Recent market volatility has shifted B2B go-to-market strategies. Companies are increasingly prioritizing enterprise accounts to establish predictable, long-term revenue streams in order to drive stability. 

Indeed, according to Mutiny data, 82% of marketers and sellers agree that closing enterprise accounts is critical, yet only 15% of sellers feel marketers generate those opportunities effectively. 

This disconnect signals a need for a more targeted strategy. Modern account-based marketing (ABM), especially when paired with AI-powered 1:1 personalization, provides the structure today’s go-to-market (GTM) teams need to manage the complexities, depth, and scale of enterprise engagements. But many marketing professionals are still struggling with how to put it into practice.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be one of them. Here, we’ll explore key enterprise ABM best practices and dig into aligning sales and marketing around technology, testing, and timing to hone in on the right accounts and engage the right stakeholders. We’ll also provide a quick baseline definition of enterprise ABM and unpack some of the biggest challenges teams face when calibrating their sales process to target key accounts.

What is enterprise account-based marketing?

Enterprise ABM is a strategic, highly personalized approach to B2B marketing—engineered to handle complexity and long sales cycles. Unlike traditional lead generation tactics, it centers on close collaboration between marketing and sales teams to engage hand-picked, high-value accounts at the enterprise level.

In the context of ABM, many teams treat each account as its own market. That means leveraging hyper-personalized messaging, deep research into company structure and pain points, and high-touch, multi-channel engagement across content, social media, ads, direct outreach, and executive-level initiatives.

These motions take time—often 18 to 24 months—and involve multiple decision-makers across different business units, regions, and hierarchies. But when executed well, enterprise ABM can drive significant, measurable results. That is, stronger customer relationships, higher win rates, and relatively stable, long-term revenue generating potential, just to name a few.

7 essential best practices for measurable enterprise ABM success

Transforming business complexities into advantages requires more than identifying account-based challenges—it takes a deliberate, systematized approach to solving them. The following best practices reflect how leading ABM teams are doing just that.

1. Align sales and marketing teams early

GTM collaboration is the beating heart of any successful enterprise ABM initiative. So, the sooner leaders can get their sales and marketing teams aligned, the better. But pushing alignment to the top of the priority list takes intention—with leaders establishing shared goals, running joint planning sessions, and building clearly delineated cross-functional account teams before any campaign development begins. 

These initial efforts pay off quickly. The process of front-loading team collaboration supports unified account selection criteria for specific accounts, shared KPIs, and clear hand-offs between marketing and sales teams. This approach also better equips GTM teams to develop strategies that leverage both marketing’s content expertise and sales’ customer insights.

And best of all, early sales and marketing team alignment helps prevent information siloing, messaging inconsistencies, and resource redundancies that often threaten to get in the way of effective ABM. 

2. Use AI to automate and scale account insights

High-performing ABM teams increasingly rely on AI to automate manual research tasks—transforming them into systemic, data-driven processes that can handle volumes of data at speeds that humans can’t. In doing so, these automation tools analyze tens of thousands of data points at a time, surfacing actionable insights regarding key stakeholders,

account readiness, and ideal messaging approaches. 

Fortunately, these economies of scale don’t come at the cost of precision. Managed properly, the AI-driven insights the tools produce are exceptionally precise—providing quantifiable metrics around account engagement, intent data, and conversion probability that enable teams to dial in their ROI measurement. These systems also have the potential to generate predictive scores and validate them against actual outcomes. 

Teams that take advantage of this functionality can create feedback loops that improve their targeting accuracy over time—with AI tools continuously providing real-time intelligence by monitoring account activity, organizational changes, and engagement patterns. 

3. Build dedicated landing pages for target accounts

To meet the demands of modern enterprise ABM, dedicated personalized landing pages offer rich, bespoke experiences. Each should serve as an opportunity for teams to strategically leverage all of their key research and insights—displaying account-specific messaging, industry case studies, and personalized content that resonates with each target account’s most pressing opportunities and challenges.

These highly relevant digital experiences are both unique and impactful as they immediately signal to the audience that they’re consuming content that was tailor-made for their org, if not the specific roles and responsibilities of its key decision makers. 

So, these pages act as invaluable conversion hubs, generating high engagement that translates into a wealth of specific data and conversion signals—capturing high-intent behaviors and movement through the sales funnel. And ABM teams get to use all that information to optimize future campaigns and inform their follow-up strategies.

