What is offline ABM? A practical guide for B2B marketers

Offline ABM is account-based marketing with physical advertising. Instead of showing ads to everyone in a city, you place billboards, digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens and event activations where people from your target accounts work, travel and meet. The campaign starts from your account list, and success is measured at account level – just like your online ABM programmes.

Why B2B marketers are looking offline

Most ABM programmes run almost entirely online: LinkedIn ads, display retargeting, email sequences. That has two problems. Costs per click keep rising, and buyers have learned to scroll past ads in crowded feeds. At the same time, a B2B buying decision involves a whole committee – not just the two or three contacts you have in your CRM.

Physical advertising solves both. A billboard next to an office or on a daily commute is seen by everyone who passes, it can’t be skipped or blocked, and it gives your brand a size and credibility that a banner rarely does.

How offline ABM works

An offline ABM campaign typically follows four steps:

1. Start from your account list. Upload target accounts from your CRM – new prospects, open deals or customers you want to expand.
2. Find where the accounts are. Office locations are matched with nearby billboards and screens. Movement data shows the roads, stations and transit stops people from multiple accounts share.
3. Launch the right placements. Only the locations with a high share of your target accounts are booked, with creatives written for that audience.
4. Measure at account level. Website visits and engagement from targeted accounts are compared with accounts that weren’t targeted, and connected to pipeline.

At Hoolty we use this approach for account-based billboard campaigns, for trade show and event advertising and for campaigns aimed at one specific account.

Offline ABM vs. traditional billboard advertising

Traditional out-of-home advertising is bought for reach: as many impressions as possible in a city or region. That works for consumer brands, but for a B2B company with a few hundred target accounts most of that reach is wasted.

Offline ABM flips the logic. It accepts fewer impressions in exchange for a much higher share of relevant ones. A campaign might use a handful of locations instead of hundreds – as long as those are the places your buyers actually pass.

When does offline ABM make sense?

Offline ABM works best when:

• Your target accounts are clustered in certain cities, business parks or regions.
• You’re entering a new market and need awareness among a defined group of companies quickly.
• Your buyers attend trade shows, where thousands of relevant people gather in one place for a few days.
• Deals involve large buying committees, and you want to reach people beyond your known contacts.
• You have a few strategic deals worth a dedicated campaign.

What results can you expect?

Results depend on your goal, but they should always be measured against pipeline, not just impressions: engagement and website visits from targeted accounts, meetings booked, and opportunities created or moved forward. Set these goals before the campaign starts, so you can compare targeted accounts with similar accounts that weren’t targeted.

Getting started

You don’t need a big budget to start. A focused first campaign – one city, one event, or one cluster of accounts – is often the best way to prove the channel internally.

Book a call and we’ll show you where your target accounts can be reached offline.