Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel BTP marketing podcast, brought to
you by full funnel dot io. Let's start.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And welcome to the new episode of Full Funnel Life.
Today we continue our account based content topic during the
previous sessions of where we invited our clients. We have
seen multiple questions about account based content strategy and obviously
our clients can present you know, the experience right, which
(00:37):
is limited to the programs that we have done together.
But today we wanted to tackle the big picture, right,
showing you how to how basically we create the account
based content strategy for ourselves for our clients. Show with
your practical examples, of course, because it makes no sense
to record a podcast episode and not talking about practical examples.
(01:02):
And we have received a lot of great questions from
you guys, so we'll try our best to tackle all
of them. Meanwhile, let us know please in the chat
where you guys join us from. I'm again broadcasting from Williaral, Valencia, Spain.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
And I saw from the city of Valenci Yeah, currently
reigning unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, that's the typical sign. We have books from Estonia.
Good to see somebody where our company is actually registered.
Let's see from London to see Nicola. I great to
see you again. Yeah, probably the most how to say
(01:48):
it correctly, the fan that has been for us like
forever almost I feel that I know you better than
some of my college friends. Thank you so much, coming
all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
My.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Biggest stand for Yeah, and as they see a point,
nice to media sarrived from Adrid. Got to see our neighbor,
but I got to see you guys, Monica Pressols Candas
Columbia increase. Nice to media guys. Okay, cool, So what
we want to share with you today? First of all,
we want to share with you how to create a
(02:26):
holistic one too many, one of you and one to
one account based content strategy. And then we want to
share with your practical examples and also demonstrate some of
our playbooks just to give you an idea how different
formats of content might look like. That being said, I
(02:47):
think we can kick it off, and I think the
first good point would be just to explain how content
goals are different in account market and compare and let's
say to traditional content market. And so I would be
calling out of lock.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, hello everybody, Yes, there will be recording. This is
the most popular question we get will be recording available
on the same platform if you log in tomorrow and
we publish these also on YouTube. We publish them on
all the podcasts platforms as well. But with that out
of the way, I wanted to jump into how is
(03:28):
content marketing different within ABM and within ABM than to
the traditional let's say B to B and specifically, let's
dive in first into the goals. What are some of
the goals now? We want to align the goals of
your content strategy with the goals of your ABM program.
(03:50):
And usually you will have different programs depending on whether
your goal is net new pipeline and revenue versus pipeline
acceleration versus expansion renewals, et cetera. So if you're looking
at net new pipeline and revenue, what we are looking
for from content is to help us create awareness in
(04:14):
target accounts, specifically in the buying centers our target buying centers,
in our target accounts. And if there is one challenge
that we repeatedly hear from salespeople is there is lack
of awareness and recognition of our brand and nobody pays
(04:35):
attention to my messages. What we know today people receive
so much outbound that if they don't know you, they
will ignore your messages. So when they don't know you,
when they don't know your brand, when there is this
lack of awareness, it's really hard to even start a conversation.
(04:56):
It's also important for net new is to not only
create a awareness about our solutions solution to their let's
say top strategy challenges, but also to showcase specifically how
our solution is going to help solve their challenges or
benefits they can expect and very important in ABM because
(05:20):
we are in ABM, unlike with let's say traditional B
to B marketing, we are working closely with sales and
content In ABM helps should help sales open doors and
create opportunities for engagement. But also, as we will share
(05:40):
later in some examples, actually help sales get insider information
in target accounts to know because at the end, ABM
is about personalized marketing, personalized approach, so getting the insider
information in addition to a country research, getting inside information
(06:01):
is really important. That's all about net new. What about
pipeline acceleration. When I say pipeline acceleration, I mean deals, sales, deals,
sales opportunities that are already in a pipeline. How can
we help the sales team win more of them faster?
And what is the role of content there? Well, role
of content is all about buyer enablement. It's all about
(06:22):
helping your champions sell. Because, as Nate Astralia said in
his book Selling with and very frequently on his speeches,
is you don't sell, it's actually the champion that sells internally,
especially in complex enterprise sales. And our content is there
to help the champion demonstrate let's say the cost of
(06:45):
inaction and the flip side, the error I of dealing
with the high priority problem that this customer account faces,
to showcase specific solutions, so we're not talking about the
generic product marketing. We are talking about the specific problems
(07:05):
that this account experience and showing them exactly how we
can help them with those challenges. And as well, very
important is as as you're dealing with the buying community,
with the buying center, with a lot of different people,
is to answer the questions that these people have, concrete
questions that I have about your solution, concerns, objections, UH
(07:29):
and UH basically provide provide an answer to those questions,
and next to that is really all about, like I said,
enabling our champion to sell our solution internally, and the
final let's say, group them together expansions and renewals once
the deal is closed. The first thing that we want
(07:52):
to do, and we want content to help us do
that is to accelerate the so called time to value.
We want to help our custom stomers become as quickly
as possible to get success with the solution that we
are implementing there with them. And then of course as
their use cases and priorities change and evolve, we want
(08:16):
to show them with our content how we can help
them evolve, how we can help them actually support their
evolving priorities, and in some specific cases to kind of
close the loop where expansion is actually about expanding into
new buying centers, into potentially new regions or geographies, departments,
(08:41):
et cetera. There is a lot of the same goals
as we have with net new accounts, where we still
have to create that awareness generate demand. The only difference
is that here we can use much more personalized content.
We can use our existing chins and power users feature
(09:02):
them in their content, but without going into a lot
of details. These are the goals and how they differ
for content within the A B M strategy. Now, there's
other differences when it comes to content, and I think
I think when we're talking about foundations, I'd like, maybe Andre,
if you can share also, what are maybe some of
(09:24):
the differences in way that we should be thinking about
the team and the role of content in that team.
And you know, as as opposed to how this in
usually structured within B to B companies when it comes
to content.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, the problem was let's say the content setups. So
first of all, I would say that content is one
of the most undervalued areas of ABM strategy. Right. You
tackled a lot how it should be part different account
based market and motions.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The second problem that is in the majority of companies
either don't have a ededucated content resource or quite often
it's a junior content marketer that doesn't have.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
The main knowledge. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Even in this case, you can fix that challenge. We
can discuss how that uh, let's say content marketer can
work with subject matter expert. But another problem I observed
that in the bigger the organization is the most silent.
