What is account-based marketing? (And is it right for you?)

Is your marketing starting to feel like you’re just shouting into a void? You're creating content, running ads, sending emails, but the sales team keeps saying the leads aren't right. It feels messy, disconnected, and honestly, a bit wasteful.

This is a really common feeling for founders. You're not doing anything wrong. It’s just a sign that your business has outgrown the old playbook of 'more leads is always better'. You've hit a point where the chaos of chasing every opportunity is costing you more than it’s giving you.

The problem isn't your effort; it's the model. You don't need a wider net. You need a spear.

From frantic activity to focused effort

The whole 'more is more' mindset creates friction. Sales wastes time on dead-end leads, marketing gets frustrated, and your budget gets burned on prospects who were never going to buy. It's the core reason why so much B2B tech marketing feels disconnected.

The solution isn't to work harder or spend more. It’s to change the question you’re asking.

Instead of asking, "How do we get more leads?" you start asking, "Which handful of companies would change our business if we won them, and how do we earn their trust?"

This simple shift is the entire idea behind account-based marketing (ABM). It brings clarity and structure by forcing you to decide, right up front, which companies are a perfect match for what you do. It gives your team the confidence that every dollar and every hour is aimed at prospects who can genuinely move your business forward.

When we embed with a team, this is often the very first gap we fix—the one between frantic activity and real impact.

Why this approach makes sense now

This isn’t just some new marketing trend; it’s a direct response to a noisy, crowded market. Australian B2B companies are catching on fast. A huge 86% of teams in our region are already using or implementing ABM.

Why? Because it provides a clear path forward.

It forces your sales and marketing teams to sit down, agree on a shared list of target accounts, and work together with a single purpose. It’s the end of guesswork and the beginning of a calm, structured plan for growth.

So, what is account-based marketing in plain English?

Let's cut through the jargon. New marketing strategies are often wrapped in complicated diagrams that don't help you on a Tuesday morning. You're left feeling like you're missing something.

At its heart, account-based marketing (ABM) is a refreshingly simple idea.

Think of traditional marketing as fishing with a giant net. You throw it out into the ocean, hoping to catch a few good fish among all the seaweed and tiny ones. You spend a lot of time and energy sorting through it all.

ABM is like spear fishing. You start by identifying the exact fish you want. Then, you focus all your energy on that single target.

It's a deliberate shift from a game of volume to a game of value.

From guesswork to precision

This simple change in perspective is a game-changer. Instead of shouting into a crowded room, you hand-pick your audience first. These specific companies, or 'accounts', become the sole focus.

Suddenly, everything becomes clearer.

• No more guessing: You know exactly who you're talking to.

• No more generic messages: Your content is created to solve their specific problems.

• No more wasted budget: Every dollar is spent engaging businesses that matter.

It’s a calmer, more focused way to work. It replaces frantic, scattergun activity with deliberate, measurable progress. The reason many teams struggle is that sales and marketing have never had a shared playbook. ABM provides that playbook.

This isn't about chasing thousands of low-quality leads. It's about starting meaningful conversations with the handful of accounts that can actually change your business.

A practical founder moment

Let’s make this real. Imagine you run an AgTech company in Australia with a brilliant new soil sensor system. The old way would involve running broad ads targeting anyone with "farmer" in their job title. Your sales team would then be stuck sifting through hundreds of leads from tiny hobby farms and students.

Now, the ABM approach. You and your sales lead sit down and identify the 20 largest corporate farming operations in New South Wales. You know these specific businesses could get a massive return from your tech.

Your marketing is no longer for "farmers" in general. It’s for the Head of Innovation at that specific company. You create a tailored report showing how your sensors would impact their exact crop yields. You run a LinkedIn ad seen only by senior managers at those 20 companies.

See the difference? It’s focused, relevant, and respects everyone's time. You’re no longer just another piece of marketing noise. You’re a strategic partner offering a specific solution. This is where real confidence comes from—knowing every action is deliberate.

ABM vs. traditional marketing: what's the real difference?

