LinkedIn Account Based Marketing: The Definitive Guide (2025)

If you sell B2B services and you're not doing LinkedIn Account Based Marketing (ABM), you're leaving money on the table.

The good news? Doing Account Based Marketing on LinkedIn is way easier than you think.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to build a real ABM strategy using LinkedIn:

• Why Account Based Marketing (ABM) is the the best strategy for closing big B2B deals

• The 3-tier system to organize your leads and prioritize your outreach

• How to map accounts and track buyer intent like a pro

• How to build an account lists and get verified emails of your leads

What is LinkedIn Account Based Marketing?

LinkedIn Account Based Marketing is a B2B strategy where you target a list of specific companies ("accounts") and tailor your outreach to decision-makers inside those companies.

Here’s how it works, in simple terms:

1. You identify and map the companies you want to work with

2. You run marketing actions to warm them up (content, ads, outreach...)

3. Once the lead is qualified, sales steps in to close the deal

How to Find Decision Makers With ABM

If you want to do ABM properly, you don’t start by searching for people.

You start by selecting the right companies—then you find the right people inside.

But how do you define which companies to target?

Start by identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Here are 6 key criteria:

• Industry

• Company size

• Location

• Job titles or functions

• Growth rate

• Tools used (optional) — Are they using tools your product integrates with?

And you can find "intent data" such as:

• Hiring

• Fundraising

• Change of a C-Level

• Opening a new location

If you’re not sure about your ICP yet, here’s a simple trick:

Look at your existing customers.

• Who do you enjoy working with?

• Who gives you the least friction?

• Which ones are the most profitable?

This will give you a realistic and profitable starting point for your ABM strategy.

How to Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Before you do anything, you need to know who you’re targeting.

And here’s the golden rule of Account-Based Marketing:

Start with companies first. Then identify the people inside those companies.

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, here's how to do that with the power of the account and lead filters.

Step 1: Build your account list with your ideal companies.

The first step to find decision makers with an Account Based Marketing strategy is to identify companies.

On LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can explore the LinkedIn database with many filters like:

• Company headcount

• Company headcount growth

• Industry

• Hiring

• Headquarters location

• Etc

To access the account filters, go on the homepage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, then click on "Account filters":

You will have this page.

On the left part of your screen, you will have all the account filters.

On the right part of your screen, you have the results of your filters.

With all these account filters, you can identify the accounts you want to target (meaning, in your ICP).

After you played with some filters, it's time to save your results in an account list.

Let's say you select 4 companies:

Then, to save these companies into a list, you need to:

1. Click on "Save to list"

2. Create new list

Finally, to create this account list you need to:

1. Name your list name (Tiers 1 for example)

2. Click on "Create and save"

Congrats! The companies you've selected are now in your account list.

💡 Pro tip: You will see that later in this article, but I recommend you to create 3 account lists:

• Tiers 1: High Priority Accounts

• Tiers 2: Mid priority accounts

• Tiers 3: Low priority accounts

Once your account list is created, you can find it in the "Account List" on top on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

You just have to click on the name of your account list, and then you will be on this page:

Here you will find:

• Account details

• Connection paths

• Alerts

• Notes

• Lead recommendations (not very accurate)

At the end, if you follow this tutorial, you're supposed to have 3 account lists on LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

• Tiers 1

• Tiers 2

• Tiers 3

📺 If you want to learn how to build your account list with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can follow this video tutorial:

Step 2: Build your leads list based on decision-makers inside those accounts

The second step to find decision makers with an Account Based Marketing strategy is to identify leads inside the accounts you've selected before.

On LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you have many lead filters like:

• Current job title

• Geography

• Posted on LinkedIn

• Years of experience

• Previous company

• Etc

To access these filters, go to your Sales Navigator homepage and click on “Lead filters.”

Once you're there, you'll see two main sections:

• Left side: All the filters you can use to narrow your search.

• Right side: The results based on the filters you apply.

It’s your lead-hunting control panel, and once you know how to use it right, you can easily find your best leads.

Now, if you want to find the leads inside the companies you've selected before, you need to use the "Account list" filter:

One of the best way to find decision makers in the lead filters, it's to use the "Current job title" filter.

👉 For example, let's say you want to reach out to CEOs in your Tiers 1 account list.

In the Current job title filter, I will use the boolean operators to get better results.

So I will write: "CEO" OR "Founder"

Then, I select my account list "Tiers 1".

At the end, I get all the CEOs (or founder) who are working in the companies in my Tiers 1 account list:

📺 If you want to learn how to build your leads list with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can follow this video tutorial:

Now that you know how to find decision makers on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it's time to export them.

