Every marketer knows the promise of ABM: highly targeted, personalized campaigns that speak directly to your ideal customers. But here's the thing: turning that promise into reality isn't just about having the right tools – it's about knowing how to build campaigns that scale while still feeling personal.

Whether you're looking to expand within your top accounts, break into new verticals, or drive event attendance, the secret lies in building campaigns that balance personalization with scalability. In this playmaker, we'll walk you through exactly how to create your first ABM campaign, from initial planning to final implementation.

The first step is deciding what outcome of the campaign will best serve your goals. There are three that Mutiny was specifically designed to help you with:

• Break Into Target Accounts: You want to turn a target account into an active deal.

• Accelerate Open Pipeline: You want to help your sales team close active deals faster. 

• Expand & Retain Existing Customers: You want to increase renewal rates and cross-sell or up-sell customers to higher value contracts. 

Pro Tip: Start with one campaign outcome that aligns with your quarterly objectives.

Now it's time to get specific about what exactly you're trying to achieve.

Define Your Goal

Set a specific, measurable (and achievable!) goal, like:

• "Create $2M in expansion pipeline from top 10 accounts by end of Q2."

• "Drive 1,000 enterprise event attendees from Tier 1 accounts."

Define Your Target Audience

Now we're going to refine the large list of target accounts we gathered in Chapter 1 of ABM Playmaker. Need a refresher? Check it out here. 

Based on the goal you defined previously, your new target audience will usually be self-explanatory. If you're looking to break into new target accounts, then you'll filter your target account list to only be accounts with no active pipeline deals and who are not customers. If you're accelerating deals, then filter out customers and accounts without active deals.

But these segments of your target audience will still be quite large. We recommend piloting with 1-2 BDRs for your initial roll out. This might mean scoping down your goal or subsegmenting your list to their accounts as you get started. Aim for around 100-200 accounts for your first campaign. Once you get the basic mechanics down, you can scale out your campaign to more accounts and contacts. 

This is where we start to put together the shape of the campaign. But it can be easy to over-think the segmentation at this point. Make the segmentation too specific, and you'll spend a lot of time and effort on the campaign and will risk not reaching enough prospects. But if you don't personalize enough, the campaign won't be specific enough and the prospect will bounce. 

There's a sweet spot where there's just enough relevance, but the relative effort to execute the campaign is low.

Here are some further segmentation you could use that are low effort, but high relevance:

• Industry: Starting with a specific industry campaign is a great way to repurpose your existing content in a more focused way.

• Company size: Prospects at smaller companies likely feel different pain points than those at Enterprise companies and warrant different messaging in bespoke campaigns.

• Persona: If you've got the right target contacts in your CRM, then a focused campaign for a particular persona can help you break into hard to crack accounts by speaking directly to an individual's pain points. 

• Geographic area: Are you hosting an event or attending a conference in a city soon? Use that as a filter and invite people nearby. 

• Tech stack: is there a particular tool that your target audience uses that you could build a campaign around?

These are just a few to get you started, but if you have your own ideas then feel free to jump right in. Just remember that a sweet spot is about 200 accounts, so aim for that on this first campaign. Here’s how you can create lists within Mutiny to get your campaign up and running.

Develop Your Messaging

Every campaign needs tight messaging. Craft your campaign messaging with these components:

• Core value proposition: what is the most important value prop your product offers to this particular audience segment? If you need help, ask your product marketing colleague, or listen in on sales calls from lookalike accounts.

• Audience-specific pain points: what does this particular segment of your audience care about? Connect the dots between the pain they’re feeling, and how your product helps relieve that pain.

• Personalized proof points: what customer proof points or success stories do you have that match the persona of your audience? Curate the most relevant case studies and sprinkle details into your messaging. 

Alright, here's where the rubber meets the road. Turn your strategy into real personalized microsite experiences. Everyone's website looks slightly different, but most B2B sites will have the following elements that you can start personalizing:

• Hero / top of fold section

• Logo bar

• Value propositions

• "How it works" section

• Quotes, case studies, and social proof

• Recommended resources and content

• Call to actions

Get more inspiration by checking out the 7 Microsite personalizations proven to close ABM deals. 

To give you an example here's what we personalize on Mutiny's microsites:

For a full step-by-step walkthrough of how to create a microsite experience, check out the help guide or watch this short video:

Exclaimer transformed their personalization capabilities from manual, one-off efforts to a scalable, systematic approach using microsites. 

Key Results Include:

• 100% of all ABM accounts being touched by marketing AND sales

• +250% increase in Consideration Stage Accounts

• +67% increase in Decision Stage Accounts

• Improved sales engagement and efficiency

Sonny Dillinger, US Sales Director at Exclaimer, says: "The team's revamped focus & ability to scale out our ABM efforts have had a direct correlation to our pipeline generation efforts. Our ABM program has allowed the team to experience some quick wins within our target verticals, while also seeing months & months of outbound efforts finally pay off as we have been breaking into more enterprise-grade accounts on a more consistent basis. In short, this has been an incredibly powerful initiative for the business."

How's that for sales and marketing alignment?!