To build a successful account-based marketing (ABM) program, focus on strategically targeting specific, high-value accounts that align with your ideal buyer profile.

But identifying these high-converting accounts is a huge task.

Chances are, your sales team dedicates a significant amount of time to it every month or quarter (depending on how often you select accounts to target as part of your ABM program).

Even so, there’s no guarantee you’re going after the right accounts — and the risk of human error is high. Not to mention your time is better spent engaging with warm leads who are likely to convert instead. 

Thankfully, with UserGems, not only will you find ICP-matching accounts to target, but it will also automate the entire account selection process — freeing up precious time for your team to concentrate on account engagement.

We’ll explain everything in this guide.

What is an account targeting strategy?

An account targeting strategy is a focused B2B sales and marketing strategy where a business identifies, prioritizes, and engages specific high-value customer accounts that are most likely to generate significant revenue or have strategic importance.

Instead of casting a wide net, this strategy concentrates resources and efforts on a select group of companies. The goal is to tailor marketing messages and sales interactions to the specific needs and characteristics of these chosen accounts, aiming for more effective engagement, stronger relationships, and a higher likelihood of conversion.

This often involves close collaboration between sales and marketing teams to create personalized experiences for each target account.

What is target account selling?

Target account selling (TAS) is a strategic B2B sales approach that focuses on identifying, prioritizing, and engaging a select group of high-value customer accounts that have the greatest potential for generating significant revenue and aligning closely with a company's ideal customer profile (ICP).  

Key characteristics include:

• Focused effort: Instead of casting a wide net to reach as many potential leads as possible, TAS directs sales resources and efforts toward a limited number of specific, high-potential accounts. The emphasis is on quality over quantity.  
• High-value accounts: The accounts targeted are those deemed most valuable to the business, often due to their large revenue potential, strategic importance, or likelihood of a long-term partnership.  
• Personalized engagement: A core component of TAS is tailoring sales and marketing efforts to the unique needs, challenges, pain points, and decision-making processes of each individual target account. This often involves in-depth research into the account's structure, key stakeholders, and business objectives.  
• Cross-functional collaboration: Successful TAS typically requires close alignment and collaboration between sales, marketing, and sometimes customer success teams to streamline efforts and ensure a unified and personalized experience for the target account throughout the buyer's journey.
• Long-term relationships: The goal extends beyond a single transaction. TAS aims to build strong, lasting relationships with key decision-makers within the target accounts, fostering loyalty and repeat business.  
• Strategic and research-driven: It's a research-intensive methodology that involves understanding the target accounts deeply. This includes identifying key players, their roles, their motivations, and the overall organizational structure.  

Target account selling is all about being highly selective and strategic in who you sell to, and then investing the time and effort to deeply understand and personalize the sales approach for those key accounts to maximize the chances of winning large, valuable deals and fostering long-term business relationships.

Why is an account targeting strategy necessary for successful ABM?

An account targeting strategy is absolutely essential for successful account-based marketing (ABM) because it provides the foundational focus required for the entire ABM approach to work effectively. ABM is a strategy that concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts. Without a robust targeting strategy, ABM efforts would be diluted, inefficient, and unlikely to achieve desired results.  

Here's why an account targeting strategy is so critical for ABM:

