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1Introduction
Why is Everyone Talking about Account Based Marketing?
At its core, ABM seems like a no-brainer. Invest your resources and budget into the accounts that will ultimately deliver the most ROI for your business. That’s what we all want in the end, is more business, from the companies we can help most. The need for ABM has truly arrived:
B2B Marketers saying ABM-based approaches deliver a higher ROI than other marketing efforts:1
Respondents whose organizations employ an account-centric go-to-market strategy:2
B2B marketers who experienced larger deal sizes with ABM:3
Respondents surveyed who noted a higher win rate for ABM accounts: 4
But despite the “aha” moment of ABM getting its time in the spotlight, marketing leaders are still struggling to crack the code of how to deliver ABM in the most impactful way.
They boil the ocean and forget about the critical steps in between to create a rock-solid ABM strategy: incredible content experiences and top-down ICP alignment. Because if you stop and take a look around, your audience has inevitably changed.
Consumers are more informed, with more content — noise — at their fingertips than ever before. It’s no longer a B2B world, it’s a B2HUMAN world, with the most impactful content speaking directly to the buyer, and audiences remembering (and embracing) WOW moments from brands that compel them to think and act differently.
A recent report from McKinsey says 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. What’s more, 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
So it’s time for brands to step up to the occasion. It’s time for marketers to publish value-driven content that attracts and helps buying teams question the status quo, and to make them believe that your brand, and no one else, can help them solve the challenges they face everyday.
Through our ABM readiness research and executing ABM for customers, we've uncovered the core steps businesses need to follow to understand if ABM is right for them, and what they need to do get started on a successful path to ABM-generated revenue.
Keep reading to learn more about our process and how to determine is ready for its ABM moment.
At New Breed, we believe that the renewed interest in ABM has grown from the realization that marketing and sales leaders need to truly focus on what matters most: Their customers, and in turn, their qualified buyers. And that focus starts from the top, with incredible sales and marketing team alignment and a rock-solid focus and understanding of who your product can help most.
2ABM Terms and Acronyms
Whether you’re new to ABM or need a bit of a refresher course, there are a few terms to know when discussing ABM and its surrounding tactics. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most common (with our own New Breed spin on them):
Account Based Marketing
The umbrella term for a strategy that aims to identify high-value accounts and then engage their buying team (stakeholders) with tailored marketing content and personal, relevant communications that speak uniquely to their needs.
At New Breed, we see ABM as a type of go-to-market strategy that combines people, process, data and technology to ‘surround’ the people you can help most with timely, relevant and personalized content.
The ultimate goal of ABM is to enable those who are specifically in the market for your solution to make the best purchasing decision — which, hopefully, is you. When done at the most strategic level, ABM connects marketing, sales, customer success and product. When deployed correctly, ABM expands on traditional inbound marketing tactics to nurture and educate different members of your buying committee further on in the sales process, past where marketing is “typically” responsible.
Consider your inbound methodologies focused on SEO, AEO, and umbrella demand generation as the ticket to the dance, whereas your ABM tactics are reserved for companies that are most likely to benefit from your services and partner with you.
Strategic ABM (1-to-1)
Focuses on building a personalized and highly targeted strategy for individual accounts. This is appropriate for high-value customers with significant revenue potential or strategic importance. Each account is treated as a separate market to penetrate with unique revenue campaigns tailored to needs, goals, and pain points of that specific account.
Our take: We could call this 1-to-1 only, as any ABM done well should be considered a strategic initiative, so the difference in terminology here is a bit misleading.
ABM Lite (1-to-few)
Targets a small group of accounts with similar characteristics such as industry, size, or location. For these groupings, organizations will create semi-personalized marketing campaigns that address the shared needs and challenges of this group, rather than on an individualized level.
This allows for greater efficiency than 1-to-1 ABM while still maintaining a targeted and tailored approach. For example, this might be a vertical target looking specifically at the challenges of industries (manufacturing, SaaS, etc.) or the company stage (companies that are looking to expand globally, companies that have been through layoffs, etc.).
Programmatic ABM (1-to-many)
Targets a larger number of accounts with similar characteristics. 1-to-many ABM uses technology and automation to create personalized marketing experiences at scale.
This differs from demand generation as demand generation seeks to create broader awareness and interest through the traditional funnel of Awareness, Interest, Consideration, and Purchase, whereas ABM starts with identifying the targets and then engaging those directly to purchase.
Target Account List (TAL)
Target accounts should have the highest probability of closing based on ICP attributes.
