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Hello and welcome to
ON 24's Insight 50
series of programmes.
This is our first one in the series
and we've got a really hot topic
to start the series off
and that's ask about ABM,
so what is account-based marketing
and what's all the noise about?
We've got a great panel with us
here today to answer
all of your questions.
Obviously this is going to be
a very interactive program
so we want as many questions
as possible from the audience.
My name is Chris Mitchell
and for those of you
that haven’t yet attended
an On 24 webinar,
before we get going,
I'd just like to do
a little bit of housekeeping
and talk to you about the console.
So what you're looking at,
you have various windows
windows in front of you.
You can move those around,
drag them around,
resize them as you need to.
There's a number of widgets
or applications
at the bottom of this screen as well
which you can open.
We have things like the resource list
there's loads of documents in there,
reports and white papers,
as well as also a link
to register for our
webinar benchmarks report,
if you're interested in attending
that program.
Also in there we have
a speaker bio,
so you're able to connect with the
panel of guests on LinkedIn,
on social media,
continue the conversation with them
after the program is finished.
Also another important one
which we don't want to forget about
is a Q and A widget.
So please do
type in all your questions,
make sure those are coming in,
we've got a team
in the back room
who are going to be putting through
some questions to me.
We'll put as many those
to the panel as we can
and hopefully that will guide
a great conversation
to answering all your questions
about ABM.
Last one I just wanted
wanted to mention quickly
is Twitter,
so we do have a hash tag
for this event,
#on24webinar.
So feel free
to tweet about the program,
ask questions on that as well
and just generally
chat about ABM on there.
So the more the better.
Okay, time to meet our panel.
So, I'm very pleased to welcome
with us today Joel Harrison.
So Joel, what can you tell
the audience about
who you are and what you do?
So thanks and good morning.
So my name is Joel Harrison,
I'm editor in chief of B2B Marketing.
We're an information provider,
we're a media organization.
We have a magazine,
organisieren Konferenzen,
produce reports,
we run webinars.
Our mission is to help B2B marketers
do what they do better,
to be more successful
in their careers
and make their organizations
more successful as well.
So ABM is definitely
right up our street.
Vielen Dank.
Obviously being vendor agnostic,
let's call it an unbiased view.
I was very keen to get
your definition of ABM,
so I went onto your site
and found the definition
of ABM from your organization.
If I could just read it out,
it's a strategic approach
to marketing and sales.
Working in combination
to identify and target
your most important customers
both new and existing.
So fairly generic as a definition
but what was important to you
about getting that kind of a
definition in place
and how did you come to it?
It's not rocket science,
there are a lot of definitions around
about ABM,
we wanted to have our own one
which kind of expresses it
in a way which we feel
is appropriate.
But what's really important about that
is the work and the collaboration
and the close integration
of sales and marketing,
which has always been a bug bear,
anyone who has worked in B2B
will know this has been
the real challenge they've had
sometimes it's been a
tolerant relationship,
often it's been a downright hostile one.
So to find the means of
actually working together effectively
and collaborate
for the good of everybody,
which is what ABM does
is really, really transformational.
No that's great. Thank you.
I'm sure everyone can relate to
what you're saying there
and I think actually
we've seen a lot more collaboration
within organizations now,
not just across sales and marketing
but across organizations in general
so I think that's a really good point.
Okay. Guy, welcome to the show.
MomentumABM,
obviously specialist consultants
within the ABM space.
So over to you,
who are you
and what are you all about?
Thank you, I'm Guy Phillips,
so I'm head of consulting
for MomentumABM.
I guess the clue is in the name,
we've been going for 7 years
and running ABM programs for
primarily technology clients
but increasingly we're seeing
it's moving across
other sectors as well.
As head of consulting I guess,
curse of the consultant is
I tend to oversimplify everything.
So apologies to everybody
on the webinar
if I tend to oversimplify.
Please shout out on the questions
and get me to elaborate if needed.
Great, I think simplification is great,
especially in a specialist topic.
You heard Joel's definition
of ABM,
do you think of that definition
in any different way
way or do you generally
tend to agree with that?
I think as an overarching definition
it makes complete sense.
. I think we see it very much more
as kind of becoming
customer-centric
and looking at a customer
as a market of one basically.
So starting with enterprise customers
as really complex, really big,
really difficult organizations
to penetrate as a sales organization.
So the marketing and sales
alignment point that Joel made
ein sehr wichtiger Punkt,
in terms of how a company,
our client company,
needs to attack that customer.
It isn't something
they can do in silos,
sondern müssen zusammenarbeiten,
and make it effective.
So actually, really you've just
what you said about
simplifying things.
Making it very simple
in that target of one.
Trying, yes.
Great, okay thank you.
Leanne, obviously last but not least.
Welcome to the show.
Danke.
Demandbase
obviously sit in the martech space,
again specialists in ABM.
Please tell us a little bit
about yourself and Demandbase.
My name is Leanne Chescoe,
I'm a senior manager
for the EMEA region
at Demandbase.
I've been in B2B marketing
for about 12 years
and practicing
account-based marketing
for about 2 and half years of those.
So Demandbase is
an account-based marketing platform
and we work with our clients
clients to firstly help them identify
what accounts to target,
help keep those accounts engaged
and really getting them to
that conversion state where they're
filling out forms on their website.
So they're actually
raising their hands,
you know who that individual is.
Excellent, thank you.
Presumably you don't also have
have much of a differentiator
with that definition
that we talked about at the start?
