertise and refine processes before scaling up your efforts.

Key Factors in Target Account Selection

 

When determining the right number of abm target accounts, several critical factors must be considered. Each of these will shape your account targeting strategy, ensuring your approach is both focused and sustainable.

• • • Revenue Goals: Consider both short-term and long-term revenue goals. ABM is a long-term strategy, so it’s essential to select accounts that align with your financial targets over time.
    • Sales & Marketing Capacity: The capacity of your sales and marketing teams plays a significant role in target account selection. If your team is smaller, it’s crucial not to overwhelm them with too many accounts. Conversely, a larger team may be able to manage a broader scope of accounts more efficiently.
    • Revenue Potential: When building your target account list, prioritise accounts based on their potential to generate high revenue. These target accounts may require more resources and personalised attention but offer higher returns. Many sales teams divide accounts into tiers, with higher-value accounts receiving greater focus.
    • Complexity of Product or Service: The more complex your product or service, the more tailored your account targeting strategy needs to be. High-complexity solutions often require deeper engagement with fewer target accounts to ensure success.

 

How to Create a Target Account List for Your Enterprise Team

 

Creating a target account list for your enterprise team is often a challenging task, with over a third of marketing teams citing it as one of the biggest hurdles in running an ABM campaign. However, the effort is well worth it. Around 87% of marketers report that ABM delivers a higher ROI than other marketing approaches.

ABM operates on a “flipped funnel” model, which focuses on a smaller, more precise set of prospects. This is why target account selection is absolutely critical. Prioritising and narrowing down the right target accounts is the first essential step to ensure your ABM strategy thrives.

Narrowing Down Your List of Prospects

 

The foundation of any effective target account list lies in your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This profile describes the types of companies that are most likely to benefit from your product or service. Since your sales team cannot realistically follow up with every lead, using an ICP ensures your team focuses on the most promising abm target accounts.

For teams new to account-based marketing, ICPs are invaluable. Not only do they help identify target accounts that align with your business goals, but they also enable you to refine your messaging, ensuring that your product addresses the specific needs of your customers. Furthermore, this approach harmonises your product, marketing, and sales efforts, uniting them under a shared strategic framework.

It’s crucial to distinguish between an ICP and a user persona. While both are useful, an ICP focuses on the company you’re targeting, whereas a user persona refers to the individuals within that company you’re aiming to reach. In ABM, the ICP is your guiding tool for target account selection.

The Benefits of a Well-Defined Target Account List

 

A meticulously crafted target account list offers multiple advantages. Primarily, it enables you to quickly identify the target accounts most likely to engage with your product or service. This strategic focus allows for tailored content that speaks directly to decision-makers, enhancing your chances of successful engagement. Moreover, tracking the performance of your content against this list enables you to make real-time adjustments, ensuring that your efforts yield the best possible results.

Increased Focus and Marketing Efficiency

A well-defined target account list enhances marketing efficiency by allowing your team to focus on the most relevant in-market buyers. With a precise list of target accounts, you can create highly relevant content aligned with different stages of the sales funnel, from top-of-funnel (TOFU) to bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) interactions. This structured approach helps strengthen relationships and positions your team ahead of competitors by delivering personalised, high-impact marketing messages.

Improved Alignment Between Marketing and Sales Teams

Another significant advantage of having a defined target account list is the improved alignment between your marketing and sales teams. When both teams are operating from the same target account list, it ensures clarity and coordination, driving better results. This shared focus ensures that all efforts are concentrated on target accounts that fit the company’s strategic objectives, which in turn helps maximise ROI.

By working from a unified list, marketing teams can develop more precise campaigns with messages that resonate with each specific target account. This not only streamlines the process but also significantly increases the chances of campaign success, as everyone is targeting the right prospects in alignment with broader business goals.

Closing More High-Value Deals

Identifying the right abm target accounts is instrumental in optimising your outreach efforts and creating more targeted, personalised email campaigns. With a clearly defined target account list, your team can identify the key stakeholders within each account, tailor your messaging, and utilise resources more effectively.

This approach also enables better prospecting and the ability to track account-level metrics, giving you the flexibility to adjust your strategy as needed. By focusing on the most promising target accounts, you build stronger relationships with potential clients, significantly increasing the likelihood of closing high-value deals.

 

 

How to Create a Target Account List (TAL)

 

Creating a target account list (TAL) is essential to ensuring your efforts are focused on the accounts with the highest potential for success. A well-constructed target account list allows your team to concentrate resources where they can have the most significant impact. The first step in building a TAL is thorough research into your target market, identifying the best accounts to target based on several critical factors.

You should begin by considering firmographic data such as company size, the potential revenue they could generate, and their success with products or services similar to yours. Competitor analysis is also valuable at this stage. Once you’ve identified the most promising target accounts, compile the necessary contact information, including names, companies, phone numbers, and email addresses, in addition to technographic insights.

Defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

 

The foundation of any effective account targeting strategy lies in defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Your ICP should be based on measurable factors like company size, industry, geographic location, revenue, and other demographic considerations that align with your offering. The more precise your ICP, the easier it will be to identify the right abm target accounts and buyer personas.

Once your ICP is clearly defined, you can begin researching prospective clients who match the profile. This research can involve market analysis, customer surveys, or even interviews with potential buyers. The result is a refined list of target accounts and personas that form the backbone of your ABM strategy, helping you concentrate on accounts with the highest likelihood of conversion.

 

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Researching Target Accounts and Personas

 

When researching target accounts and personas, it is essential to consider various elements such as language, geography, and industry preferences. If your audience is based in the United States, for example, your focus should be on target accounts and personas in the English (US) language, tailoring your messaging accordingly. Depending on the industry, you might also need to narrow your scope to specific regions to ensure you’re concentrating on the right abm target accounts.

Prioritising Target Accounts

 

Once you’ve compiled your target account list, the next step is to prioritise the accounts that offer the greatest potential. Factors like geographic location, language, industry, company size, and growth potential all play a crucial role in determining which target accounts should take precedence.

Segmenting Your Target Account List

 

Segmenting your target account list is key to optimising your outreach efforts. Dividing your accounts into tiers enables you to allocate resources more effectively, ensuring your marketing and sales efforts are aligned with account value.

You can segment your list by criteria such as company size, industry, and geographic location. Using a lead-scoring system is also highly beneficial in target account selection, helping you prioritise based on factors like potential revenue and engagement levels.

For instance, if a company has a large workforce, it might score higher, signalling greater potential. Once you’ve assigned scores to each target account, you can identify the most valuable prospects and tailor your approach accordingly. This segmentation ensures your account targeting strategy is both focused and scalable, driving better results in the long term.

 

What are the tiers of Target accounts

 

A critical element of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is recognising that not all target accounts within your list carry the same value. Some accounts will naturally be higher priority, while others may be less so. It’s crucial to make this distinction early on to allocate the right level of resources and tailor your efforts accordingly. Proper segmentation ensures that your marketing and sales teams are working on target accounts that align with both immediate and strategic goals.

Segmenting Your Target Account List

 

Segmenting your target account list typically follows three key pillars: Intent, Fit, and Engagement. These pillars guide the division of abm target accounts, ensuring you prioritise based on need, opportunity, and existing relationship levels.

Intent

Intent refers to specific signals that indicate whether a particular target account or individual within that account is actively interested in your product or service. These signals could manifest in many ways, such as individuals searching specific keywords related to your offering or browsing relevant content on industry websites. Triggers like recent publications or leadership changes within a company can also point to intent. While there are many third-party data providers offering intent data, you can also track intent by setting up Google Alerts or LinkedIn notifications for relevant topics.

Fit

Fit assesses how closely a target account aligns with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This alignment can be measured by firmographic data points such as company size, industry, and geography. It’s also critical to evaluate the potential Annual Contract Value (ACV) an account can bring relative to the ease of sale.

Some key questions to ask when assessing fit include:

• • • Which regions or industries does your company perform best in?
    • What is your ideal company size for successful sales?
    • Does your solution integrate better with certain types of technology stacks?

Engagement

Engagement measures the level of interaction your organisation has already had with a target account. This can range from website visits to attending webinars or downloading content. If opportunities have previously gone cold within your pipeline, this could also be an indicator of existing engagement.

When breaking into a new market or pursuing abm target accounts without prior engagement, leveraging connections can be a valuable tool. Common connections between your organisation and the target accounts, or even your client’s network, can be a useful resource. Targeted referral campaigns can also help build rapport and trust with new prospects.

 

How to Tier Your Target Accounts

 

Now that you’ve compiled a list of target accounts, what’s next? Tiering your accounts allows you to organise your audience according to their value and the campaign you’re running. It’s important to recognise that not all target accounts should be engaged simultaneously. Doing so could overwhelm your sales reps, dilute your messaging, and misallocate resources.

Account tiering combines technology, data insights, and traditional research to rank your target accounts by priority. For many B2B companies, a three-tiered system works best:

• • • Tier 1: These accounts are a perfect match with your ICP and are comparable to your most valuable existing customers. Tier 1 accounts may also include companies with significant strategic value, such as high-profile logos that could elevate your brand.
    • Tier 2: These accounts strongly align with your ICP but may offer lower lifetime value. They are still valuable and worth targeting but with fewer resources compared to Tier 1.
    • Tier 3: While these accounts may not fully meet all your ICP criteria, they still offer some potential. However, they typically don’t justify a significant resource allocation to secure their business.

 

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How do you identify Target accounts

 

Researching Potential Accounts

 

The first step in identifying target accounts for your Account-Based Marketing (ABM) efforts is thorough research. This process involves gathering detailed information about companies that could be a good fit for your ABM strategy. Key factors to consider include company size, industry, location, and any other relevant characteristics that align with your account targeting strategy.

