How do you rinse, repeat and scale?

There are a couple of ways to interpret this question. One way is process; how do you create a system that lets you operate efficiently, rinse, repeat, and scale? The second is growth; how do you expand from a few accounts to many while still doing “ABM”?

I’m going to start with the latter, because it lets me start off with a strong statement:

I Do Not Believe ABM Is Real or Effective As Originally Defined.

I’ve been doing digital marketing for a long time, in many different ways, and one thing marketers are exceptional at is reframing what we already do, giving it a new name when we’ve only made a small tweak. Email marketing became marketing automation. Now, really great targeting became ABM.

Early ABM had a couple of distinct features. At first, it often included literal 1:1 tactics, like sending custom physical packages to a specific person at a specific company. But over time, we got better at scaling those tactics digitally—and suddenly, we called it ABX (Account-Based Experience).

So what are we really talking about? It’s not ABM, it’s just really solid marketing with really solid targeting. And that’s something everyone should be doing.

Yes, ABM is more B2B-focused, and yes, selling iPhone cases on Instagram doesn’t map to ABM-style targeting in the same way. But the core principle—highly strategic, high-intent targeting—should be the standard for all sophisticated marketing.

So, Given That, How Do You Scale It?

I think about marketing the same way product managers think about products.

Every campaign and audience combination is a separate product.

Scaling ABM isn’t about running one play and making it bigger—it’s about building a system where you repeatedly test, optimize, and expand audience and campaign combinations.

1. Start with a strong initial audience-campaign fit—something you’re confident will perform.

2. Build the mechanisms, measurement, and execution for that audience.

3. Test, iterate, and optimize.

4. Once you’ve validated it, add the next audience or campaign.

5. Repeat. Again. And again.

Two Critical Things to Watch as You Scale:

1. Maintenance Costs – Every new campaign adds operational overhead (tracking, reporting, optimization). It only works if the ROI outweighs the upkeep.

2. Audience Overlap and Cannibalization – The more you scale, the greater the chance you start targeting the same people in multiple places. You have to manage cross-channel saturation and ensure new campaigns aren’t just stealing conversions from other efforts.

When you've achieved the right scale you then get to really have fun, something I've termed "moneyball marketing" which is a fancy way of saying constant tweaking.

At some point, you’ll max out one or more of these factors:

1. Total Addressable Market (TAM) – You run out of high-fit accounts.

2. Budget Ceiling – You need to justify more spend by proving incremental ROI.

3. Team Capacity – You don’t have enough hands to execute everything.

At this stage, your job is to fine-tune the balance between these constraints:

1. Find and test new audiences.

2. Justify more budget from Finance by proving ROI.

3. Optimize your team’s workflow, automation, and execution velocity.

Once you’ve built a scalable ABM engine, you’re no longer just marketing. You’re running a system that continuously finds, targets, and converts the best-fit buyers in a predictable way.

Some other things to think about:

Don't neglect your audiences, the rinse part also applies to stuff that's been out a while and getting stale, your audiences notice that and you'll lose efficiency.

Partner with the sales/revenue org on this. Great marketing of this type requires that side of the playbook to be just as good.

One aspect that ABM had is that super personal feel. AI can be a place you rediscover that with the broader scale I'm talking about here.

NOTHING is more important than measurement. You can't manage what you can't measure. All these campaigns are not going to work if you can't compare them apples to apples and really prioritize.

ABM isn’t some exclusive marketing methodology, it isn't fancy, it’s just high-quality targeting at scale. If you rinse, repeat, and scale effectively, it stops being just marketing and starts becoming a revenue engine. Really you're not making a campaign, you're building a system.

Hmm. I wrote all that answering my second interpretation and looking back I think it solves for both, so I'm going to stop here.