Yes so account-based marketing
really is focusing on the accounts
that are going to have
the highest propensity to buy,
sales and marketing alignment
alignment is a real key piece
of that as well.
Okay. Great. So that's our panel.
Obviously this is a very
very interactive program
as we've said.
So it's now
all about the audience.
So let's try and find out
a little bit about the audience
and where they are.
So we've got a poll question
for the audience.
So I'm just going to read that
out to you
so the guests can hear it as well
but you'll see that
on your screens now at home.
What is your current
understanding of ABM?
We've tried to put
a number of different options
in there.
So I'll just read through those briefly,
it's a new definition of drive
in successful marketing.
It's really interesting
but I need to learn more.
It's just another marketing fad.
It's another name for
what I've always done.
I've heard the term,
but I don't know what it's all about.
So quite a few
to choose from there.
Where do you find, Joel,
that marketing organizations
in general are,
in puncto ABM?
Well we did some research on this
last year because it's a topic
which I think,
we'll discuss this later I'm sure,
it's been in around
in one form or another for a while,
but there's momentum around,
pardon the pun,
around it being interesting
at the moment.
So our survey sought
to understand our audience
and their interest in it
and their level of sophistication
Wir führen viele Umfragen
of B2B marketing
but this one got
extremely good traction
very, very fast.
So A, a lot of interest in it,
but B,
what it showed overwhelmingly
was that most people out there
are very, very low
in their adoption curve.
They're only starting to understand
what it actually is,
let alone what it means
and even further away from
what they can do about it.
So it'd be really kind of a
scoping phase to understand
the dynamics and the opportunities
von ABM kennenzulernen.
So it's a very good time
to be thinking about this.
If you are in that early stage
then you are in good company,
a lot of people are
in that place as well.
Okay great. Thanks.
So just thinking about that and
and Guy, what I'd like to
come to you with on that,
we talk about
or Joel has talked about
the fact that there are
a lot of people
denen ABM bekannt ist,
but not yet started on that journey
but at the same time,
in conversations that we've had,
there's a bit of an understanding
that some people think
this has been around for a long time
and they've been doing it,
they just didn't realise
they call it ABM.
Maybe doing it
under a different guise,
so how prevalent do you think it is
within marketing organizations,
that they're doing something
along these lines,
just maybe not calling it ABM.
That's a good question,
I think probably a lot depends on
the type of marketing organization,
the type of company.
Roughly speaking
I put them in 3 buckets,
either marketing is
driving the sales process,
so providing a kind of input
into the sales process,
or the sales team is driving
the sales process and marketing
as a support function.
Or, increasingly we're seeing this,
that they're equal status
and they're both driving
driving the process together.
Of course that's the bucket
where our version of ABM
tends to work the most effectively.
But I think potentially depending
on the culture of the organization
in those three buckets will dictate
where on the ABM journey you are.
Okay and Leanne lastly,
so when you actually consider that,
the clients that you're talking to,
I'm guessing they're all
very aware of ABM already
or do you have to do
sort of an education program
to teach organizations about ABM?
Yes it's definitely a bit of a mixture,
we've got some people that are
very much at the start
of their journey,
we still, when we're at events,
get people coming to our stand
to say what is account-based marketing?
So there is still a pretty big level
of education going on there,
but we kind of see everything
right through to people
that have been practicing ABM
for a while
and looking to scale their efforts
and looking at technology
to help them do that.
Excellent, okay well on that
I think it's probably a good time
to have a look at the results.
So if we can put the results out
and see what our audience are
and where they're at.
So our first answer,
it's a new definition
of driving successful marketing,
we have 22.8%,
it's really interesting
but I need to learn more,
nearly 48%,
so that's obviously quite a high one.
No one thinks it's just another
marketing fad,
so that's really good news to hear.
And it's another name for
what I've always done,
nearly 16%,
so there's a few
who fit into that bucket.
I've heard the term
but I don't know what it's all about,
about 14%,
so I think by far
the most common answer
we've got there is the fact that
I need to know more about it.
So that's really
why we're all here isn't it?
So I think that's really,
really good news.
So what I want to do is now
now look at some of the questions
that are coming through
from the audience.
So we've got one
that's come through actually
from Lindsay and apologies,
it’s quite a long question,
it's quite an involved question,
so let's jump in
at the deep end shall we?
So Lindsay is asking,
enterprise marketing,
with its limited prospect pools
and long sales cycles,
could mean ABM
and marketing influence
is more important
than traditional lead generation.
Direct MQL generation
is quite easy to measure,
but I'm really struggling
to find a solution
to tracking multiple marketing
and sales touch points
on and offline,
across multiple individuals
at an account.
So I can measure the impact
of marketing influence to pipeline,
rather than just
MQL-generated pipeline.
Like I say, it's a lengthy question,
quite a bit to it, but Leanne,
do you want to take that one first?
Yes I think there's a couple of
elements in there definitely.
First of all starting off
with measurement and
talking about or thinking about
what you actually
should be measuring,
I think in an ABM world,
you're still going to look at
at those campaign type metrics,
that you've traditionally
been measuring,
but you're really going to start
applying an ABM lens to that.
So when we talk about metrics,
it's really bucketing them
into 3 areas,
so ones that look at
revenue metrics,
so sales velocity, pipeline,
campaign metrics
as I said previously,
open rates, click through rates,
business metrics as well.
So I think really applying
an account-based marketing lens
to that to see what impacts
your target accounts are having
on those metrics,
secondly,
using tools to help measure that.
So there's definitely attribution tools
out there that can help with that,
so it suggests that's
an area to look at.
Okay great thank you.
