The Modern Agency's Account Based Growth Playbook

Why Should Agencies Care About ABS/ABM?

The traditional agency playbook often relies on generating a high volume of leads. While this has its place, the increasing market saturation and service homogeneity mean this approach yields diminishing returns. Facing intense competition often forces agencies into offer discounted prices that erode margins. It's becoming harder and more expensive just to get meetings with prospects who are bombarded with similar messages. If you'd like to read a detailed breakdown on why ABM makes sense for agencies, check out the article.

ABS/ABM offers a compelling alternative by directly addressing these core challenges:

• Solving the Differentiation Puzzle: In a sea of sameness, demonstrating deep understanding of a specific client's business becomes a powerful differentiator. ABM forces this deep dive, allowing you to tailor your approach and stand out based on insight, not just service checklists. This aligns with strategies like focusing intensely on the buyer's journey or strategically niching down. Going deep isn’t a choice, it’s the only option in a competitive market.
• Attracting Higher-Value Engagements: By focusing efforts on accounts identified as ideal fits (based on revenue potential, strategic alignment, etc.) ABM naturally steers the agency towards more substantial and potentially more profitable engagements. Focusing on the right accounts at an account level is logical for B2B success.
• Improving Client Retention: ABM isn't just for acquisition. The deep understanding gained during an ABM approach leads to smoother onboarding and stronger ongoing relationships. It aligns perfectly with the principles of Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM), applying focused effort to retain and grow your most valuable clients. Retaining clients is almost always more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, making this a critical benefit. A lifecycle-first approach, considering retention alongside acquisition, ensures sustainable growth.
• Driving Sustainable Growth: Moving away from unpredictable, volume-based lead flow towards targeted, high-value account acquisition and expansion creates a more stable and sustainable growth trajectory for the agency. The market is forcing a move away from volume-based outreach to quality.

Of course, adopting ABM isn't a magic bullet. It requires a shift in mindset, dedicated resources, and crucially, a strong alignment between sales and marketing. Challenges we'll explore throughout this guide. But the potential rewards of better clients, stronger relationships and improved profitability make it a strategic imperative worth serious consideration for any agency looking to thrive long-term.

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The Core Philosophy of ABS/ABM

At its heart, ABS/ABM operates on a few fundamental principles that distinguish it from traditional demand generation:

• Quality Over Quantity: Forget chasing thousands of leads. ABM prioritizes identifying and engaging a select list of high-potential accounts that represent the best fit and highest value for your agency. Resources are concentrated where they'll have the most impact. This is the key to breaking free from commoditization.
• Deep Research & Personalization: This is non-negotiable. ABM demands a thorough understanding of each target account. Namely, their business goals, challenges, industry landscape, key players and naturally their current marketing activities. This intelligence fuels hyper-personalized messaging, content and outreach that resonates far more effectively than generic campaigns. Buyers respond to hard work with reciprocity and reward insights with trust.
• Accounts as Markets of One: Each target account is treated as its own unique market, requiring a bespoke engagement strategy. The messaging, content, channel mix and even the specific offers are tailored to the specific context and needs of that single account (or a small cluster of very similar accounts in 1:Few models).
• Focus on High-Value Outcomes: ABM typically targets complex, higher-value deals where the investment in deep research and personalization yields a significant return. The goal isn't just a lead, it's a substantial, long-term client relationship. Guideline annual deal sizes often start around $50kk+ to justify the intensive effort.
• Sales and Marketing Partnership: ABM absolutely requires tight alignment and collaboration between sales and marketing teams. It's a unified effort, with both teams working from the same playbook, sharing insights, and coordinating actions to provide a seamless experience for the target account.

Understanding these principles is the first step towards shifting your agency's mindset from a broad, volume-based approach to a focused, value-driven account-based strategy.

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Building Your ABS/ABM Foundation

Laying the groundwork correctly is crucial for ABM success. It starts with clarity on who you should be targeting and why.

• Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Before you can target accounts, you need a crystal-clear definition of what your ideal agency client looks like. This includes basic firmographic information and more in-depth factors:
  
  • Industry/Niche
  • Company Size (Revenue, Employees)
  • Geographic Location
  • Technological Maturity (e.g. current MarTech stack)
  • Prospect marketing mix and maturity
  • Specific Business Challenges your agency excels at solving
  • Potential Deal Size / Lifetime Value
  • Cultural Fit / Strategic Alignment: This isn't just a marketing exercise so your ICP should reflect the clients where your agency delivers the most value and achieves the best results. These are often your most profitable and longest-retained clients. Use data from your CRM, analyze past successful deals, and gather input from both sales and client service teams to build a robust, data-driven ICP.
• Create Your Target Account List (TAL): The ICP provides the template and the TAL is the specific list of companies that fit the template that you will actively target with your ABX efforts. As mentioned, make sure to use various data sources to build this list: your CRM, sales team input, third-party data providers (offering firmographics, technographics and intent data) and competitive analysis. 
  
  • Intent data, signals which companies are actively researching solutions like yours, is particularly powerful for prioritization. 
  • Start realistically, especially in the beginning, focus on a manageable number of accounts where you have the resources to execute personalized campaigns effectively. 
  • Look for the low-hanging fruit. This can be found in the form of old opportunities, lost deals and your contacts lists.
• Tier Your Accounts: Not all target accounts warrant the same level of intense personalization. Tiering helps allocate resources effectively.
  
  • Tier 1 (Strategic 1:1): A very small number of highest-value, strategic accounts receive bespoke, one-to-one marketing and sales efforts. Think custom research, highly personalized content and at times executive engagement. Typically requiring an annual deal size of >$100k.
  • Tier 2 (Scaled 1:Few): Small clusters of accounts with similar characteristics or challenges receive lightly customized campaigns. Messaging and content are tailored to the cluster's shared attributes. Suitable for mid-tier opportunities, perhaps $50k-$100k+ annually.
  • Tier 3 (Programmatic 1:Many): Broader reach using ABM technology to personalize at scale, often focusing on specific personas or segments within a larger list of accounts. Less resource-intensive but still targeted. For most mid-sized agencies starting out, focusing on Tier 1 and Tier 2 is the most practical approach.
• Gather Deep Account Intelligence: Once you have your TAL and tiers, the deep research begins. Go beyond surface-level data. Understand the account's strategic priorities, recent news, financial performance, key initiatives, competitive landscape, organizational structure and the specific pain points related to marketing. Analyze their existing marketing efforts. What channels are they using, what content are they producing and where are they spending ad budget? Tools and public information (company websites, annual reports, LinkedIn, news articles) are essential here. Services designed to aid agencies with deep prospect research and personalization can significantly streamline this process. Ortium, for example, automates account research and helps find insights.

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The Engine of ABX: Sales & Marketing Alignment

We cannot stress this enough: Account-Based Growth does not work without true Sales and Marketing alignment. It’s not just desirable; it’s foundational. When these teams operate in silos, ABM efforts falter, leading to inconsistent messaging, wasted resources and frustration.

This is often the biggest internal hurdle. Sales might be skeptical of marketing's "list" and marketing might feel sales isn't following up appropriately. Bridging this gap requires deliberate effort and leadership commitment.

Achieving alignment isn't just about having occasional meetings. It requires structural and process changes:

