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B2B Agility with Greg Kihlström™: MarTech, E-Commerce, & Customer Success
#68: Improving lead quality with Derek Gerber, Power Digital
00:26:03
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- [00:01]
Derek Gerber
The agile brand.
- [00:08]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to the B2B Agility Podcast where we look at the factors that drive success in B2B marketing with a focus on the people, processes, data and platforms that make B2B brands stand out and thrive in a competitive marketplace. I'm your host, Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, marketing operations and CX, bestselling author and speaker. Now let's get on to the show.
- [00:34]
Interviewer
Are you getting lots of leads but never enough good ones? Agility requires not only the ability to adapt to change quickly, but also the foresight to anticipate what's coming next, whether that's top, middle or bottom of the funnel in B2B lead generation. Today we're going to talk about why so many marketers are stroll. Today we're going to talk about why so many B2B marketers are still struggling with poor lead quality and what they can do to fix it. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Derek Gerber, director of growth B2B at Power Digital. Derek, welcome to the show.
- [01:07]
Derek Gerber
Hey Greg, thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate the opportunity. Yes, for the audience. Derek Gerber, Director of Growth here at Power Digital. I've been working in B2B SaaS and marketing for about 15 years. I'm passionate about working with global teams, building world class marketing solutions that drive pipeline and of course revenue. So I focus again directly here on driving programs internally, but then also making sure that we're building implementable and scalable ABM like approaches for our clients at scale. Developed a couple frameworks here for growth as well that have helped the company grow 50% year over year and excited to also share those same kind of results with our clients. Nice.
- [01:45]
Interviewer
Nice. Yes, you're, you're definitely the right person to talk about this topic here. So yeah, let's, let's, let's dive in here and I want to start with what I touched on in the beginning and just, you know, this problem of poor leads, not, not necessarily, not enough leads but, but just not the right ones. And you know, I've, I've certainly lived through that myself before, so I, I know what that's like. So beyond the obvious wasted resources that bringing a bunch of leads but not necessarily good ones brings, what are some of the less discussed negative impacts of consistently working with poor quality leads on a marketing team?
- [02:21]
Derek Gerber
Absolutely. I was gonna say, even from some of the partners that we have, we would say that about 58% of marketing leaders right now admit that they have Trouble targeting the right kind of leads, which actually leads to poor quality leads and such. So building full go to market plans and strategies that identify the right audiences, the channels, and again how we move them through the funnel, all important for driving pipeline generation. That matters with higher quality opportunities. But also making sure again that, you know, we're working hand in hand with the sales team to make sure that we're making revenue grow as well. But I would say that it's like some of the things that I think about too are just like the lack of visibility into performance, what channels are working, what's not, how do I measure that? Teams often struggling with inefficient budget allocation, something that is absolutely critical to getting this right. We can dive into that in a little bit too. I have some extra thoughts on that. But decisions being made on incorrect data when you don't even have the full picture. We've all struggled with that with business over time in general. But I feel like that's been exacerbated just a little bit underperformance against KPIs. The lack of stakeholder confidence that generates and then of course, like incorrect attribution when you start making decisions based off of gut feelings at some point because you can't actually showcase the right kind of leads and data, makes it extremely hard to upgrade the value of your strategy and go to market the right way.
- [03:41]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of tools out there that are promising, you know, making it easier on getting leads and doing stuff, you know. But from your standpoint, is the problem getting better? Is it getting worse? You know, what, what factors are, you know, contributing either way?
- [04:00]
Derek Gerber
Yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit of both and I'd love to dive into that just a bit more.