Nice in depth answer, Leanne,
thank you.
Guy, anything want to
add to that?
I think Leanne has covered it
very well.
I think we look at readiness
and reach as a first phase,
are you ready to begin
an ABM program
and have you got
got all the tools
that you need to begin?
Sometimes those tools
are actually about the organisation
and how it's ready to go,
ready to start.
Reach is obviously the same point
about can you measure
how many people
you're actually hitting
and have you got a way of tracking
whether that's actually working or not
and I guess in our world,
outcomes and impact
which are kind of the next two,
are actually a bit more visceral,
because it's quite personalised,
it's quite detailed with individuals
in the sales organisations
Kontaktpersonen beim Kunden.
So it actually becomes quite realistic
to say that's just happened,
we've just seen
a presentation happen
where the customer has gone
wow, this is the most
amazing thing I've ever seen
and that's easily measurable.
So from that point of view
I guess our world is slightly simpler
in that sense that we can see
outcomes and impacts
almost umbilically.
But at the same time
it's quite a lengthy sales cycle
isn't it?
So I suppose it's taken
a long time to get to that point.
The question is absolutely right.
Some of the programs we've run
take 18 months.
If you're looking for a quick fix
then ABM possibly isn't the right tool
for that right job.
Another question in from Clive,
ABM is something we've done
in different forms for years,
however the key is
how do you get a CTA
as everyone is always so busy
or ignores the marketing?
How do we get the clients
to respond is the key,
what does ABM do differently
to achieve this?
So Joel, do you want to
take the first stab at that one?
Can you just repeat
that bit again for me?
ABM is something we've done
in different forms for years,
aber die zentrale Frage lautet:
how do you get a CTA,
so a call to action?
As everyone is always so busy
or ignores the marketing,
how do we get the clients
to respond is the key,
what does ABM do differently
to achieve it?
One of the differences in ABM
besides the focus on accounts
Leanne was talking about earlier on,
which is the primary one,
it's moving away from
demand generation,
it's not focusing on individuals,
it's seeing an individual
within a construct of a larger,
buying group.
It’s actually around personalisation,
because the difference
between ABM and
what we were doing as marketers
perhaps 5 years ago,
we were doing these low volume,
high value,
direct marketing campaigns,
the level of insight
which we can now derive.
There are loads of
platforms out there
which enable that insight
Dadurch kann die Kundenansprache
much more personalised,
and much more focused
on the issues.
the very, very specific issues
that organisation, that buying group
is focusing on.
Demandbase is one such tool,
there are other tools that do that.
LinkedIn is a good tool,
there are some basic ones
you can use which are free
but there are obviously some
much more sophisticated
ones than that.
So those are the reasons,
it doesn't matter how you get
an individual to actually address this,
it’s actually knowing what it is
that they're interested in.
Knowing who they are,
what they want
and where their company is going,
what they’ll likely need in the future.
That's how you can actually
derive messages
and then connect that with
a sales team in a way
that means something to them
them which they can actually
leverage and pick up on.
That's a great, very in-depth answer,
thank you.
Actually it goes back to
something we were talking about
earlier on,
that was, we need to understand
understand the persona that we want
to be targeting but now
what we really need to do
is personalise that,
and understand the person
behind the persona
and what's important to them.
Which is I think a crucial part of
what you're saying there,
so Leanne, when we're actually
looking at ABM at scale,
which obviously Demandbase do,
how do you tackle that
personalisation approach?
So I think taking it even before
the step back when you're looking at
who are the right accounts to target,
using tools to help you do that,
such as Demandbase,
I think you can look at
buying intent signals as well
So that will give you an idea
idea of accounts that are in market
to buy, what they’re interested in
and you can do that based on
key words that you would use
use in your SEO and SEM programs
so that gives you a good idea
of what people are talking about out there,
so it almost comes one step before
that personalisation
so you can you can actually see
well these are the accounts
that are in market,
based on these buying signals,
this is what they're talking about
on Twitter, on LinkedIn,
they're writing a blog post on this.
They're talking on this particular topic
that's related to your business.
So that gives you a good idea,
and that personalisation step
comes next, so you're actually
delivering them messaging
that's relevant to them,
so that's really going to help
get them converted.
Great thank you.
Okay I've got another question here,
Guy, which I'd like to put to you.
Because you talked specifically about
collaboration between
sales and marketing,
so is ABM purely
a marketing strategy
or do we need buy in
from other teams,
how would you define ABM
as a strategy?
Well that's a very good question and
I suppose controversially
you could say that
the “M” is the misnomer,
really it's an account-based
everything approach I would say.
Marketing are given the ownership
because the budget tends to sit with
the marketing department,
so the activity is driven by them
as opposed to the ownership
necessarily driven by them.
I often talk about the fact
that our client is the marketing team,
our customer is the sales team.
Getting those two teams
working effectively
with the product team as well
and typically with corporate
or brand marketing as well,
is a very important part of this.
I think going back
to my point about readiness,
if you don't have the buy in,
obviously in the management
within the organisation
to start this whole process,
then it's a pretty radical shift
in a traditional marketing function.
Natürlich. Joel?
I absolutely agree with that.
The potential implications
across the business are enormous
and particularly it depends
on what kind of ABM you're doing
and what kind of
customers you're targeting.
If you're dealing with a very,
very strategic end of the spectrum
where you're targeting
a very large organisation,
very embedded customers,
potentially you're trying
with the existing customers or indeed
new ones, often you're looking at
the customer success function,
the customer service team.
You're trying to identify issues
which may be related there.