This function is, which means that this pew like. Let's
(10:34):
say if you have silent content team, This team doesn't
care at all about ABM program success. They have own metrics,
they have own calendar, they care about the corporate ton
of voice, you know, they care about press releases, they
care about you know, the slam that in the real
(10:57):
world you'll never use it and your bear buyers I
bets never understand this, but that's the reality. So we
must tackle this before launch any ABM program. We need
to get a committed content marketer that will be working
alongside account based marketing team and if let's say other
(11:19):
team members. If your ABM lead and sales rep, they
are not domain they don't have domain knowledge. You must
have subject matter expert in your ABM team, right, This
is where all the content should come from. Especially let's
say this one to many content that will tackle next
(11:41):
in the next block. This person basically who is the
subject matter expert. This is the person who used to
work as your target buyer PERSONA right. This person understands
the jobs to be done. This person understands the typical challenges,
the daily routine, if you will, the typical internal conversations
(12:02):
that are happening and the most important saying, this person
understands the status quo. In many cases, we are competing
not with the competitors, we are competing with the status quo.
It's the standard way of doing things for these companies. Right.
To give you a specific example, quite often we observe
(12:23):
in many companies that let's say leadership or sales are
hesitant or reluctant to launch account based marketing program because
they feel that you need to stop lead generation. And
the first reaction is, wait, are you going to say
that we need to kill our bread and butter pipeline
(12:44):
generation channels? Of this outbounded last performance marketing, and you
need to do a lot of change management. You need
to explain why it's not working, proving it with the facts,
et cetera. Right, And if you look at any given
bit to B market this is the reality. Right. A
lot of companies they don't even understand they have a
specific problem or challenge just because they have done these
(13:08):
things for years that specific way. And how can you
change it? You can change it only with the content,
right you can. Basically the content starts ciding degree in
the minds of your target buyers that there are inefficiencies
in these processes. It starts connecting the dots for them
so they start understand, Okay, here's the inefficiency, and here's
(13:31):
how it impacts my own jobs to be done and
my organizational goals, my department goals, et cetera. Right, so
these are the keys. And without having a person who
understands this, who can share anycdots, you'll never be able
to create good content, and without it, your program is
(13:52):
likely not to perform. Right, that's the problem. And I
saw a lot of questions about like automate and the process,
or like how to use AI, how to use chadgpety.
The problem is simple. You like, you can use all
of these toolls, but if you don't have subject matter
expert who can share these insights, your programers doomed. No
(14:14):
chudge re pity will help you to print seven seven
figure deals. That's that's the sad reality.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So from that perspective, account based marketing team is a
BM lead, subject matter expert, content market or sales. And
then depending on other playbooks, you might involve other people. Right,
but this is this is the bare minimum. And now
the question who owns the process, Who owns like let's
(14:41):
say the account account based content strategy creation and the
answer is simple. The team owns it. You need to
create it right. All these people need to gather in
one room or child room doesn't really matter, off side
room and work to gathers through what we call the
(15:01):
cluster challenge, the composition right, and that's basically the next
part of account based content strategy. I think you can
pick it up and explain the cluster approach.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Happy too, Happy too. So in a traditional B to
B marketing set B to B content marketing setting, what
you see very often being used our personas, and depending
on the team, they might be more precise, more generic,
et cetera. But in general there are some problems with that,
(15:36):
and instead of using personas, what we use typically in
ABM is ideal customer profile, which consists of specific thermographics
and technographics the buying center, specific qualification pritization criteria, and
(15:56):
insights into the buyer NY. But there's actually when we
look at a lot of companies and the way that
they create their ICP, there are a couple of missing
elements that are important for our content strategy. Okay, so
first of all, what we want to do is even
when you focus, for example, on a specific industry vertical
(16:21):
and define very precisely let's say qualification and prioritization criteria,
but this doesn't tell you, It doesn't tell you how
you should align your content with the different use cases
that your customers might have, although they might be all
from the same vertical. Usually, depending especially for large enterprises,
(16:44):
complex solutions, you will have different kinds of use cases,
different kinds of challenges that your product can solve. And
I think this is really the key, right So to
solve this, we further segment this into what you mentioned
account clusters, and account clusters is simply a group of
(17:04):
accounts that have similar use cases and share challenge share challenges. Okay,
so let me just give you a quick two quick examples,
and I think I'll use two examples that everybody knows. One,
let's say that you're selling a CRM, or if you're
a service company, let's say you're selling software, so a
(17:26):
software development solution. Like two extreme examples where it's very
clear that let's say as a software development company, you
could basically do a lot of different news cases. You
can do that you could help your target companies with
many different challenges or even a CRM, right, we know,
like it's a very generic solution, it's really hard to
stand out. And again, the different companies will have different
(17:51):
news cases. Now, let's say both of these companies they
decide to focus on banks, financial service of financial service
vertical and sorry industry, and then the banks within there
even like going deeper, let's say retail banks right. Still again,
still still have the same problem. There could be like
(18:13):
a multitude of use cases, multitude of reasons why their
customers will actually buy their solution, and it's only when
you start zooming into those use cases that you can
start seeing some similarities. So let's say, for example, banks
that are looking to improve their digital customer experiences and
(18:35):
differentiate in that way because they are under pressure from
the disrupting neo banks, you know like Whys and Revelute
and all of these new startups fintech startups in the world.
They're under pressure and they want to differentiate through the
(18:57):
experience customer experiences, but they have to fight with legacy software.
