Think of ABM as the Icing on the Cake

Before launching an ABM program, you need to assess your readiness and marketing setup, not just identifying an account list to target. If you think of your ABM strategy and program as the icing and the marketing foundation as your cake, you'd start your assessment by confirming that your "cake” is baked: clear positioning, a defined Ideal Client Profile, strong vertical or segment narratives, and a working demand engine.

ABM cannot fix unclear messaging or a fuzzy target market—those issues only get more diluted when you layer personalization on top. Once the foundation is in place, align your ABM strategy and program, and these programs should feel like a natural extension of what you already do well, not a disconnected campaign.

The Cake: Your Core Marketing Foundation

Before you ever think about ABM, your marketing needs to be solid. That “cake” is everything that makes your marketing function work today.

Brand and Positioning

This is who you are, what you stand for, and why you’re different. Your brand and positioning define the story you tell at the company and solution level. They give you a clear, consistent answer to questions like:

• What problem do we solve?

• For whom?

• Why should they choose us instead of someone else?

Without this clarity, any ABM effort will feel scattered and generic.

Vertical or Segment Strategy

Your vertical or segment strategy defines how you talk to different slices of the market—manufacturing vs. financial services vs. healthcare, mid-market vs. enterprise, and so on.

The problems you solve, the examples you use, and the language you lean on should shift by industry or segment. At this stage, you’re not yet customizing to a single account—you’re tailoring to patterns in the market.

This is still cake, not icing.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Your ICP describes what “good fit” looks like:

• Company size and growth stage

• Industries and sub-verticals

• Buying triggers and business models

• Tech stack patterns and operational complexity

A clear ICP keeps you from chasing every logo and calling it ABM. It gives you a rational way to say, “These are the accounts that are worth deep focus—and these are not.”

Core Content and Demand Engine

Finally, you need a functioning engine that creates awareness and interest at scale:

• Website and landing pages

• Thought leadership, case studies, and proof points

• Webinars, events, roundtables

• Nurture programs and always-on campaigns

• Paid channels that put your story in front of the right people

This is how you show up in the market before you ever start tailoring to a specific account. ABM works best when the foundation is strong—then it focuses and amplifies them.

The Icing: ABM as Focused, High-Value Segmentation

Now, let’s talk icing. Account-based marketing is how you take that solid marketing foundation and apply it with precision to the accounts that matter most. You’re not changing who you are—you’re deciding where to focus and how to make your story land for specific companies and buying groups.

Think of 1:1 ABM as The Single-Account Cake Topper

With 1:1 ABM, you create a marketing and sales strategy for one high-value account.

That means:

• Tailored messaging that ties directly to that company’s priorities, language, and initiatives

• Content built specifically for their stakeholders—executive briefs, business cases, or roadmaps that speak to their reality

• Orchestrated outreach across your team (marketing, sales, sales engineering, customer success) toward their buying group

This is not just “Dear {{CompanyName}}” personalization or swapping in a logo on a slide.

It’s closer to designing a mini go-to-market strategy around a single account—grounded in your core positioning, but tuned to how that company thinks, buys, and measures success.

Consider 1:Few ABM as An Icing Variation for a Shared Need

With 1:Few ABM, your focused for a cluster of accounts that share meaningful characteristics, such as:

• A common challenge

• Similar buying dynamics and stakeholder patterns

You’re still specific and relevant, but now you’re building for 10–30 accounts, but the icing—your narrative, examples, and value props—is tuned to that shared situation so it feels targeted without being built from scratch for each individual company.

Once You’ve Assessed to ABM-Ready, Research Is the Next Step

Congratulations on your ABM readiness! This means you have positioning, ICP, vertical narratives, and demand engine in place. Next steps, a non-negotiable step if you want success from your program, research! 

Once you’ve confirmed you’re ABM-ready, resist the urge to jump straight into campaigns or templated plays. Instead, deepen your understanding of the accounts and clusters you’ve chosen to focus on:

• Reading earnings calls, news, and leadership interviews so you understand where the company is headed—and what’s keeping executives up at night.

• Understanding strategic initiatives and pressures, including growth targets, cost constraints, regulatory pressure, technology debt, talent challenges.

• Mapping the buying group so you know who influences the decision? Who decides? Who blocks? How do their priorities differ?

• Translating your solution into their language and their KPIs. Not “we improve efficiency” in the abstract, but “we help you reduce rework in plant operations” or “shorten your close process by X days” in terms they already use internally.

ABM readiness tells you you have the right cake. Research is how you decide what design goes on the icing for each account or cluster so your programs feel specific, intentional, and worth a decision-maker’s time.

Bringing It All Together

When you treat ABM as the icing on the cake, a few things become clear:

• You don’t start with which accounts should we target. You start with is the foundation baked with clear positioning, a defined ICP, and a functioning demand engine.

• ABM isn’t a shortcut around fundamentals—it’s what you layer on once they’re in place to make your story sharper for the accounts that matter most.

• Being “ABM-ready” simply means you’re at the point where research becomes the next step. Focus to understand specific accounts and clusters in enough depth that your 1:1 and 1:few strategies feel tailored, timely, and grounded in the reality of each business.

ABM is at its best when it feels like a natural extension of everything you already do well in marketing and sales. Get the foundation right. Then invest in real account insight. That’s where ABM stops being a buzzword and starts becoming a disciplined way to aim your best marketing and sales work at the right companies, in the right way, at the right time—just more precise, more relevant, and more deeply connected to the accounts that matter most.

Contact us if you're looking for marketing strategy. We can help you focus on accelerating complex B2B sales cycles through sharp positioning, account-based programs, and sales enablement.