• Resource optimization: ABM is resource-intensive, requiring personalized content, tailored outreach, and significant sales and marketing alignment. An account targeting strategy ensures that these valuable resources are concentrated on the accounts that offer the highest potential return on investment (ROI). It prevents wasting time, budget, and effort on prospects that are not a good fit or have low revenue potential.  
• Effective personalization at scale: The core of ABM is to treat each target account as a "market of one." This requires deep understanding and personalization. An account targeting strategy identifies these specific accounts, allowing teams to research their unique needs, pain points, organizational structure, and key decision-makers. This insight is crucial for crafting highly relevant and resonant messaging and marketing campaigns.  
• Sales and marketing alignment: A well-defined target account list, born from a clear strategy, serves as a common ground and a single source of truth for both sales and marketing teams. This alignment is paramount in ABM, ensuring both departments are working cohesively towards the same goals, targeting the same companies with coordinated efforts.  
• Clear focus and prioritization: An account targeting strategy helps to narrow down the vast universe of potential customers to a manageable list of high-priority accounts. This focus allows teams to dedicate the necessary attention and effort to each account, rather than spreading themselves too thin.  
• Improved lead quality and conversion rates: By concentrating on ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and accounts that are most likely to buy, ABM inherently focuses on quality over quantity, moving beyond traditional broad lead generation tactics. An effective targeting strategy ensures that the "right" accounts are pursued, leading to higher quality engagement, stronger relationships, and ultimately, better conversion rates and larger deal sizes.  
• Measurable results: When you have a defined list of target accounts, it becomes much easier to measure the success and ROI of your ABM initiatives. You can track key metrics like account engagement, pipeline velocity within target accounts, and revenue generated from these specific accounts.  ‍
• Strategic foundation for all ABM activities: Every subsequent step in an ABM program—from content creation and campaign development to sales outreach and relationship building—is built upon the initial selection of target accounts. If the targeting is off, the entire ABM strategy will be flawed.

How to implement an account targeting strategy? 8 key steps

Implementing an account targeting strategy is a methodical process that aligns your sales and marketing efforts on high-value accounts.

Here are the key steps and best practices:

1. Define (and refine) your ICP

As you try to figure out who to target for your account-based marketing strategy, it’s important you have a solid understanding of who your ICP is before you get started.

To get started, look at your most successful and satisfied customers. Identify common characteristics such as industry, company size, revenue, geographical location, technology stack used, pain points they faced, and the solutions your product/service provided.

Then, gather quantitative and qualitative data. Use firmographic data (industry, size, revenue), demographic and technographic data, as well as behavioral data. Also, gather qualitative insights through customer interviews and sales team feedback.

This data-driven approach helps you properly define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas. This document should clearly outline the attributes of a company that is a perfect fit for your offerings. It serves as the foundation for identifying potential target accounts.

2. Identify potential target accounts

Use your defined ICP to scan your existing database, market intelligence tools, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and other B2B databases to find companies that match your criteria.

Then, look for companies exhibiting buying intent. This could include those researching solutions like yours, visiting your website (especially key pages like pricing), engaging with your content, hiring for relevant roles, or experiencing significant company events (e.g., funding, mergers, new leadership).

Lastly, gather input from sales and leadership. Your sales team often has valuable on-the-ground insights into promising accounts. Leadership may also have strategic accounts they wish to target.

3. Research and qualify target accounts

Once you have a list of potential accounts, conduct thorough research on each one. Understand their business model, financial health, strategic priorities, challenges, key executives, and organizational structure.

Determine who the decision-makers, influencers, champions, and blockers are within each target account. Map out key stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities.

Lastly, evaluate how well each account aligns with your ICP and the potential revenue or strategic value they represent. Consider their budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT or similar frameworks can be adapted here).

4. Tier your target accounts

Not all target accounts are equal. Segment them into tiers (e.g., Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) based on their strategic importance, potential deal size, and how closely they match your ICP.

Tier 1 accounts (highest value) will typically receive the most personalized and resource-intensive engagement, while Tier 2 and Tier 3 might have a more scaled or programmatic approach.

5. Develop account-specific plans and personalized messaging

Tailor your messaging to address the specific pain points, needs, and goals of each target account (or tier).

Then, determine which channels and tactics you will use to reach and engage key stakeholders within each account (e.g., personalized emails, targeted ads, direct mail, social media, events, etc).

For example, one tactic is to develop content (e.g., case studies, white papers, webinars, presentations) that speaks directly to the challenges and interests of your target accounts.

💡 PRO TIP: One of the leading reasons why ABM campaigns fail is the lack of personalization. However, you can’t nail personalization until you refine your target buyer profile. 