So this could be like a very specific use case
for within that niche right, or like in a CRM,
let's say we want to go after agents after let's
say investor investment departments where the high churn rate of
(19:25):
let's say investor investment advisors or agents. Right, So this
is a very specific use case that would allow us
to now align our content with the challenges that these
customers have. So the takeaway here is to not only
define your ICP in terms of your prmographics, qualification criter,
(19:47):
et cetera, et cetera, but to actually look deeper into
the main use cases jobs to be done, the main
reason that the customers are buying your product, and to
segment them this way. This will make it so much
easier for you to align the content. And there is
one more aspect within the ABM that we might ignore
(20:08):
in a traditional bit to be setting, and that's obviously
the buying center. We are not selling to companies. We
are selling to people, teams, are buying committees whatever you
like to call them, within those within those companies, and
the different roles and the different people within those accounts
(20:30):
will have different needs, will have different questions as they
are joining the buyer journey, as they are being asked
for an advice or their input, or they're you know,
part of the decision making process and These are the
additional insights that you will need to define a good
(20:52):
content strategy. And I mentioned one of the important aspects
of our ICP is the buyer journey, and this is
another topic that I like to ask Coundary to address,
like how do we actually align our content with the
buyer journey of the target accounts and thereby journey stage.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I think I will need to share my screen just
to show your one diagram how we think about it.
And meanwhile, guys, feel free to ask any questions we
have Q and a section. I already saw a question
coming from Nikolai. If you have any questions that you'd
like us to cover, I feel free to put your
(21:34):
questions into that section. Now, this is the fundamental diagram
that we believe you need to use in your account
based content strategy. So a couple of things here, Right,
you see a few access and if you need if
you don't see a whole screen, you can just click
on zoom in on your screen. So, first of all,
(22:00):
we have different levels of demand and intent, right, and
the majority of your like we don't need to repeat
the B to B mantra, right that the majority of
your customers are not actually buying. You have heard about
this multiple times. We always look at the current stage
(22:20):
of bier journey and the level of intent, right, and
we separated into basically where you find three blocks. We
have Let's say no law intent and what does that mean?
That means that these people are not actively looking for
any for any solution.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Let's say if you I mean, I bet the majority
of you in UH having different marketing positions in your organization, right,
and they're not actively buying. But what why do you come,
for example, to link it for this live podcast? Right?
Because you want to learn? And the same is the
(23:00):
same could be applied to your buyers. The majority of
your buyers are in that state. Yes, they are not
actively buying, but they are actively learning, right, And our
goal is to align our content with their interests, right,
with their jobs, to be done with sharing the industry
(23:21):
US right and trends because a lot of them might
be interested in what's happening in the industry, what their
peers are doing, etc. Sharing best practices right despite there
not actively buying, They're all interested in how to make
their life better.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Probably this is one of the reasons why you attended
this episode right now, and ultimately our goal is to
challenge the status quo. Right, we need to kind of
initiate or trigger or somehow influence they are buying process
something that can tell, something that can point their attention
to inefficiencies right and better ways to do multiple processes. Now,
(24:03):
half of your target accounts would have let's say medium
by an intent. What does that mean? That means that
there are conversations about how to make things better that
are happening in the accounts. So what we observe typically
company missed, either company missed the revenue targets maybe for
(24:28):
a couple of years, or another typical problem. A company
growing successfully on the local market but struggling to grow
outside despite multiple attempts, and they usually try already multiple solutions,
purchasing an expensive ABM platform, hiring different types of agencies,
(24:49):
and nothing helps. Right, another typical problem, so they try
to solve. For example, the company has successful SMB motion
but struggles to go up market and generate enterprise deals right,
and simply nobody in the company has the necessary skill set,
and the company tries to investigate what are the best
(25:12):
ways to solve it? Right, It's not necessary that they
want to bring full funnel as the consulting company. Maybe
they are thinking about different technology, maybe they're thinking about
different training whatever, right, maybe even changes in the team
they believe that the current team doesn't have the necessary
skill set. So that could be multiple ways. And why
(25:34):
we call the medium intent because apparently if the content
that you create resonates with them, that could actually influence
their buying process. Right, they could pay attention and they
could start talking to you. So from that specific perspective,
we'll think about one to few pieces of content, right,
Like I mentioned for example, you're struggling, you're struggling to
(25:56):
crow enterprise right, and then we'll start creating the same
content basically cover and that specific cluster, right, how to
scale so how to go from SMB to enterprise right,
or how to develop enterprise motion properly? This becomes our cluster, right,
and we start creating the content that is relevant for
these specific companies. In this case, you need to have
(26:19):
a couple of things. You incorporate a couple of things
into your content strategy. It should be step by step processes,
explanations on how to do it successfully, and it should
be proven by industry case status. Right, you can't come
and bly, you know, just latently tell hey, do this, this,
this and that, and the success is guaranteed. Probably you
(26:43):
all have seen a couple of years ago that LinkedIn
was full of generic advice, something like create valuable content
and the leads will come and gate everything and deliver value,
focus on trend and I mean in theory, all sounds right.
(27:04):
The problem is how to do it right and how
to make sure that when you do it you will
generate pipeline and revenue.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So it's easy to say, but it's hard to do,
and especially it's easy to make the kind of wag
bloat and statements that are not proved by anything, right,
by any facts. We need to do the opposite right.
We don't create content for the hype. We don't create
content for the likes. I often hear a question about metrics,
(27:34):
and well, cover the metrics at the end, but I'm
always saying, for me, what is essential If like four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
target buarer personas will consume that content and consider our
company as the vendor, this is this is a success
for me. It's not that this content will be consumed
(27:54):
by thousands of random people who don't care about who
and what we do. Right, that's the key. This is
the mindset that you need to apply. Right. How what
is the content that you create? Can its influence the
let's say, the way of saying or the decision making
process of your target accounts? And ultimately it's one on
(28:15):
one content, right? And this is the content where the
demount is high. How can we just cover it? Right? Obviously,
these accounts are aware of you. You have they demonstrate
some level of engagement. So these are not the called accounts,
and these are the accounts whom you already have some
level of relationship with the buying committee and you execute
(28:37):
it in depth account research I mean not judge a
pet account research, but des research combined with one on
one conversations with the buying committee group, you pretty much
understands the challenges and you can see a strong product
need evidence, I mean your product need evidence. Why we
(28:58):
don't call it the buying intent because there is only
one definition of the buying intent. When a prospect tells you, hey,
I want to buy your product, send me an invoice,
set up an account for me or whatever, this is
the buying intent. All the rest is engagement, right, and
when you have a count research, when you collect different signals,
(29:19):
this is only the evidence that they have challenges that
your product can help with. And your goal is to
create a fully personalized solution, fully personalized content hup for
these accounts, explaining how their challenges could be solved, right,
not just talking about your product features, but explaining how
(29:40):
their specific challenges could be solved and your product could
become a part of it. Right. This is the key
that also intels creation of business cases. What already mentioned right,
Why your solution? Why doing what you're offering right now?
