6 Ways Poor ABM Targeting Is Quietly Ruining Your Results
It starts small: You notice water drip-drip-dripping out of a pin-sized hole and think, “I’ll deal with it later.”
When “later” comes around, you’re facing a flooded basement and more than a few regrets.
It’s what poor ABM targeting can do to your results.
When hidden tool gaps strain your strategy, minor holes quietly compound into major problems.
It’s a gradual process. You may not even notice it happening.
We partnered with Forrester to understand how poor ABM targeting quietly impacts outcomes. To keep your strategy from springing a leak, watch for these six warning signs.
You’re losing brand credibility
Ever seen an ad so wildly irrelevant it left you questioning a company’s entire strategy?
Then you know exactly why account-based targeting is risky.
If you’re an HR leader and an ad for a marketing ops tool lands in your feed, your reaction isn’t: “Huh, this sounds interesting. I should look into it!”
Likely as not, you’re wondering, “Why am I getting this?”
Wasted ad spend aside, poor targeting damages brand perception. Over a quarter (28%) of marketers report this consequence. As Danielle Edberg, head of marketing at CrossnoKaye, explains:
When buyers get content that isn’t meant for them, they don’t just ignore it. They remember it. You’ve signaled that you don’t understand their role or their business. Once that impression is formed, it’s hard to recover.
Bad first impressions matter more than you think.
Companies with strong brands command a 46% larger market share than weaker brands, meaning how you’re perceived directly correlates with how you perform.
The scariest part?
You won’t know the damage has happened until it’s too late, a risk Richard O’Connor, CEO at B2B Marketing, describes:
If your outreach shows you don’t understand the buyer's role, jobs-to-be-done, or priorities, it signals you’re just part of the noise, not a potential partner.
He continued, "Crucially, this damage is invisible. There is no way to identify or measure it.
Over time, it doesn’t just damage marketing effectiveness; it also impacts sales. When Sales does eventually have a conversation, they’re often forced to overcome inherent scepticism. Salespeople are left scratching their head, when the real issue is that trust was lost long before the call took place."
The takeaway: You only get one first impression. Don’t let poor targeting shape how you show up.
Your pipeline isn’t growing
On paper, the ABM engine is in motion. Marketing is driving engagement on a high-value account, sales is following up, and your CRM is full of new leads.
Look closer.
Tool limitations might be leading you in the wrong direction.
Amanda Heredia, principal ABM strategist and founder at ABX Stack, tells us that your ABM tool just might be undermining your effort and your investments:
The biggest business impact I’ve seen from targeting the wrong people inside accounts is that you create engagement without leverage. You generate ABM engagement inside target accounts with people who weren’t part of the buying committee.
One in three marketers lacks the technology to target key accounts at the contact level.
So, those impressions and clicks…maybe they’re from an influential decision-maker. Maybe they’re an accident.
You just don’t know. And if you don’t know, Sales doesn’t either.
When that happens, Sales chases the wrong people. Fewer qualified leads enter the pipeline, kicking off a devastating domino effect.
Stunted pipeline growth is the most common consequence of poor targeting, affecting 40% of ABM marketers. According to Chris Muldoon, Chief Revenue Officer at Punch!, it has everything to do with focus:
If you’re still running ABM at a broad account level, you’re optimising for noise, not impact. The future of ABM is knowing exactly who you want to speak to and aligning every channel around those individuals.
The takeaway: People make decisions, not accounts. So, why are you chasing logos when you could be targeting decision-makers? See how Influ2 makes it possible.
Your conversion rates are dropping
Clicks and views are valuable signals. At least, they are when they come from the right people.
But when your targeting consists of throwing spaghetti at a persona-shaped wall, every engagement starts to look like intent.
Thirty-seven percent of marketers report lower sales conversion rates as a result of poor targeting.
That doesn’t mean your ads are bad or your strategy is completely broken. It just means you’re not reaching the right people.
Let’s say you’re selling a fishing rod. If you target “outdoors enthusiasts,” you’re just as likely to reach an amateur rock climber as you are a professional fisherman.
It’s simple: When you target the wrong people, conversion rates drop. According to Matt Steffen, senior research advisor at ForgeX, mature ABM programs know to account for this:
Advanced programs consistently operationalize around buying groups—not just accounts—and target audiences as granularly at the contact-level as possible
The takeaway: Better targeting leads to better conversations (and higher conversion rates).