4. Incorporate personalized LinkedIn Ads as part of your ABM motion 

Personalized LinkedIn campaigns typically achieve 2-3.5% greater click-through rates compared to the platform average of 0.65%. That goes to show the potential they can have in any ABM team’s toolbox, particularly to hone in on specific employees within target accounts with hyper-relevant messaging and creative assets.

Utilizing ABM principles, LinkedIn’s professional context—coupled with the targeting precision it gives teams—makes it ideal for reaching decision-makers and leaders in a highly relevant, business-centered context. Indeed, LinkedIn Ads offer a potent mix of personalization and ease of deployment, enabling teams to build brand awareness and reinforce messaging before and after direct sales outreach.

On top of those advantages, LinkedIn analytics also provides detailed engagement metrics on an account level. This kind of detail allows teams to precisely measure their ad performance and pipeline outcome attribution. In addition, LinkedIn’s professional targeting ensures engagement metrics reflect genuine business interest as opposed to low-intent behaviors or browsing, improving the fidelity of the information as a result.

5. Maintain a feedback loop from reps to refine messaging

If cross-team collaboration is the heart of enterprise ABM, feedback is its lifeblood. That’s because feedback loops enable teams to maintain continuous improvement cycles, measured through metrics like message response rates, meeting acceptance rates, and overall sales velocity. And when it’s leveraged as the complementary undercurrent of an ABM campaign, feedback helps teams track how ongoing messaging refinements create more measurable connections between their campaign optimization efforts and business results. 

Sales teams normally serve as the primary source of real-time marketing intelligence for ABM feedback loops. By leveraging their experience and instincts to provide curated, continuous feedback on how prospects react to campaign messaging, GTM teams can rapidly iterate and refine—ensuring their marketing campaigns remain relevant and impactful. 

Ideally, other input sources—like from regular review sessions or structured feedback forms—supplement these sales-led insights. That way, ABM teams can derive both quantitative data (e.g., response rates, meeting acceptance) and qualitative insights (e.g., feedback themes, messaging effectiveness) through the feedback process. 

6. Validate personalization with performance data

Using performance data to validate personalization efforts serves as a critical counterpoint to qualitative feedback loops. Possible actions might include A/B testing different levels of personalization across campaigns, measuring engagement metrics across account tiers, and correlating personalization investments with revenue outcomes. 

Teams that validate performance data in this way know their personalization efforts are actually producing desired results as opposed to simply creating more work for themselves. In addition, by measuring the ongoing impact of the different personalization approaches in play, ABM pros can also identify which tactics are producing the best results for any given account. That way, team leads can optimize their efforts on the fly—allocating more resources and attention to support winning tactics and amplifying their effects. 

7. Start with the highest-priority accounts and scale from there

ABM leaders who focus on high-priority accounts first gain a key strategic advantage. These accounts often have the highest revenue potential and shortest sales cycles—making them the clearest path to early wins, quick lessons, and measurable ROI.

This approach typically starts by implementing a tiered account structure based on each account’s ideal customer profile (ICP), revenue potential, and strategic importance:

• Tier 1 (1-10 accounts)

• Tier 2 (10-50 accounts)

• Tier 3 (50+ accounts)

Resource allocation then follows that hierarchy, with 60–70% of the ABM budget often devoted to Tier 1.

By concentrating efforts on a smaller set of top-tier accounts, orgs can avoid diluting resources and instead create standout, high-impact programs. This focus not only improves win rates and deal size, it also generates the kinds of proof points—like success stories and performance metrics—that justify scaling to lower-tier accounts later.

Over time, this tiered approach allows teams to build repeatable processes, benchmark performance, and secure greater buy-in for broader ABM rollouts.

Remember: Enterprise ABM isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters most, and better. With the right tools, alignment, and focus, teams can turn complexity into competitive advantage.

6 key challenges of enterprise ABM programs

While complications are always borne from complexity, challenges related to enterprise ABM are often uniquely related to the demands of delivering 1:1 personalization at scale. So, the following key challenges dig into the distinct, often overlapping obstacles that can stall or sabotage even the most well-planned ABM efforts.

1. Siloed sales and marketing teams

Cross-departmental collaboration is both the source of account-based marketing’s potency at the enterprise level and one of its biggest challenges. Indeed, successful ABM motions require exceptional levels of coordination between sales and marketing teams—far beyond what traditional B2B marketing efforts typically require. 

