March 10, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode of the B2B Brand180 podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Andrew Seidman, co-founder and COO of Digital Reach. Andrew shares insights from over a decade of experience in designing full-funnel go-to-market motions for enterprises and startups. They discuss the importance of implementing a cohesive, integrated B2B marketing strategy. Andrew emphasizes the value of account-based marketing (ABM) and shares successful campaign examples, particularly highlighting a successful case with VMware's Tanzu business unit. The episode also covers how to align sales and marketing teams as the critical first step for any new engagement.
01:34 The Importance of Integrated Marketing Strategies
03:48 Effective Tactics for B2B Marketing
07:25 Understanding Sales Cycles and Buyer Groups
10:10 Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams
13:42 Case Study: Successful Campaign with VMware
15:55 Rapid Fire Questions with Andrew Seidman
More information about Andrew:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-seidman/
https://digitalreachagency.com/
Linda's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: https://mill.agency
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency/
Linda's Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Linda Fanaras (00:00):
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast, a place
(00:03):
where we focus on transformativestrategies and innovative
approaches in B2B branding andmarketing.
You'll learn today how to make a180 degree shift in your
marketing efforts or actuallycomplete reversals and brand
strategies.
So start now by making somepivotal shifts and
groundbreaking moves thatredefine how you position
yourself in the market.
(00:24):
My name is Linda Ris and I'm thehost of today's B2B Brand 180
podcast.
And I'm super excited to bringin Andrew Seidman.
He is his co-founder and COO ofdigital Reach.
And he has spent 10 yearsdesigning full funnel go to
market motions for enterprisesand startups.
So, hi Andrew.
I'd love for you to take amoment and introduce yourself
(00:45):
and tell us a little bit aboutyou.
Andrew Seidman (00:46):
Hey Linda, thanks so much for having me.
I'm one of the co founders atdigital reach.
For now, 12 years, almost, wehave been helping B2B companies
create full funnel, go to marketmotions with ABM focus, but also
demand generation, even PLGmotions as well.
I'm based out of Brooklyn, NewYork.
I followed my fiance now fiancehere a few years ago from the
(01:09):
Bay Area where I lived andworked for almost nine years.
Yeah, I'm super excited to behere and talk with you, Linda.
Linda Fanaras (01:15):
And I understand you're a former high stakes
professional poker player, whichI thought was a great little
tidbit about you that I did notknow about.
So
Andrew Seidman (01:23):
yeah, it is a unique, a unique piece of my
background for sure.
Did it through college and for anumber of years out after
college before I found my wayhere.
Linda Fanaras (01:33):
Awesome.
All right.
So today, what I really want totalk about is really building
out and, and talking aboutintegrated marketing strategies,
how we really best tie togethergood websites, content CRM and a
strategy that actually works.
Something that's.
fully functional, this greasedwheel thought process, this real
(01:55):
integrated digital model.
So I would love for you to startout by talking about what you
think the value of having astrategy like this would be for
a marketer or business owner.
Andrew Seidman (02:06):
Yeah, I mean, I would say, we came across this
the hard way I wish we wouldhave learned it more easily or,
or sooner, but the the morecommon scenario that we would
have is someone would come up tous and ask us to run their paid
ads.
we started originally as a paidmedia company and, there's a
bunch of questions we didn'tknow to ask at that time.
Like, how are you going toreport on this?
do you have the data to supportproving whether or not this is
(02:28):
actually going to work?
do you have a creativeorganization or creative access
that will provide really goodads or content that will be
meaningful or useful for someoneto drive towards, or even like
at the top, do you have a brandthat sits atop product market
fit or that is competitive withother brands in your area?
And so I think a common mistakethat folks fall into is they
(02:50):
really look for like acollection of these point
solutions and
Linda Fanaras (02:53):
I
Andrew Seidman (02:53):
want the best paid social agency and I want to
find the best branding agencyand I want to find these
different things without havinga cohesive or central philosophy
and how to do the wholeapproach.
And so for us, we view that you,it's just as important to ensure
that your brand is going to hitthe target or that you have good
content to start newrelationships in the upper
funnel as it is to spend a bunchof money on paid search ads and
(03:17):
do that really well and capturea bunch of high intense searches
at the bottom of the funnel.
Like you do need to do both tobe successful in the longterm.
And so I think that's kind ofjust become my philosophy and
our philosophy at digital reach.
Linda Fanaras (03:29):
So I don't think you know, when our, when we talk
about this integrated approach,I'm always thinking about all of
the, I look at it like a hub andspoke model, Andrew.
So we're really driving trafficsomewhere to the website.
Maybe we're using content, we'reusing social media, we're using
a super strong digital marketingstrategy.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of the tactics that you may
(03:52):
have recommended to B2B firmsthat have worked really well and
what that might look like?
Andrew Seidman (03:58):
Yeah.
I mean, I think in terms ofcapturing or generating demand
as a starting place, one of themost important tools that we
have is something that we callinternally, at least sequential
retargeting, basically bucketingyour audience.
If you imagine like you have anaudience, You're starting with,
let's say that, you know, youhave a certain product that's
going towards, I don't know,like we're just working with our
(04:19):
organization right now that'sselling to marketers.
So, you know, you're going towork, this is marketing focused
campaign.
