Nour Al Hadid is Industries and Sales Enablement Marketing Lead at PwC Middle East, and a graduate of our ABM Academy. She moved into ABM after years working across broad campaigns, content and brand, drawn in by one question: how do you actually win the clients that matter most? Since then, she’s built her approach around quality over quantity, backing fewer accounts with deeper focus, and helping teams see marketing as a driver of real business conversations rather than campaign output.
Interview
You’re at a dinner party and someone asks what you do – how do you explain ABM?
ABM is treating an account or client as a market in its own right. It’s all about marketing with intention and understanding a handful of organisations so well that every interaction feels relevant, useful and timely.
How did you get into ABM? Was it intentional or by accident?
A bit of both.
I started in broad campaigns, content and brand, then found myself working more closely with client teams trying to solve one question: how do we actually win the clients that matter most?
ABM felt like the missing piece — strategy, creativity, data, storytelling and relationship-building, all combined. Once I saw it shaping real business conversations, I was convinced.
What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken in your ABM career, and did it pay off?
The biggest risk was backing quality over quantity. In a world where success is usually measured by bigger numbers, it’s uncomfortable to advocate for doing less but doing it better — more effort on fewer accounts.
It paid off. Focusing on the accounts and objectives that mattered most made impact easier to track and ROI easier to demonstrate.
What was your ‘lightbulb moment’ during the Academy course?
Realising that ABM isn’t a campaign.
It might sound obvious now, but it’s an entirely different way of thinking. The campaign is just the output. The real work is understanding people, aligning teams, building trust and solving real business problems.
Once I stopped thinking like a marketer running campaigns and started thinking like someone helping accounts make better decisions, everything clicked.
What’s in your ABM toolkit that you couldn’t live without – and what’s the most overrated thing everyone raves about?
A good account plan and insights from the teams working closest with the clients. Their knowledge of the account is gold.
The most overrated thing? Martech platforms and the idea that ABM starts with technology. Yes, technology makes ABM easier to scale, but it won’t make up for poor account selection, weak propositions or teams that aren’t aligned.
Fast-forward five years – what does success look like for you?
Success is being known as someone who helps businesses grow, not just someone who ‘does marketing’.
I’d love to be focused on commercial strategy where marketing is recognised as a driver of revenue, relationships and long-term value. Being able to build a bigger team around that shared objective would be the other marker of success — and if AI can take care of half the admin by then, I won’t complain.
If you could give aspiring ABM-ers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Instead of always trying to prove marketing’s value, start creating it.
Spend less time chasing perfect dashboards and more time sitting with stakeholders and client teams to understand what actually keeps our priority accounts up at night.
Final thoughts
Nour’s journey shows what ABM looks like when it’s done with real intention: fewer accounts, deeper relationships, and a relentless focus on the problems that matter most to clients. Her advice to stop proving marketing’s value and start creating it is a lesson worth carrying into any ABM programme.
Ready to start your own ABM journey? Get in touch with us or explore our ABM Academy courses to find the programme that’s right for you.
Read our previous Alumni Spotlight where we chatted to Claudia Pichlmeier, Senior Account Based Marketing Manager at Autodesk.
Find out more about our ABM Academy Alumni network.
