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Episode 1989 · 6 months ago
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Episode 1989 · 6 months ago
3 Levels of ABM to Multiply Your Effectiveness
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Welcome back to Baby Growth. I'm DanSanchez with Sweet Fish Media, and today it's just me again. And I'm gonnabe talking about some of the lessons I've learned after this last week oftalking to multiple practitioners, thought leaders, even some clubhousemeetings I was in recently with James Carberry. I've learned so much aboutaccount based marketing in another week. It's like when you start risk readingand pounding the material and talking to all these people, you tend to learnon rapid fire. So I keep unlocking new lessons. In fact, this week I wanted tocircle back around to engagement, actually found a couple of differentlevels you could do engagement on. That's different from the one too manyone too few oneto one, because that's a way of looking at it. But there'sactually a whole another way of looking at it, and I've talked about pieces ofthis with a bunch of different episodes over this last week, but I wantedtocircle back around it and give some highlights of some of the things I'velearned and kind of package it up in a way that I think would make the mostsense for you. So again, if you're joining me, if this is the firstepisode you've listened to the month of February, I've been on a month longsearch for figuring out a B M account based marketing as a methodology for Btwo B marketers. I'm still new to the B two B marketing game. I am a B two cmarket. Er. I've done a lot of higher ed B two C companies, even localcompanies. Coffee shops, dentist, nonprofit. I've done some B two B workin the past, but not as much as I'm doing now, especially with all theinterviews I'm doing with B two B marketers and marketing sweet fishmedia myself, there's a lot to learn, and with a B M, there's certainly Mawrgoodness to go around. So let's jump into the three different levels ofengagement. You can look at the count based market, and again, this isn't onetoo many. One too few oneto one campaigns. This is looking at itdifferently, and it's looking at it with at the stakeholders in theaccounts that you're targeting. I just talked to Dimitri over at in, flew toabout how tow target different people...
...differently into account. And that'swhat I wanted to break down in this episode. So I've had a couple ofdifferent insights since then. So just so you know, like the first level wouldjust be targeting the one stakeholder that you know is the ideal buyer for anaccount that one person you know is the main person doing all the work toesecure. Whatever it is you're selling, there's that person. But we knowthere's more than one person that usually when you're selling B two b,there's a whole team of people that you need to convince to buy your solution.And that's what what we're gonna do a little bit deeper into is, I think youcould break it down into a few different levels and scale into itrather than making it too complex to start. So I'd say the first level isjust finding that ideal buyer and targeting them and still laying out awhole funnel for them. So what are you going to do with your messaging at thebeginning of the funnel while you're gonna build messaging around awareness,just getting them aware of the main problem you address and who you areright and around your content. You're going to deliver content, the beginningof the stage of the funnel that just peaks their interest. It's categoriesand topics that they're interested in. It may or may not have to do with whatyou sell directly, but it's in the realm of what your target audience.What that target buyer is interested in if you sell legal services to marketingagency CIOs and you're publishing about marketing agency stuff, but it's notnecessarily about legal services yet, right? So and then testimonials likeyou wanna probably publish some testimonials at even at the beginningof the funnel that covers some really interesting insights from people thatare like them, right. But then all that changes when you come a step down thefunnel into this engagement stage, Um, where they know about you. They'reaware of you now, so your messaging is going to switch to be more benefitrelated. The things that you selling the benefits that can happen. Of course,this is somewhat of an over generalization. You can mix and matchthese in different places. There's kind...
...of an overview to kind of give you anidea what I mean by changing your marketing per different parts of thefunnel, right, So your messaging is that it might be more benefit driven.Your content is probably going to be answering more specific questionsrelated to what you sell, though not necessarily talking about the product,but it's definitely in the category of what you sell. Now your contentmarketing is, and your testimonials are going to be from your customers thatair now, exploring and telling your your ideal buyer how much they've lovedin the results. They've seen working with you, right? And that all changesagain. When they're in the very bottom stage of your funnel into the awareness.When they're talking to sales, you're going to be doing messaging. That'smore feature comparison, right? You're going to have content. That is moreeducation on how your product works and you're going to have testimonials. Theygo a little bit deeper about why people like working with your company, notjust the results they've seen, but what they've enjoyed about working with yourcustom might be about your customer service. It might be about differentthings they didn't expect that were amazing. It might be handling some,like bottom of the photo, all types of objections that come out. But you cansee how you can customize the different types of marketing and the content, themessaging and the testimonials you are putting in front of people based onwhat stage of the funnel there in. Now, take that in mind that this is thefirst stage right. Building this all out takes a long time to even for yourideal buyer. You have this one person in mind for this one major productcategory that you're trying to sell to in your A B M campaign, and it is a lotof work just building it out for the one buyer for every major stage, fromawareness to engagement to the last bottom of the funnel considerationstage as they're talking to sales. It is a lot, just a lot of work to just toget that done, which is kind of where we're focused on its sweet fish media.I'm still putting together this main A B M funnel, but I'm also keeping myeyes on the prize. I think there's other levels we could be doinginternally, and so I'm creating this content now for you because I'mlearning it. And I'm also kind of like...
