---
title: "How Much Should an Account-Based Marketing Campaign Cost?"
date: 2025-09-26
author: "The ABM Agency"
featured_image: "https://abmagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AdobeStock_187293733-3-scaled-e1642601247345.jpeg"
categories:
  - name: "Uncategorized"
    url: "/category/uncategorized.md"
---

# How Much Should an Account-Based Marketing Campaign Cost?

## Everyone Defines ABM Differently, So How Much Should I Expect an ABM Campaign to Cost?

Depending on the size of your business and the accounts you target, the cost of your [ABM campaigns](https://abmagency.com/account-based-marketing/) can vary greatly. The [Forrester 2019 State of Account-Based Marketing Study](https://www.forrester.com/blogs/abm-budgets-study-findings/) found that the “average ABM budget was around $350,000 (excluding headcount costs). For pilot programs, the budget is understandably lower – averaging about $200,000 – while more mature programs that have proven value have a budget of about $600,000. Very large organizations with established programs can have budgets of up to millions of dollars.”[\[1\]](https://www.forrester.com/blogs/abm-budgets-study-findings/)

While the numbers may appear large, the number of factors and skills required for successful [ABM initiatives](https://abmagency.com/account-based-marketing/) continues to grow. For example, in 2017, it was possible to engage in buying scenarios with only one or two buyers to target. Today, these represent only 18% of purchases, while a large majority of buying teams have five or more people across multiple departments involved in the process.[\[2\]](#_ftn2) As a result, the demand for account-based marketing increases exponentially as B2B organizations attempt to close sales by reaching specific accounts with tailored advertising addressing the buyers’ unique pain points.

### ![](https://abmagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AdobeStock_164646605-300x200.jpeg)

### *The landscape of B2B marketing has changed*

It is no secret that the pandemic drastically changed how we do business. Understandably, it has also changed the way businesses reach new clients. As we move into 2022, marketing budgets have seen increases as more and more interaction with potential buyers happens online.

Forrester found that 70 percent of organizations expected the $350,000 average cost to rise between 2020 and today, and indeed, it has. Full-service account-based marketing now encompasses marketing, content, creative, and sales departments. In addition, agencies can now generate account or opportunity scores based on anonymous interactions from key accounts. High opportunity accounts are then explicitly targeted to improve sales and dramatically increase marketing ROI. As a result, data-driven insights prove critical to successful ABM initiatives for businesses.

### ![](https://abmagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AdobeStock_164646664-300x200.jpeg)

### *Looking at the cost-per-value of ABM initiatives*

The cost of an ABM initiative should not deter your business from considering one. On the contrary, studies have shown that a well-conceived ABM strategy significantly impacts ROI, proving the value of account-based marketing.

When working with a full-service account-based marketing agency like us, you are benefiting from years of experience with campaigns, a team of experts in their respective fields, lower overhead costs, as well as a top-to-bottom funnel approach to drive more opportunity-to-sales. While an in-house team can certainly accomplish aspects of ABM and can provide results, working with an ABM agency with documented experience in your market can guarantee results from leveraging technology, expert analysis of analytics and data, as well as market understanding.

### ![](https://abmagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AdobeStock_164646659-300x200.jpeg)

### *Five key components to consider when valuing the ABM model*

While multiple considerations can determine the cost of an ABM initiative, we find these five key components the most important to consider.

**1. Agency**  
First and foremost, the agency you decide to work with is critical to the price you pay. However, this isn’t because some agencies simply charge more than others. Instead, experience, team expertise, and services offered are the main factors in agency prices. A “budget” agency could, over time, actually cost you more than a more expensive agency, if it takes twice, three times, four times, etc., longer to see an ROI on the initial investment.

Of the three factors that affect agency pricing, the most critical consideration is what the agency does and will do for you for your budget. As ABM grows and the number of agencies increases, a wide variety of services and disparate quality of service have emerged. Many agencies may call themselves full-service ABM, but when you investigate further, it turns out they work primarily with Pilot and [1:Many ABM campaigns](https://abmagency.com/account-based-marketing/) but do very little for 1:Few or 1:1 ABM campaigns. Yet 1:Few and 1:1 is what you are looking for when searching for *account-based* marketing.

While these agencies may be excellent at determining opportunity accounts, they have little skill or experience in creating targeted campaigns to turn the opportunity into a sale. Furthermore, agencies embracing omnichannel marketing orchestrate coordinated campaigns to target accounts on the right channel at the right time, contributing to higher ROIs. Therefore, it is crucial to find an agency, like us, that offers an ABM service that works within the entire sales funnel.

If your goal is to target desirable accounts, track their progress through the funnel, and bring them to a sale, investing in a full-service account-based marketing agency that *actually* does this, is critical. Our objective is to find the opportunity accounts within our clients’ ICP, track their progress through the sales funnel, assign account scores based on interactions, and target buyers with 1:1 campaigns. Our method continues to produce high ROI for our clients, and as we continue to evolve with new technology and capabilities, we expect to continue to produce industry-leading results.

