The Ultimate Guide for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) on LinkedIn in 2025

With over 1 billion professionals, including 65 million decision-makers, LinkedIn is the ultimate platform for lead generation and business growth. 

But why, then, does connecting with the right leads and closing high-value deals on this platform remain a struggle?

Let’s be honest: traditional marketing often misses the mark when it comes to engaging high-priority accounts.  This cannot be said about Account-Based Marketing (ABM). With its more personalized approach, ABM on LinkedIn ensures you connect:

• with the right people
• at the right time
• with the right message

Find all the rules and steps in this easy guide and become a pro in the LinkedIn ABM game! ↓

What is LinkedIn account based marketing?

LinkedIn account-based marketing is a B2B strategy that prioritizes targeting specific accounts rather than a general audience. Unlike traditional B2B marketing, which aims to attract broader groups of users, ABM focuses on the accounts that are supposed to bring the most value.

Why run ABM campaigns on LinkedIn?

With a massive pool of professionals, LinkedIn has everything you need to engage key decision-makers within target organizations. And now multiply it by the advanced search opportunities offered by Sales Navigator. Its precise targeting possibilities are ordained to free you from wasting time on audiences that don’t align with your business goals.

ABM on LinkedIn: why is it the best strategy in 2025?

ABM is inherently about quality over quantity. This approach allows you to identify and prioritize high-value accounts more effectively by aligning sales and marketing efforts. That’s the key goal of a Smarketing business strategy.

💡 Expert note: What’s Smarketing? A blending of two words, ‘sales’ and ‘marketing,’ Smarketing encompasses the best sales and marketing alignment practices for achieving business growth. It presupposes building a shared system of goals that makes sales and marketing teams work in sync.→ Read more about the best Smarketing strategies in this post.

Marketing teams often aim to generate a high volume of leads. The problem is that not all of them match the sales teams’ criteria for closing deals. This disconnect often leads to businesses interacting with every random connection. 

Imagine tons of effort put into converting leads that will never really convert.

Aсcount-based marketing helps bridge the gap between marketing and sales teams by focusing on the accounts that meet both marketing and sales objectives. No more vain calls with less promising prospects or days of waiting when the right lead comes across your content! With LinkedIn ABM, you can optimize your business processes from the start.

Step-by-step strategy for LinkedIn account based marketing

To make ABM on LinkedIn effective, you need a structured approach. In this section, I will guide you through the essential stages of this process—from onboarding your team to executing targeted outreach. 

How to run a successful LinkedIn ABM campaign:

1. Prepare your team for account-based marketing
2. Define your ICP
3. Get LinkedIn Sales Navigator
4. Prioritize accounts with the ABM tier system
5. Build account lists
6. Find decision-makers
7. Export LinkedIn search data
8. Start the outreach

1. Prepare your team for account-based marketing

A successful strategy for account-based marketing on LinkedIn starts with team onboarding. ABM is a team effort, so it is essential to build effective communication between Marketing and Sales. 

You need to ensure all team members are on the same page, so:

• Start by sharing a mutual vision of ABM on LinkedIn. Hold meetings to outline the strategy, goals, and responsibilities so everyone understands their role in this process.
• Share success stories that showcase the potential of the account-based marketing strategy on LinkedIn. Inspire executives by emphasizing their leadership role in driving this strategy.

Train your team on LinkedIn ABM tactics and describe how to effectively use extra tools you will leverage for outreach, such as Sales Navigator or LinkedIn automation tools for lead generation.

⚠️  IMPORTANT: Ensure the tools you use are safe When choosing additional software for your LinkedIn account-based marketing, check if it meets all necessary safety standards and provides complete security. For example, with Snov.io, you can be sure your business data will be protected owing to built-in proxies for each LinkedIn account and cloud-based servers. Moreover, Snov.io’s LinkedIn outreach automation lets you automate your outreach without the risk of account restriction due to the safety limits between actions. These smart delays simulate human behavior and prevent the detection of automated activity.

2. Define your ICP

Before investigating LinkedIn’s vast database of companies and professionals, you should understand your search criteria. Think about the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) you will target.