Potentially the implications
are quite huge across
da die Kundenzufriedenheit
how it reaches out to its customers.
That's great and coming from
the customer success
background myself,
I totally agree
and I love that phrase you use there,
Guy, the account-based
everything approach.
I think that's really, really critical.
Den würde ich gern patentieren,
aber das geht wohl nicht.
Maybe we're seeing
a definition change,
of ABE something.
Let's work on that one shall we.
Okay I've got another
good question here, for Leanne
I'm going to put this one to you,
what are the crucial data skills
and capabilities an agency
needs to provide,
to develop intent
and predictive ABM
at scale programs
and which agencies would you
recommend that have
all these skills in house?
This question is from David.
So I think going back
to what I mentioned earlier
about the buying signals,
the intent piece,
you can use technology platforms
to help you do that,
so it's really looking at
a lot of organisations will
already have their
keywords defined,
so as I mentioned earlier,
what you would use
for your SEO terms,
your SEM terms
to look at what people
are searching on,
but a lot of people have
a good idea of what businesses
are a good fit for their organisation,
industry tends to be a key one,
revenue size definitely
is another key one as well
so I think those two factors built in
to determine what are
the right accounts to go for
for and those intent signals
really are based on
those keywords.
Excellent, thank you.
I think I'll take that opportunity
to remind everyone watching
to please submit your questions
Es sind bereits
good questions through
so thank you for those.
But we can always take more
and while we're thinking about that,
I think what we'll do is
we'll move to the next poll
question for the audience.
So if we can push
that next question out,
what is your biggest ABM challenge?
the options we've got down there
for people are
we haven’t yet started
any ABM campaigns,
we're understanding what
technology is out there
and what I could use.
The ability to measure
and demonstrate ROI,
obviously we talked
a lot about
analytics and measuring.
Understanding your
account structure
and which accounts to target,
aligning sales and marketing,
again we've touched on that one.
Also building the business case.
So, quite a few examples there
of challenges to put down
for our audience,
Joel, again looking at
marketing organisations generally
in your understanding,
from your organisation,
what would you say are
the biggest challenges that you see?
Well the first
in terms of the readiness expression
which we use today,
which I think is a really good one,
the first thing people need to do
is try to understand
which accounts they're looking at,
we're seeking to identify, to target,
what approach they might take
it kind of depends on
the business model as well,
because Demandbase for example
enables people to reach
a much broader audience
whereas I was having a conversation
an agency last week who
are dealing in the
RFP marketing arena
and the example they gave
was they were seeking to basically
do one campaign
worth multiple tens of thousands
out of the states, literally,
they had thousands of decision-makers
but based on one account
and they were literally trying to
force this company to issue an RFP,
to dislodge a 25 year incumbent,
so, I thought that was...
this stuff goes on quite a lot
and it's a very different,
it's a scale-based campaign
but with an account of one,
you're dealing with people at very,
very different levels and I think
that's kind of a fascinating activity
and this campaign was successful,
they did issue the RFP
and that's what success looks like,
it's not winning the RFP,
it's about,
in this instance it was just issuing the RFP,
all that work just goes into
that one thing.
Which is quite interesting I think
because when you look at all the
social chatter around this online,
I see a lot more about
trying to get organisations
not go to RFP,
rather than try to drive them to RFP.
That's a really interesting one.
It's a conflict isn't it?
I think that comes back to that
point we started with,
these are very
complex sales processes
and to try to get RFPs to be removed
out of procurement process
is a tough ask.
So, the best thing
you could possibly hope for
I would say is being able to
control how the RFP is written,
I think that's probably
playing to that point,
is if you are the technology vendor
let's say in this case,
that gets to control the RFP,
there's a fairly strong chance
you'll win the process.
That I think is where a lot of
sales organisations are
starting to drive.
Underpinning that,
interesting I was just thinking
as Joel was speaking,
underpinning this is fundamentally
that ABM is an outbound approach.
It gives you the control back again
as a marketing organisation
to dictate what you want to do
within the account.
Now you still need to be
customer-centric,
you still need to be very sensitive
about the customer,
but it's not inbound,
you're not waiting for
something to happen.
You're not seeing what might happen,
you're able to be proactive.
I think a lot of B2B marketing organisations
function much better
in that state
than they do in a reactive one.
Excellent, Leanne anything to add?
I would just...yes,
again to your point
it's very much about being proactive
in this example.
It helps you identify
that wider buying committee, definitely
and account-based marketing
is a great way of doing that,
delivering those
personalised messages as well.
So I think that really helps.
I think that proactive stance
I think is crucial as well
and I think again that speaks
right across the organisation,
so it comes back to the
account based-everything,
everyone interacting needs to be
a lot more proactive because
we're all customer-centric
and we're all account-centric.
Hopefully. After today’s program, moreso.
Okay so, let's push out the results
and have a see what
what our audience’s challenges are.
So we haven’t yet started
any ABM campaigns,
we've got nearly 27% there.
That's a sizeable number.
Understanding what technology
is out there and what I can use,
so I see an opportunity
there for you, Leanne,
Ability to measure
and demonstrate ROI,
so that's an interesting one,
obviously those of our audience
who are understanding ABM
and getting into it
and really to understand
how they can get the metrics
and demonstrate that ROI.
Understanding your account structure
and which to target, so...
really at the beginning of the journey
I think and quite a few
of our audience there,
nearly 16% and a challenge for 11%
of the audience is aligning
sales and marketing,
very few at the moment
finding that building a business case
is a challenge, only 2%.