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
The firmographic and technographic attributes of your highest-quality customer accounts.
Buying Committees
The group of key decision-makers, influencers, and end-users in each of your target accounts. Members of the buying committee will often play different roles.
Account Tiering
The process of segmenting your TAL based on priority and revenue opportunities.
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Tier 1: Perfect ICP fit, similar to highest value customers.
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Tier 2: Strong ICP fits but lower lifetime value.
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Tier 3: Fits many (but not all) ICP criteria.
Our take: While these are helpful and scalable tier descriptions, your account tiers should align to your specific customer makeup, business needs, and revenue strategy.
Account Intelligence
Overall knowledge you have of a target account, meaning you understand who they are and what they really want and need. Gathering account intelligence typically requires F.I.R.E. data (see below) and a mechanism for centralizing data.
F.I.R.E.
Acronym that refers to a well-known, four-pronged model of ABM success:
F Fit: knowing your target accounts.
I Intent: knowing which accounts are researching/buying.
R Relationship: knowing which accounts have a deep relationship with you.
E Engagement: creating engagement with the right people in right accounts.
3The Path to ABM Success
If you think you’re ready to start your ABM journey, you may be looking for a road map to success. Of course, the answer to this is marketing’s favorite answer: It depends.
It depends on your business, the target accounts, the resources you have to put into ABM, and (of course!) your overall budget. The first step you’ll need to do is determine if you’re ready for ABM, because (Spoiler alert) it’s not for every business.
Luckily, New Breed can support with determining your ABM readiness through our Growth Strategy workshops, which is designed to help companies jumpstart their ABM efforts through a thorough assessment and goal-setting process.
The First Step: Determine if You're Ready for ABM
To start, consider these three questions:
ALIGN
Can you describe your common buying committee, and do you have persona documentation to align with these findings?
CONFIGURE
Are your lead-gen processes, funnels, and measurement aligned to accounts vs. contacts and leads?
MEASURE
Do you know which content performs best for your target audience?
If so, your company may be a great candidate for ABM. There are now an average of 10 team members in a buying committee. And what’s more, every additional person adds 21 days to the sales cycle.5
Average Buying Committee: 10 people
To put this into perspective, that is 4x more buyers than five years ago. What’s more, the trend for these larger buying committees is that it leads to customers not making any purchase decision at all.
At the end of the day, it’s about creating really good, valuable insights for your buyers to question the status quo and to talk to your organization on how you can best support them throughout the entire buying (and renewal!) process.
They can, and they will, self-select. Make sure you’re the ones they’re choosing.
If your team is already generating returns on traditional inbound methodologies, you’ve got a ticket to the dance to greater marketing and sales success. Now it’s time to apply ABM tactics to drive engagement among that target market you’ve reached.
The combination of your inbound methods and ABM methods is what’s going to allow you to generate outsized return for your marketing efforts. Consider your ABM strategy a more focused approach within your overall house of demand generation.
Larger buying committees can lead to customers not making a purchase decision at all.
4How New Breed Helps Accelerate ABM Readiness
ABM can be intimidating.
It asks revenue teams to shift from lead-centric thinking to account-level orchestration. It requires tighter alignment, deeper data visibility, and shared accountability across marketing, sales, and product.
And alignment is where it starts.
Our State of HubSpot research found that 97% of revenue leaders believe stronger sales and marketing alignment drives tangible benefits, including increased revenue and customer satisfaction.6
But belief alone isn’t enough. Execution maturity is what separates stalled ABM programs from scalable ones.
Recent findings show:6
- 63% of HubSpot users rate their CRM as extremely effective for Account-Based Marketing, compared to just 28% of non-HubSpot CRM users.
- Organizations working with a HubSpot Solutions Partner are:
- 9 points more likely to report increased bookings and revenue
- 9 points more likely to improve ICP clarity
- 21+ points more likely to resolve siloed data issues
- Significantly more confident in AI adoption across revenue teams
ABM doesn’t fail because the idea is flawed.
It fails when systems, processes, and measurement models aren’t built to support it.
Where We Focus: Operationalizing ABM Inside Hubspot in Four Core Areas
1
Assess
We evaluate your current CRM structure, tech stack, sales process, and reporting model to determine whether your organization is truly account-ready.
- Is lifecycle tracking aligned to accounts — not just contacts?
- Can you see buying committee engagement clearly?
- Are target accounts defined by real ICP data?