Understanding your perfect customer helps you prioritize accounts that drive your success and contribute to your growth. Besides, a clear ICP enables a more personalized approach for your ABM on LinkedIn that will bring you more meaningful conversations and higher results.  

Don’t know where to start? No worries, these quick guidelines will help:

• Analyze your current clients: What industries do they belong to? What’s their company size? These insights form the core of your ICP.
• Consider static signals: Look at fixed factors like industry, company size, and location to build a solid framework for your Ideal Customer Profile.

• Examine dynamic signals such as new product launches or fundraising activities. They reveal companies ready for active engagement.

→  Want to dive deeper into how to define your ICP? Find all answers in this post.

3. Get LinkedIn Sales Navigator

This premium LinkedIn feature offers a more precise search than a free LinkedIn plan. Therefore, I highly recommend that you use it to ensure the success of your ABM strategy.

Here is why LinkedIn Sales Navigator is more effective targeting of high-priority accounts:

• It allows you to customize your settings to match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
• With its advanced search filters, it’s easy to find prospects based on specific criteria — company headcount, annual revenue, seniority level, location, industry, job title, etc.
• You can save high-quality accounts in your Sales Navigator list, further monitoring updates, and tailoring your outreach accordingly.
• Sales Navigator provides valuable insights that help you adjust your outreach to each prospect’s unique context. You can access companies’ key details like headcount trends, growth patterns, and hiring sources.

4. Prioritize accounts with the ABM tiers system

ABM experts suggest organizing accounts into three groups, or tiers, based on their level of priority to your business. Each tier plays a distinct role in your strategy and should be targeted effectively. Together, they create a balanced, scalable system that drives long-term success.

Tier 1: Core accounts

In this tier, you should include the whale accounts that can contribute most to your business growth. Usually, these are large companies or major brands critical for your success. Reaching out to them will require a highly personalized approach — that’s where your top salesforce should take charge.

Tier 2: Essential accounts

These big fish prospects are not as crucial but still significant. Not demanding as much attention as Tier I accounts, they’re still vital to your company’s growth. Such accounts will provide steady progress and revenue to your business.

You can entrust this work to a well-coordinated team of sales representatives who will use semi-automated strategies to engage these clients. The key goal is to ensure effective and smooth communication.

Tier 3: Additional opportunities

These small fish accounts have the least priority; however, they still bring extra revenue, enriching your business. They may not require a resource-intensive strategy from your team, but ensure you capture value from these easier wins through a scalable, automated outreach.

💡 Expert tip With the Snov.io LinkedIn Automation Tool, you can ensure consistent engagement with valuable accounts. You can program all automated LinkedIn touches, from profile views and post likes to connection requests, messages, and InMails. They told you that bulk automation can’t be personalized? That’s a myth. Snov.io provides an extensive toolset of personalization features (custom variables, dynamic content, and Spintax) that lets you maintain a personal touch.  On top of that, you can always monitor how your automated campaigns perform. Snov.io analytic dashboards provide valuable insights to enhance your LinkedIn account-based marketing.

Now let’s see how you can use Sales Navigator for building account lists, finding top leads, and collecting their data for outreach. 

5. Build account lists

Once you’ve established your tiers, you can create account lists that will help organize your efforts around the most valuable opportunities. 

Do it step by step:

Step 1. Create lists of all account tiers in Sales Navigator

You can easily do it in the Accounts tab:

Step 2. Make an account search

Use the Sales Navigator’s advanced search to identify accounts that match your ICP. Carefully apply filters to narrow your search by key attributes and set the foundation for building well-targeted account lists. Define parameters like industry, geography, company size, etc.

💡 Expert tip Optimize ABM targeting with Saved Searches Benefit from Sales Navigator even more using Saved Searches. This feature helps you boost your targeting by alerting you to new accounts or leads matching your criteria. Set up advanced filters, save this search, and let LinkedIn notify you about fresh opportunities. Regularly refine these searches to stay aligned with your priorities. Saved Searches ensure you never miss a valuable lead while saving you time and helping eliminate constant manual searching.