So that feels like mismatch
between the response
to this question
and the last question,
it feels like people,
the question was saying
we're at the very beginning
of the journey
and at this point they're already
trying to work out
which technology they need and
there's a little bit of an
an alarm bell going off there.
Unbedingt!
I think the point if
you're at that early stage of
account-based marketing,
you're just figuring out what it is,
trying to adopt that
within your own organisation,
it's really key to have
that strategy in place,
before you're even looking at
what technology to use,
we want to make sure that alignment,
throughout the organisation,
definitely with sales,
but there's going to be
other parts to build that
ABM leadership team,
that might include your
operations team that look after your
CRM systems and
how you're going to measure
those programs once you get your
ABM programs up and running,
could even be
your finance team as well.
Looking at what pipeline
you need to deliver.
So maybe people need re-evaluate
actually what they're starting with
They need to understand
what they're trying to achieve,
they need to build a
business case and do it properly.
I mean it's so fundamental
we're missing it.
The point about a proper
ABM campaign is that
you're committing quite sizeable
levels of your budget to achieving
achieving a realistically strong goal.
I suppose within that whole context
companies that are selling
very low order value products,
services, whatever it might be,
ABM probably isn't for them,
because you're not
going to get an ROI,
often ABM approach for
tens of thousands of dollars
of deal size.
It needs to be probably
higher levels in order for it
it to be justifiable.
Because otherwise you're
flipping your marketing function
on its head, without
necessarily having a pilot or
a proof case or whatever it might be
to say this is worth doing.
So that's really a fundamental
first question to ask,
is ABM a right approach
for my organisation to take?
Does everybody understand
what we're trying to achieve?
And is everybody on board with it?
Because the biggest problem
and going back to the beginning
is marketing and B2B companies
historically have struggled
to demonstrate its value
and prove its worth in the organisation.
ABM is great news because
it gives marketing a means of
aligning the sales and
demonstrating the value
and proving the worth of
both of those organisations.
But if you haven’t got that alignment
to start off with,
you haven’t proven the value
and people don't understand
what you're doing,
what success looks like,
how you're going to deliver it.
Then you're starting off on a really
wrong foot in my opinion.
I think the maturity of
the marketing organisation
and how deeply embedded they are
in technology to understand
what's happening and get that ROI
and really understand the analytics,
I think it's such a crucial piece.
Certainly I know for us,
that's a really key target
for our organisation is companies
that are more mature
in their marketing.
Well the specific for me
maybe would be
if your marketing organisation
is measured on generating inquiries
or generating MQLs,
you'd have to get the buy-in for that
to change if you're going to go
to an ABM process,
because it is fundamentally different.
Can you not run ABM
as kind of a silo,
silo is the wrong word but I know that
some companies at least start with ABM
in kind of a pilot base
run their demand generation
programs alongside that.
I think that's the way to start definitely.
But in a way it's a
a direction of travel,
if you're going to start,
you need to be sure
you're going to carry on,
that seems to be where
the buy-in of the senior management
is an important part of that process.
I think you can think also about
account-based marketing as more of
a comprehensive
demand generation strategy
and it depends and there's going
to be differing levels of budget
that you would assign to that,
you look at your
total addressable market,
obviously you're going to spend,
it might just be like air cover
and awareness.
You're still going to keep
doing those things in an ABM world.
The more granular that you get,
the more segmented that you get
with your target account base.
That's when you'll start to spend
more on those programs.
I think you can do a
kind of blended approach.
I'm sure that's absolutely right,
the one anecdote that
always comes to mind is that
the company I won't mention
in this environment but
who spoke at our conference last year
who said they switched off
demand generation
and nobody noticed for a year
so that speaks volumes about
probably the kind of
demand generation
they were doing at that time.
Okay.
I think we're actually getting into
some really good detail here,
so I'm going to take the opportunity,
I've just seen the question here
which I just need to find again
because I lost it,
there we go.
How will GDPR affect ABM,
or even will it?
It's very topical,
we actually had an event yesterday
on this subject, so I think there's
obviously a lot of things,
a lot of implications
and regulations around it,
the biggest thing being consent.
One of the conversations
we had yesterday
is actually using
account-based marketing
as a mechanism
to help get that consent,
or re-consent,
whatever stage you are at
in that journey.
By actually personalising content,
to help people deliver messages
that are relevant to them.
They're more likely to be
at that stage of consent,
but I also think it's an opportunity
for marketeers to do better things
with data as well and again
that comes back that
personalisation piece,
engagement piece,
if you're delivering
messages to people
based on the intent signals
that they're showing,
based on their engagement
on your website,
haben erkennen lassen.
if you can identify
the types of industry they're at
and serve them up content
that's relevant to that.
They're much more likely to engage.
Guy, anything to?
I would only confirm and elaborate
so the legitimate interest criteria
which is probably the key way
B2B marketers will get around GDPR
if I can call it getting around GDPR,
Comply.
Comply with GDPR.
Thank you, that's a much better word.
Forces you almost to do that
higher level of insight,
to do that higher level of research,
to do that higher level
of personalization
and if you don't do that,
then obviously you will not be
complying with GDPR.
I totally agree with
both those points.
We had a round table yesterday
for marketing directors in B2B
and the topic of the round table
was digital transformation
and one of the questions
that came across was
what is the catalyst
for transformation?
Because transformation
being a very, very...root and branch,
rebuilding of your
digital infrastructure
and how you operate
as an organisation.
