The Fundamentals of ABM: From Zero to Hero

You’re focused on maximizing your capabilities as a business. To do that, you need flexible strategies that can adapt as your company grows and pivots. And to do that effectively, you need a playbook. A playbook gives you the structure to put best practices into place while also giving you the flexibility to stay aligned with changing priorities, market conditions, and client expectations.

Account-based marketing (ABM) has become a proven way for B2B companies to win high-value customers. By aligning marketing and sales around the right accounts and contacts, ABM helps teams focus resources where they will have the greatest impact. The challenge is knowing where to start and how to scale.

Think of these five fundamentals as your ABM playbook. Whether you are new to ABM or refining a mature program, these steps will help you build a process that drives pipeline and revenue.

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Step 1: Build the Right Audience

Your campaigns are only as strong as the audience behind them. Start by creating segmented account and contact lists based on firmographic and psychographic data. Go beyond just identifying accounts and focus on the right decision-makers and influencers inside those organizations.

💡Pro Tip: With Propensity, you can build contact-level lists using double-verified data, psychographics, and intent signals that dynamically refresh as engagement changes. The result is higher match rates and a stronger foundation for every ABM campaign. 

Read: How to Use Intent Data to Power Your ABM Strategy

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Step 2: Launch Omnichannel Campaigns

Once you know who to target, it is time to engage them. ABM works best when you surround your audience across multiple channels including programmatic and CTV ads, email, direct mail, and social.

Running omnichannel campaigns ensures your message is relevant and consistent wherever your buyers spend time. 

💡Pro Tip: With Propensity, you can activate ABM across 20+ channels with precision targeting and real-time optimization. With more channels than any other ABM platform, you can own more mindshare across your target accounts.

Read: 5 Strategies for Successful ABM Campaigns

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Step 3: Score Engagement and Handoff to Sales

Not every click or impression is equal. That is why scoring engagement is critical. Track how contacts interact with your ads, emails, and website to identify which ones are truly in-market.

Once you know who is hottest, make sure sales can act quickly and effectively:

• Prioritize and route hot contacts to sales
• Verify employment and email addresses of ABM leads
• Send your hottest ABM leads into your CRM system
• Provide sales with CRM reports that highlight the most engaged contacts

💡 Pro Tip: With Propensity, you can score engagement at the contact level and automatically route verified leads into your CRM so sales always knows where to focus.

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Step 4: Scale Sales Engagement

When marketing signals the right opportunities, sales can engage with confidence. Automated cadences across email, LinkedIn, and other channels ensure timely follow-up without extra manual work.

To maximize success, focus on building a better outbound motion:

• Act fast and personalize outreach. Reach out immediately while intent is high and tailor messaging to the specific action the contact took.
• Use opt-in messaging. Build trust from the first touch by asking if you can share relevant educational content or schedule time to answer questions instead of pushing a hard pitch.
• Focus on timing and quality over quantity. Prioritize hotter, more qualified leads with clear contact-level intent.
• Align marketing and sales. Marketing generates verified intent signals, and sales converts them into active pipeline.

💡Pro Tip: With Propensity, AI-driven next-best-action recommendations make it easier to scale consistent and effective sales engagement.

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Step 5: Measure and Attribute Impact

The final step in ABM fundamentals is proving what is working. Measure engagement at the contact level, track pipeline contribution, and connect activity directly to revenue.

Contact-level attribution gives you a clear picture of which campaigns, channels, and messages drive real results so you can optimize with every cohort and continuously improve ROI.

💡 Pro Tip: With Propensity, you can tie ad impressions, clicks, and visits to real people with minute-by-minute timelines for every contact, and track every signal directly in your CRM.

Read: Is ABM Right For Your Company?

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Get Started With the ABM Coach

If you’re not sure where to start, let the ABM Coach guide you. The ABM Coach analyzes your company, uncovers overlooked opportunities, and builds a ready-to-launch ABM campaign tailored to your business, audience, and product.

You will get:

• Market gap analysis
• Targeting recommendations
• Campaign and messaging ideas

👉 Start a free trial and we’ll automatically analyze your website for you.

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Continue Your Journey With ABM

Mastering the fundamentals is just the beginning. As you scale, ABM can become your growth engine by aligning marketing and sales, building predictable revenue, and giving your team the clarity it needs to win more deals.

Ready to put the fundamentals into action? Book a demo of Propensity and see how easy it is to launch ABM campaigns that deliver measurable pipeline impact.