Adopting an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re operating with a lean team or just beginning to dip your toes into more targeted go-to-market strategies. But the reality is, ABM isn’t reserved for enterprise giants with massive budgets, shiny technology, and dedicated teams. Rather, it's focused, strategic marketing built around the people most likely to buy from you. Plus, if you’re using HubSpot, you already have the right tools in your holster to support ABM.
ABM is a great fit for B2B organizations with long or complex sales cycles and large buying committees. If you have a strong inbound marketing foundation, a well-defined growth strategy but are still struggling to fill the funnel with highly qualified leads, an ABM strategy might be right for you.
In this blog, I’ll break down how ABM really works, who needs to be involved, and how roles and responsibilities can be divided between internal teams and external partners. Spoiler: you don’t need to hire an ABM specialist to get started!
It just takes the right mix of internal resources and external support, with clearly defined roles to drive execution.
One of the misconceptions I often hear is that companies think they need a full-service marketing team to do ABM right. That’s simply not true.
Not every organization needs a full-time content person, a dedicated paid strategist, or a big internal operations team. But content still needs to get written and campaigns still need to be run. That’s where having the right partner can make all the difference. This is exactly why companies choose to work with New Breed: to gain the specialized support they don’t have in-house, without adding headcount.
ABM is a very “divide and conquer” friendly approach. If you’ve got a few core team members internally, like someone in demand gen, a couple of sales reps, or a HubSpot admin, you can absolutely run ABM. Bonus points if you have systems like HubSpot or 6sense which can listen for intent signals and automatically enroll buying committee members in the correct campaigns or agentic outreach based on persona, funnel stage, engagement, and more. It's more about how you organize your people and systems, not how many people you have.
At its core, ABM is about prioritizing the highest-fit and highest-intent accounts and the buying committees within. To do so, you have to begin with the basics within a Growth Strategy inputs: your ideal client profile (ICP), key personas, firmographics, demographics, etc. These are your segments (who we sell to), and finding this data sometimes requires looking beyond your CRM.
Maybe LinkedIn can fill in some blanks, but tools like HubSpot’s Breeze Intelligence or 6sense can go even deeper. These platforms help you discover who else is on the buying committee and tell you when someone at a target company is showing intent, like browsing your pricing pages, researching your product category, or even responding to a hiring change. These are the signals (when we sell to them).
When you combine segments (who usually typically buys) with signals (who are in the market right now), you can prioritize accounts dynamically and deliver timely, relevant campaigns. This fusion enables you to meet prospects with targeted ads and personalized content right when they’re most open to hearing from you.
ABM is a team sport. While you don’t need a massive internal team to launch it, you do need clearly defined roles, whether they’re owned in-house or supported by an agency partner. Here’s how those responsibilities often break down:
Developing campaigns, defining audience segments, and aligning messaging pillars.
Mapping the buying committee and enriching CRM records to enable persona- and stage-based segmentation.
Building smart lists in HubSpot, triggering workflows, and delivering the right message to the right contact.
Net-new content for ABM is not required, but it does need to be relevant. Personalization by persona, vertical, or funnel stage is key to meeting buying committees where they’re at.
The content offerings are usually recycled — content the client already has. We just reconfigure or reposition it based on the campaign’s messaging pillars.
Think ad graphics, landing pages, banners, and one-pagers tailored to each audience segment.
Getting your ads live on platforms like LinkedIn or StackAdapt, testing variations, and optimizing based on performance.
Sales reps (or Go-To-Market Engineers, if you're rethinking the SDR role) need to engage accounts with personalized follow-up.
Don’t forget people buy from people. The AI might help expedite the response or personalize messaging, but it’s the human touch that drives deals forward.”
Coordinating campaigns, timelines, deliverables, and performance reporting.
So what happens when all of these pieces come together? The ABM Program Flow diagram below illustrates a typical journey from capturing intent signals to booking meetings with the right decision-makers.
A lot of this can (and should) be automated, but human input still matters, especially in sales, content personalization, and messaging strategy.
If you’re identifying high-value accounts, aligning sales and marketing around messaging, and personalizing your outreach: congrats, you’re already doing ABM.
The beauty of this approach is that it can scale. You can start small, build off tools like HubSpot, and grow from there. At New Breed, we work with clients using what they already have, enhancing campaigns with intent data, paid media strategy, AI automation tools like Breeze, and content repurposing.
You don’t have to overhaul your team. You just need someone to connect the dots and help you execute. ABM is a smart evolution of what you’re probably already doing, not a scary leap into the unknown.
At the end of the day, ABM is about focusing your efforts where they matter most. It’s about helping your sales team prioritize the highest-fit and highest-engaged accounts. With the right structure, the right tools, and maybe the right partner, you can make ABM work at any size or stage.
If you're wondering whether your team is “ready” for ABM, chances are you already are. You just need a map and maybe a copilot like New Breed to help you get there.
Ready to launch or scale your ABM strategy? Explore New Breed’s ABM services and see how we can help you turn intent into revenue.