A complete guide to ABM:

Account-Based Marketing as a strategy to scale B2B businesses

"Personalization in Marketing"

How many times have you read or heard this phrase in recent years? And how many times have you and your team actually personalized each step of the customer acquisition - or even retention - process?

It's common for new marketing concepts to become seven-headed monsters due to the gap between theory and practice.

Remember when you heard about Inbound Marketing, maybe in 2009/2010? Didn't it seem surreal to attract customers by generating intellectual value, instead of highlighting the benefits of your service right away?

Well, we're in 2025 and, for many companies, this gap still exists in Inbound Marketing.

Our goal in writing this content for you is precisely to prevent this from happening when it comes to Account-Based Marketing: we want to create the bridge between theory and practice, in the simplest way possible, so that your company can execute the MVP of an ABM program without getting lost along the way.

We'll bring our practical experience in ABM, addressing the current scenario, test&learn, cases and a lot of hands-on work.

Personalizing the B2B marketing and sales process is an urgent need and doesn't have to be this seven-headed monster. Are you coming with us?

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SUMMARY

But after all, what is ABM?

For Justin Gray, CMO of LeadMD, Account-Based Marketing is "simply marketing done well".

For us at BOWE, ABM is an alternative within marketing strategies for complex operations. Translating: a marketing strategy for long-cycle B2B sales, applied to named accounts in a highly personalized way.

We are no longer talking to hundreds of leads [COMPANIES] at once, we are talking 1:1 with stakeholders, representatives [PEOPLE] of companies that don't deviate one comma from our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).

And this, of course, requires a lot of technology - but it doesn't prevent us from agreeing with Gray.

Since Kotler back then, with the definition of the 4 Ps, marketing (in theory) is based on delivering exactly the transformation that your prospects need to become customers. Solving a latent pain in their lives - or, in the case of B2B, in their companies.

The 4 Ps (product, price, place and promotion) are the embryo of the customization we talk so much about today, and ABM is the delivery of this highly personalized marketing in highly complex sales, through technology.

What ABM is not

Account-Based Marketing is a combination of actions executed through marketing assets that are generally used in a decentralized way.

But the differences don't stop there. In fact, the main distinctions between ABM and Inbound lie in the funnel model and workflow.

In Inbound, the funnel begins with attraction, moves through interest, then through the nurturing of the qualified base, and only then do commercial negotiations begin.

In Account-Based Marketing, as Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing, would say: "instead of fishing with a net, you fish with a harpoon".

First, key accounts that make sense for the company, within the ICP, are selected. Then, the contacts of this prospect are identified, to then nurture these contacts and, finally, forward them to sales.

ABM x Inbound Marketing

That is, ABM is not JUST Inbound Marketing, although Inbound is an asset present in ABM.

While Inbound primarily focuses on Volume - reaching the largest number of people through quality content - in ABM, we focus less on VOLUME and much more on QUALITY.

Therefore, the need for personalization: generating ideal content that speaks to the current needs of one or more prospect(s), initiating and continuing the relationship through the generation of intellectual value.

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Now, when we talk about workflow, the difference is as simple as it is difficult to apply.

In Inbound, the most common workflow is Marketing > Sales. In ABM, the two sectors must work together. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that ABM doesn't exist without the alignment between marketing and sales.

Complementary material: Integrating Marketing and Sales is a task for yesterday

No action should be entirely unilateral. Each touchpoint and the paths leading to them must communicate to create a unique journey for the prospect. This also makes ABM very different from Outbound, in its purest form.

ABM x Outbound Marketing

ABM is not JUST outbound marketing, despite using outbound in conjunction with inbound to generate demand holistically.

While Outbound seeks to offer products or services to potential buyers - often with marketing and sales departments approaching completely different people in the process, who have never had prior contact with the offering company - ABM uses outbound channels to lead prospects to touchpoints or valuable content that keeps the relationship active.

Furthermore, Outbound is usually done in campaign format, with a beginning, middle, and end. Account-Based Marketing, on the other hand, takes the form of a program, with long-term relationships and no defined end, making it a Customer-Centric marketing strategy.