• Shared Goals & KPIs: Both teams must be measured against the same account-based objectives, such as target account engagement, pipeline generated from the TAL, deal velocity within the TAL and ultimately, revenue won from target accounts. This shifts the focus from individual team metrics (like MQLs for marketing or call volume for sales) to revenue generating activities.
• Joint Planning & Strategy: Sales and marketing must collaborate from the very beginning on defining the ICP, selecting target accounts, developing messaging and planning campaign tactics. Sales insights into account dynamics are invaluable for marketing, and marketing's understanding of buyer journeys informs sales outreach.
• Defined Roles & Responsibilities: Clearly outline who does what in the ABM process. Who owns the research? Who creates the content? Who executes outreach on which channels? Who manages the account relationship? Clarity prevents duplication and ensures accountability.
• Regular & Structured Communication: Implement consistent communication cadences such as weekly syncs, shared dashboards, dedicated Slack channels to discuss progress, share insights, provide feedback and coordinate activities for specific accounts.
• Centralized Technology (CRM is King): Your CRM should be the single source of truth for all information related to target accounts. Contacts, activities, engagement history and deal status. Both teams need access and must commit to keeping it updated. If you decide to use other tools like marketing automation or ABM platforms, efficient integration with the CRM is critical to avoid data silos.
• Leadership Buy-in & Enforcement: Alignment needs to be championed from the top. Agency leadership must actively support and enforce collaborative processes.

Getting sales onboard early is key. Involve them in the strategy, show them how ABM insights can make their outreach more effective, and celebrate joint wins. When sales sees ABM helping them hit their numbers with better-fit clients, adoption follows.

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Executing Your ABS/ABM Strategy: Bringing it to Life

With the foundation laid and alignment established, execution focuses on personalized engagement across the right channels.

• Personalization at Scale: This is where the deep research pays off. Ortium, for instance, helps automate research and create personalized lead magnets.
  
  • Tailored Messaging: Craft value propositions and outreach messages that speak directly to the specific challenges, goals, or initiatives identified for each target account or persona within that account. Reference their marketing tactics and strategies, recent news and inferred pain points. Avoid generic agency-speak.
  • Customized Content: Develop content specifically for your target accounts or tiers. This could include:
    
    • Industry-specific case studies
    • Personalized landing pages or microsites
    • Bespoke ROI calculators or assessment tools
    • Account-specific webinars or workshops
    • Tailored pitch decks
  • Balancing Personalization & Scalability: True 1:1 personalization is resource-intensive. For 1:Few or 1:Many tiers leverage technology and content frameworks that allow for customization without starting from scratch for every account. Focus personalization efforts on the most critical touchpoints and highest-value accounts.
• Multi-Channel Orchestration: Engage target accounts where they are, using a coordinated mix of channels.
  
  • Channel Mix: Common channels include:
    
    • Email: Highly personalized sequences, not mass blasts.
    • LinkedIn: For insights and targeted outreach/InMail, targeted ads.
    • Targeted Digital Ads: Programmatic display or social ads focused specifically on your TAL.
    • Website Personalization: Dynamically changing website content or calls-to-action for visitors from target accounts.
    • Direct Mail / Gifting: High-impact, personalized physical items to cut through digital noise and build relationships.
    • Virtual & In-Person Events: Targeted invitations to webinars, workshops, or exclusive events.
  • Coordination: Ensure touchpoints are sequenced logically and consistently across channels, managed collaboratively by sales and marketing. Avoid bombarding accounts with uncoordinated messages.
• Sales Engagement: Equip your sales team (even if it's just one rep initially!) to execute the ABS component effectively.
  
  • Insight-Driven Outreach: Provide sales reps with concise summaries of account research, key talking points and relevant personalized content. Ortium helps sales reps research and present valuable insights.
  • Consultative Approach: Train reps to lead with insights and questions based on research, positioning themselves as strategic advisors rather than just service sellers.
  • Leverage Engagement Signals: Use data from marketing automation and ABM platforms to inform sales outreach timing and messaging.

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Structuring Your Agency Team for ABS/ABM Success

How you organize your team can significantly impact your ABM program's effectiveness. There's no single perfect structure, especially for a mid-sized agency, but consider these models and principles:

• Potential Structures:
  
