On 24 rushes_1

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.