It's the line of business thatyou're going for, but then
inside of that bucket, you havepeople at varying stages of
awareness of their own problemand awareness of your brand.
And so, LinkedIn is one of themost effective and best for
doing this because it gives youboth incredible targeting, like
(04:40):
it's the only.
Since like self reporteddatabase, literally someone
tells you, I am the head ofmarketing at XYZ company.
Right.
Like your next best option islike a, like a demand base or a
six cents where they're tryingto like reverse IP lookup and
like all this
Linda Fanaras (04:56):
stuff,
Andrew Seidman (04:57):
LinkedIn's got this huge advantage and they've
got a lot of pretty, they'repretty mature ad.
Platform.
So what you might do istactically setting up, like we
usually use three buckets, anaware and aware and an engaged
bucket.
And then this is the sort of thereally critical linchpin of it.
We then match the content thatwe're serving to where people
(05:17):
are at in the process.
And those buckets can have superclear definitions like.
The top one has never engagedwith anything.
And the next one is like, okay,has been to our website.
Maybe he has engaged in watchthe video that we did.
Maybe they're on a list ofpeople that we know have met at
a conference or something.
I don't know.
And then the bottom group isthese people have filled out
forms.
They have talked to our salesteam.
(05:38):
Like they've done some thingsthat are like really high in
time, but then we can reallyalign, okay.
The top of the funnel, you guysare going to watch our video.
We have a hype video.
We have some like informationalvideos, like that kind of stuff.
Middle of the funnel.
Okay.
We have some guides.
We have some things you candownload and digest some more
deep and then are like webinarsis a common one we might throw
(05:59):
there.
And then the bottom of thefunnel is a real offer, a
roadmap that is a money backguaranteed go to market plan.
And we would never show that tosomeone who doesn't know who we
are.
Linda Fanaras (06:10):
True.
Andrew Seidman (06:10):
They're never going to buy that.
It's going to be a waste ofmoney.
But tactically we kind of havesplit it up in this way that is
really trying to speak to wheresomeone's at in the funnel.
Linda Fanaras (06:19):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Because if you look at it, ifyou break those three buckets
down, you're looking at numberone, you're engaging them in one
way or the other.
You're either showing them avideo, something that really
piques their interest.
It could be a multitude ofdifferent things, something that
really attracts their attention.
Number two, it sounds likeyou're really focused in on
educating them, you know,getting them to really
understand whatever topicthey're after, providing the
(06:41):
resources, the materials thathelp Build that knowledge and
also build that connection.
And then number three, that'swhen you kind of go in for the
offer to your point, where atthis point in time, you've
gotten their attention, you'veeducated them.
Now you want to move themthrough that funnel and get them
to that.
That close cycle.
So that makes complete sense.
And I think that's a greatstrategy.
(07:03):
And that, you know, and, and howlong do you think something like
that takes if you were to try tomove somebody through a B2B
funnel?
Is it, is it sector dependent?
Is it is consumer versusbusiness owner type?
have you seen different sort oftimeframes based on who they
are, what markets they're in?
Can you speak a little aboutthat?
Andrew Seidman (07:24):
Yeah.
I think the sales cycles reallyvary a variety of different
reasons, but one of them mightbe the target audience you're
trying to sell to.
Like, if you're trying to sellto a small business, for
example, you're very likely toengage the decision maker
directly.
Are the same person who's doingthe research on figuring out
(07:44):
what tool they want to use tosolve their problem.
If you're, so in that sense,your sales cycle can literally
be sometimes like a day, likesomebody sees your ad, they
click on your thing, they go toyour site, they buy your
product, or they contact someoneto buy the product, right?
The and, and forward, it'sworth, there's almost always
some low hanging fruit that youmight be able to capture, let's
just say like on Google searchis a good example of this.
(08:05):
Okay.
Some keywords that are somebodytyping in, I want to buy X where
X is you can basically alwayshave a profitable paid search
program.
If you only go after those typesof probably not a ton of volume
for those types of words, soyou're not going to spend that
much money, but the I think themore common thing that we see
(08:27):
with a lot of our companies,especially ABM clients are that
they're actually trying toengage like a buyer group of a
large number of people who aretrying to solve a very high
value and very complicatedproblem.
And so in that sense, theeducation is not just you and a
decision maker.
It's actually you and maybe avariety of influencers.
It is speaking to a collectionof different pains, like.
(08:50):
Maybe on a executive level, thatpain is I'm missing my revenue
targets, but maybe on apractitioner level, the pain is
I can't get the damn website todo the thing that it's supposed
to do.
And so the being able to speakto both of those contingencies I
think nurtures their, theirrelationship until you have a
buying committee with enoughmomentum that you end up in like
(09:10):
an enterprise sale.
So.
If that's a multimillion dollardeal, which for a number of our
clients that would like what thekind of things that they sell,
those things might take severalyears to from initial first
engagement all the way throughto a 20 person buying committee.
That's going to then approvesome 10 million purchase.
Linda Fanaras (09:28):
Right?
Andrew Seidman (09:28):
So there's a pretty wide range, I think.
And most organizations tend toknow, we usually start off with
a benchmark.
So how long it takes.
And then we're, our mission isthen to accelerate that.
