The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

Our 5 Step Account Based Marketing Strategy for B2B SaaS (Plus 10 Mistakes to Avoid)

by 

Dev Basu

Last updated: March 28th, 2025

ABM may be the primary marketing strategy for many enterprise B2B SaaS companies, but plenty of marketers still struggle to generate a positive ROI.

Your first reaction is probably to try one of the following tactics: 

• Testing different ad creatives
• Expanding audience size
• Changing bidding strategies

In our experience, these tests don’t fix the problem if there are fundamental issues with the campaign.

In this post, we’ll discuss the common mistakes that hurt ABM performance and our step by step process for creating an ABM campaign, from creating a solid foundation to specific campaign optimizations.

10 Account Based Marketing Mistakes B2B SaaS Companies Should Avoid

1. Not Allocating More Budget to Accounts with Higher Potential Value

Let’s say you’re a SaaS company doing account based marketing.

If you think Account ‘A’ on your target account list would be worth $50,000 ARR, and Account ‘B’ would be worth $15,000 ARR, you should be willing to spend more to acquire Account ‘A’ than Account ‘B’, right?

While this logic is easy to understand, occasionally we see this fail to translate into practice for SaaS companies doing ABM.

What happens is: Once a target acquisition cost is determined (target CAC or the amount you’re willing to spend to acquire a new customer), it’s applied across the board to all of your campaigns. But in doing so, you miss an opportunity to allocate more budget to accounts with higher potential value.

This is one of the biggest mistakes that we see limit results for SaaS companies struggling to make ABM work.

2. Thinking That Investing in an ABM Platform Alone Will Make It All Work

Popular ABM platforms like Terminus, Rollworks, or Demandbase work fine, but investing in these platforms alone isn’t enough. If you don’t give the platform the right inputs, your marketing efforts aren’t likely to improve.

Investing in one of these platforms makes sense only when you have a well developed ABM strategy. The platforms alone won’t make your account based marketing work.

Our ABM strategy will show you how to get a good ROI from the ABM platform you invest in.

3. Purchasing Ads Through AdRoll or Perfect Audience Instead of Directly on the Platforms Where You’re Advertising

When you run ABM campaigns through a platform like AdRoll or Perfect Audience, they’re buying ads for you and marking them up. These platforms don’t show you what you could have actually spent on that ad had you bought it directly from the channel.

For example, you’ll see a CPC of $5.40 on your account from AdRoll without being able to see that they bought those clicks from LinkedIn for $5.00 per click. Some SaaS marketing teams may feel that the markup is worth it for a slightly better user experience. But without transparency on those metrics, it’s impossible for decision makers to monitor and understand the actual value in that service over time.

If you want to see a higher ROI, we recommend bypassing these services (to avoid their markup) and running your marketing campaigns directly through the native ad platforms.

4. Poor Journey-Offer Fit

Going straight for the sale with cold prospects (offering a demo or trial right off the bat) is like proposing marriage on a first date.

It’s a big turn off.

This is a symptom of short term thinking. Overlooking where in the customer journey your target audiences are leads to poor click through rates and higher costs per click. Platforms will end up delivering your ads to less of your audience due to these metrics, and you’ll be left wasting money on underperforming ads.

In our ABM strategy below, we’ll show you how to make sure your ads match up with your audience’s progression through the customer journey.

5. Putting Your List Together Without Enhancing and Further Refining It

Another mistake we see B2B marketers make is creating their initial target account list without refining it further. Creating your initial list is just the beginning of the process to develop it.

An effective ABM approach requires further list enrichment. You want to ask the question: “What are some other things we can add to this list that will help us target these accounts?”

These characteristics are sometimes referred to as firmographic data. Firmographic data includes basic information like company size and annual revenue. But for SaaS companies, we find technographic data to be particularly useful.

We’ll try to answer the question: “What are the various types of technologies they’re using?”

There are two helpful things you can keep an eye out for:

1. Companies using the same tech as your existing customers and tech that is complementary to your SaaS.
2. Companies who use tech that is at a comparable price point to your own (a signal that they make significant investments in services like yours).

