Going from SMMA to an ABM Agency - Shawna Tregunna, CEO & Chief Strategist of Acclivity

Today’s episode welcomes Shawna Tregunna, CEO and Chief Strategist of Acclivity - a B2B marketing agency specializing in Account-Based Marketing, Content Marketing, Earned Media and Virtual Marketing. Their focus market consists of manufacturers, IoT providers, and innovative technologies.

Acclivity has been active for almost 4 years, but it’s not Shawnas first agency venture. Her first agency came to be due to the explosion of Twitter back in the day. She was an early adopter, making noise on the platform and experimenting with a variety of formats until she was approached by an investor that saw an early opportunity in social media and chose Shawna to pioneer the SMMA movement. She ran that agency for 7 years up until a client decided to buy the agency, giving Shawna her first exit.

Her current agency started during COVID, when the world went fully virtual and social media became an even bigger part of how brands get their message to potential clients. Shawna couldn’t idly stand by while businesses that have close to 0 social media expertise were now thrown into a new world, so she started Acclivity to put her years of experience to great use. They’ve now expanded their service offering to include account based marketing, which is one of the hottest marketing strategies in B2B.

The first ideal client profile that Shawna pursued was other agencies that were looking to add social to their marketing offering. This helped her grow tremendously, as her clients book of business would also become her book of business, allowing for a huge increase in their overall reach and industry knowledge. She also approached clients as partnerships, helping increase her nearbound circle and organically grow her referral network.

Going viral shouldn’t always be the goal, but that’s a tough sell as an SMMA. Shawna’s first challenges arose when clients would expect a huge dose of vanity metrics across the board with every engagement, which led to a lot of misalignment between her agency and clients. Nowadays, most B2B companies understand that virality isn’t the best metric to gauge the success of an SMMA engagement, but there’s still many that expect likes and comments to be the North Star, which simply doesn’t make sense when selling into technical folks that aren’t chronically online.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how Shawna pioneered the SMMA movement and transitioned into ABM!

HIGHLIGHTS: 

01:16 First Agency to exit
03:31 The birth of Acclivity
06:04 How Shawna grew her agency
09:01 The challenges of growing an SMMA
12:31 Thriving in a data-driven world
16:40 Tips for selling your agency
18:31 Grow through ABM

Connect with Shawna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnaactually/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/