Like, how do we, how do we makethis happen?
More inexpensively.
Linda Fanaras (09:42):
So, when you're dealing with sort of internal
teams, it could be the marketingteam or the sales teams.
They're often silos.
So, and it's always been achallenge, right?
Trying to connect marketing andsales and then finance and how
do those all two how do those,those two in particular work
together?
have you come across any.
Tactics, any recommendationsaround connecting those systems
(10:04):
to avoid those silos?
Particularly in a go to marketstrategy.
Andrew Seidman (10:09):
Yeah.
I will start off by saying thatI think it almost always has to
start at the top that the, someorganizations foster a culture
of collaboration and some fostera culture of competition.
And I'm totally, totally surewhich is better.
In fact, organizations might,might be better or worse than
the other.
But I would say that the thingsthat we see on a very high
(10:30):
level.
Are in alignment of sales andmarketing goals where they're on
the same like competition overcredit generally is is not super
productive.
I tend to find organizations aremore successful when they have a
shared revenue goal and oftenrolling up to a chief revenue
officer, for example, as opposedto a babbling CMO versus a chief
(10:51):
sales officer kind of thing.
So that's one, super high leveltakeaway.
I think the, the other kind ofmaybe more tactical thing is
there's actually a bunch ofspace where there's mutually
beneficial conversation betweenmarketing and sales teams that
people sleep on.
So I'll give you like a reallycommon example.
We actually had this likeexample with a client where we
(11:13):
had working with a marketingteam and we, this was like last
year, maybe, okay.
And we're getting nothing butgood feedback from the marketing
team.
Like the MQL numbers are up, thetraffic numbers are up.
We think things are going great.
We're even, we're like preparingto ask them for a case study on
all the success we're having.
Out of the blue, the entiremarketing team gets let go and
(11:33):
sales gets moved over to be incharge of the relationship with
us.
Linda Fanaras (11:36):
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Andrew Seidman (11:37):
Wow.
That's interesting.
Sales sits down and they say,you've never driven us one
quality lead and we're notpaying for this.
And the misalignment that washappening between the sales side
of the table and the marketingside of the table was so
dramatic and it could have beeneasily solved if we just like
had a conversation, right?
(11:59):
One of the things that we haveintroduced after that actually
was just like a standing leadquality call.
You spend 20 minutes with themarketing stakeholder and the
sales stakeholder.
And you just say do the leadslook good?
Are they coming through and theyseem appropriate.
And we could also do someeducation there.
When people talk about leadquality, they often are talking
(12:21):
about two different directions.
One of them is, is this lead atthe right type of company?
And then the other one is, isthis lead ready to buy?
Right, right.
So for example, Google drivenleads, super ready to buy a lot.
They're going in there andthey're typing in, I want to buy
product X, but they might belike the intern, or they might
(12:41):
be like an SMB or they might be,you know, in the wrong geo or
something like that.
LinkedIn on the other hand, it'slike, Oh, this is the director
of it at Fortune 500 company.
That is a really qualified lead.
And, but they're also like, I amhere to read a white paper, you
know, they're not anywhere nearpurchasing.
And so finding that rightequilibrium, we can help educate
(13:04):
the sales team as to kind ofwhere we are in the process and
also get super valuable feedbackfrom them, who they're talking
to, what's effective, and alsolike messaging and talk tracks,
like they offer the bestmessages.
And if we can incorporate thoseinto our ads, our emails, our
organic meta information, likethat kind of thing, it really
helps, I think, you know, risingtide, float all boats kind of
(13:26):
thing.
Linda Fanaras (13:27):
I'd love you to talk a little bit more about how
you may have had put together asuccessful campaign.
Maybe you could tell me what itwas on and then the different
tactics that you tied togetherto make that be a big success.
Andrew Seidman (13:42):
Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about for and this
is, there's a case study forthis on our website, but we did
a lot of work with the verylarge corporation VMware and one
of this, the case study is aboutone of their business units, a
group called Tanzu and the wewere, thankfully there's an
awesome company to be a partnerwith.
So we were kind of brought in,in this integrated way where we
(14:03):
were not just working on oneside of the equation, but we
were working on, the like webuilt landing pages for them.
We built reporting for them.
We built like we helpedintegrate their demand base for
like an ADM movement.
And then we also were runningads on, on a variety of
platforms, basically all thepaid social platforms and
Google.
The, the thing that made thisreally I think really successful
(14:26):
was we had a super.
Targeted audience, there was avery clear set of accounts and
they were actually especiallystrict.
They were like, if you're not onthis list, we don't want to
Linda Fanaras (14:37):
talk to you.
Andrew Seidman (14:38):
This is even if you're a lead coming in from a
company that seems good, whowants to buy, like, doesn't
matter if you're not on thelist, we don't talk to you.
So we had this extremely narrowfocus and we were able to come
up with really, really crisp.
Okay.
Ours for the engagement.
So we could say, we want thismany matched leads as leads that
have filled out a form from oneof the master counts.
Linda Fanaras (14:57):
You could
Andrew Seidman (14:58):
say, we want this much account engagement.
So we have demand based set uptracking on the account
engagement.
We know these, we know ouraccount lists.
We want to see these accountsincreased by this much
engagement.
