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Oct 21, 2026
Watermark Water Cooler: Account Based Marketing
Originally posted on June 15, 2022
Who can benefit from account-based marketing? In this episode of the Watermark Water Cooler, Cameron Burns sits down with Aaron Campbell, an account coordinator at Watermark at the time, to break down what ABM is, who it targets and how to put it into practice.
What is account-based marketing (ABM)? Account-based marketing is a B2B approach that focuses sales and marketing on the specific accounts you most want to win. Instead of casting a wide net, ABM personalizes your messaging to each target company and the people inside it, then measures success account by account.
Why Is ABM a Good Fit for B2B?
ABM stands for account-based marketing, and Aaron calls it a great fit for B2B marketers. Newer marketing technology has made it possible to take sales and marketing teams that used to work separately and turn them into one cohesive effort aimed at the clients the business wants to win.
Who Does ABM Target?
ABM targets your key accounts within the industries you serve. Because a service can apply to one business differently than it applies to another, account-based marketing personalizes your communications to each account you’re after.
Within each account, Aaron recommends starting broad. Even an entry-level employee might take something they saw from your company to their manager, so the more people you reach inside an account early on, the better. Once an account becomes sales qualified, shift your focus to the decision-makers and champions.
How Do You Define Your Target Accounts?
Start with your ideal customer profile (ICP), which defines the companies you want to work with by characteristics such as:
- Number of employees
- Revenue
- Funding
- Region
Inside that profile, define the buyer personas you’re selling to at each company. As Aaron puts it, you’re after not only the accounts but the people who make them up, because they’re the ones whose attention you need to earn.
What Does an ABM Campaign Look Like?
An ABM campaign is built around the buyer’s journey, starting with awareness. The goal is to let target accounts come to you rather than pushing a hard sell that turns them away.
Personalization can be very specific. In one past campaign, Watermark put together a physical box with items chosen for a single executive. The team knew the executive liked golf, so the box included golf tees. Compare that with a typical Google Ads campaign, which might target an entire industry instead of one person.
How Should ABM Messaging Change Across the Buyer’s Journey?
Timing matters as much as the message. For a new account, focus on content that positions you as a thought leader, such as a blog post or white paper that helps with a problem their company is facing right now. There’s no hard sell at this stage.
Once an account reaches the prospecting stage and a lead becomes marketing qualified, through either inbound or outbound marketing, you can have a bigger conversation about how your services apply to their business.
Which Channels Work Best for ABM?
Aaron recommends engaging across every channel you run, including social media, paid media and your website, with a cohesive message across all of them. Email is especially useful for personalization: find the values that matter to one target account, which may be different from another account’s, and make that the focus of your message.
What Technology Do You Need for ABM?
Aaron lists four core pieces of an ABM technology stack:
- CRM: The customer relationship management system your sales team relies on, and the foundation for automating your marketing.
- Marketing automation: Many platforms combine CRM and marketing automation, connecting your social media, email and paid advertising in one hub so you can monitor everything in one place.
- CMS: A content management system for your website, whether that’s WordPress or a headless CMS like Contentful.
- Business intelligence tool: A tool that pulls data from LinkedIn and websites to give you people’s names, titles and emails, so you can reach them directly or add them to a targeted campaign. Aaron names ZoomInfo as one of the first. Salespeople once used tools like it mainly for cold calls; now marketers use the data to build targeted campaigns.
Aaron admits that kind of data can feel “a little creepy, a little Big Brother-ish.” Cameron’s view is that it doesn’t have to be. Used well, it means delivering better, more relevant content to the right person instead of blasting messages everywhere. Watermark follows an education-first, inbound approach, and the goal is always to build trust so a lead is ready to convert.
How Do You Measure ABM Success?
Aaron looks at ABM results two ways:
- Qualitative: Are you reaching the right people? How many contacts are you reaching at each target account, and who is becoming sales qualified? Review job titles and who is converting through your lead forms.
- Quantitative: Track conversion rates at each stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to becoming a customer. Breaking a campaign into stage-by-stage conversion rates shows how effective each part is.
Your sales team may only look at whether a deal closed, but marketing needs to understand every stage of building trust with a target account. Cameron adds that because ABM has a clearer goal than a broad inbound campaign, success and failure are often easier to see.
Does ABM Stop Once an Account Becomes a Customer?
No. Nurturing continues after the sale. Keeping a client happy leads to referrals, and learning your customer’s business helps you win other customers. If you work with a major player in an industry, they know their peers and can refer you and advocate for your brand.
Aaron’s final tip: look to industry conferences and trade shows. You don’t have to attend, but they’re a great way to understand an industry and who its major players are.
Key Takeaways
- ABM focuses sales and marketing on the key accounts you most want to win.
- Define your ideal customer profile first, then the personas inside each company.
- Lead with education for new accounts, and save the bigger conversation for when they’re marketing qualified.
- Start broad within each account, then focus on decision-makers once it’s sales qualified.
- Measure by account and by stage, not just by closed deals.
- Keep nurturing after the sale to earn referrals.
Ready to Build an ABM Strategy?
ABM works when sales and marketing agree on the accounts that matter, reach every person who influences the decision and track progress account by account. Watermark helps B2B and AEC firms define their best-fit accounts, build personalized campaigns across every channel and measure what’s working. , or contact us to start building your ABM strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is account-based marketing (ABM)?
Account-based marketing is a B2B strategy that focuses sales and marketing on a defined set of key accounts. Instead of attracting a broad audience, ABM personalizes messaging and outreach to the specific companies, and the people within them, that you most want to win.
What’s the difference between an ICP and a buyer persona?
An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the type of company you want to work with, based on factors like number of employees, revenue, funding and region. A buyer persona describes the individual people within those companies who influence or make the purchase decision. ABM uses both.
What tools do you need for account-based marketing?
A CRM to manage accounts and contacts, a marketing automation platform to personalize and deliver campaigns, a website or CMS to host content, and a business intelligence tool such as ZoomInfo to find the right contacts at each account.
How do you measure ABM success?
Track account-level results: how many contacts you’re reaching at each target company, how many become sales qualified and conversion rates from awareness through becoming a customer. Because ABM targets a defined list, success and gaps are often easier to see than in a broad inbound campaign.
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