I'm often asked to define account-based marketing (ABM) and, I'll be honest, that's actually a challenging thing to do. Bev Burgess of ITSMA (now Momentum ITSMA) first coined the phrase, defining it as, “strategic approach that treats individual accounts as markets in their own right.”

Later definitions mostly came from thought leaders in the space, led by Sangram Vajre of Terminus. Sangram's framing for ABM starts with the difference between it and more traditional inbound marketing, focusing on how it essentially flips the traditional marketing funnel on its head.

Here at Brilliant Metrics, we like that definition and often lead with that, focusing on how the first step in an ABM strategy is account identification or qualification.

But thats where the tight definition ends. See, ABM isn't one thing. There are actually three different types of ABM and they can look radically different.

Also called, One-to-One ABM, this approach focuses on building a personalized and highly targeted marketing strategy for individual accounts.

Strategic ABM is really only appropriate for targeting high-value accounts with significant revenue potential or strategic importance. Each account is treated as a separate market to penetrate, and a dedicated team creates unique marketing campaigns tailored to the needs, goals, and pain points of that specific account.

This level of personalization is incredibly effective, but also resource intensive. For example, we are working with a client right now on an ABM program targeting prime contractors on military projects. Each piece of creative is customized to match each unique account, down to the level of using the target account's colors and look and feel alongside our client's.

You'll typically only run at handful of these strategic ABM accounts at a time, and a salesperson is often dedicated to that single account.

Often referred to as One-to-Few ABM or Cluster ABM, in this approach, you target a small group of accounts with similar characteristics, such as industry, size, or location. By focusing on a cluster of accounts, you can create semi-personalized marketing campaigns that address the shared needs and challenges of the group. 

This allows for greater efficiency than one-to-one ABM, while still maintaining a targeted and tailored approach. 

For example, we are working with a client targeting private schools and we identified different needs based on the student population of the area, so after narrowing the total addressable market to prequalified, best-fit accounts, we broke those up into cohorts based on size.

We ended up with:

• 5 cohorts of many small schools in rural or small communities
• 2 cohorts of a few medium-sized schools in smaller metropolitan areas
• 5 cohorts of just a couple large schools in large metropolitan areas

Also called One-to-Many ABM, this is the most scalable form of ABM, targeting a larger number of accounts with broadly similar characteristics. One-to-many ABM leverages technology and automation to create personalized marketing experiences at scale.

Though barely qualifying as ABM at all due to the lack of personalization and a greater separation of duties between sales and marketing, advocates say it still qualifies because the focus is on a targeted, prequalified list of accounts.

We generally guide clients away from this form of ABM and instead focus efforts on hybrid programs that still prequalify target accounts, but broaden reach beyond that limited set and share some characteristics of more traditional or inbound marketing.

So you can see, ABM isn't really just one thing. It can take three distinct shapes and then from there the individual forms can vary widely by industry, resources and focus.