Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is only effective if you choose the right accounts. Creating a target account list (TAL) can help sales and marketing determine the best fit, especially when it comes to the highest value and strongest buying potential. A TAL is more than just a data exercise because it requires commercial judgment, sales input, and clear prioritisation.
What is a Target Account List?
A TAL is a list of companies for a business to actively target through ABM strategies. It includes a small, curated selection of high-value companies rather than a high volume list based on general demographics. Creating this list involves looking at highly specific information, such as ideal customer profile (ICP), account tiers, sales plays, and campaign planning to ensure you’re only focusing on the accounts that have the highest revenue potential.
Why the Target Account List Matters in ABM
TALs are the key to keeping your sales and marketing teams focusing on the same specific accounts. Having a curated, high-value list can improve campaign relevance and pipeline quality while helping your teams effectively prioritise time, budget, and sales effort. Overall, a TAL reduces the amount of time, money, and effort spent on poor-fit accounts.
Step 1: Define the Commercial Goal
First, determine what the goal for your ABM strategy is. Do you want to focus on new business, business expansion, market entry, or enterprise growth? Knowing what you’re aiming for will help you build a TAL that aligns with your targets and priorities.
For example, if you’re looking to enter a new market, you’ll want to focus on large companies with massive annual revenue. If you want to expand existing relationships, you’ll want to focus on companies that grew in size or companies that aren’t fully utilising their current software capabilities.
Step 2: Build or Refine the ICP
Having a strong ideal customer profile (ICP) is the best way to find highly specific target accounts. Make sure you define firmographic, technographic, behavioural, and commercial traits for your ICP and adjust those aspects as your goals change.
To elevate your account selection, analyse your current customers, won deals, and high-value opportunities to locate patterns. Make sure your ICP defines accounts that are genuinely a good fit rather than only being recognisable and aspirational.
Step 3: Identify Account Selection Criteria
Once you define your ICP, determine how you’re going to prioritise accounts. Consider all aspects, including industry, company size, revenue, region, tech stack, growth stage, funding, hiring signals, and strategic fit.
Consider what each account’s buying triggers are, whether that’s expansion, leadership change, transformation projects, or new market activity. If the account isn’t seeking a business solution like what you offer, it might not be the right fit.
Step 4: Gather Account Data
Collect data about each account from CRM, sales input, customer records, intent tools, enrichment platforms, LinkedIn, website activity, and market research to learn as much about each target as possible. As you research, ensure you have quality data with no duplicates or outdated information.
Don’t make the process overcomplicated. Focus on compiling data in a way that’s practical and easy for all teams to understand.
Step 5: Score and Prioritise Accounts
Once you’ve narrowed down your accounts to only good fits, decide which are the most important for your brand. Order the accounts while considering fit, value, intent, engagement, and likelihood to convert. Rather than weighing every factor equally, determine which areas you value the most.
As you’re comparing accounts, think about who they are and what they do to help score them on how well they align with your ICP and goals. Your rankings shouldn’t replace sales judgment, but instead, they should support ABM decisions.
Step 6: Tier the Target Account List
Next, create three tiers for your TAL: one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many. One-to-one is the most customised tier, allowing you to make extremely personalised messaging for a few key accounts. One-to-few targets a small cluster of similar groups with personalised messaging that applies to all of them. One-to-many reaches a large group that delivers relevant messaging at a larger scale.
Put the accounts into tiers based on how important they are and how personalised their messaging should be. One-to-one is only for the accounts with the most revenue potential while one-to-many accounts don’t require personalised campaigns to convert.
Step 7: Validate the List with Sales
Make sure all sales leaders in your company review the TAL to confirm areas like account fit, active opportunities, known relationships, and timing. Remove any accounts that aren’t realistic, even if they look perfect on paper. Then, once everyone agrees on the accounts to target in each tier, make sure sales and marketing are on the same page for the next steps.
Step 8: Map Buying Committees
To reach target accounts, you need to know who specifically you’re connecting with. Identify everyone in the company that plays a role in decisions, including those who influence decisions, use the products, assess a product’s viability, and block purchases.
Create campaigns that appeal to all these decision-makers, focusing on their pain points and buying priorities. Adjust your messaging, content, and outreach plays to appeal to the entire buying committee.
Step 9: Turn the TAL into Action
Once it’s time to build strategies to reach your TAL, make sure you create unique approaches based on the tier, segment, or priority group. Every step of the marketing strategy, including campaigns, sales outreach, content, ads, events, and executive engagement, should have aligned messaging and goals.
Go beyond trying to reach accounts by determining what the next steps are once they engage. For example, many brands stick with a few repeatable steps, such as sending out a personalised email when an account interacts with your ad.
Step 10: Review and Update the TAL
Your TAL isn’t set in stone forever. It should be a live asset that changes and grows as your company sets new goals and adjusts the ICP. Look at your engagement, meetings, opportunities, pipeline, and revenue to determine if your current performance is effectively reaching your target accounts. Don’t be afraid to add, remove, or re-tier accounts after analysing your market signals and sales feedback.
Common Mistakes When Building a TAL
Following the steps above can help you build a strong TAL, but mistakes can still happen. Be aware of these common concerns so you can avoid them:
- Selecting too many accounts to target
- Prioritising brand-name accounts over best-fit accounts
- Not using marketing data and sales opinions together
- Ignoring buying triggers and timing
- Not connecting your list to campaigns and sales action
How xGrowth Approaches Target Account Lists
xGrowth helps brands build target account lists one step at a time to ensure no part of the process is forgotten. We start by helping you define your commercial goal and ICP. Then, we look at a combination of data, market insight, and sales input to help you prioritise accounts based on fit, value, and likelihood to engage.
Once you have a strong TAL, xGrowth can help you connect it to an ABM strategy that includes tailored messaging, sales plays, and pipeline measurement. With a strong, practical TAL, your sales and marketing teams can reach high-value accounts effectively.