A straightforward, sequential hand-off works fine for the latter, where marketing generates leads and passes them along to sales. Enterprise ABM, however, necessitates both teams functioning as a single revenue unit, often across 18-24-month-long sales cycles. Plus, there’s the added complexity of even the most modest enterprise accounts, possibly consisting of multiple business units, diverse business communities, and regional offices, where even a slightly misaligned touchpoint can derail months of collaborative efforts.

2. Marketing struggles to generate enterprise opportunities

Sales opportunities at the enterprise-level often involve identifying and engaging entire buying committees as opposed to individual prospects, which is another key difference compared to traditional marketing. 

For instance, for a Fortune 500 account that represents potentially millions in revenue, no single decision-making will ever suffice to seal any deal on their own. Enterprise ABM teams must, therefore, orchestrate complex, multi-threaded, multi-hierarchical campaigns that are designed to account for dozens of diverse personas at the same time. 

3. Manual, time-intensive account insights and personalization

Due to all the layers and players inherent in each enterprise opportunity, ABM success at scale relies on significant volumes of highly relevant, account-specific intelligence. This stands in direct contrast to simpler forms of B2B marketing, where a campaign can subsist on basic organizational knowledge—annual revenue, industry type, and company size, for example. By contrast, campaigns for enterprise account-based management require research that’s both expansive and exhaustive. 

To prepare, GTM teams will aggregate and analyze extensive amounts of data, spanning everything from personalization triggers and communication preferences to internal power dynamics and the historic interplay between key decision-makers. Doing so can involve team members analyzing thousands of data points per account, a necessary yet increasingly prohibitive need to accomplish manually. 

4. Perception of personalization as shallow or gimmicky

Considering the size and complexity of enterprises, it’s only logical that their leaders and executives have high standards and years of experience under their belts. The safe assumption—if there’s ever one to make as a marketing or sales pro—is that they’ll have seen a great deal of branding, marketing tactics, and strategies during their careers. And they’re more likely than not to have strong opinions about them. 

So, the lengthy duration of ABM motions acts as an extended audition process, with stakeholders controlling the spotlight and consistently judging the efficacy of each tactic and execution placed before them. That makes it essential for teams to remain thoughtful and vigilant throughout each phase of the ABM process, adjusting and adapting their efforts, often in the moment, to ensure the campaign maintains its mission-critical effectiveness. 

5. Website performance and dependency issues from dynamic personalization

Delivering on the promise of modern personalization at the enterprise level is technically complex. Generic landing pages with tailored headlines and customized body copy no longer suffice. Enterprise ABM motions demand dynamic, real-time content to function across an array of websites, business unit pages, and role-based experiences. 

What’s more, the technical demands required to power enterprise personalization bring increased risks of breakdowns, glitches, and bottlenecks. These issues can be catastrophic, as poor digital experiences and performance issues can easily disqualify vendors from consideration. 

6. Tool sprawl between data, content, and campaign execution

Finally, just as enterprise ABM necessitates sales and marketing working together, so too does it require seamless integration across multiple complex systems. That may include customer relationship and content management software, marketing automation services, account intelligence platforms, and sales enablement tools. 

The fact that each enterprise organization relies on a uniquely nuanced tech stack—often spanning multiple business units and a small army of observability solutions and security tools—further complicates the challenge of enterprise ABM campaign execution.

Break through the noise: Discover how Mutiny’s ABM campaigns improve enterprise results 

Despite the current (and understandable) C-suite focus, enterprise ABM isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to market instability. It’s the way forward—a proactive strategy for driving growth, efficiency, and meaningful customer engagement when it matters most. But as we’ve seen, being able to deliver on the promise of effective account-based marketing strategies requires the right knowledge, the right people, and the right tools and technology. Frankly, we get it. 

At Mutiny, we’ve seen what’s possible when enterprise ABM strategy becomes infrastructure—not just another tactic. Our customers report faster time to market, lower acquisition costs, and consistently higher conversion rates for key accounts by centralizing their campaigns and scaling personalization with AI. Despite the madness of the market, Mutiny is making it possible for teams to scale world-class 1:1 enterprise experiences. This is good news. So, don’t waste another minute. 

Learn exactly how Mutiny ABM campaigns are helping marketers (just like you) meet their moment today.