In a recent episode of the B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast, Olga Bondareva, founder of ModumUp, talks about account-based marketing in B2B with experts from different companies:

Irina Chernova, Demand Marketing Manager EMEA&LATAM at NetApp 
Viviane Ross, Senior Marketing Campaign Manager at Octave (formerly - Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence) 
Elena Simkina, Sr. Digital Marketing Director at Acronis

The experts shared how differently ABM works depending on company strategy and target accounts. Viviane Ross focuses on one-to-many and one-to-few campaigns in the US and Canadian public sector at Octave. Irina Chernova runs strategic one-to-one ABM at NetApp, targeting high-value accounts across EMEA. Elena Simkina described Acronis's evolution from targeting 5,000 accounts with general advertising to a focused combination of one-to-few and one-to-many built around industry-specific lists.

All three speakers agreed on the same challenge: sales alignment. Elena Simkina shared that it took about a year to agree with sales that ABM is not about hot leads but about working together on a specific list of accounts. Irina Chernova put it sharply: ABM is not marketing (despite its name), it is a customer experience - marketing orchestrates, but the work is still sales.

On personalization, Elena Simkina shared a practical lesson: Acronis once built 20 different landing pages with hyper-personalized messaging. It didn't deliver expected results. What worked was personalizing by role and buying committee expectations. Irina Chernova added that personalization should be good enough but shouldn't look like stalking.

All three experts use AI for research and analysis at scale, but keep the final review human. Viviane Ross stressed the human element: ABM is about the person-to-person aspect behind business-to-business. Irina Chernova described using people from professional services as an intelligence channel - gathering customer insights without being invasive.

You can check out the full episode on the B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast:

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LPgMW5aK72c
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HeJRyoDIBKguZajd9NV8S
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/abm-in-b2b-insights-from-netapp-octave-and-acronis/id1852582740?i=1000767731506