It’s easy to hear "account-based marketing" and think it’s just the latest buzzword. But this isn't about a new tactic; it’s a different way of thinking. If you feel like your marketing team is always busy but not really moving the needle, this can be a lightbulb moment.

The confusion usually boils down to one question: aren’t we already trying to market to our ideal customers? Well, yes, but probably in a broad, inefficient way.

Traditional marketing is a numbers game. ABM is a value game. That one shift changes everything.

The funnel vs. the flip

We’ve all seen the traditional marketing funnel. You pour a massive audience in at the top, and hope a few qualified leads trickle out the bottom. Success is measured by the volume of leads you generate.

Account-based marketing flips this model completely.

Instead of a wide-open funnel, you start by getting sales and marketing in a room to agree on a shortlist of best-fit, high-value accounts. Your dream clients.

From there, every single effort is focused on engaging the key people within those specific companies.

It’s a shift from "marketing to everyone to find someone" to "marketing to someone, specifically." This one change gives your team the confidence that every dollar spent and every hour worked is aimed at the right target.

When we work with clients, building this shared target list is the very first thing we do. It’s the foundation. Without it, you’re just guessing.

So, how does this change your day-to-day work?

Let's get practical. What does this actually look like on a Tuesday morning?

• Content Creation: In a traditional model, you might write a blog post on "5 Trends in AgTech". With an ABM strategy, you’d create a report on "How Our Sensor Technology Can Reduce Water Usage by 15% for Large-Scale Cotton Farms," then send it directly to the COO of your top three target agricultural giants.

• Advertising Spend: Instead of a broad social media ad campaign, you’d run a specific LinkedIn campaign that is only shown to people with certain job titles at your 50 target companies. Your ad spend becomes incredibly efficient overnight.

• Sales Conversations: Sales no longer gets a random list of leads. Instead, they get a notification when someone from a target account has engaged with your content. Their outreach is suddenly timely and relevant, because they know the company is already a perfect fit.

The goal isn't to work harder; it's to work smarter by focusing your efforts where they will have the most impact.

Let’s look at a practical scenario

Imagine your company sells logistics software, and you’re trying to land a major Australian supermarket chain as a client.

The traditional approach would involve running ads about "supply chain efficiency," hoping someone from the supermarket sees it. You'd cross your fingers and wait for a lead.

The ABM approach is different. You’d start by identifying the five key decision-makers at that specific supermarket chain. Marketing would create a case study showing how your software solved a problem for a similar retailer. Your sales team would connect with those five people on LinkedIn, sharing that content and referencing a challenge they know that supermarket is facing.

It's a coordinated play aimed at one account, treating it as a market of one. This is the shift from hoping to planning. It gives your team the structure they need to replace scattered efforts with calm, deliberate execution.

Traditional Marketing vs. Account Based Marketing

To make it even clearer, let's break down the core differences side-by-side.

Aspect	Traditional Demand Generation	Account Based Marketing (ABM)
Core Focus	Volume of leads (individuals)	Quality of accounts (companies)
Primary Metric	Cost per lead (CPL)	Account engagement, pipeline velocity
Audience	Broad, based on personas	Narrow, based on a specific account list
Content	Generalised, one-to-many	Personalised, one-to-one or one-to-few
Sales & Marketing	Often work separately	Deeply aligned and collaborative
ROI Measurement	Hard to connect directly to revenue	Clear line of sight to revenue impact

As you can see, ABM isn’t just a new set of tactics. It’s a strategic decision to align your entire team around the accounts that matter most.

Choosing the right ABM approach for your business

If you’re starting to see how this could work, the next question is usually, "Okay, but where do I start?" It can feel like you need to build a massive, complex new system overnight. That’s not true.

ABM isn't a rigid, one-size-fits-all framework. It’s a toolkit with different tools for different jobs.

The trick is to pick the right level of intensity based on your deal size and your resources. This isn't about adding complexity; it's about choosing the simplest path to get a result. For most, it comes down to a simple fork in the road.

This decision tree shows that choice perfectly: a volume-based leads model versus a value-based accounts model.