Both of these can indicate the right accounts from your list to prioritize in your targeting.

6. Not Doing Proper Data Hygiene

Effective ABM requires good data hygiene to successfully target accounts.

Missing data can lead to missed targeting opportunities. To drive home the importance of data hygiene, consider this scenario:

You have a list of 500 company names and each company has 10 people you want to target. So you have 5,000 people in an Excel file.

If you don’t get your data hygiene right, you might think you’re targeting 5,000 people when in fact many of them aren’t matched when you finally upload your list. There might be 100 valuable names on your list that simply aren’t matched because of typos or formatting errors, leading you to miss out on targeting them.

7. Not Setting Up Your Campaigns on an Account-by-Account Basis

Account based marketing consists of marketing, sales, and performance tracking across each individual account.

Yet, we still sometimes see B2B companies segment their account lists based on the shared characteristics of their accounts.

For example, they might create a campaign for “US enterprise technology companies” — because that’s what their target companies are. Then, they run their ABM campaigns toward that group rather than each individual account.

But this misconception defeats the purpose of an account based approach. You’ll get performance data on enterprise technology companies, but not data specific to the individual accounts you’re targeting across each individual account.

8. Using Sponsored In-Mail Without Warming Up Prospects

This mistake is similar to mistake #3 of having poor journey-offer fit. If you’re sending sponsored in-mail to prospects without any pre-targeting communication, you’re going to turn prospects off.

Instead, you should send out ads a month ahead of time to reach these people before you ever reach out to them through their inbox. Our stance is that sponsored in-mail is one of those marketing tactics that should be reserved for retargeting campaigns (definitely not for a first touch).

Note: to learn more about B2B marketing best practices, check out our article on LinkedIn ads for SaaS.

9. Not Remarketing on Every Possible Channel

Multichannel marketing — marketing to prospects through many different channels — is the status quo today.

However, omnichannel marketing — which places users at the center of the marketing experience (by connecting the different channels where they interact with you) — is still underutilized.

One easy way to implement omnichannel marketing is in your remarketing efforts, but many SaaS companies fail to leverage this. Not creating omnichannel remarketing campaigns for people who have engaged with your ads is a missed opportunity to reach leads in the different places they spend time online.

While ABM prospects will usually enter your funnel through LinkedIn, you should be retargeting them through Google and Facebook to further increase their awareness of your solution. In addition, when you get a click through Google or Facebook, it’s likely to cost less than getting it on LinkedIn.

We recommend implementing omnichannel campaigns to help make your ABM more successful and cost-effective.

10. Bidding on CPC Based on What LinkedIn Recommends

Marketing teams that follow LinkedIn’s suggestions about what to bid for campaigns often fall victim to over-estimations of what their bids actually need to be, and end up paying more to the platform than necessary.

We recommend starting out your bids at 50% of the recommended rate to see how things perform first, and then increasing them from there as needed. We can often attain click-through-rates of 1%+ (well beyond LinkedIn’s standard for a good ad of .1-.7% CTR) with a CPC that’s a fraction of what they suggest.

Remember, these platforms are designed to get rich, not to make you rich. So, do your own testing to see what bid rates perform best.

Now that we’ve covered the common ABM mistakes we’ve seen, let’s dive into our process for ABM.

Common ABM Mistakes That Hurt Performance

Before outlining our ABM strategy, let’s address the most common mistakes that hurt ABM performance.  

Mistake 1: Relying Solely on Firmographic Data For Targeting

Even if a company matches the characteristics of your ideal prospects (location, industry, revenue, employee count, etc.), they won’t purchase your product if they don’t have the pain point that your product solves. 

Sure, these accounts may eventually convert once they realize the pain point, but it will take a long time to nurture and convert them.  

Instead, use an intent-based targeting approach and only target prospects who are already experiencing a pain point and are actively researching solutions.  

High intent prospects convert much faster, improving the ROI of your ABM strategy.

We use intent data platforms like 6sense, Bombora, or Demandbase to identify ideal accounts that are already searching for your solution.

