Playbook · Complete blueprint

Fundz for Marketing and PR Agencies

A complete blueprint for B2B marketing agencies, PR firms, and performance/paid-media agencies using Fundz to find new clients at the moment they need agency help — and run signal-anchored account-based campaigns for existing clients.

One Fundz signal → three coordinated agency motions in the same week. That's signal-anchored ABM.

The job to be done

Agencies grow on two parallel motions. New business: finding companies at the moment they're considering an agency change — right after a funding round, on the heels of a new CMO, or coming out of a launch with no in-house GTM lead. Existing client work: running account-based campaigns where signal-anchored targeting beats generic ABM lists by a wide margin.

Fundz turns both into a daily inbox. New-business prospects surface ICP-matched and signal-anchored. For client campaigns, every signal type can be turned into a Mandate that feeds your account-based strategy with fresh, real-time triggers.

Who this playbook is for

Demand-gen and B2B marketing agencies — HubSpot/Marketo expertise, lead gen, full-funnel demand work. Use Fundz both for new-business prospecting and for client account-based programs.
PR and brand agencies — storytelling, media relations, launch comms. Use Fundz to find companies in launch or funding moments who need PR support and to identify reporters and decision-makers tied to specific events.
Performance and paid-media agencies — paid social, paid search, programmatic. Use Fundz to identify newly-funded companies with budget who need scaled paid media and to track competitive client campaigns.

Quick start — first 30 minutes

Step 1: Configure notifications for new-business prospecting

Visit /account/email-notifications and verify Daily Email Alerts is on. Event types that matter most: Funding Rounds, Executive Hires (CMO/VP Marketing specifically), Product Launches, Acquisitions.

Step 2: Save Mandates for both motions

Save 2–3 Mandates for new-business prospecting (companies that need an agency) and 1 Mandate per active client engagement (signals affecting their account-based campaign). See Mandate setups section.

Step 3: Build separate Watchlists

Open /watchlist and build two lists: 50–100 prospect companies for new business, plus your active client accounts and their target customer companies for ABM work.

Step 4: Connect your CRM and team Slack

Visit /account/connectors. Connect HubSpot or Salesforce (Pro+) for new-business lead routing. Connect Slack for real-time team alerts on client-relevant signals (e.g., "client's target company just funded — let's pitch a campaign extension").

How Fundz fits agency operations

Fundz is a signal-intelligence platform: real-time funding rounds, executive hires and departures, M&A, contracts, product launches, and workplace sentiment shifts, paired with verified ICP-scored contacts and 200 mobile direct dials per month on the Strategic plan.

For agencies, Fundz serves both sides of the business. New-business side: daily prospecting list of companies that just hit signals indicating they need agency help (new funding = budget, new CMO = vendor review, launch with no GTM lead = strategy gap). Client-work side: signal feeds for ABM campaigns, real-time intelligence for content strategy, competitive deal-flow tracking for industry positioning work.

Signals and what they mean for you

Funding rounds (new-business window)

Browse on /fundings. The cleanest budget signal in B2B agency work: a company that just raised has fresh capital and is actively scoping marketing investment for the next 90 days.

Demand-gen agency: Series A and B raises in B2B SaaS, $5–25M, are your sweet spot. They need pipeline frameworks and demand systems before hiring full-time marketing.
PR agency: All raise sizes — even Seed companies often need launch comms. Filter on rounds with notable lead investors (story angle).
Performance agency: Series B+ where the budget is large enough for meaningful paid scale. Companies with multi-million ad budgets.

New CMO / VP Marketing hires (vendor-review trigger)

Browse on /executives. A new marketing leader in their first 90 days re-evaluates the agency stack. This is the highest-conversion new-business signal for agencies. The 30–60 day window is when decisions get made.

Product launches (PR + GTM gap)

Browse on /products. A launch with no announced go-to-market lead is a tell that strategy or PR support is needed. Especially valuable for PR agencies and demand-gen agencies in companies sub-50 employees.

Hiring surges (scaling pain = need help)

Companies posting 8+ open roles in 14 days are scaling fast and feeling operational pain. Marketing functions in those companies often turn to outside agencies to bridge before in-house teams catch up.

Acquisitions (rebrand and consolidation)

Browse on /acquisitions. Acquired companies in their first 6 months of integration often need brand consolidation, GTM alignment, and combined-entity launch comms — substantial agency engagements.

Contracts and partnerships (PR opportunities)

Browse on /agreements. Partnership announcements and major customer wins are PR opportunities your client probably hasn't fully exploited. Agency-led media work on these moments often drives better coverage than the company's announcement alone.