**2. Target Accounts**  
The accounts targeted are a factor in the price of your [ABM initiative](https://abmagency.com/account-based-marketing/). You may have a general initiative with an ABM agency that works to drive interest. However, when an account within your ICP moves down the funnel, a 1:1 campaign becomes crucial to make the sale. The value of the potential contract impacts the maximum your company can invest to earn that contract. These investments are most often in addition to the cost of your overarching ABM campaign. Therefore, this factor can drastically alter the annual cost of your [ABM services](https://abmagency.com/account-based-marketing/) depending on your size and the client you are targeting.

It is important to note that the cost of your 1:1 campaign is determined by which advertising methods and platforms are used, as well as the number of buyers to target across platforms. For example, company A has a potential contract value of $800,000 and your company decides that your max investment for a 1:1 campaign will be $8,000. Whereas company B has a contract value of $1.5 million, and your company decides the max investment will be $30,000. [](#_ftn3) However, 1:1 campaigns are most often reported between $5,000 and $30,000 to target a single account.

So why then are 1:Few and 1:1 campaigns necessary? Both campaigns seek to target specific members of the buying committee at specific target accounts. Due to this targeting approach, ABM allows you to personalize your advertising messaging personas — serving them relevant information to both their role and current position in the sales funnel. Therefore, partnering with an agency adept at metric analytics and targeting specific accounts is crucial to the success of the 1:Few and 1:1 campaigns engaged.

Also important to note, if the agency you are working with is not a leader in 1:Few or 1:1 campaigns, the money invested in these campaigns may not result in a high, or any, ROI. Be sure to research the results of these specific campaigns when looking for an agency if these are the types of campaigns you plan to run. We have an average ROI of 9x initial investment on annual initiatives because we are full-service, data-driven, and experts in the industries we work.

**3. Brand Awareness and Competition**  
This factor depends largely on your business when you begin the ABM campaign. For many B2B companies, their brand awareness isn’t high. In other words, some of your desired buyers may be aware of your services, but they are not aware of how your services would solve their particular pain points. Furthermore, if your competition has already engaged an ABM initiative, they may be receiving far more interest from your potential buyers than you are and closing more sales.

In these cases, the initial aspects of the sales funnel are emphasized at the beginning of your campaign, adding another layer to your account-based marketing initiative. Next, you and the agency you’ve selected will need to develop a plan to move your audience down the sales funnel. ABM campaigns are built to personalize the message advertised by persona and by which stage of the sales funnel the buyer is in. This could mean more advertisements across more platforms and other types of marketing to attract potential clients *before* your ABM agency can begin to dig into targeting specific accounts within your.

**4. Marketing Strategies**  
As we mentioned above, not all account-based marketing agencies are created equal, nor are the campaigns they employ. Opt to go with a limited-services agency, and you may be responsible for developing and managing your own initiative as well as hiring freelancers or employing creative people to create deliverables. Initially, it may seem that managing these items yourself will generate savings on ABM services. However, the long-term costs of managing your campaign in-house far outweigh the initial costs of hiring a full-service ABM agency.

When managing your own campaigns and hiring talent to complete deliverables, other projects can fall to the wayside as the amount of responsibility on your employees increases. Additionally, the average tenure for marketing professionals is a little over two years with a company. The effort necessary to hire, train, and update new personnel on your existing campaigns eats up a large amount of time every time it must be done. In comparison, you receive regular status updates and a team of experts who are specifically responsible for your campaign with an agency. Furthermore, with an agency, you should not have to deal with any turnover-related issues and can be confident that the agency is dedicated to producing ROI results for your company.

**5. Technology**  
Finally, the technology employed contributes to the cost of your campaigns. Companies that succeed in account-based marketing heavily leverage technology that enables precision and highly customized strategies. While you may have your own tech-stack in place, agencies may suggest or require additional tech components to gather all the data possible. Regardless of what technology is used, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are rising as critical features. These features can provide increased insight into the audience, industry-specific recommendations, and pinpoint accounts in the sales funnel.

Our tech integrations and our expert knowledge on data-based systems. Through our tech partnerships and leveraging your existing tech-stack, we gather data and connect that data in ways other agencies do not. This is crucial when you consider that buyers are researching at work and away from work on personal accounts. We connect this data to provide a complete picture of the buyers in the sales funnel and their exact pain points. We have produced ROIs of 9x our clients’ initial investments for annual services because we leverage technology heavily and use it to provide and analyze metrics regularly.

Our strategy creates spectacular results for our clients and, more importantly, extremely valuable data that increases opportunity-to-sale immediately and over time. This is possible because our tech-stack integration allows us to identify which accounts are moving through the sales funnel and personalize messaging based on the unique pain points the organization is experiencing. In short – we ensure your client sees you solution on the channels they are using.

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In conclusion, an ABM initiative can vary largely in cost. However, the cost itself should not determine which agency you work with or if you work with anyone. Bottom line: an ABM agency that grows based on their performance for clients is far more likely to provide exceptional ABM services than your own in-house marketing team. Among other reasons, this is because account-based marketing is the service their business is built upon. That expertise comes at a cost. But through diligent research, you can choose the best agency for your budget, the services you require, and for the outcome you desire.

We are here to serve as your partner in ABM. We know every company is unique, and we strive to provide a highly personalized level of service that produces results. We would love to connect with you and help create an account-based marketing initiative that delivers! Check out our free [ROI Calculator](https://abmagency.com/roi-calculator/) to see what we can do for you.[](#_ftnref1)