Account-Based Marketing Funnels

After running paid media and outbound for dozens of B2B accounts, the single biggest unlock we've found is connecting three motions most teams run in isolation: organic LinkedIn content, paid thought leader ads, and personalized outbound. Here's how the full loop works. Step 1: Organic content from your founder or executives. Your CEO or subject matter expert posts consistently on LinkedIn. Thought leadership, hot takes, customer stories. Not corporate fluff from the company page. Real, opinionated content from a real person. Everything downstream depends on it. The content is what gets promoted. The person behind it is who the retargeting and outbound comes from. Step 2: Sponsor that content as Thought Leader Ads. Take posts performing well organically and put paid behind them. TLAs promote a post from someone's personal profile. It looks native, feels organic, and outperforms traditional sponsored content in every account we've managed. Run on an Engagement objective with manual CPC bidding. We consistently see 2x to 3x cheaper costs compared to automated bidding or Reach objectives. Target at your ICP and upload your target account list as a matched audience for ABM. You're building an engaged audience that becomes the fuel for everything else. Step 3: Retarget engagers with conversational ads from the same person. People who engaged with your TLAs are warm. They recognize the person. Hit them with a Conversation Ad from that same exec's profile offering something concrete. Conversation Ads are more like text adventures than actual conversations. Effective for qualifying intent, but not where real relationship building happens. Step 4: Capture the engagement and push to outbound. This is where it becomes a true allbound system. Push TLA engagers through Clay. Push contacts into HeyReach for LinkedIn sequences or Instantly for email. A personalized connection request from the same exec whose content they've been engaging with converts at a completely different rate than cold outbound. It doesn't feel cold because it isn't. Step 5: Fill the gaps with mid-funnel content. Turn blog posts into document ads the prospect reads in-feed. Cut podcast episodes into clips and run as video view campaigns. These audiences stack into retargeting layers that make conversion campaigns cheaper and higher quality. Why this works: Most B2B companies run organic with no paid amplification, ads with no connection to outbound, or cold outbound with no warming layer. Organic feeds paid. Paid builds retargeting audiences. Retargeting warms prospects. Warm prospects convert at higher rates on outbound. Closed deals become new content. The loop restarts. We've seen accounts cut cost per lead by 30%+ within 60 days by connecting the TLA retargeting funnel to conversation ads. Adding outbound on top accelerates pipeline because you're reaching the same people through multiple channels with a unified message.

ABM Playbook in B2B is changing. In 2025 your program should reframe account movement as a series of mental state shifts, not lifecycle stages. That shift breaks the typical "stage-based" ABM content cycle and replaces it with a hypothesis-resolution loop ...where every stage is defined by what the buyer believes, not what the seller does. Here's how I approach it now. =》SIGNAL Most ABM playbooks describe accounts as moving through stages: unaware → aware → engaged → qualified → closed. But my previous experiments revealed something more useful - accounts don’t move linearly. They escalate (or drop) based on how their internal hypotheses evolve. =》INSIGHT The stages weren’t buyer statuses- they were buyer states of mind. Engaged ≠ interested. Interested ≠ ready. Each shift depended on resolving a different kind of internal tension: doubt, fear, credibility, cost-of-action. =》CRITICAL ACTION To move someone from "engaged" to "interested," I didn’t push offers. I focus on one question: “What doubt is most costly to this person right now?” The answer changed by ICP- proof for one was a customer story, for another it was a financial model, and for some, a quiet reference call. That forced me to structure the campaign not by funnel stages but by hypothesis blockers, each requiring a different trust asset to resolve. =》 SIDE NOTE If you’re designing ABM by stage, you’re assuming intent. I like to rebuild it by mental velocity - what it takes to change someone’s mind, not just get their attention. Check out the video and share your views. #abm #b2b #marketing #ICP