A Customer-Centric strategy

Forget the difference between marketing agencies/consultancies and B2B companies: ABM is the same for everyone. It's about personalizing your marketing actions to solve a prospect's or client's pain point. After testing and learning a lot, we understand that ABM can be guided by 3 keywords:

When we talk about B2B marketing or sales, it's common to think we're talking to companies. But personalization requires understanding that we're talking to people. This is the purest concept of "relationship". When we create personalized actions within an ABM program, we seek to reach people with whom we will relate - generally over an extended period of time - for mutual gain in the end. But who are these people? Very objectively, ABM applies to:

Speaking empirically, once one of these groups was approached in Bowe's ABM programs, they realized how concerned we are with their satisfaction, seeking to solve problems and improve results.

Despite being a marketing strategy, ABM ended up becoming our best relationship channel. Partners, clients, and prospects began to see value in commercial conversations, instead of seeing them as SPAM.

Conversations more focused on solutions and less on sales end up translating their needs within the solutions we offer. It's that world-famous story of using technology to promote relationships between people. In the end, they felt understood because of personalization.

And speaking of the world…

Source-Data

ABM in Brazil and in the World

Trends in marketing and sales are usually born in certain regions (primarily large urban complexes with large commercial operations) in the face of certain challenges and, gradually, spread around the world as their results prove positive.

With ABM it was no different.

Even though first mentioned in 1993, in the study The One To One Future, ABM only began to enter meeting agendas in mid-2014, as shown by Google Trends:

Since then, evolutions in this marketing strategy have been slow but gradual. Until 2020, something happened that affected not only large urban complexes with large commercial operations, but the entire world: the Covid-19 pandemic.

The The 2020 State of ABM Report, from Terminus, shows that only 5.8% of respondents still did not have an active Account-Based Marketing program in their companies - compared to 23% the previous year.

And it's no wonder: in a ITSMA research with the ABM Leadership Alliance, 87% of respondents said that ABM programs offer better results than any other marketing investment.

When the entire market enters a recession (in this case, due to the pandemic), it is natural for communication investments to decrease or turn solely to strategies with proven high ROI.

In another DemandGen study, focused on the US market, 76% of respondents said that ABM strategies offer superior ROI compared to other marketing strategies. When the same question is asked to respondents from a The CMO Survey study, which analyzes marketing during the pandemic, 87% of respondents assume that ABM exceeds the ROI of any other marketing strategy.

Also in the DemandGen study, Account-Based Marketing is pointed out as the strategy with the highest investment prioritization, being cited by 61% of respondents.

That same ITSMA research, cited above and also focused on the US market, shows that 27% of B2B marketing budgets across the country are being allocated, in some way, to ABM programs.

In Brazil, however, the numbers - besides being difficult to find - still leave much to be desired.

Despite 76% of DemandGen study respondents expecting personalized service regarding their marketing needs, only 17% of marketing budgets in the country are allocated to ABM, according to SalesForce research.

And even more alarming than that, is knowing that only 31.3% of Brazilian companies use marketing and sales tools that connect - something essential for Account-Based Marketing to happen, according to the Digital Marketing and Sales Maturity Research in Brazil.

But it doesn't stop there.

When we talk about tools for ABM in Brazil, the hole is deeper.

Account-Based Marketing Challenges

In a global scenario, implementing Account-Based Marketing presents common challenges similar to those we would face when implementing any marketing strategy: starting with lack of quality data.

ABM Data

Data is the foundation for any marketing strategy in 2022 and beyond. With it, we stop throwing bait at thousands of people hoping that one of them, by luck, will be hit assertively by the message.

As Seth Godin says, in the most didactic way possible, "marketing is the art of reaching the minimum viable public".

From the moment we give up volume to focus on quality, we must direct all actions to very specific pains, communicated to key people within the companies we need to prospect or optimize the partnership. In this context, stating that there is no more room for feeling is stating the obvious. At the same time, acquiring data becomes an even more difficult task, since we are talking to few people with such specificity.

We will talk about ABM tools in this section, but just so you have an idea, an ABM Stack is basically made of data acquisition and analysis tools:

A good path is to understand (once and for all) that the ABM program must communicate with people, not companies. The data should provide insights about:

  • who these people are

  • what their pains are to be solved

  • what are the touchpoints to impact them

  • what message to convey

But don't forget that, on your side, the challenges are also about people.