Daily workflow

7:30 AM ET — Morning brief (new-business)

The Daily Brief surfaces ICP-matched companies that triggered overnight. Triage: same-week pitch (high-fit, high-priority signal), add to nurture sequence (good fit, longer cycle), skip.

9 AM ET — Outbound prep

For high-priority new-business signals, click into the Deep Dive page (/companies/[id]), pull the verified marketing buyer's contact, and send a tailored outbound message via Engage anchored on the specific signal.

Midday — Client work scan

Five-minute pass through your client-account Mandates and Watchlists. Look for signals affecting active campaigns — client's target company just hired a CMO? That's a campaign timing trigger to share with the account team. Industry consolidation? That's content angle for next week's blog.

End of day — Pipeline + content prep

For new-business pursuits, queue tomorrow's outreach in your sequencer. For client work, save signal feeds that inform tomorrow's content calendar — product launches in client's customer base often become "your customers are doing X" content beats.

Mandate setups by sub-variant

For demand-gen and B2B marketing agencies

New-business Mandates

Series A/B raised $5–25M in last 30 days, B2B SaaS, US-based, no listed CMO on leadership page

New CMO/VP Marketing hires in last 30 days, companies $5–100M revenue, B2B

Hiring surges in marketing/sales functions, companies 50–300 employees, B2B SaaS

Client-work Mandates (per active client)

[Client target ICP companies] with recent funding or new exec hires (campaign timing triggers)

For PR and brand agencies

New-business Mandates

Funding rounds Seed–Series C in last 30 days with notable lead investors, US-based, [your sectors]

Product launches in last 30 days at companies 20–500 employees

Acquisitions in [your industry], last 90 days — rebrand/integration comms opportunities

Client-work Mandates

[Client industry] partnerships and contract announcements (story angles for client coverage)

For performance and paid-media agencies

New-business Mandates

Series B+ raised $25M+ in last 60 days, [B2C/B2B segment], US-based

Companies with hiring surges in paid-media or growth roles, last 30 days

Product launches at companies that recently raised Series B+ (paid-launch budget)

Watchlist strategy

Two parallel Watchlists for agencies:

New-business prospects: 50–100 high-fit companies you'd want as clients. Track for the signals that signal agency-readiness (funding, new CMO, scaling pain, launch).
Client account base + targets: All current clients (track for cross-sell and renewal-timing signals) plus the target companies in their ABM lists (signals affecting their pipeline).

Notification configuration

Alerts to enable

Daily Brief email: on.
Event Summaries (daily) for Funding + Executives + Product Launches: on. These are your three highest-leverage agency triggers.
Slack notifications: on. Connect at /account/connectors. For agency teams, real-time Slack pings on Funding events let account teams jump on cross-sell or extension opportunities at active clients before competing agencies.

Alerts to skip

SEC 8-K Filings, Form D, Crowdfundings — mostly relevant to wealth/M&A personas. Toggle off to reduce noise.

Using Fundz for client campaigns

Beyond new business, Fundz is a powerful tool for running client work. Three patterns that work:

1. Account-based marketing (ABM) signal feeds

For each client's ABM target list (typically 100–500 named accounts), build a Watchlist in Fundz. When any account hits a signal — funding, new buyer, hiring surge — share that with the client's sales team in real time. Signal-anchored ABM outperforms generic ABM by 4–6x on response rates.

2. Content strategy from market signals

Industry-level signal patterns are content gold. Fundz Trends (/trends) shows funding and hiring volume by industry over time. "Marketing investment in [client's vertical] up 40% YoY" is a far better content angle than generic thought leadership. Anomaly Detection cards on the dashboard surface non-obvious patterns ("Q1 financial deterioration in healthcare IT") that translate directly to story pitches and content beats.

3. PR amplification on client moments

When your PR client closes a contract, hires a senior leader, or launches a product, the same signal surfaces in Fundz alongside competitive context. PR teams use this to time outreach to industry reporters with "here's what's happening in the category" framing rather than just "here's our client's news."

Outreach templates

Demand-gen agency — post-funding (cold first touch)

Saw the Series [X] close, congrats. Most B2B SaaS companies your stage end up needing demand-gen frameworks — ICP refinement, pipeline systems, full-funnel measurement — in months 3–9 before hiring a full-time CMO. We've helped [N similar companies] in [vertical]. Worth a 30-minute conversation?