In addition to general data, it’s important to dive deeper into the specific needs and pain points of these organisations. Understanding the challenges they face and the solutions they are currently using allows you to determine whether your product or service is well-positioned to meet their needs. This type of targeted research not only helps you identify abm target accounts, but also ensures you’re focusing on prospects that are likely to convert.

Identifying Key Decision Makers

 

An essential part of the research phase is identifying the key decision-makers within each target account. These individuals typically hold senior roles such as CEO, CFO, or VP of Marketing, and are responsible for making or influencing purchasing decisions. Successfully identifying and reaching these individuals is crucial, as they will ultimately determine whether or not to move forward with your offering.

By understanding the hierarchy and the specific roles of key stakeholders within a target account, you can tailor your outreach to address their unique needs and concerns. This approach significantly increases the likelihood of building a strong connection and winning their business.

Leveraging Tools for Account Identification

 

• • 1. Visitor Tracking Tools Visitor tracking tools such as LeadFeeder, VisitorQueue, and LeadForensics help you identify target accounts that are already visiting your website. These tools offer insights into account behaviour, providing a clearer picture of which accounts may be actively seeking solutions like yours. Many of these tools integrate with platforms like Google Analytics, allowing you to further narrow down your target account selection based on browsing behaviour. Kickfire is one such example that adds depth to your data, helping you focus on the most relevant target accounts.
    2. Intent Intelligence Tools Intent intelligence platforms, including Demandbase, Terminus, and 6sense, analyse online content consumption patterns to identify accounts with the highest likelihood of purchasing your product. These tools are highly sophisticated, albeit often more expensive. They offer the advantage of detecting abm target accounts that are actively in the buying cycle, allowing you to prioritise these opportunities.

 

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Identifying Target Accounts at Industry Events and Conferences

 

Industry events and conferences present valuable opportunities to engage directly with potential target accounts. These events provide two key ways to identify high-potential prospects:

• • • Exhibitors and Attendees: By examining the list of companies exhibiting or participating in an event, either through the event host’s website or by attending in person, you can gather valuable information about possible target accounts. This method offers direct interaction with decision-makers and influencers, allowing for immediate engagement.
    • Networking Opportunities: Whether physical or virtual, networking remains a powerful tool. Conferences provide ample chances to network with prospects, gaining insights that might not be available through digital research alone.

Identifying Prospects at Online Events and Webinars

 

In today’s digital landscape, online events and webinars offer new avenues for identifying and engaging target accounts. Many platforms feature e-meeting setups, chat rooms, and other interactive tools that create opportunities for connecting with potential buyers. Here are a few ways to leverage these events:

• • • RSVP Lists on LinkedIn: When you RSVP for an event on LinkedIn, you can view the list of other attendees, offering insights into new target accounts you may not have previously considered. This process can be resource-intensive, so it’s crucial to prioritise accounts that align with your strategy.
    • Chat Interactions: Some platforms, like LinkedIn live events, allow attendees to interact through public chat windows. These conversations can reveal valuable information about prospects, helping you identify abm target accounts.
    • Purchasing Attendee Data: Some event hosts sell attendee data, providing an easy but potentially expensive way to access new target accounts. If budget allows, purchasing this data can significantly streamline your research process.

 

 

How to Attract Target Accounts

 

Step One: Launch Targeted, Personalised Marketing Campaigns

 

The first step in attracting target accounts is to capture their attention through highly personalised and targeted marketing campaigns.

In ABM, specificity is key. The more tailored and personalised your campaign is, the greater the chance of engaging your target accounts. Studies show that 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand when their experience is personalised. Therefore, your goal should be to create a bespoke marketing experience that resonates directly with the needs and interests of your abm target accounts.

Begin by choosing the right communication channels for your audience. These could include direct mail, social media engagement, email marketing, custom content, virtual events, phone calls, referrals, or even podcast invitations. Target account selection requires meeting your prospects where they are, not just where it’s convenient for you. Personalisation starts by interacting with potential buyers in environments where they’re most comfortable and engaged.

Avoid relying on a single medium; instead, adopt a multi-channel approach. This will require a carefully mapped-out customer journey, ensuring you deliver the right message at the right stage of the funnel. For example, if a potential customer registers for a virtual event, consider what stage they’re in and the key questions they might have. Your job is to answer those questions at each touchpoint, guiding them smoothly along the buying journey.

Step Two: Tailor the User Experience to Identify Target Accounts

 

By this stage in your ABM process, you should have a deep understanding of your target accounts, including their pain points, objectives, and frequently asked questions. With this knowledge in hand, it’s time to craft a personalised user experience.

Incorporate these insights into your website experience, weaving personalised messaging and content that directly speaks to your target accounts. Consider creating bespoke video content, tailored guides, and calls-to-action (CTAs) that address the specific challenges your target accounts face. For instance, you might offer downloadable whitepapers or webinars that cater to their industry-specific pain points.

Not only does this strategy help you identify who is visiting your website, but it also positions you to provide answers before your prospects even ask the questions. This type of content-driven engagement builds trust and credibility, helping your account targeting strategy convert more effectively.