Talk to one of our specialists

ABM Teams

Most of the ABM challenges are focused on the team that will plan and execute the program:

  • alignment between marketing and sales
  • lack of resources to perform necessary functions
  • lack of essential skills for ABM, such as data analysis, for example
  • lack of support from managers or even C-Levels in the processes

There are very simple ways to overcome some of these challenges.

Much of the lack of support from managers comes from seeing ABM as an experiment, not a solid and effective strategy. As we will see a bit further ahead, Account-Based Marketing has surprising numbers when it comes to ROI, which can help a lot when convincing the entire hierarchical chain of its urgency.

Dedicated team, budget for training and even budget for hiring can arise from there.

Tools for ABM

Lack of budget can be one of the biggest challenges, since implementing Account-Based Marketing tools can be a high-investment initiative.

But what if the tools for this purpose don't even exist yet?

In Brazil, at least, there isn't one specific for ABM yet:

ABM Technologies - who proposes to solve:

But worldwide, tools that cover all the needs of Account-Based Marketing are still scarce. The market still needs to greatly facilitate access to:

  • Holistic ABM tools
  • Predict tools
  • BI tools
  • Testing tools

No wonder, the stack to execute an ABM program is a collection of SaaS for Inbound, Outbound and data (as we mentioned earlier):

The Rich Man's ABM Stack:
All the Tools You Need to Execute Your ABM Strategy

As we can see, the vast majority of companies use tools already applied to other marketing and sales fronts to run pilot ABM programs, testing results before moving to a specific solution.

Speaking in numbers:

+ 70%

of companies that work with ABM use:

  • Email marketing
  • Website
  • CRM
  • Social media

50% a 70%

of companies that work with ABM use:

  • Events
  • Ads (from Google to Social Media Ads)
  • Insights Tools (Analytics, Sales Navigator, market intelligence tools, etc.)

-50%

of companies that work with ABM use:

  • Specific ABM tools
  • Chatbots

But calm down, not everything is lost!

Difficulties aside, the advantages of ABM make it all worth it. So breathe, grab a coffee and follow us to the good side of the story.

I want to know

Revenue increase using ABM

Let's get straight to the point: 91% of companies that use ABM increase their business. 25% of them claim to have an increase greater than 50%, according to a survey by SiriusDecisions.

The ROI of Account-Based Marketing

There is an infinity of data that opens our eyes to the results of an ABM program.

It's worth remembering that, up there, when we explored ABM numbers, we mentioned that 87% of respondents from a The CMO Survey survey stated that this strategy surpasses the ROI of any other marketing strategy. In another DemandGen survey, 76% of respondents said the same.

Exactly the same question was asked in an ITSMA survey, and almost 85% of participants confirmed ABM as the marketing strategy that delivers the most ROI.

Hardly would 3 studies with such close numbers be exaggerating the results. Do you agree?

ITSMA, in fact, divided the ROI perception of respondents between ABM programs in initial and already mature stages. The results continue to surprise:

Going beyond ABM ROI.

ROI is one of the most important marketing metrics, but it leaves other benefits out of its calculation.

In a Marketo survey, 84% of participants said that ABM largely benefits customer retention, in addition to expanding relationships with existing customers (upsell, cross-sell and different types of partnerships).

Another Marketing Profs study shows that the alignment of marketing and sales (necessary for ABM) increases customer retention rate by 36%. And this says a lot about your revenue growth.

To give you an idea, a SiriusDecision study showed that B2B companies with well-aligned marketing and sales operations can accelerate revenue growth by 24% in up to 3 years, and 27% net profit growth in this same period.

When we talk about individual results, companies with both sectors aligned can achieve up to 208% more revenue through marketing actions, according to Marketo.

That is, revenue increase through ABM is a reality.

That is, revenue increase through ABM is a reality.

"Surprised? Then check out this study on revenue increase with ABM.

An ABM Leadership Alliance survey shows that, after implementing Account-Based Marketing, the interviewed companies had a 71% growth in their contract values, compared to their annual averages.

And it's no wonder. Since 100% of customers acquired through ABM are within the ICP, retention is almost a certainty.

Why adopt ABM: benefits of Account-Based Marketing

Time to convince your executive partners and team managers to implement ABM. For that, you'll need to know that among its main advantages are:

  • High ROI;
  • Revenue increase;
  • Clearer results, from the alignment between marketing and sales;
  • Reduction in sales cycle;
  • Improvement in secondary results, such as relationship and customer retention.