What can you expect from the implement What are the
(30:01):
necessary resources for the implementation, what has expected milestones? And
let's say ro out of this solution. Why Because these
people would have internal evaluations and internal conversations, and you
need to armor your champion with enough arguments to protect
your offer, right or to sell your offer to the
(30:22):
rest of the team. This is the key. And depending
on the prime committee structure, right you might have. You
might have people from different departments and you need to
taggle all of their potential concerns. This is what we
put into one on one content. And if you look
at this content, holistically. Right, you can see that it's
(30:45):
pretty much connected to different Bier journey stages. Right, how
can you create awareness for the accounts that are not
in the market, How can you pursue or how can
you attract the attention of accounts that are considering multiple
solutions to consider your solution as one of them, and ultimately,
how can you pursue the buying committed to buy your
(31:09):
specific solution your products. This is a natural the ABM strategy.
I said, what could be good to do next is
to dive deeper into the formats of the content. So
maybe you can just cover the examples of what can
be done from one too many and one a few
(31:30):
and one to one.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Absolutely, I'd love to share an example and map to
the different stages of the bar journey. But I think
it would be also at the same time interesting to
share the examples of a format. But also I think
I I'll be able to address the question of theorists,
which I think is super relevant. And his question was
(31:52):
having the content is one thing, but making sure that
the right people get it distribution to the people that
matter is another. Can you elaborate on that? And I'd
love to do that so Andrea was talking about low intent,
medium intent, high intent. The way we practically approach this
within account based marketing programs is looking at three lists.
(32:20):
We call this and we did an episode diving deeper
into this how we prioritize accounts, et cetera. But we
use three lists. The first list is so called cluster ICP,
So we don't make a list that is larger than
one ideocasm profile cluster. If you remember, cluster are accounts
that share challenges, right, because if they don't share challenges,
(32:44):
it is very difficult to have a consistent, meaningful content
strategy for them, right. So you first build a list
of target accounts in a cluster. A cluster like I said,
with a specific use case, let's say companies that went
through mergers and acquisition and are looking to onboard new employees.
(33:08):
Whatever the clus there is, you will be able to
identify those accounts and how do you distribute content to them?
And also what kind of content can you be using there? Well,
there's basically kind of two ways in which you can
distribute this content. The first way is obviously using paid
distribution to those named accounts and the target buyers within
(33:29):
those accounts, you can use LinkedIn or account ban is
marketing account BANI is advertising solution for that LinkedIn is
good enough. We like to also immediately involve our salespeople
because one of the main biggest challenges that we see
in the market, especially with sales, is that lack of recognition,
(33:50):
lack of awareness, and we want to create awareness. If
you remember, that's exactly what Andred said. So these are
accounts that have low buyering and they may not even
be aware of us that we exist. So we need
to create awareness and recognition. And if you now create
content that is for example, native to LinkedIn or communities
(34:12):
or where our buyers are. So let's say to LinkedIn
social content, and we distribute this content to those target accounts,
and we share it on the profiles of our salespeople,
and we use for example, thought leadership ads to distribute
this content to those targeted accounts and buyers. Suddenly we're
not only creating awareness, we are also helping position our
(34:34):
salespeople as quote unquote trusted advisor versus yet another sales
ap trying to get your attention. Okay, so speaking about
formats of content that are appropriate here I mentioned already
content for social or communities, any content that actually lends
itself to sales engagement. Another type of content that works
(34:57):
really well for awareness is events or webinars, and the
reason is, again they lend themselves very easily to sales engagement.
So which brings me to the second part of how
we distribute the content. We actually use our salespeople. They
(35:19):
help us distribute the content we are sharing. We had
their profiles, They're connecting to our target accounts on social
on communities, and they are sharing that content and you know,
we paid promotion, we are boosting that. Now, when I
say this content lends itself to engagement, it means that
(35:40):
every time somebody is engaging with your content on social
or on communities, you immediately can turn that engagement into conversation.
If your content is on the relevant topic, your conversation
is going to be on the same topic, so the
topic is going to be relevant. That's why it's so
important to have content that is actually reflecting the challenges
(36:01):
of your target accounts, because this is the conversations that
you want to have very naturally coming from that content
engagement and flowing into that sales conversation. Okay, so this
is in terms of like awareness creation. The second list
that we build are accounts that still fit our cluster
(36:22):
ICP but they have some awareness, they have some engagement.
We don't really know if they are immediately if there
is an opportunity. We call them future pipeline because there
is some awareness, there is some interest, there is some engagement,
there is let's say medium level of intent, but there
(36:43):
is definitely no intent yet and we don't know enough
of that. We didn't validate their need. We are not sure.
We don't have that insider information. And our goal for
those accounts is to increase the sales engagement, increase conversations
to help our sales people one build a relationship with
(37:04):
the target buyers and two get this insider information to
be able to validate their insights. So how what's the
role of content there? Well, one of the best ways
for salespeople to get some insider information, engaged buyers and
conversations by content co creation. So we do that a lot.
(37:26):
We co create, will work together with our salespeople to
co create content with our buyers. You know, we could
you know, write about a specific topic, get some quotes,
or run surveys or get some quotes from their connections
(37:47):
and feature them in a piece of content that could
be as simple as a LinkedIn post where you're sharing
insights that you learn through conversations with other people in
other people in the industry up to you know, something
like a podcast or industry research where this is like
much more formalized, where marketing is also taking a more
(38:08):
active role in creating that content. Right, So content collaborations.
