How to launch better ABM campaigns

For many B2B companies, account-based marketing (ABM) is the most effective way to turn high-value target accounts into real opportunities. But the truth is, most ABM campaigns fall short. They rely too much on generic personalization, outdated intent data, or messaging that doesn’t match where the buyer actually is in their journey.

The real reason why many ABM efforts underperform is simple: most of the signals that indicate buyer interest are invisible. They live in the dark funnel, the part of the buying journey that doesn’t show up in your CRM or attribution tools. Someone might read a blog post, visit your pricing page three times, or forward your newsletter to a colleague, but unless they fill out a form, you never know.

Without visibility into these early signals, teams miss the timing. They launch campaigns too early or too late. They target the wrong accounts or send the wrong message. As a result, they leave revenue on the table.

If you want to run smarter, more effective ABM campaigns, you need to start by surfacing the hidden intent that’s already there. When you can see the full picture, you can act sooner, with more accurate context.

This guide will show you how.

Why traditional ABM isn’t working

Many ABM playbooks are built around static lists, job title filters, and surface-level personalization. You choose your target accounts, plug them into a sequence, add their company name to a subject line, and hope it works. Sometimes it does, but more often, your messages go ignored or deleted.

Here’s why:

• Most campaigns start too early, before there’s actual interest.

• Personalization is shallow and irrelevant.

• Intent data is outdated, vague, or incomplete.

• Sales and marketing are not aligned on timing or messaging.
  
  

To run better ABM campaigns, you need better timing, better signals, and better context. This is where AI and more advanced data tools are changing how modern teams work.

Start with intent, not just fit

Targeting based on company size, industry, or revenue is fine for building a list. But it’s not enough to know who to reach out to. You need to know when and why.

That means moving beyond firmographic filters and identifying real signals of interest. Not just one person clicking an ad, but clusters of activity across the company.

Look for:

• multiple visits to your website from the same domain;

• content consumption patterns across the buying team;

• branded searches or direct traffic from target accounts;

• people interacting with your company across channels (LinkedIn, events, email).
  
  

Tools like ClearCue can help you surface these patterns early by connecting the dots between anonymous traffic and known accounts.

Align messaging to where the buyer is in their journey

A common ABM mistake is treating every target account the same. Just because a company is on your list doesn’t mean they’re ready for a sales pitch. Relevance comes from timing.

Use AI-powered tools and signal tracking to group accounts by stage:

• Early stage: Light signals like single blog visits, newsletter opens, or social post clicks. These accounts are exploring broadly. Share educational content, guides, or curated resources. Keep outreach minimal and focused on value.

• Mid stage: More frequent activity from multiple people at the same company. One person reads your blog, another browses the site or signs up for a webinar. These patterns suggest internal conversations. Introduce case studies, solution pages, or success stories relevant to their role or industry.

• Late stage: High-intent actions like repeated visits to pricing, product comparison pages, or form activity. These accounts are actively considering solutions. This is the time for direct engagement through personalized offers, demo invites, or tailored sales follow-ups.
  
  

Matching your message to where the buyer actually is helps you stay relevant, reduce friction, and improve close rates.

Build content that fuels the ABM engine

Personalized content is not inserting a logo or using someone's first name in an email. It means delivering content that speaks to a real problem, at the right time, to the right person. The only way to do this well is by understanding what your target accounts are actually engaging with.

You need to see what people are reading, sharing, or coming back to. If someone views your integration docs twice, that’s not random. If multiple people from the same company are returning to your blog, it shows growing interest. These hidden signals tell you what kind of content resonates and where each account is in the buying process.

Your ABM content strategy should include:

• One-to-few landing pages grouped by shared needs or industry. These allow you to address clusters of accounts with similar challenges in a way that still feels relevant.

• One-to-one pages for high-intent accounts. When you see strong engagement from a specific company, use their behavior to inform a landing page that speaks directly to their role, use case, and challenges.

• Industry or persona-specific use cases. If you notice marketers in SaaS companies reading your attribution guides, follow up with SaaS-specific examples that show how your product solves that exact problem.

• Segmented case studies that match company size or vertical. Enterprise buyers want to see examples from companies like theirs, while startups prefer leaner, faster stories.

• Short videos or explainers that address one clear question. These are especially useful once someone is already interested but needs help understanding one key part of your offering.

Strong ABM content is rooted in signals. The more you know about what your target accounts are doing across channels, the easier it is to create content that feels timely, useful, and worth engaging with.

Track real engagement, not just campaign performance

Most B2B marketers rely on easy-to-measure metrics like open rates, clicks, and replies. These numbers can tell you if someone interacted with a campaign, but they don't reveal what really matters. They don’t show if an account is becoming more interested, sharing your content internally, or moving closer to a purchase decision.

