Stumped on how to choose an ABM agency? Our UK Agencies Benchmarking Report featured some of the best in the region. Check out everything from the agencies who cracked the top five to some interesting insights revealed from our experts, case studies and more.
First off, when we surveyed 83 UK agencies, 19 of them said ABM was one of their top three specialisms. That means nearly a quarter of agencies are making ABM a strategic priority but in turn that means a majority of agencies are not.
Robert Norum, Propolis ABM Expert, said: “It’s interesting to see that just over 22% of agencies see ABM as one of their top three specialisms as this is the exact percentage of budget that companies are investing in ABM, according to the Inflexion Group’s ABM Benchmarking Study 2024. I suspect that many more agencies are delivering ABM for their clients without necessarily seeing it as a ‘top 3’ specialism.”
And Robert would be correct here – when we looked at the data, 60% of UK agencies (while not all of them said it was their top specialism) offered ABM capabilities to some capacity. This is also interesting as according to the same study from the Inflexion Group, over half of respondents are seeing their percentage spend on ABM increase in 2025. Seeing our two stats align, I think it’s safe to say we predict further growth in the sector.
But what about the agencies who nabbed the top ABM spots? Bearing in mind these were ranked by overall gross income, Twogether was named the #1 ABM specialists with a gross income of 16.3 with Ledger Bennett coming in at #2 with a gross income of 14.6. So while these were the top earning agencies, it’s important to note their gross income was also coming from activities outside of ABM. So apart from these metrics, what makes these types of ABM agencies stand out?
Robert said: “The ideal ABM agency needs to understand sales and marketing equally well. It helps if they have a flexible and entrepreneurial approach and the ability to really ask the tough questions to define the right strategy and approach by account or segment. A really good ABM agency will be comfortable working anywhere on the continuum from brand positioning to industry marketing and demand gen – and they need to be able to really understand their clients’ business objectives to deliver the optimal ABM approach.”
Check out the top five below:
A word from our report’s ABM specialist: Ice Blue Sky
Now that we established what makes these ABM agencies so great, let’s break down some more ABM stats we discovered. We got the chance to speak with Charlotte Graham-Cumming, CEO, Ice Blue Sky and we delved into some interesting insights around the types of ABM. Following our 2024 B2B Marketing Awards, we fed all our submissions for ‘Best use of ABM’ category into an AI tool for a full analysis.
Interestingly enough, 40% of entries were in the 1:1 space, 25% were in the 1:few space, and 35% were in the 1:many space. So what does this say about the current state of ABM? Charlotte suspected that marketers are finally understanding the benefit of targeting on a 1:1 level with existing customers which is why it might’ve outnumbered the rest. Whereas 1:many ABM is effective when multiple accounts share characteristics of a broader scope and 1:few is often used in lieu of 1:1 ABM.
Charlotte said: “I do think there are more tools emerging (check out our ABM tech report here) that are making it easier for people to do that personalisation to a good quality level at scale. So I think, for me, I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future, the ratio between 1:few and 1:many switches around.”
Want more insight around this very topic? Charlotte shares a tonne more in our agency report so do check it out here if you want to find out more about ABM agencies in the UK.
