For most startups—especially those in Series A and Series B stages—the path to consistent, scalable revenue can feel like trying to map a city with half the streetlights out. You know your ICP. You’ve got a crisp brand story. You’re investing in demand gen, content, and maybe even some light account-based marketing (ABM). But here’s the problem: most of your buyers don’t fill out forms, click CTAs, or engage publicly until after they’ve made up their minds.

This is the dark funnel—the pre-evaluation phase of the buyer journey that’s invisible to your CRM and untouched by traditional lead scoring. If your team is focused only on MQLs and demo requests, you’re missing the real action.

That’s where contact-based marketing comes in.

What Is Contact-Based Marketing (CBM)?

Contact-Based Marketing is a strategic approach that focuses not just on accounts, but on the people inside those accounts—the influencers, champions, budget-holders, and blockers—across the entire buyer journey. Instead of treating your GTM efforts like a billboard aimed at a company logo, CBM gives you the clarity of marketing to human beings with context, behavior, and intent.

Why Startups and Growth-Stage Companies Need CBM in the Dark Funnel

Let’s break down why contact-based marketing is essential during the early and hidden parts of the sales cycle.

1. The Invisible Buyer Journey Needs Visibility

People are consuming your webinars, reading your blogs, and asking peers about your product—without ever engaging with your brand directly. Contact-based marketing brings together third-party intent data, marketing automation, and behavioral tracking to unmask these buyers.

• Example: A product manager at a Series C fintech company visits your pricing page five times, but never fills out a form. Traditional lead models don’t surface them. CBM pulls them into your radar and activates a nurture motion aligned to their role and intent.

2. Your ABM Campaigns Are Probably Off-Target

ABM is great—until it isn’t. The problem with most ABM strategies is they go too wide on the wrong contacts or too narrow on a single person at the right account. CBM solves this by identifying the full buying committee and scoring engagement at the contact level, not just the account level.

• When ABM goes wrong: You run a high-budget campaign targeting Acme Corp, but you only engage the head of IT—when the actual buying committee includes compliance, procurement, and operations. The deal dies in committee.

CBM helps you multithread earlier, so you never fall into the trap of selling to one contact in a vacuum.

3. Sales and Marketing Alignment Gets Real

Startups often struggle with siloed handoffs between marketing and sales. CBM integrates into your martech stack—think HubSpot, Salesforce, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, and even LinkedIn—so your SDRs and AEs aren’t guessing who to contact next. They’re engaging warm contacts that are already primed.

• Real-time signals turn into prioritized outreach.
• SDRs can personalize based on role, journey stage, and activity.
• Marketing can attribute influence at the contact level, closing the loop on ROI.

Implementing Contact-Based Marketing in Your Martech Stack

To make CBM work, you don’t need a million tools—you need the right framework and a lean stack that supports it:

• CRM & MAP Integration: Sync contact-level data across platforms (Salesforce + HubSpot or Marketo)
• Intent & Enrichment Tools: Use platforms like ZoomInfo or Bombora to identify who’s in-market and why
• Segmentation & Personalization Engines: Tools like Mutiny or Clearbit to adapt content based on who’s engaging
• Campaign Automation: Orchestrate outreach that responds to contact-level behavior, not just firmographics

Benefits of Contact-Based Marketing for Startups

1. Faster Deal Cycles
   When you engage the right people earlier, you reduce dead time and accelerate velocity.
2. Higher Win Rates
   Multithreading gives you resilience—if one contact goes dark, your campaign lives on.
3. More Efficient CAC
   You spend less on broad campaigns and more on buyers who actually move the needle.
4. True Marketing Attribution
   You stop crediting form fills and start attributing pipeline to actual influence.
5. Cross-Functional Productivity
   Everyone—marketing, sales, product marketing—works from the same source of contact-level truth.

Why CBM Beats Traditional ABM (Especially for Startups)

Let’s get real—most early-stage ABM looks like this:

Step 1: Choose 100 logos
Step 2: Buy ads against those logos
Step 3: Hope someone bites

It’s like fishing with a billboard. Contact-Based Marketing flips that model:

Step 1: Identify key personas inside target accounts
Step 2: Map behavior, role, and stage
Step 3: Personalize engagement with messaging and content that aligns to them

Don’t Wait for the Demo Request—Engage the Right People Now

If your revenue team is still waiting for high-intent hand-raisers, you’re already behind. The dark funnel isn’t optional—it’s where modern buying decisions start. Contact-Based Marketing gives you the visibility, precision, and speed you need to win in that invisible space.

And if your ABM feels like it’s generating more reports than results? You’re probably missing the human layer.

Ready to See It in Action?

At Samesum, we help startups and scaling companies:

• Build contact-based marketing frameworks from the ground up
• Optimize your martech stack for visibility and velocity
• Design campaigns that reach the right people at the right time
• Align sales and marketing on the contacts that actually matter

Let’s stop guessing and start connecting.
Talk to us about implementing CBM that actually converts.