Old vs New Account-Based Marketing (ABM). 1. 𝐆𝐎𝐀𝐋𝐒. Old ABM: We need more leads. New ABM: -Focusing on new logos with a high probability to buy -Expanding business with existing clients -Preventing churn of the key accounts 2. 𝐈𝐂𝐏. Old way: Broad firmographic + decision-makers. We sell to CFOs from the US-based helathcare organizations. New way: -More specific firmographics and technographics -Qualification criteria -Tier segmentation -Detailed Buying committee -Account enrichment (business insights, common connections, where account is in their journey) 3. 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆. Old way: Sales wish lists + databases. New way: - Check 1st party intent and engagement data - Define accounts that fit ICP and demonstrate a high level of engagement or interest 4. 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐙𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. Old way: Vertical or job-role message distributed through programmatic, landing pages, and email outreach. New way: - In-depth account research - Content aligned with the buyer's journey and buying committee - Personalization based on in-depth account research 5. 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌 𝐔𝐏. Old way: Programmatic display ads + sales outbound cadence (that infamous 21-touch). New way: - Multithreaded engagement with the buying committee on social and communities - 1:few or 1:1 events - Content co-creation - Personalized content hubs 6. 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 & 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓. Old way: Lead handover from marketing to sales when an account clicks ads, downloads gated content, or sign ups to the event. New way: - Alignment on GTM elements: target segments, ICP, buyer journey, message, warm-up and activation - Joint playbooks that include interactions with the buying committee -Joint reports - Weekly ABM programs and pipeline review meetings 7. 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐒. Old way: ABM success is measured by new leads only. New way: - Revenue that is generated from new logos, existing pipeline (accleration) and existing customers (expansion) - Sales pipeline velocity and revenue metrics: ACV, win rate, sales cycle length - Leading indicators for every program ---- ABM ≠ lead generation. Don't be fooled that you can buy an ABM platform, prospect thousands of accounts with programmatic ads and automated outbound cadence. ABM requires good GTM fundamentals and close collaboration between marketing and sales to: - Select accounts with a high probability to buy your product - Creating awareness and demand through manual engagement with the buying committee members and personalization - Thorough playbook planning and review It requires a lot of manual work. But this is the only way to generate enterprise, 6-7 figure deals. On 19th Oct I'm co-hosting a webinar with Leanne Chescoe from Demandbase to share practical examples of Sales and Marketing's Collaborative Journey to Revenue Acceleration. Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/dYzjX2_w #abm #accountbasedmarketing

𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 “𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲,” 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱—𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲. Teams that upgraded to account-level intelligence and outcome-based measurement saw an 81% lift in closed-won. Not from working harder—but from changing what they measure and how they activate it. Meet the new GTM: not a playbook, a Revenue Operating System (RevOS). 1. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 — Reveal Invisible Demand Your website is already telling you who’s buying. With identity stitching + enrichment, you can ID 70–75% of anonymous traffic. That becomes the fuel for everything else. 2. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗰 — Merge Every Signal High-intent buyers don’t live in one channel. Search queries, G2, dark social, paid media, reviews, surges—each is a pixel. Woven together, they reveal the full picture. 3. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 — Real-Time Readiness AI blends behavior, firmographics, lifecycle, and history into a live score. No more static lead lists. Just dynamic account orchestration. 4. 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 — Precision Advertising Ads shouldn’t be campaigns—they should be programmable touch patterns. Sync audiences. Train algorithms. Control frequency. Relevance + repetition = revenue. 5. 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 — Triggered Engagement When buying signals spike, AI routes hyper-contextual actions instantly. It’s not outreach—it’s commercial choreography. 6. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 — Revenue-Truth Attribution Modern attribution highlights the touchpoints that actually shift pipeline. (One team learned G2 influenced 35% of pipeline they never credited.) The Meta-Shift: Funnel → System The winners aren’t generating leads. They’re running a closed-loop revenue system where identity, intent, prioritization, activation, and proof compound. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝗚𝗧𝗠. 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀. 𝗔𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺.

Still, treating Every Buyer Like They’re in the Same Funnel? The Biggest Marketing Mistake of 2025: Most B2B marketers are still making a fundamental mistake in 2025: They treat all buyers as if they move through the same linear funnel. But here’s the reality: ✔️B2B buying isn’t a single journey. ✔️It’s a collection of micro-journeys happening at different speeds, with different priorities, across multiple personas. Most marketers push a one-size-fits-all narrative. 1. Your CTO prospect isn’t evaluating your product the same way their Director of Ops is. 2. Your CFO isn’t asking the same questions as the end user. 3. Your buying committee isn’t aligned internally, yet most B2B marketing assumes they are. The Problem? Static Messaging in a Dynamic Buying Process. The 2025 Playbook: ABM Content Needs to Follow the Buying Journey. ✔️Vendor-unaware accounts -Thought leadership that educates and helps learn. ✔️Vendor-aware, engaged accounts (unknown product need). -Content that helps sales validate pain points and build trust. ✔️Vendor-aware accounts (validated product need). -Hyper-personalized content that removes objections and accelerates deals. Example from an ABM playbook we ran for an enterprise SaaS client: 1. We ran a LinkedIn + email drip with industry trend reports for cold accounts to establish credibility. 2. For engaged accounts, we used role-specific insights to help SDRs book meetings. 3. We created a custom value calculator for late-stage deals that showed their potential cost savings. ✔️When buyers reach your demo request, they’ve already formed their perception of your brand. ✔️That perception isn’t influenced only by ads. ✔️It’s shaped by what they’ve seen on LinkedIn, heard in podcasts, or discussed in Slack groups. -The best B2B marketers do more than capture demand. -They engineer influence across multiple personas before the buying process even starts.

