These are the wrong questions. 

If we go back to ABM’s origin story, ABM’s entire raison d’etre is to connect the work that marketing does to achieve actual sales results. Instead of blasting content to the void and hoping the right people find it, the goal of ABM is to get hyper-targeted around who your most likely customers are and to focus your time and attention to winning those deals. That means ABM can’t be a standalone tactic—it affects everything you do as a marketer. 

The real question that marketers therefore should be asking is: Where do we expect to get our revenue?

That’s why we at Inverta created the Demand Continuum. The Demand Continuum is a framework to help you build a holistic view of how marketing contributes to generating revenue. It shifts the focus from just executing campaigns to understanding where your pipeline is coming from, which allows you to determine the appropriate marketing audience and approach. 

In this article, we’ll explore what the Demand Continuum is, how it works, and how you can leverage it to achieve your pipeline and revenue goals. 

Why do I need another marketing framework anyway?

Before we break down what the Demand Continuum is and exactly how it works, we think it’s important to address the elephant in the room. We know that marketing is already awash in frameworks, from the 6 P’s of lean product to the “AARRR” of pirate metrics. We don’t want to create YAMF (yet another marketing framework) if it isn’t completely necessary. But we truly believe this one is essential. 

Here’s why: We see so many marketers getting stuck on the tactic level, focusing on specific campaigns rather than the broader picture. And who can blame us? As marketers, we’ve been conditioned to work this way. All of our planning and goal-setting structures are set up to support it. Part of the reason that so many teams have struggled to meaningfully implement ABM is because it’s so much easier to track MQLs or campaign metrics than measure marketing’s impact on revenue. 

But spending so much time at the tactic level means that marketing teams are missing important steps. Instead of letting their revenue goals dictate their approach, they’re jumping straight into campaigns and channels. 

Working this way means that, at best, marketers are missing valuable information about their audience that would help in their campaign execution. At worst, they’re designing campaigns first, then retrofitting them to an audience (which, considering the need for personalization in today’s marketing, can hardly be effective). The Demand Continuum solves this challenge by using your company’s revenue goals as a starting point, then considering your target audiences and the insights you have about them before you start thinking about which campaigns to run. 

For instance, if you know you need to generate $10 million this year from six high-value customers, you can make an informed decision that running a 1:1 ABM campaign is the best move, rather than first deciding to run a 1:1 ABM campaign, then selecting which customers to put in it. It may sound obvious, but so many marketers aren’t doing it, due to the pressures to “get moving” with campaigns or show certain metric results to execs, regardless of whether those metrics actually contribute to the bottom line. The Demand Continuum solves both of these challenges. We’ll explore how below. 

What is the Demand Continuum and how does it work?

The Demand Continuum is a framework for visualizing where your company’s revenue comes from and designing marketing strategies to achieve those revenue goals based on the kind of resources and intelligence you have available. In other words, you start with where you expect your revenue to come from and work backwards. 

With the Demand Continuum, you start with where you expect your revenue to come from and work backwards.

Once you have your revenue targets defined, you can match your target customers to those specific revenue goals, using the depth of insights available for each segment as a guide to how personalized your outreach can be. We like to think of it as an intermediary step between the high-level strategy of annual planning and the tactic level of campaigns—a critical mid-step that many marketers find themselves missing. 

Let’s take a look at an example of Demand Continuum and break down its component parts. 

1. Along the top of the continuum, you have your revenue sources. These should tie into your company’s revenue goals for the year. Using these goals as a guide, you can determine what percentage of your revenue you project to receive from inbound, outbound, and partnerships. 

2. Below that, are the different campaigns and motions you might run—from brand and SEO to ABM to partnerships. Moving from left to right, these campaigns are arranged from more general to more targeted and personalized. As you might note, there’s a direct relationship between the depth of insights you have access to and how personalized your outreach can be. The more insights you have, the more personalized the outreach. 

The whole idea behind the Demand Continuum is that instead of first deciding which kinds of campaigns you want to run, then populating them with accounts, you look at your target account list first to determine which kinds of campaigns they’re best suited for. Using your ICP definition and insights you can see which accounts fit best into each bucket—and why—and design your campaigns accordingly. 

3. Within each motion, you can get granular about how you’ll qualify accounts for each program, what channels you’ll target, the kind of messaging you’ll use, and how you’ll measure your success. Again, note that the level of insights you have access to for each account affects the kind of messaging and content you can use and how personalized it can be. 

