A/B Marketing Funnels

Speaker 1: 00:06 
Hello everybody and welcome back to a new episode of our podcast series. Lately we've been talking about marketing funnels, simplifying and scaling those. And what we're going to talk about today is account based marketing. And what does an account based marketing funnel look like? And, and what we found is basically it looks like it's, it's kind of flipping. The traditional marketing funnel looks a little bit different. So today we're gonna, we're gonna dive into that starting specifically with what's our first step when, when we're flipping a marketing funnel for account based marketing set.

Speaker 2: 00:41 
Yeah. So instead of the traditional approach where you're putting out a bunch of content, ads or, or what, what have you to a larger audience to see who bites in hopes of attracting the right audience, you know, in abm, instead you're handpicking specific companies, kind of target accounts and then decision makers within those accounts or buying groups based on fit, you know, revenue potential, industry, things like that, potentially some buying intent data. So you're really being laser focused on who you want to bring in as an account rather than the opposite.

Speaker 1: 01:25 
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Again, kind of reverse there. Any other thoughts or additions there, Zach?

Speaker 3: 01:34 
Well, I think that, you know, Seth and I actually dealt with this on a recent client, brand new CEO and you know, we hadn't really worked with a client like this before and it's almost become a whole nother kind of account based marketing group to go after. You know, we offer a lot of fractional marketing, a lot of fractional team services and without having, you know, if we would kept going after we were going after, I don't think we would have been able to make the services for a client like that. So being able to identify just with even within our current clients that we had kind of this new account based group to go after. This is a perfect example of that.

Speaker 4: 02:16 
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Speaker 1: 02:53 
The next stage of the marketing funnel traditionally would be interest. What is, how is that different in an account based funnel?

Speaker 2: 03:00 
Yeah. So in traditional marketing you're Hooking a crowd or an audience with blogs, webinars, landing pages, freebies, and then filtering or segmenting them by interest or other attributes. Whereas abm, we are tailoring the outreach directly to target accounts using personalized emails, custom offerings or demos, even customized videos or one on one LinkedIn messages. You know that that's really focused on what the account needs, who they are and the specific pain points that they might be experiencing. So again, you're not, you're not casting a wide net or casting bait. You're knocking on the, on the door of the specific accounts with a custom tailored or as custom tailored as possible solution that they already need.

Speaker 1: 04:01 
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Zach, any other thoughts there too?

Speaker 3: 04:06 
Not really. I mean, I think that again, ABM is just, it's so much more direct. It involves a little bit more of a strong kind of like sdr, but I think the return on that spend is quite high. So I think that that type of really tailored outreach and engagement, you know, we've, we've obviously seen the difference, takes a little bit extra effort, but they also see that on the other side.

Speaker 2: 04:33 
I was just going to say that's a key point. There's this notion of an ABM hype cycle where it's like people get, you'll get a team, a marketing and a sales team or a revenue team really excited about abm. Oh, it's this hot new thing. But ABM, to execute properly takes persistence and it takes collaboration between sales and marketing and maybe even service a little bit, you know, and then you've got this period of excitement. The C level's like, okay, we're going to bring in these accounts, but it takes refinement and adjusting and even the metrics that you track initially are not going to be as bottom of the funnel. Right? It might be, you know, like coverage of accounts or like, you know, some, some metrics regarding awareness. Do these target accounts even know who we are? Are they clicking on the links in the emails? Are they spending any time on the website? Do we have visitor identification set up so we can see if they are. That kind of stuff. So it's, it's definitely not easy. It's a process, but it can definitely pay dividends once, once you get into it. So there's often a peak of expectations, then a period of disillusionment, but then eventually if you push through, you get to this plateau of productivity. So just, you know, want to, want to contextualize it in that ABM is not necessarily easy, but it can, it can Be very rewarding.

Speaker 1: 06:14 
So we're moving to the next section here. We're talking about consideration and conversion. We're talking about when people are kind of shopping around what does that look like? Again, flipped. When we're doing not traditional marketing funnel, but account based marketing funnel.