And we wanted to do this byoffering this really
personalized experience.
So we would have likeverticalized landing pages that
were serving these really greatexperiences.
(15:18):
And then we'd have like coveringthe zone with really valuable
content.
I would say this, this exampleis kind of like the, honestly,
it's like the model we use oftenfor how to create a best
practice campaign, which is thatit was truly integrated.
We had same goals for everyone.
We had removed the silos fromthe equation.
We had a sales liaison, we hadall the things that we needed to
(15:39):
be successful.
And as a result, we drove a tonof mass leads.
We drove a ton of pipelinerevenue.
And this was all in the run upto, ultimately VMware getting
acquired and like the largestmerger of all time.
That's awesome.
Linda Fanaras (15:51):
That's phenomenal.
Andrew Seidman (15:52):
It was a a really big success.
Linda Fanaras (15:54):
Awesome.
So I would love to I don't knowif you have anything else you
want to share, but I'd love toask you a couple of rapid, what
I call rapid fire questions forour, I'm sure you've been doing
this for 12 years, so I'm sureyou have an answer.
So if you could, you know, maybeyour answers would be two to
five sentences, right?
Great to the point.
That'd be awesome.
All right, cool.
So ready to get started.
Andrew Seidman (16:15):
Let's do it.
Linda Fanaras (16:15):
All right.
So what's your biggest mistakein business?
I
Andrew Seidman (16:21):
think we this is such a cliche, but we had a
product a few years ago that we,Was super easy to sell and we
thought that it would be superawesome for our clients.
We, it was like a new version ofhow we were going to provide our
services.
Linda Fanaras (16:41):
And,
Andrew Seidman (16:42):
We didn't we weren't proactive in the actual
strategy or the service deliveryin that product.
Like it ended up being wherelike we kind of turned to the
client and asked them, well,what do you want?
To do instead of us saying, Hey,this is really the best way to
go to market.
Like we're the ones who are theexperts here.
Linda Fanaras (16:59):
Okay.
Andrew Seidman (17:00):
I think, I think the big mistake there was that
we, we didn't take a strategicleadership role in the
engagement and we actually havea new product that is now
designed to totally correct thatissue.
But I would say, yeah, like, Youknow, we do this a lot.
We have experts, like we shouldtake a role of leadership, I
think.
Linda Fanaras (17:16):
Okay.
So what do you tell your clientthat their first step should be
if they engage with you?
Andrew Seidman (17:21):
We do the same first step for everyone.
It is called a roadmap for usand it is a execution ready, go
to market plan.
And the reason we do it this wayis because all the time folks
will say, we want you to just godrive pipeline.
Just go get this.
Go get us opportunities and likewe talked at the very beginning
of this conversation, if youdon't have a way to report on
(17:44):
stuff or you don't have acontent that will support it or
a brand that's off target orsomething like that, you can't
win.
So starting from a really likecrystal clear view of everything
is really important becauseoften like people think they
want paid media, but they reallywant pipelines.
Maybe it's like the place to getpipeline is actually because you
(18:05):
drop a hundred leads on theground every month in your
Linda Fanaras (18:08):
CRM.
Andrew Seidman (18:09):
It's like, if we fix that, that'll be so much
faster than if we spent a ton ofmoney on ads.
Linda Fanaras (18:14):
Right.
Andrew Seidman (18:14):
And so, zooming out and remembering that, like,
the answer is almost always justpipeline
Linda Fanaras (18:18):
and
Andrew Seidman (18:20):
trying to figure out the best, most strategic
route to getting there.
I think that's a, that's how wealways start.
Linda Fanaras (18:25):
Yeah.
And what's your top.
Digital tip, would you say to acustomer client
Andrew Seidman (18:30):
Google search is amazing at capturing buyers, but
not a good tool for branding.
Linda Fanaras (18:38):
And my last question just for the our
audiences.
We talked about a B.
M.
A lot.
Can you take a couple sentencesand explain to them what is that
and why is it important?
Andrew Seidman (18:48):
A B.
M.
Stands for account basedmarketing.
And the really key differencebetween account based marketing
and sort of traditionalmarketing or lead based
marketing or demand generationmarketing and so forth is the,
that version applies to peopleor like focuses really on
individual people, whereasaccount based marketing is
focused on the account, theactual company, which in a B2B
(19:10):
environment is, you know, whoultimately signs the check.
Like it's a company that'spaying the bill.
And the, the kind of, I guessthe important distinction here
would be to You might get 20leads.
That all come through as like anMQL, but they're all from kind
of crummy companies and yoursales team might spend all their
time working on that.
Whereas you might see 20 pre MQLpeople at a really good account
(19:32):
all engaging and you might missthat if you're not paying
attention and instead you mightwant to go capture that giant
account that has all thosepeople engaging but if you're
not in an ABM mentality, you'llmiss it.
Linda Fanaras (19:43):
Well, thank you, Andrew.
Thanks for coming on today.
Really appreciate you.
Joining in and sharing all yourinsights about digital and
integrated marketing strategies.
I would love for you to sharehow the audience can get in
touch with you.
So I'll have you take it fromhere.
Andrew Seidman (19:58):
Thanks, Linda.
It's been a total pleasure to behere.
Yeah, if you want to get intouch with me, feel free to
shoot me a message on LinkedIn.