Start with understanding your ideal buyer, their pain points, and how they make purchase decisions. From there, create personalized landing pages and social media ads. 

For example, this LinkedIn ad gets a lot of compliments from prospects on sales calls. People who take a demo with us often reference it — saying they either screenshotted the ad or shared it with their team.

Rather than taking a mass personalization route, pick a subset of accounts and test your personalized ads and other relevant content to find out what works for you. 

Once you start getting positive responses, target more people in the segment with the same type of personalized content. 

6. Align sales and marketing teams

Coordination between these teams is key to strategically engaging warm accounts and closing deals. To this end, sales and marketing should: 

• Track the same performance metrics or KPIs 
• Run ads and outreach simultaneously 

Additionally, establish frequent meetings and communication channels for sales and marketing to share valuable insights, coordinate efforts, establish clear workflows, and provide feedback.

💡PRO TIP: At UserGems, sales and marketing put this into practice by:

• Working together to decide which accounts to target and not straying from the agreed-upon list.
• Tracking the same key metric: meetings booked.
• Simultaneously running LinkedIn ads and ADR outreach to target accounts to increase booking rates.

7. Execute your strategy and engage target accounts

Now, the time has come to implement the planned marketing and sales activities.

Make sure you coordinate interactions across different channels to create a cohesive and consistent experience for the target account.

It’s also important to focus on building long-term relationships, not just quick wins.

8. Measure results and optimize accordingly

Monitor ABM metrics such as account engagement (website visits, content downloads, email opens/clicks from target accounts), pipeline velocity for target accounts, deal size, win rates for target accounts, and overall ROI from ABM efforts.

Make sure you review performance regularly. Analyze what's working and what's not. Are you targeting the right accounts? Is your messaging resonating? Are your channels effective?

Lastly, be prepared to adjust your ICP, target account list, messaging, and tactics based on performance data and market feedback.

Account targeting is never a one-time setup. It requires ongoing optimization.

Best practices for implementing an account targeting strategy

• Start small and focused: Especially if you're new to ABM, begin with a smaller, manageable list of target accounts to refine your processes before scaling.
• Prioritize quality over quantity: The success of ABM hinges on focusing on the right accounts, not just a large number of accounts.
• Data is your foundation: Invest in good data sources and ensure your existing data is clean and accurate. Continuously enrich your account and contact data.
• Invest in the right tech stack: Utilize tools for account identification, intent data, CRM, marketing automation, sales intelligence, and analytics to support your ABM efforts.

• Be patient and persistent: ABM is a long-term strategy. Building relationships with large, strategic accounts takes time and consistent marketing and sales effort. Don't get discouraged by a lack of immediate results.
• Focus on providing value: Every interaction should aim to provide value to the target account, whether it's through insightful content, helpful advice, or a solution to their specific challenges.
• Develop an "always-on" mentality for research: Continuously gather intelligence on your target accounts and their industries. Things change, and your approach needs to adapt.
• Celebrate small wins: Recognize and celebrate milestones and successes along the way to keep teams motivated.

5 ways to identify and prioritize high-value accounts with UserGems

Instead of relying on salespeople to identify which accounts to go after, automate the process with UserGems. We help boost your ABM strategies by showing you warm paths into target accounts and prioritizing which ones to target using customizable filters. 

Take a look at the following ways UserGems automates tracking a variety of buyer signals to save you time, keep your pipeline full, and kick pipeline anxiety to the curb. 

Here’s how:

1. Automate champion tracking

In contrast to folks who have never used your product, alumni customers or people who have previously bought, used, or demoed your tool are more likely to convert.

The reason is simple: they’ve seen or experienced the benefits of using your tool in a previous role. 

In fact, targeting or involving old customers in closing new deals generates:

• 114% higher win rates
• 54% bigger deal sizes
• And, 12% shorter sales cycles 

However, manually tracking alumni customers (or Gems as we call them) is time-consuming and prone to human error. Our data shows that when B2B companies rely on manually tracking customer job changes, they miss a whopping 85% of these champion-based sales opportunities.