Step 3: Export your LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search into Excel (with verified emails)

You have a list of qualified leads in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

You probably want to get them in your CRM, or have their contact informations to do some outreach.

Unfortunately you can't export leads natively from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

You need a tool to extract your lead list as an Excel file.

With GiveMeLeads, we do 4 things:

• Filter the leads that don't match perfectly your filters

• Clean the data (rocket emojis, capital letters, weird company name)

• Give you the verified emails of the leads

• Let you leverage the strengths of your LinkedIn account (1st degree connections, company followers, profile viewers, etc)

So you don't need to spend hours of manuel (and boring) work.

You get a clean leads file with all the informations you need:

• First name

• Last name

• Company name

• Current job title

• LinkedIn URL

• Verified emails

• And much more

How to Execute ABM Strategies

As you saw earlier in this article, an Account Based Marketing strategy works best when you split your target accounts into 3 tiers.

Let’s break it down.

Tier 1: High Priority Accounts

These are the accounts you really want to close.

We’re talking about big companies, big budgets, and big impact for your business.

Because the potential is so high, you can afford to spend more time on them.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Build a real 1-on-1 relationship with key people

• Research the company and the people

• Personalize every message, every piece of content, every touchpoint

Here's how to do LinkedIn Account Based Marketing for Tiers 1:

Step 1: Maps the company with decisions makers

If you want to map an account with good leads, you need to go on a company page.

Then, when you're in the company page:

1. Click on "Relationship explorer"

2. Filter your leads based on your ICP

3. Save the interesting leads (I recommend decision makers)

Then, we need to map the account with the leads we found.

For that:

1. Click on Relationship map

2. Add the leads you saved

3. Create the map with the hierarchy

It will help to visualise how they are organized in an account.

💡 Pro tip: You can tag each lead by their roles. It can help you for your ABM strategies.

You have 5 tags available:

1. Decision Maker

This is the person who says yes.

They usually own the budget and have the final word.

👉 Example: CEO, CMO, Head of Sales.

2. Champion

This is your internal ally.

They love your solution and will push it internally.

They might not have decision power, but they influence it.

👉 Example: Marketing Manager who sees the value in your tool and wants to bring it to their boss.

3. Evaluator

They are the person doing the research.

They test, compare, and present options to the team.

👉 Example: A Marketing Ops specialist checking tools before a decision.

4. Procurement

This is the person handling contracts, pricing, and legal.

They don’t care about your features — they care about terms and cost.

👉 Example: Procurement Manager or Legal Advisor.

5. Influencer

They have no formal decision power, but people listen to them internally.

Could be a respected expert or someone with seniority.

👉 Example: A senior engineer or longtime employee whose opinion matters.

Step 2: Check the Growth insights

If you want to have more account data, you can check the "Growth insights" page.

For that:

1. Click on "Growth insights"

2. Select the account data you want to see

In this example, it's the employee count. You can see the trend if the company is growing, or not.

There are 3 more important pages:

1. Distribution & headcount.

2. New hires

3. Job openings

Let's start with Distribution & headcount.

In this example, we can see that this company is growing is engineering team.

It's a nice info to have if you sell a product or service to help engineers work better.

(of course, it's just an example)

Two infos I like to check when I do LinkedIn Account Based Marketing are "New hires" and "Job openings"

On this New hires page, you can see the details of when they hire exactly, months by months

💡 Pro tip: You can see when they had a recent senior management hires.

Now, on "Job openings", you can see the details in what departments they are hiring.

Step 3: Go on People also viewed

When you're on an account page, LinkedIn Sales Navigator recommend you other accounts that might be a good fit for you.

If you want to check these recommendations, you have to click on "People also viewed":

💡 Pro tip: It's a fast and easy way to add more accounts in your Account Based Marketing strategy.

Step 4: Use alerts

If you want to check more informations about your account, I recommend you to check the "Alerts" page.

You will see alerts about:

• Growth

• Updates

• New decision makers

• Career changes

• News

💡 Pro tip: you can use these informations in your prospection messages. Because your message is personnalized with an alert, you will have a much higher reply rate.

Tier 2: Mid Priority Accounts

These are good accounts you definitely want to close.

They have strong potential, so it’s worth putting in some effort—but not as much as Tier 1.

That’s where semi-automated campaigns work best.

Use a mix of:

1. Cold email

2. LinkedIn outreach

3. (Optional) Cold call — if your deal size is high

Step 1: Import your leads in your outreach tool

If you use Lemlist you can import the CSV file you get with GiveMeLeads and upload it.

Here is the process:

1. Click on "Create campaign"

2. Click on "Lead list"

3. Click on "Import new leads"

Then, you need to :

1. Click on "CSV Import"

2. Upload your leads list (from GiveMeLeads for example)

3. Click on "Continue"

Then, you have to match the custom variables.

