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Elevating Agriculture:

Vertical Farming Agri-tech projects 51:1 ROI from ABM Strategy.

The success story of our Account Based Marketing Strategy for agri-tech scale-up Intelligent Growth Solutions. The results speak for themselves:

To convert prospects into loyal advocates, it takes your whole marketing, sales and product team to actively listen and collaborate to serve the right content and value, at the right time.

Innovative vertical farming pioneers Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) approached us with this very challenge, appointing us to lead EU go-to-market expansion and help improve sales and marketing alignment.

The IGS team had great potential, including strong leadership and the proactive support of board members. They had raised significant series B funding, had a positive revenue to funding ratio, and were fortunate to be in the position of having too many potential leads. 

A large number of leads could be seen as a positive, but IGS were keen to narrow their focus to ensure they are engaging with the right customers, and reducing the amount of time, energy, and money spent on qualifying/chasing too many leads.

There was a lack of alignment between the sales and marketing teams, right down to a lack of shared language and understanding of process.

Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) is a pioneering company in the field of vertical farming and agri-tech. IGS offers innovative solutions to address the challenges of traditional agriculture.

Their core technology revolves around vertical farming systems that enable the efficient cultivation of crops indoors, making use of advanced LED lighting, automation, and data analytics.

IGS is committed to sustainable food production by reducing the environmental impact of agriculture. They emphasise resource efficiency, including water and energy conservation, and the reduction of pesticides and herbicides.

The company’s solutions are scalable and adaptable, making them suitable for various applications, from commercial agriculture to research and development.

With a focus on cutting-edge technology and sustainable practices, Intelligent Growth Solutions is revolutionising the way we grow and consume food, contributing to food security and environmentally responsible farming practices.

IGS chief marketing officer : Andy Penfold

“It became very evident early in the interview process that not only did Zebra Growth have the skills and knowledge we were looking for but that they really cared about the business.

They are the right cultural fit for us. We are a very fast-growing business striving to do great things in the world. Zebra Growth fit with how we want to do business and how we want to interact with people and build relationships.

The team at Zebra Growth will work with us to build a comprehensive account-based marketing strategy. Drawing on their experience in the market, Zebra Growth will then help execute that strategy in Europe, while providing support to allow it to be executed elsewhere in the world.”

ZG Regenerative Growth Director: Moh Al-Haifi

“We’re facing a huge food crisis around the world and we are honoured to be partnering with IGS to help them scale up effectively to make the biggest impact possible in food systems change.

There are billions of people unable to eat properly, without access to healthy fresh produce and that is getting worse as the population grows. The effect of food on climate change is a big issue which is going to become a catastrophic problem and we are very proud to be playing our part in helping IGS tackle that situation.

We combine our Growth Hacking expertise with social impact objectives and our purpose is to bridge the gap between social impact and the next generation of conscious leaders like IGS, who are focused on the planet and its people.”

During our collaborative discovery phase with IGS, we celebrated the areas where they were excelling and identified opportunities for enhancement:

  • Expanding Demand Generation resources into Europe, ME, and APAC.
  • Developing a more targeted Demand Generation engine.
  • Focusing on immense opportunities for growth.
  • Enhancing their strategic marketing plan for precise market targeting.
  • Strengthening alignment between sales and marketing.
  • Implementing a performance tracking/analytics dashboard for actionable insights.

We uncovered these opportunities using:

  • Marketing & Sales audits, evaluating current tactics, tech stack, and results to uncover areas for improvements, identify quick wins, and diagnose the reasons behind team disconnects.
  • Lego Serious Play facilitated workshops with IGS sales & marketing stakeholders.
  • Surveys of the wider team members.

Why ABM?

Fewer wasted resources
Shorter sales cycles
Coordinated & meaningful touch points with your ideal customers
Hyper focused thought leadership and sales content that adds value
Better sales & marketing alignment
Higher NPs Score
Clearer ROI

ABM Demand Gen Cycle

The Main Difference: The Funnel. Flip It!

Foundational Phase: ABM Growth Marketing Strategy

  • Marketing Objectives and Key Results
(with a focus on a purpose-led northstar KPI)
  • UX and website funnel audit & recommendations
  • Created core content pillar strategy that focused on both SEO optimisation and thought leadership
  • Overview of an account-based marketing funnel & core KPIs needing to track within the funnel
  • Defined core personas & channels
  • ABM Engagement score creation
  • Created Tech stack → ABM tracking as core CRM
  • A roadmap to prioritise key levers (starting with quick wins and foundational elements)
  • A process to help run monthly experiments based on roadmap
  • Project management set up to allow for an agile marketing function

Growth Phase: Growth cycle management & execution

  • Campaign and hypothesis planning and documentation
  • Campaign & hypothesis test creation (design, copy, email automation, online advertising, landing pages, media, webinar series) 
  • Campaign & hypothesis test implementation & management (design, copy, email automation, online advertising, landing page creation, media creation, webinar series) 
  • Growth Cycle Report (monthly)


Sustain Phase: A post-project phase

  • Leaving sufficient resources to continue delivering effective growth cycles in-house. Benefits assessment – comparing the initial hypothesis (benefits roadmap) with the actual benefits generated.
  • Created and supplied playbooks future in-house growth activities.

The results speak for themselves

Where an ABM campaign is a first or secondary touchpoint

Percentage of our audience who has watched a video on LinkedIn

Increase in new website users

Across LinkedIn, Meta, Google Search Display & YouTube

Ready to reduce sales cycles while growing your impact?