So you bought into the Account-Based Marketing hype. You invested. You pivoted. And here you are – still not quite sure if it was worth the time, money and effort.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) was supposed to fix the broken relationship between marketing and sales. It promised precision targeting, personalized outreach and better alignment around high-value accounts. Yet, despite the hype, most ABM programs are still stalling or underperforming.
Well, the good news is you’re not alone. ABM is pretty much in a widespread identity crisis. Unless companies address it head on, they’ll continue wasting money on campaigns that look strategic but ultimately fail to deliver.
We recently polled practitioners on LinkedIn about ABM’s ownership, its overlap with segmentation and whether it’s genuinely evolved. The results revealed three detrimental cracks in the foundation that, left unchecked, will inevitably sink even the most well-intentioned ABM program…
1. ABM needs accountability as well as ownership
67% of respondents said ABM should be shared between marketing and sales. Sounds collaborative, right? But 17% said no one in their organization actually “owns” it, and 0% gave sales ownership outright.
This is the silent killer of ABM. “Shared ownership” often translates to no ownership. Meaning everyone is responsible, but no one is accountable. Campaigns lose momentum, sales don’t follow up on signals, and marketing declares success on metrics that don’t move pipeline.
The risk: Without clear accountability, ABM becomes a reporting exercise instead of a revenue engine.
Ask yourself: Who owns ABM results in your organization? If you can’t name someone, then chances are your ABM is already failing.
2. Without action, ABM is just expensive segmentation
71% of respondents said ABM overlaps with segmentation but is intent-led. That may sound right in theory – after all, ABM should focus on accounts showing buying signals, not just broad demographic categories.
But here’s the trap. Many teams say they’re using intent, but they don’t operationalize it. They buy intent data, build dashboards…and stop there. If sales doesn’t change its behavior, if outreach isn’t prioritized for those accounts? Then ABM becomes nothing more than segmentation with fancier labels.
The risk: You’re paying for data you don’t use and your campaigns are indistinguishable from the old “spray-and-pray” model.
Ask yourself: Can you point to a deal in your pipeline today that started because of an intent signal? If the answer is no, your ABM is running on empty.
3. AI is not a silver bullet
When asked how ABM has evolved, 40% said it’s still foundational, 40% said it’s AI-led, and 20% said it’s just been rebranded.
It’s no secret that AI is transforming ABM. It’s predicting buyer behavior, personalizing content, automating outreach. But make no mistake: it’s no silver bullet. Without strong foundations like clear ownership, aligned teams and well-defined plays, AI will only scale the dysfunction.
Instead of delivering more precision, you’ll just get faster misfires. More noise, less trust.
The risk: ABM turns into the very thing it was designed to fix: generic outreach that alienates key accounts.
Ask yourself: Is AI amplifying your ABM strategy, or is it just masking the gaps?
The hard truth
Businesses aren’t struggling with ABM because the concept itself is flawed. They’re struggling to see results because they’re not addressing its identity crisis. They want collaboration without accountability, intent without execution and AI without foundations.
Without fixing these cracks, ABM doesn’t just underperform. It actively hurts your go-to-market motion, resulting in wasted budget, disengaged sales teams and lost credibility with leadership.
ABM was never meant to be a buzzword. Done right, it’s a much-needed shift that aligns marketing and sales around the accounts that matter most. But that takes discipline – and without it, it collapses under its own weight.
The question is: will you confront the ABM identity crisis head on? Or will you risk watching as your results inevitably flatline?
