What is Contact-Based Marketing?

Traditional B2B marketing has a fundamental visibility problem. You invest significant time and budget driving pipeline for sales, but you're essentially operating in the dark—unable to see who's actually visiting your site, where potential buyers are conducting their research, or whether your ad spend is reaching the right people. These blind spots lead to low conversion rates and inefficient marketing investments. 

Even expensive account-based marketing (ABM) platforms, which operate on the premise that they eliminate these blind spots, often fail to deliver. The core issue? You're targeting entire companies when you should focus on the specific individuals evaluating your product (as well as your competitors’ products!) and making buying decisions.

And that’s where contact-based marketing comes in.

Contact-based marketing defined

Contact-based marketing (CBM) is a targeted B2B marketing approach that identifies and engages individual contacts based on their actual buying intent, rather than just their company affiliation.

Unlike traditional account-based marketing (ABM), which targets entire organizations, CBM gives you visibility into exactly who is on your site at the contact level AND who is showing intent off of your site at a contact level. This means you can see the specific people engaging with your content, researching solutions like yours, and demonstrating buying behaviors—even if they’ve never filled out a form—and personalize your marketing efforts toward them based on their behaviors, preferences, and demonstrated intent.

At its core, contact-based marketing allows you to:

• Identify and engage with actual people (not just companies)
• Create hyper-targeted campaigns based on individual buyer behavior
• Track individual buyer journeys across the entire funnel
• Deliver personalized experiences that drive higher conversion rates

For example, instead of targeting all employees at Company X, you might focus specifically on Sarah, the IT Director who has been researching cloud security solutions like yours for the past month. This precision helps you craft messages that speak directly to her specific concerns.

While account-based marketing was a significant advancement over traditional lead generation, contact-based marketing represents the next evolution:

The strategic impact is substantial: would you rather spend your marketing budget on 500 employees at a target account when only three of them are actually researching your solution? Or would you rather precisely target only those three contacts?

Why contact-based marketing matters now

Marketers are increasingly dissatisfied with the unfulfilled promise of ABM for a number of reasons:

1. The ghost problem: Thousands of anonymous visitors come to your site, but traditional ABM tools give you no way to identify them. Imagine a potential buyer spending 20 minutes reviewing your pricing page, only to leave without a trace.
2. The black hole of off-site research: Most B2B buying research happens away from your website. Your potential customer might be reading industry reports, competitor reviews, and forum discussions, but traditional ABM tools offer you no way of knowing.
3. Intent data limitations: Legacy intent providers only identify interested companies, not the specific contacts within them. Knowing that "Company X is researching CRM solutions" isn't helpful or actionable.
4. ABM adoption challenges: ABM platforms often face resistance from sales teams due to low actionability. Your sales team might question, "Great, this company is interested, but who do I actually call?"
5. Wasted ad spend: Without contact-level targeting, ad budgets get diluted across mostly irrelevant audiences. You might show ads to everyone at a target account company when only a small team is actually involved in the purchase decision.
6. High cost with low ROI: Traditional ABM platforms are notoriously expensive. They often carry six-figure price tags, but don’t deliver a deep enough level of data to warrant the continued spend.

These challenges leave marketers guessing, wasting resources, and missing out on high-quality leads that could drive revenue. The shift toward contact-based marketing is happening because:

Buyer journeys have fragmented — Your potential buyers are researching anonymously across multiple channels

Marketing budgets are under scrutiny — You need to demonstrate clear ROI and efficient spend

Sales teams demand actionable intelligence — Not just company names, but actual people ready to buy

Privacy changes have complicated targeting — Making precise, first-party data more valuable than ever

Marketers who adopt contact-based marketing gain a significant competitive advantage by identifying and reaching high-intent buyers directly—through emails, ads, content, and more—rather than hoping to reach them through broader account-based campaigns.

Key components of contact-based marketing

Not all contact-based marketing solutions are created equal. Make sure the tool you choose checks all the following boxes.

Contact-level website identification

Stop letting potential buyers remain anonymous. Contact-based marketing allows you to de-anonymize visitors landing on your high-intent pages, blog content, and ads—even if they don't fill out a form. This reveals exactly who's engaging with your content, helping you:

• Identify specific individuals showing interest in your offerings
• Track engagement patterns across your digital properties
• Prioritize outreach based on demonstrated interest
• Connect marketing activities directly to potential buyers

For instance, when Mark from Acme Corp views your product demo page three times in a week, you can proactively reach out with helpful resources relevant to his specific interests rather than waiting for him to fill out a contact form.

Contact-level intent signals

Traditional intent providers can only tell you which companies might be in-market, leaving you to guess which individuals to target. Contact-based marketing reveals specific contacts researching relevant topics, even when they're not on your site. This helps you:

• Identify in-market buyers before they find you
• Understand individual research patterns
• Engage prospects earlier in their buying journey
• Focus resources on the most promising opportunities

For example, you might discover that Jennifer, a CFO at a mid-sized manufacturing company, has been researching financial software solutions similar to yours across various industry websites. This knowledge allows you to reach out with targeted content before she even visits your site.

Hyper-targeted ad audiences

Contact-based marketing enables precision in your advertising efforts by allowing you to reach the exact buyers you care about. By targeting specific contacts across B2C ad channels, you can:

• Dramatically increase match rates compared to traditional B2B targeting
• Improve ROAS by eliminating wasteful broad targeting
• Create highly personalized ad experiences based on known interests
• Retarget individuals who've shown specific intent signals

Instead of showing your enterprise security solution ads to everyone at a large organization, you can focus specifically on the cybersecurity team members who've demonstrated interest in related topics, significantly increasing your conversion rates while reducing wasted ad spend.