But also for example, if you take a webinar or
an event, somebody registering for a webinar about a very
relevant topic, now you can instruct your salespeople to reach
out to everybody who registered there, as you can see
here as an example, right and just saying hey, you know,
(38:31):
thanks for registering. We are working with the subject matter
expert to present this topic. And he asked me or
she asked me to collect collect the questions that our
audience has. Could you please share with me what is
the top challenge that you're liking to looking to learn
more about during this event. Will collect these insights and
(38:54):
present it to our speaker to make the event much
more relevant for you. So again, you are creating in
multiple touch points using this content, You're getting some information
from those buyers that you can then later on you.
So I mentioned different formats, I mentioned how we distribute this,
(39:14):
and then obviously once we go to the third list,
which is what Andrea already explained, higher intent, where we
know they have an active need, there is an existing relationship,
we are in a conversation and two way conversation with them.
Maybe there is not yet a sales qualified opportunity, and
our goal is then to create a sale qualified opportunity
(39:36):
and how the champion basically show the priority of why
we should be even looking a solution like this. Here
we are going down to one on one content. We
are Andrea was mentioned in content hubs. We're going to
share another example of one on one content where in
(39:59):
those and hubs we will share specific answers to the
specific questions that are buying a center has. We're going
to share the business case that we might create together
with the champion or for consider in this case, we yeah, okay,
we are basically using the engagement from the previous step
to have the conversation and drive meetings, et cetera. One
(40:23):
more thing that I wanted to mention about this as
we were looking at the different formats. As we were
looking in distribution and how this maps to one on one,
one too many, and one to few. Is that if
you would actually dive a little bit deeper into this example,
you will see that all these different activities and pieces
of content are connected in a kind of a journey. Right.
(40:46):
So we were talking about the specific challenge in this case,
the cluster of accounts were companies looking to just start
to go from zero to ABM. We have invited one
of our clients to do a live case study webinar.
There we were posting about the same topic online. We
were using this engagement to reach out to the people
(41:10):
who were engaging with that post in this case, start
a conversation invited to the webinar, then connecting with the
people who registered to the webinar, getting some information also
through the signup form, and finally also going from these
insights and maybe questions they asked during the webinar to
(41:30):
continue the conversation book The calls eventually create a sales deal.
So I just wanted to share that it's also not
about having some content for top of funnel, some content
for the middle of the funnel, as we usually think
about it, some content for the bottom of the funnel,
but also thinking about, Okay, how are these different steps connected,
(41:55):
how can we actually create these multiple touch points and
how can we conne them into kind of a journey
that makes sense for our buyers.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
And I was like, if you don't mind, I just
wanted to add five cents here because laod share it
with you one of the playbooks right that contains multiple steps.
I feel what is really important to emphasize here. You
see that we imbed a lot of progressive top to
profile and touch points or basically account research touch points,
(42:28):
collected insights on sign up form right even for example,
for today's episode, when you sign up, we'll give you
an optional field to ask questions that you want us
to cover during the event. Right. Aside from this, we
can reach out, we can ask multiple questions like you
can see in these examples, and these insights feed again
(42:50):
our account based content strategy. Let's say the broader insights
about this is like my challenge or this is the
question that I have, for example, the question that you
mentioned right, how to distribute the content to target accounts
that could be our next either linked and post on use,
letter or blog or podcast episode of webinar right, we
(43:11):
could repurpose it into multiple formats. Now I just want
to make it practical, right, so we can also take
it and create fully personalized let's say content for yours,
right saying a yours, here's how And obviously that entails
in my in depths account research, and likely we have
quite good relationships share and a few beers and adverb inveltionis.
(43:36):
I think we can get this inside three too easily,
but jokes aside, I mean we need to invest time
and do the in depth account resarch. From that perspective,
we need to understand the sales team structure, the marketing
team structure, and then map out the content distribution right,
how his team can distribute the content to different target
accounts and multiple formats, and maybe the craft somed like
(44:00):
let's say make some simulation, right, make some kind of
fake examples of how that might look like, just to
give a pretty good overview. So this is essential. Every
insight that you collect should be tailored to your account
or incorporated and your account based content strategy. It is
never static. It's a dynamic program and you always prioritize it.
(44:23):
And the second point. Quite often I think this is
important to nail down content teams usually have the content calendar, right,
they create the outline of the weeks or months. Hey,
this week, we're going to post about this. This week,
we are going to post about that. But if you
guys have attended the previous episode was Alan Carross from
(44:45):
certain from our client. She actually reflected a little bit
on this. She said, Traditionally I have this content calendar,
but an APM it kind of became messy, but not
in a bad way. It means that we see the
engagement coming from the strategic account and for us as
the chief, the key priority is to generate sales opportunity,
(45:06):
but to generate it in an value added way for
this account. So from that perspective, we put away our
let's say, content plans for the weekend. We start prioritizing
what kind of content can we create using this insight, right,
what our buyers might need or appreciate. And this is
the approach, right, So you need to forget about the
(45:27):
static content calendars. This is another difference right when it
compared them to the standard content marketing approach, and you
make it dynamics. So this is this is one of
the keys. By the way, I wanted very quickly share
if you don't mind, what if you can stop screen sharing,
I would share one of the documents, uh that we
(45:51):
have in our Uh give me a second, guys, Uh,
we have we have quite a lot of this content
on playbox and we can talk ours. So maybe even
just create you know, a webinar around this, so if
you are interested, because I feel we won't be able
to cover all of this today, we have our on
(46:13):
demand ABM course, I will drop the link in the
chat so you can go through these playbox on your
own and see multiple examples on how to execute these programs. Right,
because we have ceteen minutes left, I would love to
leverage this time to answer the questions from everybody who
came to the episode life and then cover the questions
(46:37):
that came from our community. I feel only the last
point would be wrapping up the KPIs and metrics and
then we can switch to the questions. Let's maybe let's
maybe just very simply wrap up the key KPIs for
(46:58):
account based content strategy where they pick it.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Up absolutely, thank you. Basically what we said at the beginning,
content resource or resources should be part of your ABM team,
not a siloed, not a part of a siloed team,
which sometimes is the case, which actually means that they
share the KPIs with their team, and the KPIs for
(47:23):
any ABM program without having to go into a lot
of details, we did a lot of a lot of material.