Mistake 2: Running ABM Like a Standard Demand Gen Campaign

Many businesses launch ABM campaigns with standard ad structures (e.g., lead gen ads, high-frequency remarketing, and broad targeting) that are designed to resonate with a group of prospects.

Yet with ABM, you have much more control over exactly who sees your ads, giving you more information on that individual’s unique pain points and current step in the buyer journey. 

This targeting precision gives you the unique opportunity to hyper-personalize your message, and it’s often this hyper-personalization that makes ABM campaigns uniquely effective.    

If you aren’t hyper-personalizing your messaging, you’re leaving money on the table.

Instead, we develop specific messaging for different tiers of target accounts and align paid media with outbound sales sequences.

Mistake 3: Unclear Progression Between Campaign Stages

The buying journey for most enterprise B2B SaaS products often lasts six, twelve, or even eighteen months.

A message that resonates with a prospect one month into the research process probably won’t resonate with a prospect who is eight months into the research process.

So a common mistake is using a campaign to target all prospects within the buyer journey.

Instead, we recommend a multi-stage ABM campaign structure:

• Phase 1: Awareness and Reach: During this stage, you’re getting on your accounts’ radar with brand-first messaging.
• Phase 2: Engagement and Reach: During this phase, you’re serving high-value content like reports and whitepapers, to help prospects understand the value of your particular product.
• Phase 3: Direct Response and Conversion: Once prospects near the end of the campaign, you can send them messages with a stronger call to action to schedule a demo.

Step by Step Account Based Marketing Approach

Our step by step approach to account based marketing for B2B SaaS.

Step 1: Build Your Ideal Customer Personas

The first step in ABM is defining not only the company that fits your ideal customer profile, but also exactly who is on the buying committee and the pain points of each individual person on that buying committee. 

If SaaS marketers are struggling to see a strong ROI from ABM, it’s probably because of one of the three reasons:

1. They aren’t targeting the right people on the buying committee.
2. They aren’t targeting the right pain points each member of the buying committee feels.
3. They aren’t highlighting the main reasons customers choose your product over a competitor’s product.

This is because most marketers simply guess who the people on the buying committee are and each person’s pain points rather than using data to understand the answers to these questions.

For example, you may think that it’s the CFO you need to target for a payments software, when in reality, it may be a lower level accounting manager who initially researches a problem and discovers your solution.

However, you may never actually talk to that person if they simply pass the information on to their boss. Therefore, it would be easy to overlook them as part of the buyer committee, despite the fact that they are essential to the discovery process. 

Similarly, the pain points a CFO faces are very different from the pain points an accounting manager faces. 

The CFO’s main pain point may be data accuracy whereas the accounting manager’s main pain point may be reducing laborious data entry. Each ad needs to address the specific pain points of that particular member of the buying committee.

And, it’s important to understand each buying committee member’s real pain points. Don’t just make assumptions.

You may think that the CFO’s pain point is data accuracy when it may actually be keeping their team happy so that employees don’t leave the company. 

Finally, understand why customers choose your product over the competition’s product.

Often, SaaS companies believe customers choose the product because it is superior or it offers unique features. 

In reality, customers often make their purchase decisions based on customer support, trust, and other factors that have nothing to do with the product itself. 

Understanding this information (and specifically, the actions/scenarios that created trust, excellent customers support, etc.) is critical to crafting compelling messaging that converts.

So how do you get the answers to these questions? 

We use CRM data, qualitative interviews (e.g., talking directly to prospects, analyzing sales call transcript data, etc.), and intent platforms, like 6sense, to build accurate customer personas. 

For CRM data, we’re looking at things like:

• Titles who were involved in the buying committee from previous closed deals
• Specific content assets/ads they interacted with and the messaging of those ads/assets
• Buyer behavior and engagement patterns
• Firmographic and demographic data
• Buying committee and deal insights
• Retention and expansion data
• Intent and engagement scoring
• Customer and sentiment feedback

For qualitative interviews we typically get on calls with our real customers and ask questions like:

• What has been the biggest benefit from using our product?
• What other products did you look at and why did you choose ours?

We also use AI to analyze chat data, sales call transcripts, and other customer data sources to answer these questions.

