Account-based marketing (ABM) has always been built on a smart idea: focus your time, budget and energy on the companies most likely to become valuable customers. That idea still holds up. For B2B organizations with long sales cycles and complex buying groups, ABM remains one of the clearest ways to align marketing and sales around the accounts that matter most.
But the way ABM works is changing.
Traditionally, ABM followed a familiar progression: start broad, narrow as engagement builds and personalize where opportunity is strongest. That structure helped teams focus resources. But today’s B2B buying process is less linear, and engagement rarely follows a traditional funnel.
Buyers are harder to see. Buying groups are more complex. Research is happening across more channels. AI is changing how people gather information. And sales teams often enter the conversation after prospects have already formed opinions about who belongs on the shortlist.
According to 6sense’s 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, the winning vendor appears 95% of the time on the buyer’s shortlist from the very beginning. The report also found that 80% of deals are won by the vendor buyers preferred BEFORE they ever contacted sales. That means many B2B decisions are already taking shape long before a formal sales conversation begins.
ABM still has a valuable role to play. But it has to work harder now — using better account intelligence, stronger buying-group insight and more coordinated sales and marketing activity to influence the moments that happen before buyers raise their hands.
From account targeting to account intelligence
The first generation of ABM was largely about focus. Instead of marketing to a broad audience and hoping the right prospects engaged, companies identified high-value accounts and built campaigns around them. Marketing created more relevant content. Sales received clearer account priorities. Everyone had a shared list of companies worth pursuing.
That was a meaningful step forward. But targeting the right accounts is only the beginning. Modern ABM requires a deeper understanding of what is happening inside those accounts.
- Who is involved in the decision?
- What business pressures are driving the conversation?
- What signals suggest an account may be moving from passive research to active evaluation?
A strong account list is a starting point. The real value comes from understanding what is happening inside those accounts — what pressures they face, who is involved in the decision-making process and what may prompt them to act.
Buying groups have changed the job of ABM
B2B marketers talk a lot about decision-makers. And yes, decision-makers still matter. But in complex purchases, the decision rarely rests with one person.
A CEO may want confidence that the investment supports a larger business priority. A CFO may be focused on cost, return and risk. An operations leader may worry about implementation and disruption. Each person enters the conversation with a different concern. That creates a challenge for ABM programs built around one primary audience or one primary message. Even if the account is right, the message may not be doing enough work across the full buying group.
Modern ABM has to move beyond account-level personalization and into buying-group relevance. The strongest ABM programs do not simply reach the account. They help the people inside the account reach an agreement.
ABM has to support a more self-directed buyer
Through AI-assisted search, buyers can now summarize topics, compare providers, pressure-test ideas and gather background information faster than ever. That does not eliminate the need for marketing or sales. It changes what buyers expect from both.
Gartner found that 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience and 45% used AI during a recent purchase. In other words, buyers are becoming more self-directed and more digitally enabled, even when the purchase itself still requires human judgment and internal alignment.
For ABM, this raises the bar. If you are trying to engage high-value accounts, your message has to be specific enough to feel useful. Your content has to answer real questions. Your website has to make your expertise clear. Your sales materials have to help internal champions explain the value to others.
AI may help buyers move faster through early research, but it does not make the decision simple. In many cases, it gives buyers more information to sort through and more reasons to compare options carefully.
That is where ABM can play an important role. A strong ABM strategy helps clarify the message, focus the content and connect the right information to the right audience.
Personalization needs a better purpose
Personalization has always been part of ABM. But personalization for its own sake is not a strategy. Adding a company name to an email or building a landing page for a specific industry may create a more tailored experience. But the real question is whether that personalization helps the buyer make progress.
Good personalization should show that you understand the account’s business context. It should connect your message to the buyer’s priorities. It should make the next step easier, clearer or more valuable. That does not mean every account needs a fully custom campaign. It means your strategy needs smart, reusable messaging systems that can flex by industry, account need, buying role and stage of engagement.
The goal is not to customize everything. It is to make the message specific enough that the buyer sees their situation in it — and understands why the next step is worth taking.
Sales and marketing alignment matters more than ever
ABM has always depended on sales and marketing alignment. But alignment cannot just mean agreeing on a list of target accounts at the beginning of a campaign. It has to show up in the way teams work.
Marketing needs input from sales on account priorities, buyer objections, competitive pressure and conversation quality. Sales needs marketing to provide useful insights, relevant content and timely reasons to engage.
Both teams need a shared view of what success looks like and how progress is being measured. Without that, ABM can become another marketing program that sales may or may not use. When the process is clearer, the work is more useful — and the handoff between marketing activity and sales conversations becomes much stronger.
A practical checklist for modern ABM
ABM is not going away. For B2B companies with complex sales cycles and high-value prospects, focus still matters. So does personalization. So does alignment between marketing and sales. What needs to change is the way ABM is planned and activated.
Static lists, broad tiers and one-time campaigns are not enough for a buying process that is harder to predict and shaped by multiple stakeholders. Today’s buyers are researching across channels, involving additional decision-makers and using different tools to evaluate their options.
As you modernize your ABM strategy, use these questions as a gut check:
- Does your ABM strategy clearly define and target your best-fit accounts?
- Do you understand the needs of the buying groups inside those accounts — not just those of the primary decision-maker?
- Are your messages specific enough to reflect each account’s business priorities?
- Does your content help buyers answer practical questions before they talk to sales?
- Are marketing and sales aligned on which signals matter and what should happen next?
- Are you using performance data to refine campaigns, content and outreach over time?
In the age of AI, ABM still comes down to the same essential goal: helping the right buyers understand why your company is worth a closer look.
Ready to rethink your ABM strategy? Let’s talk.