Speaker 2: 06:33 
Yeah. So traditional, you get the leads coming through and sales decides who to chase in a very simplified manner. But with abm, and since accounts are pre qualified, conversion is really about deepening trust and some of these higher level engagement and these higher level ABM metrics. And then eventually you get the ability to have a conversation with them, ideally and then to pitch and then to close. So I just say that conversion is not as immediate and satisfying in abm. Right. Everyone gets excited when you get a lead, but it's a little less exciting to identify an account. Account is your lead. Right. But then you track some of these engagements like I was talking about. Awareness, engagement, program reach, program impact. And then, you know, you measure, you optimize and then you start closing more and more deals over time. But it takes time. So that's, that's how it differs from the traditional approach.

Speaker 1: 07:52 
And that's gotta be a little, that can be maybe discouraging if you, if you don't have a good handle on your sales cycle too. If you're going after account based marketing, you're probably going after bigger groups. You're probably going after in those bigger groups. Naturally there's going to be a long sales cycle. So it can feel tough. I would imagine when you get right, when you're five, six months into this, you're like, the sale, where are the sales? The sales aren't coming in. Tracking that data has to be just again, such a big part of what we're doing. Just to give you like, no, this is, we are seeing progress here outside of just closed deals. So that'd be one other thing I was thinking of. When we're going through there is just patience. It's going to be hard. You're going to have to work with the C suite and the other leaders in your team to go like, here's the progress we're making. We are getting there. We're setting meetings, we're having discussions, we're getting in front of the right people. Yeah. Zach, any other thoughts on there before we move forward?

Speaker 3: 08:52 
Yeah, I think just really dialing in on KPI's conversion focus is so far down. But if you can schedule Even just a 15 minute meeting with a C level person for your, you know, top account that you're going after, I think that's a huge win and it'd be something to refine upon. So having those breakdowns from, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, and just knowing the difference between ABM and traditional, I think if you add those two things, I think you'll go a long way and set clear expectations.

Speaker 1: 09:27 
Yeah, yeah, makes sense. All right, so last part, we're going to talk about expanding the sale after the win, not before. Tell me a little bit about that, Seth. What does that mean?

Speaker 2: 09:42 
Well, we'll take our traditional marketing example where you scale by pumping more into the awareness stage to fill the top of the funnel. Whereas in abm, after closing account, you scale by upselling within that account or targeting similar accounts because you've executed a process, you have data points about what worked, what didn't, and then you have one really strong data point like, hey, we've got a customer, we closed a deal. So in abm, growth is building from success and gathering data about what works rather than a shotgun approach of traditional marketing.

Speaker 1: 10:28 
Yeah, I think that's a great way to, to wrap up Zach, any other closing thoughts here?

Speaker 3: 10:33 
Yeah, I mean, I think for those two, if you're a lot of, you know, gurus online talking about you just need to do 100 of this a day or you need to produce this, I think marketing is definitely shifting towards kind of like the AVM flip. I think that the more hyper targeted, that's why they have all these tools out there now, like clay, they have braze, all these different ones that really have the conversation with them. And I think that people at that top level are looking for those conversations. So just understanding that the traditional way of scaling, if you pump out a bunch of content, like first of all, it has to be good content. There's not that much of it. On the other side, scaling within, I think is that idea of trust. And then this also helps you build up future case studies so you can go after those similar accounts. So expansion to me, for both of them, they obviously work, but I like signing a bit more towards abm. Once you have a successful client, you can find similar accounts, it's just a lot easier to manage too.

Speaker 1: 11:41 
Yeah. Kind of find your sweet spot. What worked, what didn't, what can we lean into? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Especially in the B2B world. Especially if you're. Yeah. Going after a certain size or form of client that makes a ton of size. Yeah, love it. All right, well, thank you everybody for, for watching and listening along. We we really appreciate it. Next episode, we're going to dive into drop off points in a marketing funnel, how we can address those, how we can increase our conversion rates and keep nurturing people down the funnel. So thanks again for following along and we'll see you very soon.