  • Dedicated ABM Pod/Squad: A small, cross-functional team pulled from marketing, sales and potentially content/creative, focused solely on planning and executing ABM campaigns (often starting with a pilot). This fosters tight collaboration but requires dedicated resources.
  • Integrated Roles: ABM responsibilities are embedded within existing marketing and sales roles. This requires less structural change but demands extremely strong processes, clear communication protocols, and defined ownership to prevent ABM from becoming a side project.
  • Matrix Structure: Individuals report to their functional managers (e.g. Head of Marketing, Sales Director) but also have dotted-line responsibility to an ABM program lead or council. For an agency with 50 or more people, starting with a dedicated pilot 'pod' involving key marketing folks, sales reps and perhaps a senior strategist or content lead often makes sense. It allows for testing the waters without disrupting the entire organization immediately.
• Key Roles & Skills Needed (even if covered by people wearing multiple hats):
  
  • Strategy Lead (often leadership)
  • Marketing Operations
  • Content Creator/Strategist
  • Channel Experts
  • Sales Representatives
  • Sales/Marketing Liaison
  • (Optional) Data Analyst
• Core Principles: Regardless of structure, success depends on:
  
  • Clear Roles & Responsibilities
  • Defined Communication Flows
  • Adaptability
  • Scalability

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Equipping Your Team: The ABS/ABM Technology Stack

(ABS Expert Perspective): While ABM is fundamentally a strategy, technology is a powerful enabler for executing it effectively and efficiently, especially when aiming for any degree of scale. Building the right tech stack is important but remember that nailing the strategy first is more important and if budget is a limiting factor, technology doesn’t need to hold you back from getting started.

Key categories and examples of tools relevant for agencies include:

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Central hub for all account/contact data, interactions, pipeline management. Essential for Sales-Marketing alignment (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive etc).
• Marketing Automation): Execute email campaigns, automate workflows, nurture leads at an account-level and track engagement (e.g. HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Marketo Engage).
• ABM Platforms: Purpose-built for ABM: account identification, intent data, orchestration, targeted ads, analytics (e.g. Demandbase, 6sense, Terminus, RollWorks, N.Rich, Metadata.io).
• Sales Intelligence & Data Enrichment: Provide firmographic, technographic, contact, and intent data to identify and understand target accounts (e.g. ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clearbit, UserGems, Lusha etc).
• Website Personalization Tools: Dynamically tailor website content, CTAs, or experiences for visitors from target accounts (e.g. Mutiny, Uberflip, Folloze, Hushly, Turtl, Unbounce, HubSpot CMS).
• Sales Engagement Platforms (SEPs): Help sales teams execute, manage and track personalized outreach sequences  through multiple channels like email, phone, social (e.g. Outreach, Lemlist, Instantly).
• Direct Mail & Gifting Platforms: Automate sending personalized physical mailers or gifts to target accounts (e.g. Sendoso, Reachdesk, Postal.com).
• Analytics & Reporting Tools: Measure ABM-specific metrics, track ROI, visualize performance (often built into CRM/MAP/ABM platforms e.g. HubSpot, Salesforce, Demandbase, 6sense).

Key Considerations:

• Integration is Paramount: Tools must talk to each other, especially feeding data into and out of the CRM.
• Start Foundational: Ensure your CRM is clean and well-utilized first.
• Choose Based on Needs & Budget: Evaluate tools based on your specific ABM strategy.
• Don't Rely Solely on Tools: Technology enables the strategy; it doesn't replace the need for smart planning and quality content.

The tech stack can feel overwhelming. Start with what you have, likely a CRM and maybe marketing automation, ensure it's used effectively for account tracking and only invest in new tools when you have a clear problem they solve and can demonstrate the potential ROI.

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Measuring Success: Moving Beyond Vanity Metrics

Measuring ABM success requires a fundamental shift away from traditional volume-based metrics towards metrics that reflect engagement quality, relationship depth and revenue impact within your specific target accounts.

While engagement is important, you ultimately need to understand the impact on pipeline, deal size, win rates and client retention.