Beyond that, at Bowe we believe that your main objective is to solve specific and urgent pains:

  • reach an audience that inbound cannot impact;
  • at the negotiation level it is very complex, create multinational strategies to simplify high-complexity negotiations;
  • expand the company's testing culture to guide it to an innovation mindset, starting with marketing and following to all other sectors.

But let's focus where it hurts the most:

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Here at BOWE, we preach that there is no better metric to calculate marketing results than the intersection of CAC x LTV (Customer Acquisition Cost x Lifetime Value, which is Net profit brought by the customer throughout their contract). Once the calculation is done, it's easy to understand why we're focusing our efforts on creating high-impact ABM programs.

This proves Seth Godin's theory, which we mentioned above. We are in the era of the minimum viable public!

Is ABM for my company?

ABM, like Inbound, is a strategy made to solve certain B2B market pains.

Does this mean it can't be applied to others? No!

This means it offers the best results when:

  • You sell high-value or complex solutions
  • Your sales cycle is long
  • Your sales are consultative
  • Your market is totally niche
  • The purchase decision is in the hands of stakeholders who need to be influenced

Do any of these alternatives resonate with your company? Then it's time to get your hands dirty!

How an ABM program works

From now on, we will begin to delve into the planning and construction of the MVP of an Account-Based Marketing program.

Let's start by understanding:

What are Key Accounts

Key accounts, or named accounts, are the personification of that story: 20% of customers that generate 80% of profits. They are essential customers for the company.

In an ABM program, Key Accounts are prospects within the ICP; customers with high expansion potential; and/or partners with high potential for new business.

Once Key Accounts are defined (we'll teach how later), the entire program must be headed by Account Managers who, together with their teams, will have to personalize each action to impact, talk to, and solve the pains of those responsible for these key accounts.

Campaigns or programs?

We've already talked about this above, but it's worth revisiting to understand ABM types with excellence.

Unlike other marketing strategies, which are mostly seasonal and campaign-based, ABM is mostly program-based.

This means it is born without a predetermined end. It must be applied continuously to maintain good relationships and identify new business opportunities.

Types of ABM

Knowing what Key Accounts are, we can dive into ABM types.

Account-Based Marketing is divided into 3 types of approach:

01. ProgrammaticOne to many02. LiteOne to few03. StrategicOne to one

Now that you already know what each type of Account-Based Marketing is and how it works, how about understanding the pillars that will support your ABM programs?

I want to know

The pillars of Account-Based Marketing

This is the last layer of knowledge before we build the planning for your Account-Based Marketing MVP.

ABM pillars are nothing more than points of attention that must be taken into consideration throughout the program.

  • Flow Intelligence;
  • Value Touchpoints;
  • Multichannel Approach;
  • Optimization.

Let's understand each one better?

Flow Intelligence

As we saw earlier, an ABM program requires the best of Inbound and Outbound. This means aligning marketing and sales to work with active and receptive demands:

Continuously raise pains and continuously map stakeholders.

An ABM program requires us to understand real needs, keeping in mind real people (instead of personas), to define touchpoints and create smarter workflows in both marketing and sales.

Complementary material: Let's talk about Demand Generation?

The possibilities are many and the tasks will not be under the responsibility of a single manager or a single team. So, how to bring intelligence to this workflow?

Value Touchpoints

There is no such thing as "giving too much attention" when we talk about contact points. In ABM then, where things get personal, they can be your best friends or worst enemies.

For us, the secret is to see touchpoints as a channel to strengthen relationships, not as another opportunity to push the sale.

In an ABM program, you need to generate value for your prospect every time you are in contact with them, regardless of the chosen channel.

Multichannel Approach

A touchpoint that adds intellectual value can be blog content to answer a quick question, an e-book about that specific pain, or a newsletter about market updates that the prospect operates in.

One that adds practical value can be a workshop - which can happen at an in-person event, also creating the possibility for the prospect to see value in networking.

When we do Account-Based Marketing, we need to think broadly, contemplate the possibilities that talk to those Key Accounts both online and offline - and never stop reviewing the strategy.