With UserGems, it’s easy to automate champion tracking by connecting your CRM to our pipeline generation tool, which can significantly streamline this part of your sales strategy.

From there, UserGems gives you a list of warm leads to target every month. 

Every time a past customer, user, or prospect joins a new target account, UserGems automatically adds them as a new contact in your CRM ­— along with their new contact information.

Cobalt took the plunge and started automating champion tracking with UserGems. The result? They created 91 UserGems influenced opportunities, totaling $1.7M in new business pipeline.

2. Review relationship type and persona to prioritize accounts

Successful ABM initiatives focus on not only finding high-value accounts but prioritizing going after the ones that are most likely to convert faster.

This means once you have a warm target account list from UserGems, start reviewing which lead personas and relationship types to prioritize.

By looking at their persona, rank prospects by those that match your ideal customer profile (ICP) the best.

For example, here at UserGems, we target three main personas: marketing, sales, and RevOps. So when an account has a new CMO hire (which aligns with our ICP), we automatically move it higher up in our list of priority accounts. 

Similarly, by reviewing relationship type, you can see the exact way a lead used your tool at their previous company.

For example, if a lead is categorized as a “buyer” because they have decision-making power, you can prioritize them over someone labeled an “end user” who may not have as much say when it comes to allocating the company budget. 

3. Look at the number of new contacts in target accounts

In addition to reviewing target accounts’ persona types to prioritize leads, review how many ideal personas are at the company overall.

If an account has a higher number of ICP-aligned new hires, for example, rank them higher in your target list. 

What’s more, assess the number of newly joined executives at target accounts. Again, the bigger the number, the higher the account should be on your priority list.

Why? Because these executives have the budget to make a buying decision in your favor. 

As prospects take on new roles, they typically look to invest in new tools. Our internal data confirms new executives spend 70% of their budget in the first 100 days. Reaching out to them during this time significantly increases your odds of catching their attention and closing the deal. 

4. Use the number of Gems as intent data

Another way to prioritize accounts to dedicate your ABM resources to is by using UserGems’ custom field (included in our packages) called the UserGems number of UserGems.

Essentially, the UserGems number of UserGems is a buying signal indicating how many Gems are working at a target account.

Use it to create a report that specifies the number of Gems you need at a target account for it to be warmer (therefore, higher priority) than others.

For example, you might want the UserGems number of UserGems to be greater than 3 or 5 (or whatever your preference is) for it to move the lead higher up in your priority list.

Once you set this number, UserGems automatically syncs the report into your CRM tool — giving you a list of high-priority target accounts for your ABM approach. 

5. Target existing customers to expand and cross-sell

Lastly, prioritize paying customers for your account-based marketing programs. 

The play here? Going after teams at your existing customer accounts that aren’t already using your product to expand usage and adoption.

We used this account-based marketing approach at UserGems when we started noticing customer success teams showing interest in using our pipeline generation tool.

Our marketing team ran hyper-personalized LinkedIn ads targeting customer support teams that pointed out how UserGems would benefit them — while letting them know their organization was already using our tool.

Simultaneously, sales reps reached out to other relevant folks at the account with the same personalized messaging.

Using this ABM strategy we not only expanded but also increased retention (reduced churn) as our tool’s usage was no longer siloed into one department at existing customer accounts.

Leverage the same play to drive expansion within customer accounts as well as cross-sell if you own multiple products.

Bonus: Automate building buying committees to target

As B2B buyers become more risk-averse, buying committees are growing.

In turn, the changing purchase behavior is making it harder to sell, making the sales process longer as teams have to regularly track changing roles and new hires at specific accounts.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. Automate this work with UserGems.

It surfaces ICP-matching key decision-makers at target accounts and then adds them to your CRM.

