Account-based marketing (ABM) helps teams identify, prioritize and execute a tailored marketing approach toward a list of key accounts or account segments. While scopes and channels may vary, marketing teams typically plan, execute and optimize their ABM programs by following and iterating on the “ABM Development Cycle,” which consists of the following steps:

Teams can use the above cycle to “spot check” their own ABM operations and processes, but following these steps alone isn’t a guarantee for success.

In our view, three other critical areas for ABM success include:

1. Sales & marketing alignment: In our experience, sales and marketing team alignment is the number one factor for ABM success. Great things can happen when both teams align on segmentation, messaging and measurement.
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2. Priority account focus: We believe that teams executing ABM have the greatest chance of improving performance and driving growth when they apply the UPSYD framework to their campaigns.
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3. Outcome-focused measurement: Teams executing ABM need a balance of awareness, influence, pipeline, revenue, conversion and expansion metrics to help paint the full picture of program impact.

By aligning strategy, operations, execution and measurement in a continuous feedback cycle with one another, we believe that teams executing ABM have the highest chance of success.