For example:

"First Name" from Lemlist = "firstName" in a GiveMeLeads leads file.

Then click on "Continue":

At the end, you will see that your leads have been well imported.

And that’s exactly how you can pull leads from Sales Navigator using GiveMeLeads and send them to your favorite outreach tool.

💡 Pro tip: Most outreach tools let you import leads from a simple CSV file—so you can use whichever platform you prefer.

Step 2: Create your outreach campaign

Now that you imported your leads, it's time to create your outreach campaign.

In most outreach tools, you can:

• Send email

• Send a LinkedIn invitation

• Send a LinkedIn message

• Create a Call task

Once you created your sequence, it's time to write good messages, that get replies.

Step 3: Personnalize your message with variables

For Tier 2 leads, it’s always worth personalizing your messages.

It might take a bit more time, but you’ll get better reply rates—and more meetings booked.

One of the easiest ways to personalize at scale is to use variables in your outreach.

You already know the basics:

• First Name

• Last Name

• Company Name

But if you want to stand out, go further with:

• Company Industry

• Current Job Title

• Relevant Case Studies or Results

👉 Here’s a quick example:

Hi FIRST NAME,

I work with leading companies in the INDUSTRY space.

We recently helped one of them boost traffic by +32% during a major sports event using influencer marketing.

Would you like to see how we did it?

Step 4: Call your leads

This step is optional—but it can make a big difference.

If you have SDRs (Sales Development Reps) on your team and a high customer lifetime value (LTV), calling your leads is definitely worth it.

Here’s why:

• Calls break through the noise. While everyone’s sending emails and DMs, a quick call can instantly grab attention.

• You get real-time feedback. You’ll quickly know if there’s interest, objections, or a better contact to reach out to.

• It builds trust. A voice conversation feels more human, especially if your offer is complex or high-ticket.

💡 Pro tip: The best moment to call? After sending an email and a LinkedIn message. That way, your name will already be familiar when you call.

Tier 3: Low Priority Accounts

These leads are still interesting, but you don't want to spend too much time on them.

That’s why we’ll use fully automated outreach.

In most cases, you’ll start with cold emails.

If your lead list is small or highly targeted, you can also add LinkedIn DMs. But keep in mind the LinkedIn limits.

One of the best way to bypass the invitation limit is to send cold email.

This approach lets you reach lots of people without manual effort.

Here is an example of an automated message on LinkedIn:

ABM Advanced Techniques

Want to go further? Try these techniques:

Save Your Searches to Get Alerts

I’m sure you don’t want to redo your filters every time? That’s why you need to save your search (which is different from save a lead).

When you're on the lead search with all your filters, click on “Save Search to get notified of new results".

You can manage your saved searches by clicking on "Manage saved searches".

💡 Pro tip: Give your saved search a clear name and description like "CEOs - TIers 1"

Now that you know how to save your lead search. It's time to leverage it in your LinkedIn Account Based Marketing strategy.

Here's how:

When you save a lead (or account) search, LinkedIn will notify you when new leads matches your filters.

If you want to check your new leads, you just have to click on "Saved searches":

Then, in green, you will see if you have new leads in your saved searches:

If you click on "X new results since…", you will be redirected on the lead filters page.

You will see your fresh new leads:

💡 Pro tip: Export these leads with GiveMeLeads and add them in your LinkedIn Account Based Marketing strategy

The saved search feature keeps your ABM list fresh without extra effort. You just have to check if you have new leads who match your filters.

📺 If you want an in-depth video on how to save your search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can check this video:

Bottom-Up Outreach

When you're targeting big companies, it’s not always easy to know who the real decision-maker is.

There are tons of job titles:

• Managers,

• Directors,

• VPs,

• C-levels

• Etc

Most of the time, it’s hard to tell who actually does what.

👉 For example in this search, I found 149 "Marketing Directors" working for "Red Bull"…

That’s where bottom-up outreach comes in.

Instead of going straight to the top, you start with people lower in the hierarchy—like managers or senior team members. If they like what you offer, they’ll introduce you to the right person.

👉 Let me give you a real example:

Back when I was running a LinkedIn DM agency, I used this exact strategy to help a client close one of the biggest banks in the world.

We were targeting people involved in social media.

I reached out to 10s of contacts. One of them replied, liked the offer, and became our internal champion.

He introduced us to the decision-makers.

Result? We closed a €100K+ contract for a 1-year project.

How to Leverage Other Marketing Channels

LinkedIn is powerful, but it works even better when combined with other channels.

