Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is all the rage in B2B Marketing circles, especially for companies with long, complex sales cycles like those in tech. Yet despite all the talk of hyper-targeted advertising, it’s easy to overlook the single most important aspect of LinkedIn: people. If your ABM campaign on LinkedIn is focused solely on ads and mass messaging, you could be missing the chance to build genuine relationships with the professionals at your target accounts.
In this article, we’ll highlight the importance of Profile-Based Marketing (PBM) as part of your ABM strategy by asking a critical question: Are we really getting personal enough on LinkedIn?
We’ll discuss how personalisation (or lack thereof) plays out in connection requests, highlight some early observations, and invite you to help shape our upcoming LinkedIn Outreach Handbook.
Profile-Based Marketing on LinkedIn helps overcome some of the main challenges in enterprise selling.
It’s almost cliché to say “personalisation is everything”, but is it really delivering what everyone expects on LinkedIn? Let’s break down the common approaches:
Although we’re currently collecting fresh data for our Q2 research paper, we have anecdotal insights from previous projects at Pitch121:
Ultimately, we want to confirm these trends with robust research and hard data, not just standout campaigns or anecdotes, or assumptions on what our data showed previously is the same today.
That’s part of why we’re launching the LinkedIn Outreach Handbook—and you can help shape the final findings (more on that below).
On one hand, we’ve seen success with a thoughtful, brief intro that references a shared interest or connection. It establishes context and shows you’ve done your homework. On the other, some senders over compensate or explain their connection to the degree that it makes a skeptical prospect decline the request.
So, are we overthinking personalisation or underestimating its impact?
Our current stance: If you do it well (making it truly relevant, not just a rehashed template), it tends to pay off. But if you’re only half-committed, it may not be worth the effort. That’s exactly the sort of nuance our Q1 polls aim to uncover.
To move from anecdote to evidence, we need your input. Throughout Q1, we’re running polls on our website and LinkedIn posts asking questions like:
We’ll compile these insights to help your Profile-Based Marketing campaigns and outreach.
Our LinkedIn Outreach Handbook, set to publish in Q2. From acceptance rates and best practices to whether upgrading to Sales Navigator pays off, we’ll use real data to clarify the personalisation debate.