ABM Was Never Meant to Stop at the Account Level

Account-based marketing (ABM) was built on a strong idea: align Sales and Marketing around the accounts that matter, instead of wasting resources on those that aren’t a fit or in-market.

But in practice, the technology behind ABM has been limited by a lack of precision. Marketers could run ads to specific accounts, but those ads still reached broad groups of employees, and you didn’t know who actually saw or clicked which ads. ABM platforms could flag potential interest at an account, but couldn’t say who was actually behind it.

These limitations created a fundamental problem. Marketing can capture intent or produce engagement, but Sales can’t act on them because they’re only at the account level. Without knowing who to call, what to say, or why it matters, traditional ABM platforms fall short.

The most obvious gap in early ABM execution was targeting. If the goal of ABM was focus, then why were ads still being blasted to random employees at an account, with no visibility into who you reached unless someone filled out a form?

This was the first problem Influ2 originally solved. Instead of spraying ads across entire companies and hoping the right people saw them, we created a way to show ads to specific contacts and see exactly who engaged. For the first time, Marketing could point to real names and say, “This person saw the ad and this person clicked.”

That gave Sales and Marketing signals they could act on together. But ads were only one piece of the puzzle.

The other challenge with ABM technology is how it surfaces intent signals. ABM platforms capture intent signals from sources like search engines and third-party websites. But those signals are also at the account level, which means salespeople have to do extra research to find who’s behind them. And even then, they’re making a wild guess. How can you even guess who out of 100,000 employees is looking for your solution?

For intent data to be truly actionable, it needs to be tied to specific individuals. Sales needs to know who to reach out to and what matters to that person right now.

That’s why contact-level intent is the natural evolution for ABM. Instead of vague hunches from ABM tools that stop at the account, GTM teams need clear, actionable signals attached to named buyers.

This vision led us to create Audienscope, our new contact-level intent engine.

Audienscope surfaces intent signals from your specified buyers, showing:

• Who’s searching for topics relevant to your company
• Who’s reading about relevant topics on third-party sites
• Who’s posting about relevant topics on social media

With that visibility, you know who to prioritize, what matters to each buyer right now, and how to engage them with messages that’ll resonate.

B2B buying has become increasingly complex. People are surrounded by more noise, more options, and the window to catch their attention is smaller.

The tools we use to understand and reach buyers in a meaningful way must evolve to reflect this reality and become more precise and targeted. ABM was always meant to work this way, but contact-level intent finally makes it possible.

See how we’re bringing contact-level ABM to life here: Learn what’s new.