Step 2. Build a Tier 1 accounts list

Save the most valuable accounts — opportunities you can’t afford to miss — to a separate list for Tier I accounts:

Step 3. Repeat for Tiers 2 and 3

Make the same steps to create Tier 2 and Tier 3 account lists. Remember that the Tier 2 list should focus on key accounts that require a coordinated but scalable approach. Tier 3 accounts can include broader opportunities that demand less outreach effort.

6. Find decision-makers

Now that you’ve built your precise account lists, the next step is identifying the decision-makers within those companies. At this stage, you need the Lead Search in Sales Navigator. It helps you filter by job title, seniority level, function, and even years in their current role.

For example, if your target is a large corporation, you might filter for C-level executives or department heads. For mid-sized companies, focus on directors or managers responsible for specific functions related to your product or service.

For even a more precise lookup, you can leverage Boolean search. It lets you combine keywords and phrases (AND, OR, NOT) and cover variations of relevant job titles within your target accounts.

💡 Expert tip Never stop searching for decision-makers To keep your ABM on LinkedIn dynamic and efficient, make the process of finding new decision-makers continuous. Regularly add them to your account lists to ensure a constant flow of fresh prospects and new business opportunities.  You should also update your lists as your goals change. The proactive approach to account-based marketing on LinkedIn helps maintain momentum in your sales pipeline.

7. Export LinkedIn search data

You can communicate with Tier I leads via LinkedIn InMail, but that’s not the case with Tier II and Tier III contacts. Outreach with these accounts should be more scalable. That’s why you need to be ready to export their LinkedIn data for further outreach via email or automation solutions.

While LinkedIn lacks a direct export option, there are tools that can be connected to LinkedIn Sales Navigator and smoothly extract key details and contact data. 

For example, with a Snov.io free LI Prospect Finder extension, you can do that in seconds. All you need is to download this extension and enable it on the page where you’ve saved your leads:

You can also use the LI Prospect Finder to find and extract prospects from profiles, company, and search pages on your free LinkedIn account.

You can further segment your leads by tiers, roles, or other criteria for more personalized outreach. 

8. Start your outreach

Now that you’ve done your homework, it’s time to reach out. I recommend the following scheme for your outreach:

Start by reaching out to individuals lower in the organizational hierarchy to gather valuable insights. These interactions will help you better understand their company structure and pinpoint the decision-makers, who are critical for introducing your product or service.

Use the gathered information to build your account map and identify top executives. Now, the real game begins. Reach out to the key executives and arrange meetings or calls to discuss potential opportunities aligned with your business goals.

💡 Expert tip Enhance your ABM strategy with multichannel outreach Streamline communication with Tier II and Tier III leads through multiple channels. With Snov.io, for example, you can create automated campaigns with both emails and LinkedIn touches to convert your prospects faster.

Alternatives to LinkedIn ABM strategy

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is, without a doubt, one of the best solutions for account-based marketing. Yet, start-ups and small businesses are not always ready to invest in this premium LinkedIn account. And it’s clear why — the Sales Navigator costs money.

The free LinkedIn account, however, doesn’t offer so many search and lead management opportunities. 

The good news is that there exist more affordable alternatives to Sales Navigator for start-up account-based marketers. One of them is Snov.io. With its Database search feature, you can find both companies and leads based on your ICP.

Just like with Sales Navigator, with Snov.io, you can create account lists, find decision-makers, and segment them for further targeted outreach. 

Moreover, Snov.io helps you manage prospecting and multichannel outreach all under one roof. You can automate LinkedIn and email campaigns, view analytics, and store all needed information safely in its absolutely free sales CRM.

You can do it!

It’s not always easy to build strong relationships with top accounts and decision-makers from the start. But now you can. 

With clear steps and screenshots, this guide will help you elevate your account-based marketing strategy on LinkedIn. Feel free to get back to it wherever you need. Use Snov.io tools to boost your account-based marketing campaigns and automate the outreach with high-value prospects.

Want to enhance your LinkedIn prospecting and get even more deals closed? Learn how to leverage automation with the Snov.io Udemy course.