...earmarking it for myself as I get intodeveloping this for sweet fish media. So here's the second level. So we havethat we have the full funnel developed for our ideal buyer. But we can alsobuild a second round where we start to customize the funnel for differentindustries. Yes, it's still for the ideal buyers, but we're often sellingto more than one industry. And if we have a couple of key industries we have,we might have a generic funnel we start off with. But we can actually segmentinto a couple of different industries to customize it further. Maybe we sellthe three different industries and no sweet fish media. We cover, like anumber of difference industries that we tend to focus more on B two B techcompanies, specifically B two b SAS Tech companies. They're still evenindustries within that small little category that I could splinter it offto. I could have a whole fintech version. I could have a wholemanufacturing arm. I could have a whole marketing services are more mark techvendors right and still customize it further yet for the ideal buyer, andthat is a way to get Mawr personalized across the board. So now I'm coming up,not with just general at the top of the funnel, right awareness piece awarenessmessaging, coming up with content. That's Peking curiosity or is aboutthem more than it is about us and coming up with testimonials that airjust like really intriguing case studies from their peers. They're allcustomized, so the awareness is around being aware that you even serve theirindustry content. That's interesting to their particular nuanced industry rightand testimonials that air from customers you already have in theirindustry. So that is the second level of engagement. So it's taking the firstfunnel you developed and multiplying at times, however many industries youreally want to focus on, and then the third level takes it a step further bynot just identifying the ideal buyer, but all the different buyers within theaccount because you have your ideal buyer, but there's probably theyprobably have a boss that's going to be looking over their shoulder andchecking up to see what they're they're...
...buying and maybe has to approve somebudget at a higher level. There's probably a direct report or many directreports that have to use the thing that your buyer is buying right, that youhave to convince. And there's probably some potentially some other departmentswithin the organization that get to weigh in on this decision, because itmight be a big enough purchase that other departments are involves morethan just one single department. There is some peers that your ideal buyer has.That might be naysayers that might be People that ask very differentquestions have a very different view of the world of what's good. And so youtake all the funnels you developed for all those industries, and then youcreate more funnel still that are customized for the different buyerswithin the account, because we know when we're dealing with accounts.That's why we even use the word just account and not buyer, because there'smultiple people within the accounts that you have to market to and to sell,and the more content you could come up with and the more sophistication andcustomization you could bring to every single piece, the more it's going toresonate them or it's going to get them to take the baby. Step down the funneltowards buying your solution. So let's take an example if we're looking atinstead of just your buyer but maybe the CEO of your buyer If you're sellingto the sweet C suite, you wanna be able to make something for their boss, right?Because the CEO is gonna look differently at the awareness stage thanthe CTO is. Maybe that you're trying to sell to the boss of the CTO has adifferent world view. They have a different paradigm of what success andwhat they care about, what keeps them awake at night. And the CTO does, right?So you wanna have a different awareness kind of campaign in your messaging? Youwanna have different content that piques their curiosity. That's justgeared for the CEO. You wanna have case studies from CEOs now CEOs in thatindustry right that you are specifically targeting You could seehow this becomes a lot of different content to make messaging to set up andtestimonials to go find. But what did it make sense that a if you're a CEO ofa company and maybe in the health...
...industry like a hospital right that ifyou see if they build awareness for that particular that narrow of a nicheof a profile and they're selling the CTO is. But they're still creatingawareness for the CEO who's going to be looking over that CTO shoulder to seewhat that might have. Some be evaluating what the CTO is buying. Ifit's a big purchase, that customizing the messaging and creating contentthat's specifically created for that CEO in mind and then coming up withtestimonials from other CEOs in the similar industry that's going to drawthem in. And so while it's very difficult to come up with that muchcontent, all of those testimonials, all that messaging and all the differentpieces of content that you need in order to walk every single buyer downthe funnel within the account, it still works and we're going. We're alreadycreating content, were already collecting testimonials, so really, wejust need to create a system of creating it and then cataloging it sothat our sales reps in our marketing teams have access to all the differentpieces. You know, you can label them all a such so that you can kind ofcreate this like grid of sorts of different content and so you can plugit into the right places, so that goes to the right people at the right time.So that's what I've been thinking about. It's kind of like Stretch to my mind isI thought about all the different possibilities of all these differentmessaging and content testimonials and where it could be fitting across allthese different pieces of the puzzle. It's definitely pushing me to thinkdifferently about how I'm even structuring my own content, marketingand how different pieces of it can fit into different parts of the funnel fordifferent people at different times. So it's very exciting to think about. Itcertainly creates a long road map for me of stuff that we still need to dio,which it's a never ending list, which that's really a good things. That'sthat's job security, right? Marketers. That's that means we get to stay aroundfor a long time because we have a lot of work to dio. In the short term,though, just start with the one funnel for your ideal buyer and account basedmarketing system, and it's already going to be so much more efficient andeffective than just targeting the...
...masses or even a large segment of whatour potential buyers. If you could just target your key accounts and thoseideal buyer's first, it's going to make a difference because you're getting inwith the right person and walking him through in a systematic manner. If youjust start with that, you're going to win. But you'll win more and more, themore you can customize it for the industry and then for the the buyers,the different buyers and stakeholders within the account. Hopefully, this hasbeen kind of a help as helpful of a revelation to you as it is for me again.I'm still new to account based marketing, but this seemed like a bigpiece that I hadn't considered before, and that's the main lesson that I'mtaking away from this week. I have one more week of content. I have actuallyhave two books more to read that I'm looking at my desk right now, veryexcited to review those. I have a couple, one more thought leader to talkto you in a couple more practitioners before I wrap up this Siris on accountbased marketing in just a little over a week from now. Thank you so much forlistening. If this has been helpful to you, please give us a five star ratingon whatever podcast after you're listening to. You don't even have towrite a review just going tap that five stars. It makes a huge difference forour show. It makes it easy for other people like yourself to find us. Sothank you so much for listening and go tap. That five star Gary V says it all the time. And weagree. Every company should think of themselves as a media company first.Then whatever it is they actually dio if you know this is true. But your teamhas already maxed out and you can't produce any more content in house. Wecan help. We produce podcast for some of the most innovative BB brands in theworld, and we also help them turn the content from the podcast into blockposts, micro videos and slide decks that work really well on LinkedIn. Ifyou wanna learn more, go to sweet Fish media dot com slash launch or emailLogan at sweet fish media dot com.
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