Your deals are slowing
The average deal involves 13 decision-makers on average. Add one late or lose one at a pivotal moment (from a job change or company restructuring), and momentum inevitably slows.
Every change in the buying committee triggers a reset, and Sales is stuck restarting the conversation from day one. The deal takes one step forward and two steps back.
One in four marketers has seen firsthand how these unexpected shifts can erase shared context and undermine months of hard work.
When a new decision-maker enters the fray, Sales is often on their own.
It’s not Marketing’s fault. Most legacy ABM tools leave them limited to persona- or title-based efforts that are unlikely to reach the real mobilizers.
Ivan Falco, head of growth at ColdIQ, outlines why:
Too many teams confuse "persona targeting" with "buying group mapping." Tools give titles. They don’t tell you who mobilizes the deal.
When Marketing supports changes to the buying committee the moment they happen, Sales isn’t left rebuilding deals alone. You can use Influ2 to target the new stakeholder with relevant ads across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Bing, and Amazon.
Sure, a new stakeholder may have shaken up the deal.
But every time that stakeholder scrolls LinkedIn, Marketing is there, ready to help them get up to speed and excited to buy.
The takeaway: Change may be inevitable, but lost velocity doesn’t have to be.
You’re losing revenue
We’ve talked about the consequences of poor targeting.
What we haven’t talked about is how these consequences can leave you standing in knee-deep water, wondering what went wrong.
Over a third (38%) of marketers report losing revenue due to poor ABM targeting. But this rarely appears overnight. It adds up over time, as:
- Lost brand credibility creates skepticism
- Unqualified leads shrink pipeline growth
- Lower conversion rates reduce wins
- Slowed deal velocity causes slips and indecision
Together, these gaps slowly but surely erode the outcomes that matter most. Andy Greaves, global GTM lead at Gravity Global, describes the danger:
Teams think a deal is moving because someone is engaged, meetings are happening, and emails are being opened. Underneath it all, the real decision-makers aren’t on the journey. It looks healthy in the forecast, but it’s fragile. That’s how revenue quietly slips away.
By all conventional measures of success, everything may be going well. Beneath the surface, you may be bleeding revenue.
And you won’t realize until it’s too late.
The takeaway: Lost revenue may feel like a watershed moment, but it's the result of months of unnoticed strain.
Your teams aren’t meeting quota
Sixty-three percent of teams still face misalignment between MQLs and sales priorities.
Why do we mention this?
Because tool limitations push Marketing to focus on engagement alone, which nearly half of teams do. Quarter after quarter, Marketing hits their MQL goals, while Sales is set up to fail.
As Greaves explains:
This is often reinforced by an obsession with vanity metrics. Marketing should be helping sales engage more of the buying group, not celebrating isolated signals.
When volume supersedes quality, attainment suffers and the business alongside it.
Twenty-five percent of marketers have watched it happen: Poor targeting and misaligned priorities lead to attainment and KPI challenges, as Sales:
- Fills the pipeline with low-quality leads
- Wastes hours on prospects that never sign
- And watches as deals slow, stall, and fall apart
It happens easily. According to Aaron Lober, vice president of marketing at CADDi, misaligned priorities—and their revenue consequences—are the result of hesitation and fear of breaking the status quo:
There’s an unresolved tension between broad, programmatic outbound, and intent-driven, targeted outbound. Even if leadership teams claim they’re aligned, the shift from large lead volumes and aggressive hustle metrics to timely interventions and “quality over quantity” can be scary.
The takeaway: Every warning sign points to fundamental targeting gaps in legacy ABM tools and tactics. It’s time to make a change.
Poor ABM targeting undermines everything
There’s a leaky pipe in legacy ABM tools. Ignoring it just might cost you.
Minor gaps in targeting can quietly erode your credibility, pipeline health, deal velocity, and revenue potential.
It’s why 72% of marketers see contact-level marketing becoming a core differentiator in their strategies.
Want to fix the leak before it becomes a flood?
Dominique Jackson is a Content Marketer Manager at Influ2. Over the past 10 years, he has worked with startups and enterprise B2B SaaS companies to boost pipeline and revenue through strategic content initiatives.