A couple of instances it was GDPR,
because it created this
cataclysmic event
with a 20 million pound fine, potentially,
which allowed marketers to go
to the board and go
here you go,
if we don't do something differently
then not only are we going to get
a fine and potentially
put out of business
but also your name is going
to be dragged through the mud,
you might lost your job over this.
It has been an opportunity.
It's potentially a very
cunning opportunity
for marketers to actually
grab the agenda and force change
in a way that we could be
really proactive because
we talked about outbound just now
and I agree with the point
that marketers are comfortable
with outbound but actually
it can be a bit of an easy habit,
it can be something we slip into
because we're comfortable with it
but it means an opportunity
to actually explore
some new channels.
I think that would be a good thing,
I don't think we should throw
the baby out with the bath water.
I agree, but I think
there's always an interesting
connotation when we start talking
about outbound,
the assumption is it will be
stupid outbound.
Why does it have to be
stupid outbound?
Why can't it be really smart,
really insightful, really targeted,
really personalised?
That's still outbound
but it's consequential actions,
you're not going to get
customer engagement
if you don't do smart outbound.
One thing that keeps coming up
is personalised communications,
so does that lead to us
needing to create
much more content?
Not necessarily,
I think if you're using,
again through technology,
there's certain platforms out there,
Demandbase being one of them
that will help.
That will help identify companies
that are coming to your website,
what industry that they're in,
actually the company themselves
to serve up relevant content
and that's not changing
the content that you have,
it's just making small little tweaks,
so that's not a
massive content overhaul,
we've seen some of our clients
that just make really small changes
to a white paper,
pretty generic white paper,
just by adding some
industry references in there.
We've had a huge uplift
in the amount of engagement
and conversion on that,
on that piece.
So it's definitely using what you've got.
I would personally hate for
any marketer watching this
to think I've got to go
and massively increase
the amount of content I produce,
because I think one of the
problems at the moment
in B2B marketing
is people are trying to produce
too much content all the time
and I'd much rather we focused on
doing less and doing it better
and I absolutely agree
with Leanne's point.
You can personalise,
you can take a relevant,
generic piece of content
and personalise it at a level
which makes it relevant
and much better
than what a lot of people
are doing at the moment.
Again it's dangerous when
we're all agreeing, isn't it?
I absolutely echo that point,
and our style point is 90% of content
that's produced is never looked at.
So, just because you can
create content, doesn't mean
you should,
is kind of the reality for us.
The point is,
it's got to be really strong content.
It's got to be really good content,
it's got to be very compelling content.
If you put that in front of
the right person,
it's going to work.
The whole point about
content marketing is about
getting the right message
in front of the right person
an die richtige Person zu bringen.
and that's the skill of
ABM in a nutshell.
One of the questions I hear
all the time though actually
from marketing organisations
is creating content is a problem
and knowing what content to create
and when
is often something that
I'm finding to be a problem.
But actually and you and I
spoke about this earlier Guy,
us being sat here on this webinar,
all we've done
to create content for this
is actually think about the topic
we want to talk about
and get questions
from our audience
and actually this 50 minute webinar
can lead to a lot of content
being generated off the back of it.
So we're covering
so many subjects here,
all of which need to be
delved into more detail,
we can create white papers
off the back of this,
little summary pieces,
actually I think sometimes,
I've seen organisations that sort of
hesitate to get into action
because they’re concerned too much
about the content first.
Do you agree?
I wanted to chip in actually
on an earlier question when
I think you had somebody
talking about getting
a call to action that works.
For me that's kind of indicative
of the problem,
is if you think inside out typically,
so this is what we want to talk about,
this is what we're
going to write about,
this is what we're going
to send out.
Then again you're going to
probably miss the point.
You need to, as Joel said earlier on,
you need to go out to the customer,
get the insight,
get the understanding.
This is where the sales team
team are important because
if they have interaction with
a customer, that's invaluable.
The marketing team should be
sucking that out completely
and making sure
dass es alle Informationen erhält.
Turning those pain points
that the customer has into
really compelling content.
Again as I said before,
if you've got a sales guy
sitting in front of a customer
with that really compelling content,
you'll get traction,
you'll get opportunity,
you'll get pipeline.
The measurements become really easy.
Okay so let's go to
another audience question,
I've got one from Vincent here.
How do you make sure
that ABM teams and programs
are seamlessly integrated into
the rest of the marketing organisation
which is addressing
the rest of the market?
So it's about this
two speed approach potentially,
to whether you're doing ABM
one level and you're doing something
that you might call
demand generation somewhere else.
How do you make sure
they're integrated?
My personal perspective,
I don't think they necessarily
integriert sein müssen.
they need to be aware of
what each other are doing,
the point is that
the demand generation,
who aren’t working on account level,
shouldn't be talking to the people,
the customers,
they shouldn't be talking to
those accounts that
have been nominated because
what then you get is
duplication of messages
conflicting the messages,
wasted effort and undermining of
each other’s efforts.
So it's more, thinking on the hoof,
it's more awareness and distinction
and respectful alignment
rather than the necessarily
great embedment.
So it really comes back to that
initial statement we made about
understanding which accounts
to target and then having that
separation from there.
Absolutely, just to add to that.
I think we've talked a lot about
sales and marketing alignment but
marketing and marketing alignment
in an ABM world is actually
really important too.
It's like knowing, as you said Joel,
it's knowing what each other is doing.
I think that comes down to,
you could kind of split it up into
what accounts each department
or function within marketing
is responsible for.
So at Demandbase we practice
account-based marketing ourselves.
We actually have a weekly
campaign execution meeting.
What we call our
sausage making meeting.