Or of course, come visit ourwebsite at digitalreachagency.
com.
Happy to chat about anything andwould love to explore our
roadmap.
If that's something that soundedinteresting to you.
Linda Fanaras (20:13):
That sounds fantastic.
Well, thank you again.
Thank you for listening into theB2B Brand 180 podcast.
For more information, you canvisit us at mill.
agency or you can connect withme directly on LinkedIn as well
and happy marketing.
Thanks for joining us today.
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast, a place
(00:03):
where we focus on transformativestrategies and innovative
approaches in B2B branding andmarketing.
You'll learn today how to make a180 degree shift in your
marketing efforts or actuallycomplete reversals and brand
strategies.
So start now by making somepivotal shifts and
groundbreaking moves thatredefine how you position
yourself in the market.
(00:24):
My name is Linda Ris and I'm thehost of today's B2B Brand 180
podcast.
And I'm super excited to bringin Andrew Seidman.
He is his co-founder and COO ofdigital Reach.
And he has spent 10 yearsdesigning full funnel go to
market motions for enterprisesand startups.
So, hi Andrew.
I'd love for you to take amoment and introduce yourself
(00:45):
and tell us a little bit aboutyou.
Andrew Seidman (00:46):
Hey Linda, thanks so much for having me.
I'm one of the co founders atdigital reach.
For now, 12 years, almost, wehave been helping B2B companies
create full funnel, go to marketmotions with ABM focus, but also
demand generation, even PLGmotions as well.
I'm based out of Brooklyn, NewYork.
I followed my fiance now fiancehere a few years ago from the
(01:09):
Bay Area where I lived andworked for almost nine years.
Yeah, I'm super excited to behere and talk with you, Linda.
Linda Fanaras (01:15):
And I understand you're a former high stakes
professional poker player, whichI thought was a great little
tidbit about you that I did notknow about.
So
Andrew Seidman (01:23):
yeah, it is a unique, a unique piece of my
background for sure.
Did it through college and for anumber of years out after
college before I found my wayhere.
Linda Fanaras (01:33):
Awesome.
All right.
So today, what I really want totalk about is really building
out and, and talking aboutintegrated marketing strategies,
how we really best tie togethergood websites, content CRM and a
strategy that actually works.
Something that's.
fully functional, this greasedwheel thought process, this real
(01:55):
integrated digital model.
So I would love for you to startout by talking about what you
think the value of having astrategy like this would be for
a marketer or business owner.
Andrew Seidman (02:06):
Yeah, I mean, I would say, we came across this
the hard way I wish we wouldhave learned it more easily or,
or sooner, but the the morecommon scenario that we would
have is someone would come up tous and ask us to run their paid
ads.
we started originally as a paidmedia company and, there's a
bunch of questions we didn'tknow to ask at that time.
Like, how are you going toreport on this?
do you have the data to supportproving whether or not this is
(02:28):
actually going to work?
do you have a creativeorganization or creative access
that will provide really goodads or content that will be
meaningful or useful for someoneto drive towards, or even like
at the top, do you have a brandthat sits atop product market
fit or that is competitive withother brands in your area?
And so I think a common mistakethat folks fall into is they
(02:50):
really look for like acollection of these point
solutions and
Linda Fanaras (02:53):
I
Andrew Seidman (02:53):
want the best paid social agency and I want to
find the best branding agencyand I want to find these
different things without havinga cohesive or central philosophy
and how to do the wholeapproach.
And so for us, we view that you,it's just as important to ensure
that your brand is going to hitthe target or that you have good
content to start newrelationships in the upper
funnel as it is to spend a bunchof money on paid search ads and
(03:17):
do that really well and capturea bunch of high intense searches
at the bottom of the funnel.
Like you do need to do both tobe successful in the longterm.
And so I think that's kind ofjust become my philosophy and
our philosophy at digital reach.
Linda Fanaras (03:29):
So I don't think you know, when our, when we talk
about this integrated approach,I'm always thinking about all of
the, I look at it like a hub andspoke model, Andrew.
So we're really driving trafficsomewhere to the website.
Maybe we're using content, we'reusing social media, we're using
a super strong digital marketingstrategy.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of the tactics that you may
(03:52):
have recommended to B2B firmsthat have worked really well and
what that might look like?
Andrew Seidman (03:58):
Yeah.
I mean, I think in terms ofcapturing or generating demand
as a starting place, one of themost important tools that we
have is something that we callinternally, at least sequential
retargeting, basically bucketingyour audience.
If you imagine like you have anaudience, You're starting with,
let's say that, you know, youhave a certain product that's
going towards, I don't know,like we're just working with our
(04:19):
organization right now that'sselling to marketers.
So, you know, you're going towork, this is marketing focused
campaign.
It's the line of business thatyou're going for, but then
inside of that bucket, you havepeople at varying stages of
awareness of their own problemand awareness of your brand.
And so, LinkedIn is one of themost effective and best for
doing this because it gives youboth incredible targeting, like
(04:40):
it's the only.
Since like self reporteddatabase, literally someone
tells you, I am the head ofmarketing at XYZ company.
Right.