Post on LinkedIn

If you're doing LinkedIn Account Based Marketing, sending LinkedIn DMs is great.

But if you're not posting on LinkedIn, you're missing a huge opportunity.

Even if your posts don’t directly bring new business, they bring visibility:

• You build awareness

• You stay top-of-mind with your leads

• People get familiar with your name, face, and company

I know it's boring… But when someone receives your DM and recognizes you from a post, they’re far more likely to reply.

That’s why posting regularly (even simple content) can significantly boost your response and conversion rates.

Think of it as warming up your ABM audience before you reach out.

👉 Here's an example with Arnaud Belinga from Breakcold.

Post on YouTube

YouTube is one of the most powerful channels to attract qualified leads, especially in B2B.

It's a good channel when you do Account Based Marketing because you can produce really specific videos.

When someone watches your video, they spend 5, 10, sometimes 20 minutes with you.

It builds trust.

👉 Here’s a great example: Instantly’s YouTube channel.

They consistently get between 2k and 10k views per video.

All from people who are deeply interested in cold outreach and lead generation.

Email Marketing

You can’t run a real Account Based Marketing strategy without email.

It’s one of the best (and cheapest) ways to nurture your leads and turn them into clients.

Why? Because email lets you:

• Stay in touch with your target accounts

• Send helpful content and case studies

• Follow up without being pushy

• Keep your company top of mind

And the best part?

Sending emails costs (almost) nothing.

👉 Here’s a great example of an email campaign from Smartlead:

LinkedIn Ads

If you have a bit of budget, LinkedIn Ads can be a great way to boost your Account Based Marketing.

Here’s how to use them the smart way:

Step 1: Target the right leads

You can leverage the leads you extracted with GiveMeLeads and upload a list of up to 300,000 contacts.

That’s perfect when you already have a Tier 1 or Tier 2 account list.

LinkedIn will match your list and show ads to these people.

Here's how to upload your leads list:

💡 Pro tip: Other possibility: You can upload companies and then target specific people inside those companies.

Step 2: Run the right type of campaigns

Use different ads depending on where your target is in the buying journey:

• Warm-up ads: Run these before outreach to introduce your brand.

• Cover ads: While you're sending DMs or emails, these help build trust.

• Retargeting: For people who showed interest but didn’t convert yet.

Step 3: Keep things organized

Use clear campaign names like ABM - Tier 1 - USA so you can track results easily.

FAQ

How to Build Your Leads List With LinkedIn Sales Navigator

It’s super simple. You need 3 steps:

Step 1: Start with companies

Use the Account filters in Sales Navigator to find the right companies.

You can filter by:

• Company size (headcount)

• Growth

• Hiring activity

• Industry

• Location

• And more

Once your search looks good, save the companies into an account list.

Step 2: Find the right people inside those companies

Go to the Lead filters tab on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Then select your account list to only see leads from those companies.

Now add filters like:

• Current job title

• Past job title

• Location

• Years of experience

• People who posted on LinkedIn recently

You’ll now have a clean list of decision-makers who are inside the companies you want to target.

Step 3: Export your leads

Use GiveMeLeads to export your leads directly from Sales Navigator.

From there, you can plug them into your outreach tool and start booking calls.

How to Export Your Search and Find Verified Emails

You can use GiveMeLeads to export your leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

You will get all the data you need for your outreach:

• First Name

• Last Name

• Company Name

• Current job title

• LinkedIn URL

• Verified email

With GiveMeLeads, you don't waste time to clean the data (emojis, capital letters, etc), and you are sure to only get leads who perfectly match your criteria.

What is Tiers in LinkedIn Account Based Marketing

In ABM, not all accounts are equal.

That’s why we split them into 3 tiers, based on their importance and potential.

Tier 1 : High Priority Accounts

These are your dream clients. Big names, big budgets.
You’ll do everything manually here:

• Personalized outreach

• Deep research

• Custom content

• 1-on-1 relationship building

Tier 2: Mid Priority Accounts

These are still very valuable accounts.
But you can afford to semi-automate the process:

• Email campaigns

• LinkedIn messages

• Cold calls (if your deal size is high enough)

Tier 3: Low Priority Accounts

Smaller deals, or less strategic accounts.
You’ll go for full automation here:

• Cold email first

• Then LinkedIn messages

• Maybe some retargeting ads if needed

This way, you keep your time and resources focused on what matters most—while still covering all bases.

What is the best CRM to use for LinkedIn Account Based Marketing

I recommend using Breakcold.

It’s built specifically for LinkedIn Account Based Marketing, so you can manage your leads, track your outreach, and stay organized.

If you want to see how it works step-by-step, here’s a guide on how to use Breakcold for LinkedIn ABM.