Which ABM Strategy Works Best For ETS Firms

In the previous post, we discussed how traditional B2B marketing often casts a wide net, attracting large audiences in hopes of converting a small percentage into leads. This approach wastes a lot of valuable time and resources, especially in the niche landscape of emerging tech services.

ABM Flips the Funnel

Instead of starting with a crowd and filtering down, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) begins at the bottom of the funnel. You first identify a small number of high-value target accounts and companies that best fit your services. Then, you build your outreach strategy backward from that point, designing highly personalized marketing and sales efforts tailored to each account’s needs and pain points.

Traditional Sales Funnel

1) Create a loosely defined target market.

2) Enter into the awareness of your market through social media, ads, events, outreach, content, etc.

3) Continue to provide value and attempt to develop a relationship with your targets until they raise their hand for an opportunity.

4) Go through the sales process.

5) Close.

6) Post-sale services.

ABM Funnel

1) Identify high-value accounts either from existing followers cultivated by marketing or identify them through ICP.

2) Use your beachhead contacts to establish a relationship with the larger organization. 

3) Help them mature their thoughts on the problem and the proposed solution or services you offer.

4) Once the customer is ready to buy, reinforce your ability to solve their problem with the standard sales motions.

5) Close.

6) Post-sale services.

Types of ABM

ABM can be divided into three subsets: Strategic, Lite, and Programmatic. 

Strategic ABM (One-to-One)

Strategic ABM, a more "traditional" approach to account-based marketing, aims to develop highly customized campaigns with an intense focus on target accounts. This strategy is far more human-intensive. Marketing and sales teams have a deep understanding of the targets and collaborate on creating and providing extremely customized content. This may include case studies, white papers relevant to the customer, and workshops on relevant topics, backing traditional business development initiatives by SDRs. In the process, you build relationships and understand the different people in a target account before an opportunity arises. In fact, you may guide them and help them develop an understanding of how you can solve their problem before an opportunity exists. This gives you a leg up during the sales conversations.

ABM Lite (One-to-Few)

ABM Lite applies the core principles of Strategic ABM on a broader scale. It involves identifying "second-tier" target accounts and grouping them based on similar niches. The content will not be as personal and time-consuming as strategic ABM. ABM Lite uses repurposed semi-personalized content that balances depth with efficiency. It’s ideal when full one-to-one campaigns are too resource-heavy, but you still want relevance for high propensity targets.

Programmatic ABM (One-to-Many)

The emergence of new technologies and digital marketing capabilities has led to the rise of Programmatic ABM. This approach involves identifying a large number of accounts and developing unique, scalable marketing strategies. Programmatic ABM helps you reach hundreds or thousands of accounts using automation, intent data, and segmentation. There is little customization at the account level other than understanding your ideal customer profile. It’s the go-to model for broad-market penetration. Integrating AI tools has introduced a completely new dimension to ABM, a topic that will be explored in the upcoming blog posts.

What Type of ABM Should ETS Firms Go For?

Selling tech services is difficult partly because they are solving difficult problems with hard-to-understand solutions, implementing solutions is complex, and it is difficult to prove your ability to solve the problem. This environment creates a need for customer education on the problem being solved and the path to solving it. The high complexity of tech sales and large deal size make emerging technology services an ideal candidate for the use of Account-based marketing.

Strategic ABM focuses deeply on a few high-value accounts, making it ideal for early-stage or boutique emerging tech services companies. Through tailored engagement and stakeholder-specific outreach, strategic ABM helps build credibility and trust. At the very early stage, this one-to-one relationship is critical to jumpstarting the company. But even as you mature, your top accounts will need strategic ABM, including founder attention.

When your firm has started to scale and you’re targeting clusters of accounts with shared pain points (e.g., fintech startups needing secure infrastructure), ABM Lite helps you create semi-personalized content that balances depth with efficiency. It’s ideal when full one-to-one campaigns are too resource-heavy, but you still want relevance. It is perfect for an emerging tech services firm in its growth phase that wants to expand into a niche or industry vertical. As the relationships start to mature and the potential account size crosses certain thresholds, you would upgrade the account to strategic ABM. You cannot take a strategic ABM approach with everyone because it would increase the cost of sales inordinately high for your business to be sustainable.

Finally, for scaling ETS firms, if you’ve packaged your tech services or built platform-style offerings, Programmatic ABM helps you reach a larger audience using different tools. It’s the go-to model for broad-market penetration, especially in horizontal plays like DevOps tools, AI integrations, or low-code backend services.

Wrapping Up

For emerging tech services (ETS) firms, traditional marketing falls flat since you’re not selling off-the-shelf products, but solving complex problems with tailored solutions. That’s why ABM works,  but only if it's aligned with your firm’s goals.

Start by asking: What do we want from ABM? More leads? Deeper sales conversations?
Your strategy depends on your answer.

ABM requires company-wide alignment and the correct positioning. If sales, marketing, and leadership aren’t on the same page from the start, your efforts will stall. Be realistic about what your team can execute; engaging many accounts with a small team likely won’t work without the right tools or extended timelines. But with a larger team, you gain more flexibility.

Want to learn how to build and execute these ABM models step-by-step for your tech services firm?
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