Like your next best option islike a, like a demand base or a
six cents where they're tryingto like reverse IP lookup and
like all this
Linda Fanaras (04:56):
stuff,
Andrew Seidman (04:57):
LinkedIn's got this huge advantage and they've
got a lot of pretty, they'repretty mature ad.
Platform.
So what you might do istactically setting up, like we
usually use three buckets, anaware and aware and an engaged
bucket.
And then this is the sort of thereally critical linchpin of it.
We then match the content thatwe're serving to where people
(05:17):
are at in the process.
And those buckets can have superclear definitions like.
The top one has never engagedwith anything.
And the next one is like, okay,has been to our website.
Maybe he has engaged in watchthe video that we did.
Maybe they're on a list ofpeople that we know have met at
a conference or something.
I don't know.
And then the bottom group isthese people have filled out
forms.
They have talked to our salesteam.
(05:38):
Like they've done some thingsthat are like really high in
time, but then we can reallyalign, okay.
The top of the funnel, you guysare going to watch our video.
We have a hype video.
We have some like informationalvideos, like that kind of stuff.
Middle of the funnel.
Okay.
We have some guides.
We have some things you candownload and digest some more
deep and then are like webinarsis a common one we might throw
(05:59):
there.
And then the bottom of thefunnel is a real offer, a
roadmap that is a money backguaranteed go to market plan.
And we would never show that tosomeone who doesn't know who we
are.
Linda Fanaras (06:10):
True.
Andrew Seidman (06:10):
They're never going to buy that.
It's going to be a waste ofmoney.
But tactically we kind of havesplit it up in this way that is
really trying to speak to wheresomeone's at in the funnel.
Linda Fanaras (06:19):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Because if you look at it, ifyou break those three buckets
down, you're looking at numberone, you're engaging them in one
way or the other.
You're either showing them avideo, something that really
piques their interest.
It could be a multitude ofdifferent things, something that
really attracts their attention.
Number two, it sounds likeyou're really focused in on
educating them, you know,getting them to really
understand whatever topicthey're after, providing the
(06:41):
resources, the materials thathelp Build that knowledge and
also build that connection.
And then number three, that'swhen you kind of go in for the
offer to your point, where atthis point in time, you've
gotten their attention, you'veeducated them.
Now you want to move themthrough that funnel and get them
to that.
That close cycle.
So that makes complete sense.
And I think that's a greatstrategy.
(07:03):
And that, you know, and, and howlong do you think something like
that takes if you were to try tomove somebody through a B2B
funnel?
Is it, is it sector dependent?
Is it is consumer versusbusiness owner type?
have you seen different sort oftimeframes based on who they
are, what markets they're in?
Can you speak a little aboutthat?
Andrew Seidman (07:24):
Yeah.
I think the sales cycles reallyvary a variety of different
reasons, but one of them mightbe the target audience you're
trying to sell to.
Like, if you're trying to sellto a small business, for
example, you're very likely toengage the decision maker
directly.
Are the same person who's doingthe research on figuring out
(07:44):
what tool they want to use tosolve their problem.
If you're, so in that sense,your sales cycle can literally
be sometimes like a day, likesomebody sees your ad, they
click on your thing, they go toyour site, they buy your
product, or they contact someoneto buy the product, right?
The and, and forward, it'sworth, there's almost always
some low hanging fruit that youmight be able to capture, let's
just say like on Google searchis a good example of this.
(08:05):
Okay.
Some keywords that are somebodytyping in, I want to buy X where
X is you can basically alwayshave a profitable paid search
program.
If you only go after those typesof probably not a ton of volume
for those types of words, soyou're not going to spend that
much money, but the I think themore common thing that we see
(08:27):
with a lot of our companies,especially ABM clients are that
they're actually trying toengage like a buyer group of a
large number of people who aretrying to solve a very high
value and very complicatedproblem.
And so in that sense, theeducation is not just you and a
decision maker.
It's actually you and maybe avariety of influencers.
It is speaking to a collectionof different pains, like.
(08:50):
Maybe on a executive level, thatpain is I'm missing my revenue
targets, but maybe on apractitioner level, the pain is
I can't get the damn website todo the thing that it's supposed
to do.
And so the being able to speakto both of those contingencies I
think nurtures their, theirrelationship until you have a
buying committee with enoughmomentum that you end up in like
(09:10):
an enterprise sale.
So.
If that's a multimillion dollardeal, which for a number of our
clients that would like what thekind of things that they sell,
those things might take severalyears to from initial first
engagement all the way throughto a 20 person buying committee.
That's going to then approvesome 10 million purchase.
Linda Fanaras (09:28):
Right?
Andrew Seidman (09:28):
So there's a pretty wide range, I think.
And most organizations tend toknow, we usually start off with
a benchmark.
So how long it takes.
And then we're, our mission isthen to accelerate that.
Like, how do we, how do we makethis happen?
More inexpensively.
Linda Fanaras (09:42):
So, when you're dealing with sort of internal
teams, it could be the marketingteam or the sales teams.
They're often silos.
So, and it's always been achallenge, right?
Trying to connect marketing andsales and then finance and how
do those all two how do those,those two in particular work
together?
have you come across any.
Tactics, any recommendationsaround connecting those systems
(10:04):
to avoid those silos?
Particularly in a go to marketstrategy.