We have a lot of material that we did mention
that in many different podcasts. Essentially, will your main KPIs
of your ABM program will have to be aligned with
the goal. So if your goal is net new revenue,
you will looking you will be looking at the KPIs
(47:45):
such as you know the net new revenue and the
net new pipeline you have generated, the average size of
your deals ACV the win rate as KPIs right, if
you're looking at expansion, will be looking expanded revenues will
be the KPIs. Now, when it comes to KPIs, I
think in metrics it's important to also use the leading metrics.
(48:07):
There was a great post today by Handrey about leading metrics,
especially if this is a new program that you're rolling out.
Having also early indicators and leading metrics is important. Things
that we like to look at are related to the
account engagement and conversations that are being started and are
(48:30):
related to you know, booking discovery calls that eventually should
lead to pipeline. But these are early indicators that really help.
First of all, I think like aligning the expectations on
what is what is reasonable to expect and how quickly,
but also to keep the team motivated and keep the momentum.
(48:52):
Now with respect to content specifically, like I said, they
have the shared KPIs, but there are a couple of
mindset shifts when it comes to evaluation how you are
evaluating the performance of your content. So like, typically we
might be looking at things like you know, traffic, views, engagement,
while in the case of count based marketing, you can
(49:16):
be looking at engagement right, but you're basically looking at
target accounts, like we don't really care how many people
like our posts or whether they are performing really well,
as long as the target accounts are actually seeing them
and engaging with them. The second mindset shift is it's
even like sales, how actively sales using with it and
(49:39):
how successful is sales in using the content and the
content playbooks to start conversations with target buyers. I think
this would be definitely an early indicator to look at
to evaluate the performance of your content and the final
point there, or the final mindset shift if you like,
is not looking at individual pieces of content and saying, Okay,
(50:03):
is this what is the ROI of this piece of content?
Knowing that each and every piece of content that you're sharing, preparing,
and every playbook is just one touch point in a global,
global journey. So this is what we want to be
looking at as well, we want to look at it
more holistically. Okay, So hopefully that makes sense in terms
(50:24):
of the metrics. And I'm also really looking forward to
jump into this question, So let's just do it, Andrey, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Absolutely, I feel we need to start with the question
from people who came life to the session. So Nicola,
I mean sorry, answered the question first. So let's cover
Nickela's question, how did, if at all, your ICP or
your clients ICP is changed after we start at years
(50:51):
and watch atty and other similar tools. I think that
AI can't impact the ICP. The ideal customer profile purely
depends on your on your product value. Right, that's combined
with your product market and with what challenges your product solves,
(51:13):
and then with your historical data. Right, what are the
best companies that actually this product helps, so change you
PC doesn't influence the ICP development at all if yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, maybe just add too quick sense on that. So
like like fundamentally obviously it doesn't change who your cps are.
There you do. You have an opportunity to use these
tools in two ways to some of the select two
main use cases which could be helpful. The first one
is in processing the data that you have collected about
(51:51):
your customers. So if you have customer service, customer interviews,
case studies, et cetera, you can use AI to help
you derive the patterns from there to derive those common
use cases, challenges, et cetera. So I found this very helpful,
which is one of the essential building blocks of your ICP.
(52:13):
And the second part is in researching your ICP target customers.
There are many tools today for account research and enrichment
which can help you, but they can, I mean, the
best way to use them is first understanding the basics
and what is the information you want to do this,
doing this process manually the first few times, and then
(52:36):
you know, using tools like clay or relevance AI, et
cetera to then scale this up and be able to
collect more data, more relevant data and from more and
more target accounts. I mean, these are two specific things
that can help with one ICP development in terms of
(52:56):
the analysis and to in identifying those ICP accoun from
the different sources that you have on the webinar online.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Awesome. If you guys have questions, it's the right time
to drop them in the chat. I see already question
from Ken, so let's pick it up. How have you
successfully counseled patients given ABM generally takes time to impact
new logos by plan. You're absolutely right, and this was
(53:26):
partially what I wrote about today. The key point is
that you need to set up the right expectations from
the beginning right and if you have paid attention to
the account classification like Flood described, this is what we
do to set up the right expectations. Was every initiative
(53:47):
and that's not limited to account based marketing. Any initiate
of that is new to organization. The first question you
will hear what can we expect out of it? And
how fast? Right? That doesn't matter if you print ABM
or demand gen or any initiative, in person, event, executive dinners,
you name it right now, you want to make sure
(54:09):
that your program won't be shut down in a few
weeks just because there are no leads, no sales opportunities, whatever.
How can you set up the right expectations you whenever
you pick up whenever you start building your account lids.
You need to segment them into three groups. The first
bucket is what we call the cluster ICP list. These
(54:33):
accounts don't know you and you have no idea if
they are buying. What is the actual challenge not assumed challenge,
but actual challenge?
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (54:42):
So what is the logical goal with these accounts? It's
creating awareness because if they don't know you, these are
purely called accounts, you can't sell, right, and you need
so de find with sales and executives, clear tangible create
here that you can apply and call a specific account
(55:04):
like account that knows us, account that is vender aware, right,
That's critical. The second list is what we call future
pipeline accounts. These accounts that hit your engagement threshold or
your awareness createria. But you still have no idea if
they are buying. What is the actual need from a
(55:25):
BM perspective, what is the logical goal? The logical goal
is to map out the buying committee. Start engagement with
this buying committee and run in depth account research to
validate the needs. Right. So the logical metric for this
list would be how many engage that researched accounts you have, right?
And lastly, you have active focus lists of the accounts. Right.
(55:48):
These accounts that hit all these boxes, they know you,
they hit your engagement creteria. Right, you know the challenge
and you can work on fully personalized offers if you come.
If I'll come back to our diagram of like one,
a few, one too many, one on one. This is
where you start creating fully personalized offerings for these accounts. Right,
(56:10):
and now how can you set up the right expectations.