Optimization

Remember: when we talk about Account-Based Marketing, we are talking about programs, not campaigns.

This long-term effort requires constant optimization to continue generating results and keeping ROI high.

Ready. We already have a good foundation for your ABM program. Now, it's time to plan it!

How to apply ABM:

Account-Based Marketing in practice

So far, we've seen all the theory about Account-Based Marketing. We understand why and when to apply it, what challenges lie ahead, and what results can be expected.

This is where ABM content starts to diverge. After all, each company has its own methodology for putting Account-Based Marketing into practice.

We brought the step-by-step that has been working for us here at BOWE and helping us build incredible cases with brands like Lenovo, Zoop and Pars:

Choosing the type of ABM

Remember the types of ABM?

  • Programmatic (one to many);
  • Lite (one to few);
  • Strategic (one to one).

To facilitate the process, try answering the following questions:

  • Which one does your company have the resources, expertise and portfolio to serve today?
  • How many Account Managers do you have?
  • How many accounts will each be responsible for?
  • What level of personalization do you want in delivery?

Understanding which type of ABM your company can embrace, it's time to define the accounts.

The 4 stages of an ABM Program

Never heard of the stages of an ABM program? That's okay!

This is BOWE's own methodology, which helps us generate results in ABM strategies.

The idea is quite simple: divide programs into layers, in order to evaluate results in parts to understand how to scale them.

For this, we use the following evaluation stages:

1

Pilot Stage

  • First account selection;
  • First list of actions/plays;
  • Test&Learn as fast as possible;
  • Measure results of first accounts and actions;
  • Duration: 1 to 3 months.
2

Construction Stage

  • Start harvesting the first financial results;
  • Build reputation with this ABM program;
  • Involve internal stakeholders who have some kind of interaction with the ABM program to show first results.
3

Standardization Stage

  • Create processes and define what worked or not;
  • Record information;
  • Standardize process to be able to involve more professionals, replicate them and proceed to scaling.
4

Scaling Stage

  • Mapped and standardized scenario to accelerate scaling;
  • Increase the number of companies in the program;
  • Increase number of stakeholders involved in the program;
  • Scale program to make it increasingly larger within the company.

The process to reach Scaling is long, you must have noticed: it involves 10 steps within 4 evaluation stages, all always based on the 4 pillars of an ABM program.

There's a lot of data, test&learn, resilience, flexibility, relationship and, mainly, result evaluations.

But what should we look at when we want to understand Account-Based Marketing results?

ABM Metrics

ABM metrics are a mix of marketing and sales metrics, as it should be. The objective must be unique, but the measurement of results needs to have its individualities so that teams can be well managed and flexible in actions.

The B2B market in general, works mainly with the following metrics:

B2B Marketers Primary Account-Based Marketing Metrics

  • 54%

    Influenced pipeline

  • 41%

    Individual campaign and channel metrics

  • 40%

    Conversion of engaged account to opportunity

  • 36%

    Marketing qualified accounts (MQAs)

  • 33%

    Overall number of engaged accounts

  • 31%

    Velocity engaged accounts from opportunity creation to revenue

  • 30%

    Acquisition costs

  • 20%

    Incremental sales with existing customers

  • 14%

    Customer lifetime value

In doubt about which ones to evaluate in your ABM program? Then start slowly, thinking about the common metrics we mentioned above and then defining other specific metrics for the type of ABM you choose:

Continuously analyzing results based on these metrics, just adapt to the scenarios achieved to continue evolving the program and reach the much-desired scaling

The process may seem long, but the main perceived value is exactly the opposite: reduce your B2B sales cycle and work only with customers within the ICP to optimize retention and increase LTV.

Want to get your Account-Based Marketing MVP running with help from experts on the subject? We can help you with our unique ABM methodology.

One of the great game changers we bring to all ABM programs is humanizing the brand to talk to the persona, creating an atmosphere of direct identification with their reality.

It's worth noting that one of the big problems with B2B sales campaigns is precisely not bringing personification and personalization to campaigns: campaigns are still very focused on companies, not people.

For us, the lead is a person, not a machine to buy projects!

So come with us, no commitment! Contact Bowe's experts, ask questions with Account Managers, learn about the results we've achieved with companies like Lenovo and accelerate your results in 2025:

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