Andrew Seidman (10:09):
Yeah.
I will start off by saying thatI think it almost always has to
start at the top that the, someorganizations foster a culture
of collaboration and some fostera culture of competition.
And I'm totally, totally surewhich is better.
In fact, organizations might,might be better or worse than
the other.
But I would say that the thingsthat we see on a very high
(10:30):
level.
Are in alignment of sales andmarketing goals where they're on
the same like competition overcredit generally is is not super
productive.
I tend to find organizations aremore successful when they have a
shared revenue goal and oftenrolling up to a chief revenue
officer, for example, as opposedto a babbling CMO versus a chief
(10:51):
sales officer kind of thing.
So that's one, super high leveltakeaway.
I think the, the other kind ofmaybe more tactical thing is
there's actually a bunch ofspace where there's mutually
beneficial conversation betweenmarketing and sales teams that
people sleep on.
So I'll give you like a reallycommon example.
We actually had this likeexample with a client where we
(11:13):
had working with a marketingteam and we, this was like last
year, maybe, okay.
And we're getting nothing butgood feedback from the marketing
team.
Like the MQL numbers are up, thetraffic numbers are up.
We think things are going great.
We're even, we're like preparingto ask them for a case study on
all the success we're having.
Out of the blue, the entiremarketing team gets let go and
(11:33):
sales gets moved over to be incharge of the relationship with
us.
Linda Fanaras (11:36):
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Andrew Seidman (11:37):
Wow.
That's interesting.
Sales sits down and they say,you've never driven us one
quality lead and we're notpaying for this.
And the misalignment that washappening between the sales side
of the table and the marketingside of the table was so
dramatic and it could have beeneasily solved if we just like
had a conversation, right?
(11:59):
One of the things that we haveintroduced after that actually
was just like a standing leadquality call.
You spend 20 minutes with themarketing stakeholder and the
sales stakeholder.
And you just say do the leadslook good?
Are they coming through and theyseem appropriate.
And we could also do someeducation there.
When people talk about leadquality, they often are talking
(12:21):
about two different directions.
One of them is, is this lead atthe right type of company?
And then the other one is, isthis lead ready to buy?
Right, right.
So for example, Google drivenleads, super ready to buy a lot.
They're going in there andthey're typing in, I want to buy
product X, but they might belike the intern, or they might
(12:41):
be like an SMB or they might be,you know, in the wrong geo or
something like that.
LinkedIn on the other hand, it'slike, Oh, this is the director
of it at Fortune 500 company.
That is a really qualified lead.
And, but they're also like, I amhere to read a white paper, you
know, they're not anywhere nearpurchasing.
And so finding that rightequilibrium, we can help educate
(13:04):
the sales team as to kind ofwhere we are in the process and
also get super valuable feedbackfrom them, who they're talking
to, what's effective, and alsolike messaging and talk tracks,
like they offer the bestmessages.
And if we can incorporate thoseinto our ads, our emails, our
organic meta information, likethat kind of thing, it really
helps, I think, you know, risingtide, float all boats kind of
(13:26):
thing.
Linda Fanaras (13:27):
I'd love you to talk a little bit more about how
you may have had put together asuccessful campaign.
Maybe you could tell me what itwas on and then the different
tactics that you tied togetherto make that be a big success.
Andrew Seidman (13:42):
Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about for and this
is, there's a case study forthis on our website, but we did
a lot of work with the verylarge corporation VMware and one
of this, the case study is aboutone of their business units, a
group called Tanzu and the wewere, thankfully there's an
awesome company to be a partnerwith.
So we were kind of brought in,in this integrated way where we
(14:03):
were not just working on oneside of the equation, but we
were working on, the like webuilt landing pages for them.
We built reporting for them.
We built like we helpedintegrate their demand base for
like an ADM movement.
And then we also were runningads on, on a variety of
platforms, basically all thepaid social platforms and
Google.
The, the thing that made thisreally I think really successful
(14:26):
was we had a super.
Targeted audience, there was avery clear set of accounts and
they were actually especiallystrict.
They were like, if you're not onthis list, we don't want to
Linda Fanaras (14:37):
talk to you.
Andrew Seidman (14:38):
This is even if you're a lead coming in from a
company that seems good, whowants to buy, like, doesn't
matter if you're not on thelist, we don't talk to you.
So we had this extremely narrowfocus and we were able to come
up with really, really crisp.
Okay.
Ours for the engagement.
So we could say, we want thismany matched leads as leads that
have filled out a form from oneof the master counts.
Linda Fanaras (14:57):
You could
Andrew Seidman (14:58):
say, we want this much account engagement.
So we have demand based set uptracking on the account
engagement.
We know these, we know ouraccount lists.
We want to see these accountsincreased by this much
engagement.
And we wanted to do this byoffering this really
personalized experience.
So we would have likeverticalized landing pages that
were serving these really greatexperiences.
(15:18):
And then we'd have like coveringthe zone with really valuable
content.
I would say this, this exampleis kind of like the, honestly,
it's like the model we use oftenfor how to create a best
practice campaign, which is thatit was truly integrated.
We had same goals for everyone.
We had removed the silos fromthe equation.
We had a sales liaison, we hadall the things that we needed to
(15:39):
be successful.