This boosts your sales team’s productivity and reduces your reliance on SDRs to prospect into key accounts each month. 

Account tracking also assists your marketing team with account-based segmentation — helping them create persona-based ad campaigns for your ABM strategy. This is particularly useful for LinkedIn ads as the platform doesn’t offer inclusion and exclusion filters to build your ad audience.

Once you identify prospects to target in your ICP account, you can segment them using “persona,” “seniority,” and “job title” inclusion and exclusion filters in UserGems.

 By doing so, your ads won’t show to broad segments such as “marketing.” Instead, optimize spend by excluding irrelevant departments such as “content marketing” and “product marketing.”

We use Account Tracking for building our LinkedIn ad audience as well. The results have been great — our match rates have increased between 80% and 90%. Meaning that more of our target personas are seeing our personalized ads, improving our conversion rate. 

Watch the full replay of Dig Deeper with UserGems, where Justine breaks down how to use UserGems to improve account-based targeting strategy:

Smarter account targeting with UserGems

For any solid account-based marketing (ABM) plan, figuring out which accounts to actually target is a make-or-break step. You want to focus your energy on high-value companies that are a great fit, but finding them and knowing which ones to prioritize can be a real time-sink.

That’s where UserGems comes in to help your account targeting strategy. Instead of relying only on manual research or broad company data, UserGems gives you a more direct and effective way to identify and prioritize your target accounts.

Here’s how UserGems helps you build a better target account list:

• Finds accounts with a built-in advantage: UserGems automatically spots when your previous customers, users, or key prospects move to new companies. This immediately flags potential target accounts where you already have a warm connection.
• Helps you prioritize intelligently: Once these accounts are on your radar, UserGems provides signals to help you rank them. You can see how many of your "Gems" are at a particular company or if they’ve landed in leadership roles that match your ideal customer profile. This means your team can focus on accounts that are more likely to engage and convert.
• Identifies the right people within those accounts: Beyond just flagging the company, UserGems helps you quickly find the key contacts and decision-makers you need to connect with inside your target accounts.
• Assists with personalized outreach: With Gem AI, UserGems can also help draft relevant messages and even automate parts of the outreach process, making it easier to connect with these key contacts in a timely and personalized way once they're identified.
• Spots expansion opportunities: Account targeting isn't just for new business. UserGems also helps you see when your champions move to new departments or teams within companies that are already your customers, opening doors to sell more or introduce new products.

Essentially, UserGems helps streamline how you choose and rank your target accounts by using real-time data about your most valuable connections. This means your sales and marketing teams can spend less time searching and more time engaging with companies that have a higher chance of becoming great customers.

Want to see how UserGems can make your team’s account targeting more effective? Book a demo with us!

FAQs

What is a target account?

A target account is a specific company or organization that a business has identified as a high-value prospect and a good fit for its products or services. These accounts are selected based on various criteria such as their revenue potential, industry, size, strategic alignment with the business's offerings, and likelihood to convert into a long-term customer.

Sales and marketing efforts are then specifically focused on engaging and nurturing these identified target accounts.

How does account targeting impact the traditional sales funnel?

Account targeting, especially within an ABM framework, often "flips" the traditional sales funnel. Instead of starting with a wide pool of leads and gradually narrowing it down, ABM starts by identifying and targeting specific high-value accounts (the narrow end) and then expands efforts to engage multiple stakeholders within those accounts. The goal is still to guide them through a buying process and close deals, but the initial focus is much more precise.

Can account targeting help with customer retention and upsell opportunities?

While often discussed for acquiring new logos, an account targeting strategy is also highly effective for customer retention and expansion. By continuing to monitor existing key customer accounts for changes, new initiatives, or potential pain points, businesses can proactively engage them with relevant solutions.

This provides an excellent customer experience and opens doors for upsell or cross-sell opportunities, maximizing customer lifetime value. UserGems, for example, helps identify when previous champions move to new departments within an existing customer account, creating warm paths for these conversations.

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