Create contact-level segments

Stop grouping buyers by arbitrary company attributes. Contact-based marketing allows you to build dynamic segments based on actual buyer behavior, intent signals, and engagement patterns—not just their employer. This enables you to:

• Target individuals based on their specific needs and interests
• Group contacts by stage in the buying journey
• Personalize outreach based on demonstrated behaviors
• Shift resources to high-intent segments for maximum impact

For instance, when Sarah, a Director of Marketing, clicks on your ROI calculator and downloads a related case study, you can automatically add her to your "High-Intent Marketing Leaders" segment for tailored follow-up—rather than lumping her in with everyone else at her company regardless of interest level.

Activate across your marketing stack

Leave the data silos to legacy platforms. Contact-based marketing integrates directly with your existing tools, enabling seamless activation of contact-level insights across your entire GTM workflow. This helps you:

• Trigger personalized email sequences based on specific behaviors
• Sync high-intent contacts to your CRM for sales follow-up
• Automate ad audience updates as intent signals change
• Measure true campaign performance at the contact level

For example, when Jason, a VP of Sales, shows strong buyer intent signals, Vector can automatically add him to your high-priority Salesforce campaign, trigger a tailored email sequence, and include him in your executive-focused ad audience—all without manual intervention or data transfers between platforms.

Reveal contacts that click on your ads but don't convert

Stop the mystery of ad performance. Contact-based marketing identifies the specific individuals who engage with your ads but don't complete forms, allowing you to recapture these ghosted opportunities. This reveals:

• Exactly who your messaging resonates with
• Which contacts need additional nurturing
• How to optimize landing pages for specific buyers
• Where to focus retargeting efforts for maximum ROI

For instance, when Michael, a CTO at a growing SaaS company, clicks through your cloud security ad but leaves without converting, you can identify him specifically and serve targeted follow-up content addressing common objections—turning what would have been a lost opportunity into a qualified prospect in your pipeline.

Common misconceptions about CBM

"I don't have enough site traffic to benefit from contact-based marketing."

Reality: With CBM, you don't just see who's on your site—you also discover contacts showing intent off your site who haven't found you yet. This opens up a whole new pool of in-market buyers.

"Isn't this approach against privacy regulations like GDPR?"

Reality: A proper CBM solution only delivers data from data co-ops and contacts that opt-in to cookies across their web experience, both of which comply with all relevant privacy regulations.

"Won't this just be more expensive data I can't act on?"

Reality: Unlike traditional ABM platforms that charge per lead and deliver account-level data, CBM provides contact-level intelligence that marketing teams can immediately act on—and with solutions like Vector, you get unlimited contacts de-anonymized on your website.

The mindset shift: from mass marketing to precision targeting

Adopting contact-based marketing requires a fundamental rethink of your marketing strategy:

Old ABM mindset:

• Gating content to capture leads
• Casting wide nets with generic messaging
• Targeting entire companies
• Measuring success by lead volume

New CBM mindset:

• Removing barriers to content consumption (because you don’t need gates when you know who’s engaged with your content on a contact level).
• Creating highly personalized experiences (because you can tailor content to individual needs based on their specific behavior and intent signals).
• Targeting specific decision-makers, champions, and any other significant stakeholders in the buying committee (because you know exactly which contacts are showing intent, rather than guessing which titles matter at target accounts).
• Measuring success by pipeline quality and conversion rates (because you're focused on engaging the right individual buyers instead of vanity metrics like total accounts reached).

This shift isn't just about new technology—it's about embracing a more effective approach to B2B marketing that respects both your budget and your buyers' time.

How Vector helps you make the CBM shift

Vector is a contact-based marketing platform that helps you reveal your most interested buyers—on and off your site—and take the next right action to turn them into revenue.

With Vector, you can expect:

Free, unlimited contact de-anonymization

Unlike other platforms that charge per lead, Vector gives you unlimited contact reveals on your website. Test new segments and playbooks without fear of "wasting" contact reveals or going over budget.

~50% match rate 

Vector delivers a significantly better match rate than traditional ABM tools. Instead of boasting a high (but false positive) match rate, Vector is the only platform that uses form submissions, logged-in users, and integrations with marketing and sales automation to confirm and train their identity graph. More confidence in your data means more confidence in the actions you take based on that data.

Pre-built playbooks and integrations 

Vector doesn't just give you data—it helps you act on it. Filter contact-level data so you can take the right next action and put the right marketing in front of the right buyers at the right time.

Marketing-focused approach

Vector is designed and built specifically for marketers, because we believe marketers should be the gatekeepers of contact-level data and only funnel those contacts to sales when they are truly ready to speak with the sales team.

Expert guidance 

Implementing CBM requires a mindset shift in your marketing strategy. Vector's solutions team helps every step of the way with working sessions and content that guide you through these mindset shifts and tech stack changes.

What to do next

The marketers who adapt fastest to contact-based marketing will have an enormous competitive advantage. They'll fill their funnel with high-intent contacts (not meaningless accounts), optimize their spend, and deliver the personalized experiences buyers expect.

The question isn't whether you should adopt contact-based marketing—it's how quickly you can make the shift before your competitors do.

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

1. How would knowing exactly who's researching your solution change your marketing strategy?
2. What resources could you reallocate if you eliminated wasted ad spend on uninterested contacts?
3. And how would your sales team respond to getting truly sales-ready contacts instead of lukewarm accounts?

Take the first step toward a contact-based marketing strategy.