I reviewed a client’s $20k/month ABM program this week. They couldn't answer one basic question (and tbh most teams can't either). Why is this account on your TAL? And if you can’t answer that… LinkedIn will happily charge you to find out. On the call, we pulled up their target list. It was a giant database export. No tiers. No buying committee mapping. No disqualifiers. Just “accounts” → uploaded → spend. That’s not ABM. That’s paid guessing. Here’s the operator version of what actually fixes it: 1) ICP = best-customer patterns → lookalikes → leverage Start with the customers that already convert fast and expand. Pull the pattern: trigger, constraints, why you win, what proof you have. Build lookalikes from that pattern. 2) TAL is a RevOps asset (CRM object), not a spreadsheet TAL lives in HubSpot/CRM with: owner, tier, stage, next action. Reviewed weekly and updated weekly so you can see account progression. Weekly, you should be able to answer: → % of TAL reached → % engaged → % pipeline attached → what moved accounts (signal → action) → what changed in the TAL (adds/removes and why) 3) LinkedIn ABM is judged on progression metrics: If you judge LinkedIn Ads on demos, you’ll kill ABM early. RevOps tracks what moves accounts forward: → audience penetration (% of TAL reached) → engagement rate / CTR by angle → % of TAL accounts reached by ads → account progression (% TAL → pipeline) → pipeline per $ spent 4) RevOps routing is the compounding layer Engagement → Triggers → CRM → Clay → Audience update → Outbound Trigger So signals don’t sit in dashboards. They update tiers, move audiences, and create outbound tasks tied to intent. ABM that works is boring on purpose: clean ICP → controlled TAL → progression tracking → routing. If you’re running LinkedIn ABM right now: Do you have weekly visibility on TAL → pipeline progression? Tools mentioned: Data sources: PandaMatch 🐼, Ocean.io , DiscoLike Routing stack: Fibbler, Trigify.io, Clay, Instantly.ai

Your marketing team shows you a dashboard full of MQLs. Your sales team says the leads are garbage. Both are telling the truth. This is the most common conversation I have with SaaS CEOs. Marketing is reporting wins. Sales is frustrated. Pipeline isn't growing. And the CEO is stuck in the middle trying to figure out who's right. The traditional funnel assumes a clean handoff. Marketing generates leads, qualifies them into MQLs, passes them to sales, and sales closes. That's almost completely disconnected from how B2B buying actually works. In reality, a B2B deal involves six to ten people at the buying company. They research for months before anyone fills out a form. They visit your website, read your content, check your LinkedIn, talk to peers, and evaluate competitors all before your sales team even knows they exist. When someone finally requests a demo, they've already made 80% of their decision. So measuring MQLs is like measuring how many people walked through the door of a store and pretending that's the same as revenue. It's activity, not outcome. What I track instead is engagement by account. Stage one: a target company visits the site for the first time. Stage two: they come back multiple times, meaning a buying committee is active. Stage three: they hit high-intent pages like pricing, demos, or case studies. Stage four: they request a demo. Stage five: proof of concept to close. For one client, we tracked 478 target companies through this model. - 72% hit stage one. - 81% of those came back for repeat engagement. - 27% moved to active assessment. The average prospect touched our content 50 to 60 times before requesting a demo. That's not a traditional marketing funnel. You're in a football field. And it takes a full team to move the ball.