You might take the sales list, you might work with
the sales together on the initial list. You finish your list,
start this subsegmentation and in most cases this is what
we observe. In most cases you will have zero accounts
and active focus. Then maybe just I would just share
(56:33):
with you the percentage, maybe like ten percent that would
be the maximum of total accounts that you have selected
in future pipeline list. And then ninety percent of your
accounts in let's say this cluster ICP call the accounts
that don't know you and you have no idea about
the needs of these accounts. The next step that you
(56:55):
need to take is to ask your stakeholders and sales
this is our reality, what realistically can we expect from this?
Knowing historically that our sales cycle lens is x months. Right,
Let's say your sal historical sales cycle is twelve months,
(57:16):
which if we'll translated into buyer journey, it means that
the buyer journey could be up to two years. Right,
that's the reality because we measure sales cycle from other
touch points, but the buyer journey is way longer. So
this is the question that you need to answer. And
when you present it that way, it drastically changes the
(57:37):
expectations of these people. Right. If you see clearly and
everybody agrees with these definitions, right, and with the playbox,
when you see and look at these accounts, right and
this setup, it usually changes the amount of people. And
then you start reporting on these metrics. Because the point
is simple. The key metric for you is account velocity.
(58:00):
How fast you can move one account to account, from
one list to another. Right, And lastly, how fast can
you generate sales opportunities as actually focus accounts where they
let's say account to pipeline conversion happens. So from that perspective,
when you make it visible at your shed with executives
(58:20):
and sales and ask this question, now, when our historical
sales cycle lengths, right, what is realistic to expect was
this list? It changes a lot the perceptions. So I
think this is the approach that you need to take.
Let me see what there is.
Speaker 1 (58:40):
One more from my I can take this very quickly.
Basically is asking how to determine what is thought leadership content.
Now I don't want to really have any kind of
cementing discussions, but it's a good question to highlight a
couple of things. I think when when you're thinking about
(59:01):
content here, it's important to create first. You want to
create content that is going to attract attention of your buyers.
We are selling to sometimes senior buyers from large companies,
enterprise accounts in a lot of cases, and the kind
(59:21):
of run of the mill met too content and a
lot of content that is being produced in B to
B content factories doesn't meet that mark, right, So when
what is the type of content that we want to create? Well,
first of all, we want to create content that really
addresses the challenges of those target accounts. It has to
(59:43):
be relevant. Now, these accounts are, like Andrew was explaining
several times, they are kind of stuck in their status quo.
They are not going to change unless they have a
real strong reason to change. So your content should also
help challenge that status quo. So having a strong opinion
(01:00:04):
or a point of view and basically challenging the status
quo of many of the target accounts and the industry
in general, will help you with starting that seed in
the sewing the seeds as under you mentioned starting that
change management process right, but also very importantly, it will
(01:00:25):
also help your content actually being seen attracting the attention
because again, if there is no point of differentiation, if
there is, if it's like a met too safe content
like a lot of brands might be producing, is not
going to stand out, and your content will need to
somehow stand out in order to be seen. So, without
(01:00:48):
calling this, whether this is thought leadership or not, it
needs to challenge the status quo. It needs to be
hyper relevant, it needs to be about their strategic top
of mind challenges, and it needs to come from SMEs.
It needs to come from experts, It needs to be
in depth. It needs to demonstrate your expertise, because if
you're not demonstrating your expertise, again, your content is not
(01:01:12):
going to do its job. So whether that's you call
this total leadership or not, I don't really care, but
try to hit these three points when you're creating your content.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
First of all, guys, thanks a lot for a feedback.
I appreciate it and happy to here that you enjoyed
the session. That was question from Marchana about the slides.
There were no actually slides, so we use some diagrams
that were posted on linking then recently just to support
let's say, a narrative. So if you need these specific diagrams,
(01:01:45):
you can just open mine of lots linked and profiles
and look at the reason post. This is where you
can find it. Or if you need I don't know,
like this infographics and higher resolution, then just send me
a message because we have actually no slides to be honest,
so I feel we need to cover a few create
questions from our community before we'll wrap it up. That
(01:02:08):
was a fantastic question from Dave would but what is
the best framework of content generation for all stages of
the funnel and combinion that with snarch attached points needed
before BDRs get engaged with the prospects. I think we
covered this a little bit and thanks a lot for
(01:02:28):
copy and this one, so I will present it right.
The entire point here is that our content strategy should
be relistic. We need to have this, let's say, types
of content that are aligned with the different level of
intent and current viage journey stage. Right, that's the first thing.
(01:02:52):
The second one is that this content should be grouped
into cluster. Right, cluster is a specific use case and
then this use case. Quite often companies they sink in
terms of accounts, but you need to sink in terms
of your target buyer persona. Right, I would break it
(01:03:13):
down like what this use case? What this use case
means for the power users? Because these people would be
using your product daily or if you're a service company,
these people will be working with you, right regularly. What
are their jobs to be done? What are the challenges? Right?
What is the current status quo? What are the conversations
(01:03:33):
they have internally? Right? What are some strategic initiators they're
working on? What are the KPIs?
Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Then?
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You have economical buyers right or champions, people who are
alien specific initiators. They might not be active users of
your product, but they lead business initiators right. And lastly,
you have decision makers. So holistically, you start thinking about
this cluster or use case the position, right, what are
(01:04:01):
their jobs to be done? What are their challenges? What
are the inefficients? Is what they try doing and what
are the wrong ways they take? Right? If you look
at our LinkedIn content, this is what we cover all
the time. Then you start looking at those that have
prioritized let's say the challenge. They accept the fact that
they have the challenge, but they don't know how to
(01:04:24):
solve it. Right. There are always any vendor has multiple
alternatives how to solve their challenge. And then this would
be the second group, which we call one to few
and lust one to one. This is fully personalized content, right,
and this is what you create for the let's say
active focus accounts. So a natural this is the framework
(01:04:45):
that you need to have in place, and this is
the nurture. And basically, norture happens only when your content
challenges the status quo and seits the right ideas, when
it showcases the inefficiencies and presents the frameworks these solutions
(01:05:06):
and basically builds a perception that you know you have
know how you know you know or you have the
solution right. So this way you get into the consideration
set of your target accounts. This is the framework itself.
