PART THREE
THE FUTURE OF ABM IS A SYSTEM, NOT A CAMPAIGN

PART THREE / INSIGHT ONE

AI. DATA. COMMERCIALS. OH MY.

of marketers say organizational issues are choking ABM performance. (ABM: The best is yet to come, Momentum ITSMA)

of businesses already using AI and intent data in ABM are seeing revenue growth. (ABM Statistics 2025, Martal Group)

Pull back the curtain on successful ABM and you’ll see there’s
not much wizardry involved. Just ABM basics – deep personalization, team cohesion, and intent data
management – executed brilliantly.

But here’s the thing: it’s not always easy to nail the basics. 74% of marketers say organizational issues are choking ABM performance. And with that, the gap between ABM’s promise and its reality only widens. Getting the ABM basics right in 2030 relies on systems powered by signals, smart tools, and commercial

alignment. That’s why 79% of businesses already using AI and intent data in ABM are seeing revenue growth. In the future, ABM won’t be a campaign you run. It’ll be the system that runs your revenue engine.

This chapter shows you how to make the shift from one-off bursts of activity to a compounding system where every signal feeds the next move, every move feeds growth, and every marketer owns revenue. So, let’s get into it.

ABM is the operating system for the commercial marketer. It gives marketing a strategic voice across all aspects of the customer buying cycle and acts a silo-buster in your own business. Combine a new focus on the accounts that really matter with AI and you have the model to scale true personalisation to deliver a 1:1 experience across the buying group in your most important accounts and prospects that is directly linked to revenue creation.

Robert Norum,
ABM & Demand Strategy Expert, B2B Marketing & Propolis

PART THREE / INSIGHT TWO

ABM ISN’T BROKEN, BUT THE WAY MOST TEAMS RUN IT IS

Emma McClellan,
Global ABM Manager, Cognite

The future of ABM is not about running isolated campaigns, it’s about building a program that’s tightly aligned to business objectives and your sales team. Campaigns come and go, but when ABM is structured as a long term growth engine, it creates consistency and impact that short term tactics can’t deliver.

By anchoring programs to clear business outcomes, whether that’s entering new markets, expanding within strategic accounts, or accelerating pipeline, ABM stops being a marketing experiment and becomes a core driver of revenue. That shift is critical for complex industries where sales cycles are long and buyers demand trust. The teams that embrace ABM as a strategy, not a series of campaigns, will be the ones that win the next decade.

Disconnected objectives, one-off campaigns, static playbooks that contribute to siloes – they add up to result in every cog whizzing in a different direction. And when you don’t know who or what’s caused it, success (if it ever comes) isn’t replicable. Each new venture is a leap of faith. And with 47% of marketers reporting rising expectations to deliver revenue over the last five years, we can’t afford to take blind chances.

With a setup like this, how can you possibly deliver predictable, sustainable growth from ABM?

ABM 2030 is about ditching the disjointed tactics and replacing them with a cohesive, connected system. Instead of random bursts of activity, every move you make feeds into the next – creating a positive feedback loop that compounds to grow revenue reliably.

Insights fuel actions. Actions generate outcomes. Outcomes validate insights. And so the wheel keeps on turning, getting stronger with each rotation…

We know why an ABM system beats a campaign-based approach. But how do you build one?

Like all good structures, it starts with some solid bricks.

When strategy, execution, and attribution are built around business objectives, ABM gets a lot clearer. No more questioning direction. No more squabbles about resource prioritization. It’s plain as day what you’re working towards – and anything that’s not getting you further towards that gets cut.

ABM’s new horizon demands an identity shift from marketers. They won’t be campaign managers anymore – they’ll be revenue marketers.

Sounds terrifying? Take a deep breath. We’re not saying you suddenly need to love spreadsheets more than storytelling. We’re saying putting revenue at the center of your work is what buys you the space to actually do your best work. We feel you rolling your eyes, but *please* just hear us out…

Here’s the paradox: the more you lean into commerciality, the more creative freedom you win back – because talking revenue is your ticket to earning trust and authority as a marketer. You’re not the “coloring in” department begging for budget anymore; you’re the team driving results the business cares about most. By showing you can deliver where it counts, you secure support for future creative projects.

And once the pressure to prove your worth lifts? You get to lean back into the stuff that’s been the foundation of good marketing since day one: creative differentiation, audience psychology, real human insight. The reason you got into the game in the first place. The things that make marketing feel alive. Who wouldn’t want that?

ABM isn’t a shortcut to quick revenue – it’s a change agent. Its real power goes beyond demand generation: it’s about shaping how buying groups think and act, aligning them with your brand and reputation, guiding them until they recognize the need for change, and then orchestrating group engagement all the way to the close. This change must affect the organization as a whole, not just marketing.

Koen De Witte,
CEO & Founder,
LeadFabric

PART THREE / INSIGHT THREE

STEPPING INTO A REVENUE MARKETER’S SLIPPERS

KEY BEHAVIORS OF A REVENUE MARKETER

Becoming a revenue marketer means guiding motion across the entire revenue system so Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success move as one to find, tempt, and close target accounts.

But owning commercial results just one brick on the road ahead. In our last chapter, we’ll take stock of everything we need to prepare for ABM 2030 – and how we can start building towards that brighter future today.