Two years ago, I would’ve needed to invest ~$100K in an ABM platform + a handful of workflow automation tools to assess and execute across key buying motions happening at my target accounts. That’s not the case today. The ability to assess data and build workflows no longer requires a six-figure line item or even five different tools. If you’re in B2B SaaS looking to close pipeline gaps today (let’s be honest, who isn’t), here are three account-based campaigns I’d build evergreen workflows around: Campaign #1: Closed-lost re-engagement → Closed-lost account expressed interest in solution that now maps to an upcoming product release. ⤷ Surround account with social ads with video of the assigned rep demoing solution. ⤷ For each view account, alert AE with slack with proposed touch points for follow up. why: This play recycles sunk acquisition cost by helping you re-engage familiar accounts instead of starting from scratch. Campaign #2: No-show revival → Engaged account no-shows scheduled meeting.   ⤷ Send personalized direct mail/gift referencing past engagement. ⤷ Add them to an email sequence inviting them to monthly peer-led roundtable events. why: This play aims to be a scalable way to warm up cold pipeline that your outbound team attempted to secure with marketing resources. Campaign #3 Activate whitespace → Lookalike accounts visit high-intent web pages.   ⤷ Enrich with relevant buying personas in CRM.  ⤷ Round robin to Enterprise SDRs/BDRs for tiered outreach. why: This play enables faster speed-to-lead and improves sales velocity by surfacing high-fit and high-intent accounts your team may not have discovered yet, without buying another stale list. Being the first to act on signals like these is exactly how you stay a step ahead of the competition. And the funny thing is, it no longer requires the time or budget it used to. Today, I can do any number of these in minutes thanks to partnering with Default. If you’re curious to see how, just let me know. I really do geek out over this. 😅

Your Creative Ads Are Perfect. So Why Aren't They Converting? Here's the uncomfortable truth: You're showing the wrong message at the wrong time. Content drives ad effectiveness, we all know that. However, there's a critical factor that most marketers overlook: timing and context. In Account-Based Marketing, your ability to deliver the right message based on your prospect's journey stage isn't just important; it's make-or-break. Think about it: 🤷♂️ That HR head you're targeting has never heard of your payroll SaaS. Will they really risk their reputation and career choosing an unknown solution over established competitors with proven testimonials? 🤷♀️  That finance head has engaged with your ROI calculator 5 times but still doesn't understand how it connects to your FinTech solution. When they're ready to buy, will they even remember your brand? The game-changer is mapping your target accounts against buyer journey stages, then serving hyper-relevant content: 🎯 Unaware Stage (80% of your TAL?) Deploy 1-to-Many ads featuring: Founder thought leadership videos Exclusive whitepapers addressing industry pain points Educational content that builds category awareness 🎯 Aware but Uncertain Stage (15% of your TAL?) Switch to 1-to-Few ads showcasing: Detailed case studies with success metrics Product demos addressing specific use cases Comparison guides highlighting your differentiators 🎯 Opportunity Stage (5% ready to buy?) Invest heavily in 1-to-One ads: Personalized video messages Custom proposals and demos Direct sales outreach integration Ready to stop guessing and start strategically matching your ad formats to buyer journey stages? Download our comprehensive PDF guide that maps exactly which ad types work at each stage, complete with format recommendations.

I’m extremely bullish on account-based GTM motions in 2026. As AI makes generic outreach cheap and ubiquitous, differentiation comes from precision, relevance, and deep context around a small set of high-value accounts. This sounds wonderful on paper until it’s time to set up a modern account-based GTM engine. IYKYK. For help I turned to Dan Rosenthal from Workflows.io. They’ve set up 250+ GTM systems including dozens of ABX implementations over the past year. Dan put together what I think is the most comprehensive & useful guide to *modern* ABM with HubSpot, Claude Code, Clay & best-of-breed tech. Read the full deep dive in Growth Unhinged here: https://lnkd.in/eyF9bgyb There are 7 steps — follow these in this order: 1️⃣ TAM & stakeholder mapping Dan recommends combining 3+ data sources to reach 90%+ of TAM coverage w/o blowing through your budget. AI research agents help qualify the list based on website content & do the merge/de-dupe. 2️⃣ Account research Most companies Dan works with gather 30+ custom data points with Claude Code & MCPs. Some interesting ones: closest coffee shop next to their office, competitor tech usage. 3️⃣ CRM cleanup & enrichment Nobody’s favorite step, but you can’t skip it. 4️⃣ Signal tracking Intent signals are hot. Reps also don’t trust a lot of them. And many signals have commoditized. The most valuable signals are from your first party data (website visitors, gated content, product usage, event attendance, outreach replies, etc.). 5️⃣ Awareness scoring If you embrace ABX, you need a way to see where you stand with your target accounts (no, MQLs/SQLs don’t work). Identified > Aware > Interested > Considering > Evaluating. 6️⃣ Demand generation With the scoring in place, reps can focus on the warmest accounts who already show interest. Use a mix of 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many campaigns. (Pro-tip: Dan says event invites have been a great CTA in outbound.) 7️⃣ ICP pipeline progression reporting Success can be harder to quantify w/o an arbitrary MQL goal. The upside: you’re now collecting far richer data about what resonates with your target accounts. — I hope you find this guide as useful as I do. Let me know what you think 🙏 -KP