Where we roll through everything
but we talk about, a big bulk of that
conversation is looking at
the campaigns that we're running,
the audience and
segmentation within that,
to make sure there's no overlap,
to make sure that our programs
make sense as well.
We're getting more and more
integrated as a
marketing organisation.
So I think having those,
field marketing will be
focused on a segment of accounts.
Demand generations are
a bit more broader audience as well
but I think that marketing
and marketing alignment
is definitely key.
So maybe we can sum that up
by saying it's good to talk.
Absolutely.
Guy, I've got a question
for you from Laurie.
She says how would you
combine AMB
with an industry vertical approach?
That's a very good question.
I think we're seeing quite a lot of this,
conversation developing
or cluster ABM
as it's otherwise called.
Industry is a very good start
for a cluster program.
It's probably the obvious one
and a lot of B2B teams have
obviously got an industry marketing team,
or often have an industry marketing team.
So it's a nice fit.
The challenge we're finding
and in effect going back
to the previous question
is the catalyst within the organisation
going to be the same
just because they're in
the same industry?
So what will change the impetus
behind the sales organisation,
getting traction with the customer
and is that driven by industry
or is that driven by, say maturity
of digital transformation
as Joel was talking about earlier on.
Again that might be
a more interesting way of
clustering clients
than looking at industry.
So whilst it's a reasonable start,
it isn't necessarily the best start.
I know we talked briefly
about this before didn't we,
it's almost, it differs
company to company
rather than industry to industry.
Obviously that's the very
simplistic definition for our ABM
which is completely different.
Every company is different
so you have to have a
a bespoke approach
to every company.
Trying to find a way of clustering
is a good strategy to start with
and it sometimes makes
those pilots easier but
it isn't necessarily going to give you
the best returns.
Great conversation but I do want to
get on to the last poll question
from our audience.
So, our last poll question is
really about understanding
where they are
in their journey.
So when do you plan to implement
an ABM strategy?
The options we've given them are
within 6 months, within 1 year,
I won't use ABM, it's not right for me
and if we have anyone
in that category
they've obviously listened to
what we've been saying
which is great.
I already run ABM campaigns
but I need to improve them.
Or I already run
successful ABM campaigns.
So hopefully that will give us
a variety of answers there
and as you said earlier Joel,
there's already a bit of
conflicting information about
where we think people are
on their journey so this will be
quite an interesting hunch I think,
to bear that out.
So from your perspective Joel,
let's say we've got someone
who hasn't even started,
and ABM is a completely
new term to them,
what's the sort of typical time
to implementation from...
Well I think, the best...
the stage you want to get to
first of all as a pilot really,
you can't be expected to do
anything massively complex
from the word go.
You need to be keeping marketing
business as usual
going in the background
so to try and transform everything
in one go is probably naive at best,
foolhardy at worst.
So I think you can get
a pilot reasonably quickly,
we offer a service
to allow people to do this,
to help people into that process
and that will allow you to
evaluate how it works,
what you could use it for.
I think that expectation,
this isn't necessarily true.
There is this pyramid
we haven’t talked about ABM with
at top level which is very much
focusing on one account.
The second level
is a handful accounts,
and the bottom level
which is programmatic,
which is the space of demand,
which is more our biggest
scale of accounts.
I mean, that's the bit I'm interested in
and actually in your response there
and how long it actually takes you
to get that
Because there's more complexity
in that level than
what my expectation would be
and how long it takes you
to get to roll out that
kind of program
wenn man bei Null anfängt?
I mean in terms of using technology
to help you scale,
a lot of people,
we would definitely say
the same thing about
having a pilot campaign,
have that crawl-walk-run approach.
Don't try and kind of boil the ocean
to start with.
But I think it's definitely looking at
taking that kind of
segmented approach to begin with,
testing out doing a pilot
and then scaling out as you get
more sophisticated
with your programs.
I definitely see
a lot of our clients do that,
actually they use industry
as a segment to start with.
You can build a pilot
relatively quickly
in wenigen Wochen aufsetzen.
So that's really the main advice here.
That would have been the
short answer to the long question.
Excellent. Guy, quick question to you
before we go to
the results of that poll,
we've got someone asking,
when thinking about adopting ABM
is it as simple as 1 to 1,
1 to few or 1 to many?
If it is, how do I know which is right?
That's a very good question,
my number hopefully will be
on the webinar details so
we can follow that up.
Connect on LinkedIn!
Joking aside, one has to understand
what they're trying to achieve,
what the goals are
of the sales organisation?
What the target organisations are?
I would be rash I think
to give a very simplistic answer
to that question.
I think it's interesting though,
just picking up on
the previous question,
linking it with that one,
I don't think we'd advocate
that you operate in those
horizontal segments necessarily,
it's about an audience strategy,
it's about an engagement strategy
mit unserer Zielgruppe.
These companies that
I'm talking about which are
markets of one,
potentially have hundreds,
if not thousands of people
within them who are
influencing decisions
So just having one approach
in an account that size,
isn't necessarily the best way
to go forward either.
So you should probably be
having that kind of tiered approach
of ABM to an account of that size.
Great, I'm just conscious
we're running out of time.
This is such a
fascinating conversation
I feel we could go on all day.
I do usually.
I think we're probably
all guilty of that Guy,
so let's have a look
at the results that we've got,
because I think that would be
interesting to tie back to
our observations from earlier.
So we've got...34% of people
looking to implement ABM
within the next 6 months.
13% of people within the next year,
nearly 8% I won't use ABM,
it's not right for me.
I'm glad we've helped out there.