Choosing the "Accounts" path gives you the structure and focus to pursue high-value deals with real confidence.

Three tiers of ABM focus

Think of ABM as a set of dials you can turn up or down. You don’t have to go from zero to one hundred straight away.

There are three common approaches:

• One-to-One ABM: This is the most intensive approach, reserved for your absolute 'white whale' accounts. You treat a single company as its own market, with deeply personalised research and content. It’s high-effort, but for a transformative deal, it’s worth it.

• One-to-Few ABM: This is often the sweet spot. You group a small cluster of similar, high-value accounts (maybe 5-15) that share common challenges. You then create a lightly customised campaign for that group, blending personalisation with efficiency.

• One-to-Many ABM: This is the broadest approach, using technology to apply ABM principles at scale. You might target a larger list of several hundred good-fit companies with personalised ads and messaging that speaks to their specific industry.

Understanding these tiers brings immediate clarity. You’re no longer just “doing ABM”; you’re making a deliberate choice about where to invest your team’s time and energy.

A practical example from an AgTech company

Let’s bring this to life. Imagine that Australian AgTech company that sells irrigation software.

Here’s how they could use all three ABM approaches at once:

1. One-to-One: They identify the single largest agricultural corporation in Australia as a dream client. They assign a dedicated person to create a bespoke plan, complete with a detailed ROI analysis based on that company’s public sustainability reports.

2. One-to-Few: The team spots a cluster of 10 major wineries in the Barossa Valley, all struggling with water scarcity. They create a "Barossa Water Efficiency" campaign, with a case study from a local winery and LinkedIn ads shown only to operations managers at those 10 companies. To get this right, they rely on solid target audience research techniques to understand the group's shared problems.

3. One-to-Many: Finally, they have a list of 200 mid-sized farms across regional NSW that fit their ideal customer profile. They use technology to run a digital ad campaign targeting these companies, driving them to a landing page with a calculator that estimates their potential water savings.

This blended approach is becoming more common. In the Australian market, strategic ABM focused on a few key accounts still dominates, with over 47% share in 2024. However, the scalable, one-to-many approach is growing, showing businesses need both deep focus and efficient reach.

This isn’t about choosing one path forever. It's about having the clarity and structure to apply the right level of effort to the right opportunity. When we help a team map this out, it often brings an immediate sense of calm. The chaos is replaced by a clear plan.

Your first steps to launching an ABM pilot program

Knowing you need a more focused approach is one thing. Turning that into action is another. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, staring at a mountain of advice. If you feel stuck, you’re not alone—this is where most teams lose momentum.

The way forward isn’t some 50-point checklist. It’s about taking small, deliberate steps that build confidence and prove the model works before you go all in.

Start by creating a shared reality

The single most important first step has nothing to do with technology. It’s about getting your sales and marketing leaders in the same room to agree on what a perfect customer actually looks like. So much of the friction in a business comes from these two teams working from different playbooks.

When we embed with a team, this is the very first gap we fix. We run a session with one goal: to create a single, agreed-upon Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This isn’t a fluffy persona exercise; it's a grounded discussion based on your best customers.

You need to answer three questions together:

• Firmographics: What are the non-negotiable traits of a company we should target? Think industry, size, or location.

• Pain Points: What specific, expensive problems do we solve for them better than anyone else?

• Success Signals: Who are our most profitable, happy customers? What do they have in common?

This conversation is the foundation. Without this shared reality, any attempt at ABM will feel messy.

Select a small pilot group

Once your ICP is locked in, resist the urge to build a list of 100 target accounts. Pick a small, manageable pilot group. Aim for just 5 to 10 companies that perfectly match your new ICP.

This smaller list lowers the stakes and makes the task feel achievable. It allows your teams to collaborate deeply on a handful of accounts, learning how to work together in this new, focused way. You can find more detail on this in our guide to B2B lead generation strategies that actually work.

Identify the key people inside

With your pilot list in hand, the real work begins: mapping out the key people within each account. Who is on the buying committee? You need to pinpoint the decision-makers, the influencers, and anyone who might block the deal.