4. The bottom of the continuum describes your resources and support—both from technology and from other teams. This includes both your coordination with sales and executives, as well as which technologies you’ll be using, what insights they’ll provide about your accounts, and how they’ll help support your campaigns. 

An example of the Demand Continuum in action

Here’s an example of a leading cloud security company who used the Demand Continuum to visualize their current strategy, see where the gaps were, and make an updated marketing plan. 

Let’s look at their starting point: 

There’s a lot in here, but let’s review some of the key gaps that mapping this existing state revealed: 

1. Broad account targeting, lacks meaningful segmentation 

2. Impersonal, generic messaging with an exclusive focus on verticals or journey stages (not their buyers’ specific questions or challenges)

3. Disconnected orchestration with sales—sales had identified and was going after their own target accounts, rather than sales and marketing coordinating their efforts

4. Immature strategy around partner channels

5. Basic tracking metrics that don’t clearly show marketing’s impact on revenue

6. Incomplete usage of existing software investments

By visualizing these existing programs and seeing the gaps, the team was able to make a plan for a future state that they could take tangible steps toward. Let’s look at the changes they implemented: 

This new plan includes the following high-impact changes: 

1. Much more deliberate account segmentation, leading to refined 1:many, 1:few, and 1:1 programs

2. Messaging that is much more closely aligned to specific pain points and personalized based on the type of demand program

3. Tight marketing and sales collaboration—the teams work together to select accounts and collaboratively nurture them, rather than running separate, disconnected programs 

4. Strategic use of partner programs to focus on high-priority accounts

5. Robust tracking metrics connecting marketing efforts to revenue

6. Full usage of software for intent data and account nurturing

How to use the Demand Continuum, a step-by-step guide

Download your own Demand Continuum template and use the following prompts to help you fill it out.

Step 1: Align with your company’s revenue goals

Determine: Where does your company expect to generate its revenue? Get as granular as possible. What kind of revenue do you expect to generate by solution, region, segment (enterprise, commercial, mid-market, etc.), net-new, expansion, renewal, etc.? What are your expectations around inbound business vs. outbound? Where do partnerships fit in? 

Step 2: Capture your current state

What do your inbound and outbound activities currently look like? Where is marketing currently supporting these goals? Where do sales and other teams play a role? How are you coordinating with them? 

Map this all out onto your “current state” slide. 

Step 3: Assess gaps

Where is marketing most suited to support revenue? Is that where you’re currently focusing your efforts? Note that not all solutions may necessarily require marketing support—there may be other GTM motions or routes to market, like partners or renewals sold as an add-on during the sales cycle, that are a better fit. 

Check for misalignments between marketing and sales. Are you targeting the same accounts? Are your efforts supporting or undermining one another? 

Additionally, look for gaps in terms of messaging, account selection, or how you’re resourcing specific initiatives. What’s working and what are areas of improvement? 

Finally, brainstorm any new initiatives you want to pursue in support of specific revenue goals (such as launching a 1:1 ABM campaign to target high-value accounts or segmenting an existing 1:many ABM campaign into several 1:few campaigns so you can better personalize your outreach). 

Map all this onto your “future state” slide. 

Step 4: Circulate your new plan and get buy-in

Now that you have your current and future states mapped onto the Demand Continuum, it’s time to circulate your plan (the future state) to sales and executives. This is where you can integrate their feedback, get their buy-in for specific programs, and ensure you’re all on the same page in terms of how you expect to generate revenue as a company. 

From ABM to GTM

So many teams still see ABM as one tactic in their demand generation approach. But truly adopting ABM means nothing short of upending your entire go-to-market (GTM) strategy. It’s not just a tool you use with certain high-value accounts, but rather a new way of thinking about your marketing with revenue, not marketing qualified leads (MQLs), as your ultimate goal. 

The idea of the Demand Continuum isn’t new—it’s the vision that practitioners of ABM have been trying to get to all along. But this visual framework gives you the tools to articulate exactly how you plan for marketing to influence revenue in the coming year or quarter. Critically, it gives you the ability to share this plan with executives and your sales team so you can all collaborate seamlessly as one revenue team. 

So instead of asking “where does ABM fit into my demand strategy?” try “how does ABM change the way we do demand?” 

It’s in the answers to that question that the real transformation happens.