And as a result, we drove a tonof mass leads.
We drove a ton of pipelinerevenue.
And this was all in the run upto, ultimately VMware getting
acquired and like the largestmerger of all time.
That's awesome.
Linda Fanaras (15:51):
That's phenomenal.
Andrew Seidman (15:52):
It was a a really big success.
Linda Fanaras (15:54):
Awesome.
So I would love to I don't knowif you have anything else you
want to share, but I'd love toask you a couple of rapid, what
I call rapid fire questions forour, I'm sure you've been doing
this for 12 years, so I'm sureyou have an answer.
So if you could, you know, maybeyour answers would be two to
five sentences, right?
Great to the point.
That'd be awesome.
All right, cool.
So ready to get started.
Andrew Seidman (16:15):
Let's do it.
Linda Fanaras (16:15):
All right.
So what's your biggest mistakein business?
I
Andrew Seidman (16:21):
think we this is such a cliche, but we had a
product a few years ago that we,Was super easy to sell and we
thought that it would be superawesome for our clients.
We, it was like a new version ofhow we were going to provide our
services.
Linda Fanaras (16:41):
And,
Andrew Seidman (16:42):
We didn't we weren't proactive in the actual
strategy or the service deliveryin that product.
Like it ended up being wherelike we kind of turned to the
client and asked them, well,what do you want?
To do instead of us saying, Hey,this is really the best way to
go to market.
Like we're the ones who are theexperts here.
Linda Fanaras (16:59):
Okay.
Andrew Seidman (17:00):
I think, I think the big mistake there was that
we, we didn't take a strategicleadership role in the
engagement and we actually havea new product that is now
designed to totally correct thatissue.
But I would say, yeah, like, Youknow, we do this a lot.
We have experts, like we shouldtake a role of leadership, I
think.
Linda Fanaras (17:16):
Okay.
So what do you tell your clientthat their first step should be
if they engage with you?
Andrew Seidman (17:21):
We do the same first step for everyone.
It is called a roadmap for usand it is a execution ready, go
to market plan.
And the reason we do it this wayis because all the time folks
will say, we want you to just godrive pipeline.
Just go get this.
Go get us opportunities and likewe talked at the very beginning
of this conversation, if youdon't have a way to report on
(17:44):
stuff or you don't have acontent that will support it or
a brand that's off target orsomething like that, you can't
win.
So starting from a really likecrystal clear view of everything
is really important becauseoften like people think they
want paid media, but they reallywant pipelines.
Maybe it's like the place to getpipeline is actually because you
(18:05):
drop a hundred leads on theground every month in your
Linda Fanaras (18:08):
CRM.
Andrew Seidman (18:09):
It's like, if we fix that, that'll be so much
faster than if we spent a ton ofmoney on ads.
Linda Fanaras (18:14):
Right.
Andrew Seidman (18:14):
And so, zooming out and remembering that, like,
the answer is almost always justpipeline
Linda Fanaras (18:18):
and
Andrew Seidman (18:20):
trying to figure out the best, most strategic
route to getting there.
I think that's a, that's how wealways start.
Linda Fanaras (18:25):
Yeah.
And what's your top.
Digital tip, would you say to acustomer client
Andrew Seidman (18:30):
Google search is amazing at capturing buyers, but
not a good tool for branding.
Linda Fanaras (18:38):
And my last question just for the our
audiences.
We talked about a B.
M.
A lot.
Can you take a couple sentencesand explain to them what is that
and why is it important?
Andrew Seidman (18:48):
A B.
M.
Stands for account basedmarketing.
And the really key differencebetween account based marketing
and sort of traditionalmarketing or lead based
marketing or demand generationmarketing and so forth is the,
that version applies to peopleor like focuses really on
individual people, whereasaccount based marketing is
focused on the account, theactual company, which in a B2B
(19:10):
environment is, you know, whoultimately signs the check.
Like it's a company that'spaying the bill.
And the, the kind of, I guessthe important distinction here
would be to You might get 20leads.
That all come through as like anMQL, but they're all from kind
of crummy companies and yoursales team might spend all their
time working on that.
Whereas you might see 20 pre MQLpeople at a really good account
(19:32):
all engaging and you might missthat if you're not paying
attention and instead you mightwant to go capture that giant
account that has all thosepeople engaging but if you're
not in an ABM mentality, you'llmiss it.
Linda Fanaras (19:43):
Well, thank you, Andrew.
Thanks for coming on today.
Really appreciate you.
Joining in and sharing all yourinsights about digital and
integrated marketing strategies.
I would love for you to sharehow the audience can get in
touch with you.
So I'll have you take it fromhere.
Andrew Seidman (19:58):
Thanks, Linda.
It's been a total pleasure to behere.
Yeah, if you want to get intouch with me, feel free to
shoot me a message on LinkedIn.
Or of course, come visit ourwebsite at digitalreachagency.
com.
Happy to chat about anything andwould love to explore our
roadmap.
If that's something that soundedinteresting to you.
Linda Fanaras (20:13):
That sounds fantastic.
Well, thank you again.
Thank you for listening into theB2B Brand 180 podcast.
For more information, you canvisit us at mill.
agency or you can connect withme directly on LinkedIn as well
and happy marketing.
Thanks for joining us today.
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