This is where sales and marketing collaboration becomes real. Marketing can use tools like LinkedIn to identify contacts, while sales can use their industry knowledge to validate that list. The goal is to turn a faceless company logo into a small group of real people.

This pilot approach brings immediate structure. Instead of chasing a vague notion of "more leads," your team has a clear, shared mission: to build relationships with specific people at a handful of high-value companies.

The financial upside of getting this right is huge. Companies often see 10% revenue growth after one year of ABM, with some seeing lifts of over 170% in annual contract value. These numbers prove that even small, focused first steps can create powerful momentum.

This whole process—from ICP alignment to account selection—is perfectly suited to a sprint-based approach. It creates clarity and direction quickly, giving your team a tangible plan and the confidence to execute it.

A simple starting point: where to go from here

If you’ve read this far, take a breath. That feeling is the relief that comes from seeing a focused, structured way forward. You’re ready to trade guesswork for a calmer path to growth.

The road ahead doesn't have to be complicated. The biggest mistake founders make is trying to launch a massive ABM program overnight. That just creates more chaos.

Instead, the single most powerful thing you can do next is schedule one meeting.

The only meeting that matters right now

Get your sales and marketing leaders in a room. The agenda has only one item: to walk out with a shared, agreed-upon list of five to ten companies that everyone believes would be game-changing to win.

That’s it. No talk of technology or campaigns yet.

This simple act of alignment is the real foundation of ABM. It instantly replaces friction with a shared purpose. It gives everyone a clear, common target, which makes every decision that comes next much simpler.

This isn’t just another meeting. It’s the first step toward building a shared reality between your sales and marketing teams. It’s where you stop talking past each other and start building momentum together.

If the thought of running that conversation feels a bit messy, that’s completely normal. Most teams struggle here because they’ve never had someone step in to structure the work.

You’re not behind, you just need a framework

Feeling stuck doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means you need a clear starting point. The value of this initial alignment can't be overstated; it’s the small shift that changes everything.

When we embed with a team, this is the very first thing we fix. We provide the structure for that critical conversation, helping them create their first pilot account list with confidence.

So, don't overthink it. Start with the one simple, human action that matters most: getting your key people in a room to agree on where you're headed.

Your next move is to schedule that meeting. Everything else will flow from there.

Frequently asked questions about ABM

Even with a clear path, it's normal to have a few questions. ABM is a different way of thinking, and that shift can feel uncertain. Let's tackle a few common questions we hear from founders.

These questions usually pop up when people feel a little overwhelmed, wondering if ABM is too big, too expensive, or too slow for a business that needs to move fast.

Is ABM only for huge companies?

Not at all. This is a common myth. While ABM started in the enterprise world, the core ideas are now accessible to businesses of all sizes.

For a scaling tech business, a ‘One-to-Few’ program targeting a handful of dream clients can be incredibly powerful. It doesn't need a massive budget—just a real commitment to focus.

Do I need expensive new software to do ABM?

No. You can absolutely get started without buying a single new tool. ABM is a strategy built on alignment, not software.

You can begin with your CRM, LinkedIn, and email. The first step is getting your teams to agree on which accounts to target and then work together to reach them. Technology can help you scale later, but it's not where you start.

How long does it take to see results from ABM?

Because ABM is about landing bigger deals, the sales cycle can be longer. But that doesn't mean you're flying blind for months. You should start seeing positive signs in your engagement metrics within the first 90 days of a focused pilot.

Look for things like more website visits from your target accounts, more meetings being booked, and a jump in the quality of your sales conversations.

Revenue impact typically follows in 6-12 months, but these crucial early indicators of success show up much sooner. They give you the confidence and momentum to stick with the plan.

This is why starting with a small pilot is so effective. It proves the model works and builds the internal belief you need to expand your efforts. It gives you a framework to see progress long before the final deal is signed.

---

If you're tired of the guesswork and ready for a calmer, more structured approach to growth, Sensoriium can help. We provide the senior direction and practical support to build a marketing function that delivers real results, starting with the clarity you need today. Find out how we bring structure to growing businesses.