To run successful ABM campaigns, you need to go beyond surface-level performance and track engagement signals that reflect genuine buying intent. Here’s what to pay attention to:

• Repeat visits from target domains. When someone returns to your website multiple times in a short period, it usually means they are doing research or revisiting information to share with a colleague. This is often one of the earliest signs that an account is heating up.

• Time spent on high-value pages. Not all page views are equal. Pages like pricing, integration documentation, or technical overviews usually attract visitors who are comparing solutions or planning an implementation. Track how long users from a company spend on these pages to gauge their interest level.

• Activity from multiple people within the same company. B2B decisions are rarely made by one person. If two or three people from the same organization are interacting with your content, that is a strong indicator that the company is aligning around a potential purchase.

• Movement across different touchpoints. Look at how people flow through your funnel. A user who reads a blog post, then visits your LinkedIn page, then signs up for a webinar is signaling deeper curiosity. These are the kinds of journeys that standard reporting often misses, but they are exactly what indicate progress.
  
  

AI-powered tools like ClearCue help you bring all these signals together by tracking activity at the account level. Instead of treating each visitor or click in isolation, you get a clear view of how interest builds across channels and people. This allows you to focus your time and budget on the accounts that matter most.

With a deeper understanding of real engagement, your campaigns become more timely, more relevant, and more likely to convert. You stop guessing and start responding based on what your audience is actually doing.

Coordinate outreach across marketing and sales

Even the best ABM strategy falls apart when marketing and sales are not aligned. If marketing sees a spike in engagement from a target account but that information never reaches the sales team, momentum is lost and the lead goes cold.

For ABM to work, outreach needs to be coordinated. Marketing should not just generate engagement but also share insights that help sales act at the right time with the right message.

Here is how to make that happen:

• Share engagement summaries across teams. Don’t let valuable intent data sit in silos. Provide weekly or biweekly updates that summarize which accounts are showing interest, what content they engaged with, and how engagement has changed over time.

• Highlight high-intent accounts with specific context. It’s not enough to say an account is warm. Sales needs to know who engaged, which content they viewed, how often they returned, and whether multiple team members are involved. This context helps them tailor their outreach.

• Give SDRs content-based talking points. If a Head of Marketing from a target account watched a product explainer and then visited the pricing page, that’s a natural conversation starter. Use content engagement to inform sales messaging and make it more relevant.

• Use tools like ClearCue to track account-level activity. Traditional lead scoring often focuses on individuals. But deals happen at the account level. ClearCue helps you monitor engagement across an entire company, showing heat levels based on multiple signals so both teams can prioritize together.
  
  

When marketing and sales act on the same signals and speak the same language, outreach becomes more strategic. Your ABM campaigns get tighter, follow-ups become more relevant, and deals move through the pipeline with fewer delays.

Read next: Why native analytics can’t show you true buyer intent (and what to do about it)

Use scoring that reflects the full journey

Most traditional lead scoring models are built around surface-level metrics like email opens or webinar signups. These actions are easy to measure but often misleading. Just because someone clicked on a subject line does not mean they are ready to buy.

For account-based marketing to be effective, your scoring model needs to reflect how real buying journeys unfold. That means looking at engagement patterns across people, sessions, and channels.

Here’s what a modern scoring model should include:

• Multiple engagements from the same company across different roles. A single form fill is not as meaningful as three people from the same account visiting your blog, watching your product tour, and checking your pricing page within a week.

• Depth of engagement with your content. Give more weight to repeat visits, time spent on important pages, or multiple returns to a specific case study. These are signs someone is seriously evaluating your solution.

• Cross-channel interactions in a short window. If a buyer reads a blog post, views your LinkedIn profile, and downloads a whitepaper in the same week, that activity is more telling than a scattered timeline.

• Branded search or direct traffic from your target accounts. If people are searching for your company by name or visiting directly without clicking on ads or emails, that usually signals growing interest or internal discussions.
  
  

With tools like ClearCue, you can track and surface these signals at the account level. This makes it easier to build scoring models that reflect actual buying intent, not just marketing engagement. The result is a more focused ABM program that helps your team prioritize high-potential accounts and reach out at the right time with the right message.

Review, learn, and optimize

No ABM strategy is perfect from the start. The key is to treat every campaign as a chance to learn. Look at what moved the right accounts forward and where engagement dropped off.

Ask questions like:

• Which accounts progressed quickly, and what triggered that?

• What content actually influenced behavior?

• Where did interest fade, and why?

• Were there early signals we missed?
  

The goal is steady improvement. Each campaign should help you target smarter, act faster, and convert more.

Final thoughts

Running better ABM campaigns is not about sending more messages or launching bigger ads. It starts with understanding what your target accounts are really doing behind the scenes.

When you can spot early intent signals, identify where buyers are in their journey, and tailor your messaging to match their needs, you get better results.

ClearCue helps you do exactly that. It brings together scattered activity, uncovers real buyer behavior, and shows you what is driving interest. This gives your team the clarity to act faster and with more precision.

Ready to turn hidden signals into pipeline? Try Clearcue now.