PR agency — post-funding or launch (story angle)

Saw [Company]'s [funding/launch] and the [investor/partnership] involved. The story angle has legs we'd be happy to help shape — we've placed similar narratives in [outlets] for companies in [vertical]. Worth a 20-minute call about how to maximize the moment?

Performance agency — post-Series-B (paid scale)

Saw [Company]'s Series B close. Companies your stage and category usually scale paid spend 3–5x in the 12 months after a B round — and most need an outside team to operate that scale efficiently. We run paid programs for [N similar companies] in [vertical]. Worth a 30-minute conversation about your current paid stack?

New-CMO outreach (vendor-review window)

Saw [Name] joined as [CMO/VP Marketing] at [Company]. Welcome to the role. Most new marketing leaders in their first 60 days end up reviewing the existing agency and tooling stack. We work with [N similar companies] on [your specialty]. Open to a brief intro call?

Power-user tactics

Trends page for content + thesis work

/trends shows funding and hiring volume trends by location and industry. Quarterly, use this to write client-facing market reports (high-leverage retention content) or to inform new-business pitch decks ("here's where capital and talent are flowing in your category").

Companies on the Move panel

On the dashboard, this panel ranks companies by composite recent activity. Use as a discovery surface for new-business prospects you wouldn't have found through filtered Mandates — especially companies hitting multiple signals simultaneously (funding + hiring + launch = active inflection).

FundzIQ Intelligence on client accounts

For client account-based campaigns, the FundzIQ panel surfaces AI-generated intelligence highlights on tracked accounts. Useful for the account team to scan in 90 seconds before a client check-in — you'll surface signals the client doesn't know about themselves yet.

Search Brief for new-business pitches (Strategic)

On any company's Hiring Intel page, click "Search Brief" to generate a Claude-powered intelligence one-pager. Strategic users get 50/day. Useful as a pitch leave-behind: walk into a new-business meeting with a tailored briefing on the prospect company, not a generic capabilities deck.

What success looks like at week 4

50–100 new-business prospects on Watchlist
Client account base on Watchlist + ABM targets per client
3–4 Mandates running daily across new-business and client work
10–15 same-week new-business outbound touches per week
2–3 client-relevant signal alerts per week shared with account teams
1 net-new pitch in active conversation

Agency new-business cycles run 60–180 days. Day-1 indicator that the platform is working: signal-anchored cold outreach should reply at 8–15% (versus 2–3% generic).

Common mistakes

One Watchlist for everything. Separate new-business and client-account Watchlists. They serve different workflows and the signal noise differs.
Generic Funded-Company outreach. "Saw your Series A" is generic; "Saw the $X round led by [investor], with [partner] joining the board" is specific. Engage drafts off the actual signal — let it.
Pitching capabilities, not the moment. Anchor the message on the specific event (CMO hire, launch, funding) and the specific 30–90 day window. Don't lead with capabilities decks.
Skipping the Trends page for content. Industry-level data is some of the highest-engagement content for B2B agencies. Pulling stats from Fundz Trends quarterly transforms a generic blog into a market-intelligence series.
Not using signal feeds for client work. Most agencies use Fundz only for new business. The bigger long-term value is embedded in client account-based programs.

Troubleshooting

My Daily Brief is overwhelming

Tighten Mandate filters to your specific ICP. Layer in industry, employee size, and stage. Aim for each Mandate returning 5–15 results per week, not 50.

I'm not finding clients in my niche

The opposite problem — loosen filters. Drop the location filter or expand the funding-stage range. Also: if you're a niche agency, save Mandates around adjacent verticals to catch drift candidates.

CRM sync isn't pulling in Fundz leads

Verify connector status at /account/connectors. HubSpot tokens occasionally expire and need re-auth. Salesforce manual setups need correct API permissions.

The Trends data feels too high-level for my content

Layer in specific industry filters and time periods. The default views are aggregated; drilling into a specific vertical and date range yields the specific stats that translate to compelling content angles.

Bonus: the Partner Program

Agencies regularly recommend tools to their clients. The Fundz Partner Program is built for these referrals. Your clients get the platform at a discount, you get rev-share on conversions, and the resulting intelligence keeps feeding your own client work. Email john@fundz.net to discuss terms.

Stuck after two weeks?

Most setup issues come down to Mandate filters that are too narrow, a single Watchlist trying to serve both motions, or skipping client-work signal feeds. We will sit with you for 15 minutes and tune all three.

Book a 15-minute setup call →

This playbook is written for B2B marketing agencies, PR firms, and performance agencies. If your team includes other personas (fractional advisors, sales reps, recruiters), each has its own playbook. See all playbooks →