As LinkedIn expands account-based marketing capabilities with a newly released ABM campaign tool, it’s yet another signal that ABM is ascending in status to must-have capability for most B2B marketers.

Called LinkedIn Account Targeting, this new tool works with LinkedIn’s existing capability to profile and target select personas within a target account.

It completes the two primary dimensions of proactive targeting:  1) target accounts and 2) target personas within those accounts.  Armed with both capabilities, B2B marketers can now conduct focused marketing campaigns with precision and agility on the LinkedIn platform.

The new feature is available to customers of LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates and Sponsored InMail advertising offerings.

A key advantage of increased precision in targeting is content relevance. Marketers will be able to fine tune the content they deliver to each recipient to a very granular level, ensuring they communicate the right message to the right persona at the right time.  A powerful element of successful account-based marketing, content relevance will make this a useful tool.

A content marketing strategy is only as good as the ability to create quality content, match it for relevance to the right personas and accounts, and deliver it in a highly controlled and targeted way.  LinkedIn has made this crucial third step readily achievable.

As we continue to witness exponential growth in the martech industry, LinkedIn’s own Marketing Solutions division reflecting the trend, having grown 28% in 2015 to $581m and forecasting growth by another 70% by 2017 to $1bn.

Bruce Grant, spearMaven CEO & Co-founder

While LinkedIn’s new piece in the account-based marketing puzzle should prove a useful tool, marketers will still be under pressure to ensure surrounding functions are up to speed.  They will need to make sure content quality does justice to improved targeting.   They will also need to readily integrate the tool into their overall account-based marketing framework.

While it’s great improving ability to target of personas and accounts, it’s equally important to ensure all interactions are being systematically recorded and monitored, and that reliable momentum and penetration metrics are reported to track campaign progress and success.