Step 2: Build and Clean Your Target Account Lists

The next step is building target account lists, and another common mistake we see is companies using low-quality CRM lists.

For example, a SaaS company may use a CRM list that’s a year old. Unfortunately, job titles may have changed or the company may no longer be in-market. 

Instead, we regularly validate and refresh lists. Specifically, we want the data to be less than a year old.

We also look for real-time intent signals that show the person is currently in market. For example, tools like 6sense will tell you if someone from the company has interacted with ads promoting competing products.

We also use real time data from HubSpot to identify how frequently they’re interacting with our own ads.

These people have high purchase intent and are much more likely to convert.

Step 3: Segment Your Target Accounts Based on Personas

Your prospects are not all equally valuable. 

For example, an enterprise account is much more valuable than a startup account.

So it makes sense to allocate more ad budget and more personalized messaging to enterprise prospects. 

Yet we still see marketers treating ABM like regular paid LinkedIn ad campaigns by using somewhat generic messaging and equal marketing spend across all accounts. 

This stage solves that problem.

We look through the list of prospective companies then prioritize them by revenue potential into three tiers.

Specifically, we categorize them based on three tiers:

• Tier 1 (1:1 ABM): These are the highest revenue prospects, usually enterprise accounts. As they have the most revenue potential, all Tier 1 accounts will receive personalized messaging and the most ad budget. 
• Tier 2 (1: Few ABM): These are mid-market accounts. We’ll send them semi-personalized content and allocate a moderate budget to them.
• Tier 3 (1: Many ABM): These are usually startup or smaller accounts. They’re still good customers, but generate the least revenue. We’ll use scalable, automated campaigns for broad targeting and allocate the least amount of ad budget to these campaigns.

Step 4: Build Your Campaign Structure

In an effort to drive as many conversions as possible, many marketers push ads with a CTA to schedule a demo.

The problem is that most prospects (especially enterprise level prospects) aren’t going to schedule a demo the first time they hear about your company.

Bottom of the funnel targeting is also very expensive. 

Instead, we use a two step campaign structure to first build credibility before making a bigger ask, like scheduling a demo. 

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Build Awareness and Generate Engagement

We primarily use text and spotlight ads to get in front of prospects and build brand awareness.

Dynamic spotlight ads are personalized with the prospect’s name, face, and your logo. 

To generate more brand awareness, we’ll also show them a text and image ad in the prospect’s feed like this: 

Step 2: Send Targeted InMails To Engaged Accounts

LinkedIn allows you to retarget audiences based on a prospect’s interaction with certain types of ads.

Using this data, we’ll retarget those who engaged with our previous ads with a personalized InMail message. 

InMail messages are considered BOFU as we’re asking them to take a BOFU action, like sign up for a demo. 

At this stage, prospects are much more likely to convert because they’ve already shown interest in your brand by engaging with the text and spotlight ads.

By only targeting prospects that have demonstrated interest, we see much better conversion rates (and therefore, a higher ROI) on our InMail messages. 

Step 5: Align Sales and Marketing Teams

If a prospect downloaded a guide on SEO, the sales team needs to know that information so that they can reach out to them with a customized SEO plan. 

Disconnect between marketing and sales teams costs conversions as the sales team will be scrambling to learn more about the prospect’s pain points on the demo and then tailor their pitch on the fly. 

Worse, we’ve even seen some cases where the sales team reaches out with a completely unrelated offer (e.g., sending a web design resource when the prospect is interested in SEO).

To keep sales and marketing on the same page, be sure to keep your CRM up to date. All prospect touchpoints should be documented and sales should be able to see the specific resources a prospect has downloaded, which ads they engaged with, and other important information.

Signing up with services like Terminus or Bizible (or AdRoll or Perfect Audience) are only half the battle if you want to execute on account based marketing for SaaS.
If you’ve been using these services or others and are still finding it challenging to get results from your ABM program, we hope this article will help you avoid any mistakes you might be making, and to refine your approach to optimizing your campaigns.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS businesses execute their account based marketing, reach out to get your Free Marketing Plan today.