Absolutely, Although again,
maybe it might change.
Nearly 32% saying
I already run ABM campaigns
but I need to improve them
and 13% of people
I already run
successful ABM campaigns,
I'm just wondering
how many of your companies
sich unter den Teilnehmern befinden.
no I'm joking.
That's great to hear
that there's also people
on who already run
very successful campaigns.
I think that's really good as well
and no matter how successful
things are
we can always get better.
So how do you think that relates
to the answers we heard earlier Joel?
Well I think interestingly
the last two points
die Teilnehmer, die ABM bereits nutzen.
are you doing it effectively
or know they need to do it better,
they're kind of the people who are
operational.
I hope that those are the people
who are looking at the technology
at this point,
those are the ones that should be
looking at the technology.
It demonstrates that a lot of people
are still at the very beginning
of their journey.
But you absolutely said it,
nailed it.
Nothing is ever finished.
It's always a work in progress,
we've always got to get better.
Excellent, okay.
So let's have a look at
a couple more questions.
Vincent sent in a question,
how do you make sure ABM teams
and programs are
seamlessly integrated into
the marketing organisation,
we've already asked that question
so my apologies,
I didn't get rid of that one.
Let's look at another one.
So we talked generically
about getting to a pilot program
the question we've got here,
what's a typical lead time
to implement ABM?
So let's imagine that we've done
a successful pilot,
we've decided ABM
is the way to go,
what's a of typical journey look like
from the pilot phase onwards Leanne?
I think it really differs
for a lot of organisations,
it depends on what approach
to ABM they're undertaking
and what the expected results
or outcomes
are going to be of that.
I think typically you're looking at
a pilot campaign,
it can be very quick,
you can get results
within 30 days really,
from a pilot campaign.
To start giving you that insight into
if you're thinking about what
types of accounts to target.
If those companies are
currently on your website,
interagieren sie mit den Inhalten?
and give you that insight
and then you can then take action
from there if you need to go out
and advertise to those companies
that aren’t or personalise the ones
that are already on your website
with content that's relevant to them.
So it really just differs
from organisations
but pilots definitely,
you can get results pretty quickly.
Excellent.
I'm sorry to keep
leaping in ahead of you,
but I think one important thing to note
for ABM to be done properly,
even though you should start slowly
slowly it's quite a profound change
in how you operate
and you can't rush it.
You've got to take it slowly
and you've got to go
through the gears.
It's not like an old-fashioned,
direct marketing campaign
or an email,
or even a marketing
automation campaign.
It's much more profound than that,
and requires much more planning
and thinking analysis up front.
So if you're looking for quick wins...
So really you've got to nail the strategy?
Absolutely.
I'd just like to say,
I think that's absolutely the key point
and for those people
who are maybe jumping in
looking for the tools,
in all deference to Demandbase,
I don't think there are
any magic bullets here.
There are no wonder things
that are going to suddenly
transform everybody's life.
Definitely technology is an enabler,
definitely technology automates.
Definitely technology speeds things up.
But I think to Joel's point,
the companies we work with,
their key accounts,
their ABM accounts
haven’t changed in 5 years.
So the point is that it's
an ongoing conversation
that you're having with these accounts
which is developing
all the time.
People leave those accounts,
people change within
the decision-making process
in those accounts,
sometimes you have to start
from scratch but it's still
the same account and it's still
the same company
und viele Erkenntnisse weiterhin gelten.
So think of them as longitudinal
process and you'll be farther along
the journey than maybe you are now.
Excellent.
I think that's been
a great conversation,
really, really good advice there
and I hope everyone has got some
great benefit from the program.
I'm sure they have.
So just to wrap up,
one quick summary statement
from each of you
as a single sentence Joel,
if we can get that far.
Let's try and keep it brief
and concise.
So Leanne from you,
what would you think is
a key message
in a single sentence
you want to get across the audience?
I would say to anyone out there
that's not doing account-based marketing
or thinking about getting started,
do it.
Because it's a great way of working.
You can really tie
marketing performance to
your revenue.
So I would say get started today.
Excellent, thank you. Guy?
A topic that we
haven't really covered,
but marketing is still
a creative exercise.
So how are you going
to make a difference?
Wow your clients?
Say something interesting?
Say something provocative?
Say something powerful?
That still needs a creative process.
A very creative and powerful
way to finish, thank you.
Excellent. Joel? Lastly to you.
I think know what you're doing.
Have a plan.
It's not something,
this is really important.
It is really exciting.
I think it's one of the most exciting.
It's the interesting,
most interesting bit of B2B
at the moment.
But don't enter into it lightly.
It's not something
you can do simplistically,
have a plan.
I did notice there's a lot of
very interesting articles about ABM
on your website.
So I'd recommend people to go
and have a look at that
if you haven’t done already.
So thank you so much,
it's been absolutely great
talking to you all.
Audience, thank you for tuning in,
for sending in all of the questions.
Loads there that I haven’t answered,
so apologies for that.
Unfortunately we can't
get to all of them.
But hopefully you've got
a lot of value from this.
As I mentioned there's a couple of
calls to action on the webinar console,
a couple of other events
you can sign up to
wenn Sie das nicht bereits getan haben.
Do have a look
at the resource list
and download the resources
that are on there.
This program will be available
on demand as well,
probably from tomorrow.
So if you need to have another look,
listen again,
because there is so much
good advice came out.
Also let your colleagues know,
get them to have a look too.
So, thank you very much
and look forward to seeing you
on the next Insight 50 program.
Auf Wiedersehen.