What this is
Audience building and buying circles are two of the most important foundations of a successful ABM strategy in Propensity.
A strong ABM program starts by identifying the right accounts and then narrowing your focus to the right people within those accounts. This helps you create more relevant campaigns, stronger messaging, and better sales follow-up.
This guide focuses on:
Building the right audience
Creating effective buying circles
Using Propensity tools to refine both over time
It also works closely with the ABM Connected Website, which helps reveal which accounts are already visiting your website and can surface leads for sales to act on quickly.
Why this matters
ABM works best when your campaigns are focused.
If your audience is too broad, your messaging may be too general to resonate with the people involved in the buying decision. Building the right audience first, and then refining it into buying circles, helps you:
Reach accounts that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP)
Prioritize people involved in the buying decision
Deliver more relevant messaging
Improve engagement and conversion potential
What is audience building?
Audience building is the process of creating a list of target accounts that align with your ideal customer profile.
You typically start with broad firmographic criteria such as:
Industry
Company size
Revenue
Location
From there, you refine the list to create a focused audience of accounts that are more likely to become valuable customers.
The goal is not to build the largest list possible. The goal is to build the right list.
What is a buying circle?
A buying circle is a group of people within a target account who are likely to influence or participate in the buying decision.
This may include stakeholders from different departments, seniority levels, or functional areas.
Buying circles are important because B2B purchasing decisions are usually made by multiple people, not just one decision-maker. By segmenting these contacts into smaller groups, you can tailor your messaging more precisely and create campaigns that speak to their specific priorities.
Where to find these features in Propensity
You can build an audience by creating a new account list in the Audience Builder.
To do this:
Go to the Audience tab at the top of the screen
Click New Account List
Start building your audience
You can also upload an existing account list using the Account Upload feature in ABM Tools.
Buying Circles are created from the audiences you build. Once you have created your first audience, you can use the Buying Circle option under the Audience area to begin building circles.
You can also create a Buying Circle by using the Persona Finder and applying the resulting persona to an existing account list.
For more detailed setup instructions, refer to your related how-to guides.
Audience building best practices
Use the ICP Finder to get started faster
The ICP Finder can help you identify patterns across companies that look like your ideal customers.
You can enter a list of 10 to 30 company websites, and Propensity will return useful patterns such as:
Common industries
Website keywords
Shared traits across those companies
This gives you a faster way to understand what your best-fit accounts have in common and use those insights to build your own audience.
Get the audience right before you launch
The most important part of audience building is getting the audience right.
Your list should not be too broad, but it also should not be so narrow that you restrict campaign scale too early.
A good starting point is to define your audience using:
Industry
Company size or revenue
Location
Relevant keywords or phrases
Intent topics
Adding intent data topics can help identify accounts that are actively researching related problems or solutions. Propensity uses this data to help surface in-market accounts.
If your audience consistently shows low or no intent activity, that may be a sign that your targeting is too broad, too narrow, or aimed at the wrong market.
Adjust audience size based on your market
Audience size should vary depending on the type of account you are targeting.
Enterprise
For 1:1 ABM, an audience size of 1 account can work when that account has 100+ contacts in the campaign
For broader enterprise targeting (1:few), 100 to 500 accounts with 10+ contacts per account can also work
Mid-Market
A good starting range is 100 to 1,000 accounts
Aim for 4 to 8 contacts per account
Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB)
You may need 2,000+ accounts
These accounts often have only 1 or 2 contacts per account, so more accounts are needed to create sufficient scale
Use firmographics and keywords to refine broad industries
If your initial audience is too broad, refine it using a combination of:
Firmographic filters
Industry Keywords
Industry Keyword Exclusions
For example, if you are targeting construction companies, that may still be too broad. You could narrow the audience by focusing on companies related to:
HVAC
Heating
Air conditioning
If the audience is still too broad, add exclusions such as:
Commercial
Industrial
This helps you narrow a general market into a more relevant niche.
Interpret intent differently for enterprise and mid-market accounts
Intent signals may behave differently depending on company size.
Smaller or mid-market companies often show more consolidated intent patterns because they may operate from fewer locations. Enterprise companies may show more distributed intent because research activity can happen across multiple offices or regions.
That does not mean enterprise intent is less useful. It means you may need to look more closely at location and other context to understand where the strongest intent is coming from.
Clean your list before launching campaigns
Once your audience is built, review it carefully.
You may find accounts that should not be included, such as:
Existing customers
Existing prospects
Competitors
Accounts that are not a good fit
You can remove or exclude these in two main ways:
Upload a .csv or .xlsx file under Workspace Settings > Exclusions > Upload List
Remove accounts directly from the account list
You can also add missing accounts by using the Add Account button in your editable account list and entering the company URL.
Cleaning your list helps keep campaigns focused and prevents wasted spend.
Buying circle best practices
Use buying circles to create more relevant messaging
Once your audience is built, the next step is to narrow your focus to the right people within those accounts.
Buying circles help you move from:
Which companies should we target?
to:
Which people inside those companies should we speak to, and how?
This is where your messaging becomes more useful and more specific.
Segment by skills and interests
One of the most effective ways to build buying circles is by segmenting contacts based on skills and interests.
This allows you to create messaging that is more relevant to the people you are trying to reach.
For example, if many of your contacts have skills related to Brand Development, you can create a Buying Circle around that theme and build a campaign tailored to that audience.
To do this:
Go to the Buying Circle page
Create a new Buying Circle
Name it based on the segment you want to target
Enter a keyword in the Skills section
Submit the filter
Refine further by department or seniority if needed
This gives you a focused list of contacts who share a common skillset or area of interest.
Refine broad buying circles
If your Buying Circle is too broad, refine it.
In most cases, it is better to create multiple narrower buying circles than one large general group. Narrower segments make it easier to create more relevant messaging.
A practical target is:
100 to 1,000 accounts
At least 100 contacts in each buying circle
This helps maintain enough scale while still keeping the audience focused.
Use the Persona Finder when you need a more specific contact profile
If your Buying Circle is still too large or not specific enough, use the Persona Finder.
The Persona Finder works similarly to the ICP Finder, but for people instead of companies.
You can enter up to 50 LinkedIn URLs, and Propensity will identify common traits such as:
Skills
Interests
Job titles
This can help you better understand the kinds of people you want to target and refine both your audience and your campaign messaging.
Conclusion
Audience building is the foundation of your ABM strategy, and Buying Circles help you make that strategy more precise.
Start by identifying the right accounts. Then refine those accounts into focused groups of people who are likely to influence the buying decision.
Use Propensity’s tools to improve both over time:
ICP Finder to identify ideal account patterns
Audience Builder to create your target account lists
Buying Circles to segment the right people
Persona Finder to refine your people-level targeting
ABM Connected Website to uncover engaged accounts already visiting your site
The better your audience and buying circles are defined, the easier it becomes to create relevant campaigns and stronger outreach.