(01:05:29):
Let's pick up one of the last questions I feel
that we can pick it up from Kevin. How do
you implement a strategy with a small team? I was
a limited team, so Sharon, it was you.
Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
I was thinking of saying taking the same question, so awesome,
So Kevin asked this question. I think first of all,
we like to start each and every ABM implementation with
a very limited person and whatever you limit the team,
what does it mean? Very concretely, it means that from
the marketing perspectives, somebody who is leading that program that
(01:06:10):
should be their main focus because at the end, if
you don't have a person who is the owner of
the process, that process is just not going to be maintained.
So that should be their top priority. It's never possible
to get them one hundred percent of time, but like
one person should kind of really own the process. Now,
from the perspective of the content resource I think the
(01:06:33):
best answer is was given by our guest on the
previous podcast, Allen who from certain who does our client
and who shared I think she mentioned something like eight
ten hours a week that she's spending on the content,
(01:06:53):
and the way that she described it is, so let's
say about day and a half, I would say of
her time goes on ABM, she's doing all sorts of
other things. She is in charge of branch, is in
charge of other types of content within the company. And
she also explained it that at the beginning there is
(01:07:14):
obviously more engagement as you're creating the strategy and setting
things up, but once it's in let's say thirty thousand
feet if it's flying, she's spending about day day and
a half. And also what's interesting, she went into explaining
what exactly she does during that time, and a lot
of it is, by the way, a lot of it
(01:07:35):
is talking to the subject matter expert, talking to sales
every week, seeing which accounts are coming, what their needs
and priorities are, and adjusting her content strategy to those needs,
and then obviously also creating the content. And finally, in
terms of limited resources, we mentioned this already, but just
to wrap it up also somebody from sales. Again, ideally
(01:07:58):
they should have at least you know, day or two
a week to dedicate to this program. In reality, there
will be weeks well they will be able to dedicate
more time. There will be weeks when they will be
you know, busy with client calls and not be able
to dedicate as much. But it's a very simple result.
(01:08:19):
The more they can more time they can dedicate, the
more accounts they can process, the better the results there
they will get. It's as simple as that. And without
them really having that commitment and that dedication, even if
that is you know, a couple of hours each day,
one to two hours each day, you will it will
(01:08:41):
be very difficult to actually see the results of that
pilot program. That is, like I said, during the pilot,
when you're starting in the context that you mentioned. So
hopefully that gives you a good answer.
Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Let's call out the last question from but I can't
live it and answer that. So appreciate great questions coming
from you. What was the best piece of ABM content
that someone else used on you that engaged you or
created a sales conversation. What do you start first.
Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Flood, I can honestly, only think of great examples from
our clients that worked really well. Immediately thought of the
so called account love letter that one of our clients wrote,
which was basically a LinkedIn post where he found the
(01:09:37):
news about the target account and wrote about reflections. So
they were selling some sort of an AI solution for manufacturing.
Their manufacturing client one a huge project and he was,
you know, describing the project, what's required and reflecting on
how AI could help them, you know, make this project
(01:10:00):
into success. But the best part of it was not
what was visible on LinkedIn, you know, him sharing this post,
which by the way, got a lot of traction, which
was interesting, but actually at the back of that the
kind of conversation that this allowed him to start. So
I mean, this was for me like a highlight example
(01:10:24):
of a content. It wasn't on me, though maybe you
have an example like that.
Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
No, unfortunately, I have never experienced this as like as
a potential buyer. And that's it's it's a bitter because
there are a lot of people, a lot of vendors
who could do it right. But yeah, absolutely right. I
would say we were here quite often the opposite when
(01:10:50):
our prospects or clients, right, I mean when they become clients,
when they share how our content influenced it. I think
one of the Yeah, one of the reasons once happened
last week. We had pretty fantastic feedback from one of
the teams that we approached that way was a fully
(01:11:11):
personalized approach. But besides this, I remember a very cool example.
We hear quite often that people say, hey, we're sharing
your infographics and our a slag or teams, et cetera.
But I believe one of the coolest things was when
Blood recorded a video about yeah, like hello, I'm a
(01:11:33):
modern buyer. And then one of the prospects that we
were talking to one of the target accounts, I wrote
about something different that I think it was something about
like budgeting ABM, or maybe it was even about scale
and account based. No, it was about scale and ABM
to other regions from from pilot program. And they then
(01:11:57):
the kind of VP of market and sent me an email.
The with the was basically with the picture of his
team sitting in the meeting room and they have a
screen where the blat video was played, and he said, like,
how you guys read our minds? Like literally, we were
(01:12:18):
talking about right now, we have offside meeting. We were
talking about like the broken let's say, the broken playbooks
we have and the modern buying process. And then we
had ABM program in one region that we did successfully,
but this program failed in another region. Are you guys
read in our minds how that's even possible? That was
(01:12:40):
probably one of the best Exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
If you think I have a big head, you should
see my head on that big screen that they were
watching my video on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
That that that was pretty much funny. And so the
reality is to gain this effect, if you will, right,
the key point is understanding the ideal customer profile very
well and then take this cluster approach and adjust your
content to the different Bier journey of stages. Right, don't
(01:13:11):
ask jupet you to pretend as your target buyer persona.
Do the necessary research and then involved to summarize, Involve
subject matter experts, involve sales again, listen to all the
recent conversations with your target accounts. Gain all of these
insights and incorporates them into your account based content strategy.
(01:13:33):
That being said, I feel we spent them with more
time than we wanted. But thank you so much guys
for all the fantastic questions and engagement. We appreciate it
a lot. I dropped the link in the chat to
our account based marketing course in cases if you want
just to look at other playbooks because we can talk
hours about different ways of engaging your target accounts. I
(01:13:57):
also dropped the links to our Spotify and iTunes channels
where you can subscribe to our podcast and listen to
the previous episodes. And that being said, we're going to
meet again next Wednesday, four pm, so stay tunes. The
announcement will come on Monday. Have a great rest of
(01:14:18):
the week. Cheers, cheers,