Here are the key metrics your agency should track for ABX:

• Target Account Engagement: Are the right people at your target accounts interacting with your marketing and sales efforts?
• Account Coverage / Penetration: How deeply are you reaching within your target accounts?
• Pipeline Velocity: How quickly are deals with target accounts moving through your sales pipeline?
• Average Deal Size / Contract Value (ACV): Are deals won from your TAL larger than your average deal?
• Win Rate (within TAL): What percentage of opportunities generated within your target accounts are you closing?
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Compare the CLTV of clients acquired through ABM versus other methods.
• Account Retention Rate: Track the retention rate specifically for clients within your TAL.
• Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs): Instead of individual MQLs, track entire accounts that show significant engagement and buying signals from multiple stakeholders.

Calculating ROI:

The ultimate measure is Return on Investment (ROI).

• ABM ROI = (Revenue from ABM Deals - Total ABM Investment Cost) / Total ABM Investment Cost
• Remember to factor in your profit margins in when calculating payback periods

Be meticulous about tracking all costs associated with your ABM program. Use your CRM and any other reporting to track revenue specifically attributed to target accounts.

Start tracking these metrics early, even in a pilot phase. Demonstrating positive trends in engagement, pipeline velocity or meetings booked with target accounts can build the case for continued investment before large revenue numbers materialize. Regular reporting and analysis are key to optimizing your strategy.

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Getting Started: Practical First Steps for Your Agency

Embarking on ABM can feel daunting, but you don't need to boil the ocean. A pragmatic, phased approach is usually best for agencies.

• Secure Leadership Buy-In: ABM requires a strategic commitment. Ensure agency leadership understands the rationale, the required investment (time and money) and the expected shift in focus. Frame it as a solution to key business challenges like differentiation and profitable growth.
• Start Small with a Pilot Program: Don't try to implement ABM across the entire agency at once. Launch a focused pilot targeting a small, manageable number of high-value accounts (e.g.15-25 Tier 1 or a single Tier 2 cluster) with a clear, measurable objective.
• Build Your Pilot Team: Assemble your cross-functional ABM pod/squad for the pilot. Ensure clear roles and regular communication.
• Focus on Foundational Elements: Get the basics right for your pilot: define the ICP for the pilot accounts, build the TAL, conduct deep research, establish sales-marketing alignment processes for the pilot and select initial metrics.
• Start with low-hanging fruit wherever possible: this can include old opportunities, lost deals, old project clients, small clients for expansion and converted contact lists.
• Execute & Learn: Run the pilot campaign (typically 90-120 days). Track your agreed-upon metrics diligently. Hold regular reviews to discuss what's working, what's not and gather feedback from sales and marketing.
• Measure & Report: Analyze the pilot results against the initial objectives. Focus on demonstrating progress and learnings, even if significant revenue hasn't closed yet. Build a concise report showcasing the impact (e.g., increased engagement, meetings booked, pipeline created).
• Iterate & Scale: Use the pilot learnings to refine your approach. If successful, build a business case for expanding the program to target more accounts, investing in additional technology, advertising or dedicating more resources. ABM is a long-term strategy, not a one-off campaign.

The pilot is crucial for managing risk and demonstrating value internally. It allows you to learn and adapt before making larger commitments. Success here builds the confidence needed to scale.

Conclusion: Embracing the Account-Based Future

In today's agency landscape, simply offering good services isn't enough. You need to be a strategic partner, demonstrating deep understanding and delivering tailored value. While it demands a significant shift in thinking and operations, ABS/ABM provides a clear pathway to achieve that, moving away from the commoditization trap towards more profitable, sustainable growth built on strong client relationships.

Account-Based Sales and Marketing isn't just a trend, it's a strategic imperative for B2B organizations, including marketing agencies that want to win and retain high-value clients. The principles are clear: focus on the right accounts, personalize relentlessly, align sales and marketing and measure what matters. The journey requires commitment, collaboration and the right enabling technology, but the potential rewards such as higher ROI, increased deal sizes, improved retention and true differentiation are substantial. This is why we built Ortium specifically for agencies to make ABM accessible and improve efficiency in the process.

Implementing ABS/ABM is a journey, not a destination. Start smart, focus on alignment and personalization, measure your progress rigorously and be prepared to learn and adapt. By embracing an account-based approach, your agency can build a stronger, more resilient future in an increasingly competitive market.