2
Align
We bring sales, marketing, and RevOps into shared accountability.
- Define and validate your Ideal Customer Profile
- Build and tier your Target Account List
- Align KPIs around pipeline and revenue impact
- Establish account-based reporting standards
3
Configure
Execution requires the right infrastructure.
We design and implement:
- Account scoring models
- Segmentation frameworks
- Lead routing tied to account prioririty
- Account-level dashboards
- Automation workflows built around buying committees
- AI-enabled personalization strategies
4
Launch & Optimize
Once the foundation is in place, we support scalable execution across:
- 1-to-1 strategic ABM
- 1-to-few industry or vertical plays
- Programmatic 1-to-many initiatives
With clear performance benchmarks and continuous optimization based on account engagement data.
The Difference Between Running ABM — and Being Ready for It
Many organizations launch ABM campaigns.
Fewer build the operational engine required to sustain them.
ABM readiness isn’t about running ads to a target list.
It’s about transforming your CRM and revenue operations to support coordinated, account-based growth.
If you’ve tried ABM before and it stalled, we help uncover why.
If you’re just beginning, we help you build the right foundation from the start.
Because when strategy, systems, and alignment work together — ABM becomes a revenue accelerator, not just another initiative.
Turn Strategy Into Revenue
ABM is a coordinated revenue motion.
If you’re ready to evaluate how your HubSpot instance, data model, and team alignment support account-based growth, let’s start with a structured readiness assessment.
→ Schedule an ABM Readiness Review
Sources:
1. BrightTALK
2. 6sense
3. RollWorks
4. Forrester
5. 6sense
6. State of HubSpot | New Breed
Frequently Asked Questions about Account-Based Marketing in HubSpot
Is HubSpot good for Account-Based Marketing?
Yes — when properly configured, HubSpot is highly effective for Account-Based Marketing.
HubSpot enables:
- Account-level reporting
- Target account segmentation
- Buying committee tracking
- Workflow automation
- Personalization at scale
- Revenue attribution across sales and marketing
In fact, 63% of HubSpot users rate their CRM as extremely effective for ABM — significantly higher than users of other CRMs.
However, mature ABM programs often require thoughtful CRM configuration, lifecycle alignment, and account-based reporting frameworks to unlock full value.
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
Account-Based Marketing is a go-to-market strategy that focuses on identifying high-value target accounts and delivering personalized marketing and sales experiences to the entire buying committee within those accounts.
Unlike traditional demand generation, which starts broad and narrows through the funnel, ABM begins by identifying priority accounts and then engaging them directly through coordinated outreach, content, and campaigns.
What is the difference between ABM and demand generation?
Demand generation creates broad awareness and captures leads across a wide audience.
ABM, on the other hand:
- Targets pre-identified high-value accounts
- Aligns marketing and sales around specific companies
- Measures engagement at the account level
- Focuses on pipeline quality and revenue impact rather than lead volume
Many high-performing teams use both — demand gen to create awareness, and ABM to accelerate revenue within priority accounts.
What are the types of ABM strategies?
There are three common ABM approaches:
1-to-1 (Strategic ABM):
Highly personalized campaigns targeting individual high-value accounts.
1-to-Few (ABM Lite):
Targeting small groups of accounts with shared characteristics, such as industry or company size.
1-to-Many (Programmatic ABM):
Using automation and segmentation to personalize outreach at scale across larger account groups.
The right model depends on your ICP, deal size, and available resources.
How do you know if your company is ready for ABM?
You may be ready for ABM if:
- You have a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Sales and marketing are aligned on target accounts
- Your CRM supports account-based reporting
- You can identify buying committee members
- You track account engagement, not just leads
- You have the ability to personalize messaging at scale
If these foundations are missing, CRM and process configuration may be required before launching ABM programs.
Does ABM require a Solutions Partner?
Not always — but data shows it can accelerate results.
Organizations working with a HubSpot Solutions Partner report stronger outcomes across:
- Revenue growth
- ICP clarity
- AI adoption
- Data integration
- Tool consolidation
Because ABM impacts CRM architecture, lifecycle design, segmentation, and reporting, many companies engage a partner to ensure proper setup before scaling programs.
How do you measure ABM success in HubSpot?
ABM success is typically measured through:
- Account engagement scores
- Buying committee penetration
- Target account pipeline creation
- Deal velocity
- Average contract value
- Revenue influenced by target accounts
The key difference from traditional marketing measurement is shifting from lead-based metrics to account-level revenue impact.