- [04:04]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
- [04:05]
Derek Gerber
There's a lot of technology out there right now that promises a lot of things. But I would think that holistically, when you look at the market and some of the challenges that we need to overcome, you're seeing teams of maybe 30, 50, 100 people that are literally been been cut down to three, five, maybe 10 people max. And that's a big challenge because you're asking fewer people who didn't have all the intrinsic knowledge from before to still go to market, have 30 or 40% growth rates, still have the same budget, but somehow need to navigate wearing three or seven different hats that they never had to wear before. And so there's been a lot of. Yeah. Pitches out there where, well, this technology will fill the gap and it'll solve Your problem and if maybe you sprinkle some AI on it, it'll actually help the problem. But I would say that one like one of the biggest contributing factors of it getting worse is the complexity of programs because now you have tech stacks, Martech stacks, revoff stacks that are 250, $500,000 a year with all the data analytics tools, all the AI insights that you can imagine all sitting on top of unstructured information that's completely siloed across multiple different systems. So, so now you have people, I mean who are honestly giving their best effort, good people trying to make a living, who are completely overwhelmed with the amount of technology in front of them and how to best activate it. So a lot of them still end up guessing instead of measuring properly. The level of complexity that goes into that is now way too much noise, if you would. The second part of that too, what you just teased to is the resource constraints. Maybe that was okay when you had a larger team and everyone could operate all those different levers together, but now notoriously being understaffed. One of the reasons that Power Digital is also brought in is making sure that we can actually scale teams effectively like they were before. There are CFOs and CROs out there that are effectively saying you are not going to get headcount money or budget, but you can bring in a partner. And I would say about 95% of these conversations I'm being told I have these amazing world class technology solutions and tools but I don't know how to out of it them and I don't have all the right people on staff. So how do we actually take advantage of this, get back to having a seat at the table and building confidence with the leadership team and then showcasing this is exactly where we need to put these dollars and how we need to go to market. So I would just say I was like these factors aren't necessarily new things, but absolutely critical, especially for leaders that are looking to navigate a lot of different noise. And it can be a little bit painful upfront. But I would say as you start to address these, you put the right roadmap together, you create some clarity for these teams, you start to rebuild that trust between sales, marketing and leadership. So definitely pays off big in the long run.
- [06:44]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And I mean that, that to your point that trust is critical for, you know, not only in the short term, but, but long term success. And you know, you mentioned, you know, a lot of marketers are still kind of guessing instead of measuring. Despite to your other point, despite all of the technology and all the platforms and all of the insights, let's call, you know, valuable or no, like all of the insights that those platforms technically provide. How can you know it? Is there a technology solution to this though? You know, in, in, you know, are there, are there ways to better bridge online offline data you get and actually get a more holistic view of things so people can get away from, from guessing and really start being data driven?
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Derek Gerber
I love that too. That's a great question. A couple of intricacies that go with it because we've been sold on the promise of an all in one system that can solve all these problems. And they usually pick at those gray areas between data and actionability. And so the way I think that most of my clients when they're coming, they're asking these kinds of questions, especially to Power Digital. But how do I remove fragmented systems? What tools do you recommend? Those are the kinds of things that blow me away because you may have again a world class solution and it's just not being activated right as a part of your strategy. But how do I get rid of the noise? How do we clean up data? How do we gain more confidence? How do we get back to connecting individual campaigns versus holistic marketing success? Those are the kinds of things that start to shape deeper level questions is I've even had people ask, are we measuring the right kinds of metrics? We've been doing it this way for three or five years. Is this the right way to be doing it in 2025 and beyond? What's happening in the next three to five years? So beyond just platforms, data sets, the right tools and the in the measurements that should be going into place, that should be showcased to the executive team, are the initiatives actually working? Are just like literally one of the most basic questions that we still get. A lot of people have differing information when it comes to measuring the success of a campaign. And I'm not just talking about first touch, last touch, there's a lot that go a little bit deeper than that. So I was gonna say ultimately, at the end of the day, people just want to know for my target audience, for the fit of my product, the size of my product, small mid enterprise kind of solutions, right. Do I have the right kind of marketing allocation mix based off of the growth, maturity of the size of my organization and where I'm at today. Those are a lot of the basic questions that we're helping solve. But that's how we're starting to get through that. Clarity is you gotta ask some of those tough questions upfront. But you, you can see pretty clearly upfront we're helping these teams solve that at scale.
- [09:18]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And so how do strategies like, you know, ICP journey mapping, intent data analysis, you know, how are these, how effective are these in your experience in improving lead quality and you know, are there some key considerations for implementing them successfully?
- [09:36]
Derek Gerber
Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to building out our power methodology, if you would, for B2B and how to break into these audiences, it's always going to start with that ICP breakdown and we have some unique partnerships and data insights that we bring to clients that they haven't seen before. But as a part of our power circuit audit process, if you would, we take a lot of time and discovery to understand who's the right audience. Have you done that homework and that full journey buyer mapping? If you haven't, we have recommendations, way to fill that in. But essentially what we come back with, it takes our analyst team a couple weeks to do this. We, we actually come back and show the intent of your ideal audience in your TAM in the last year and in the last 30 days. We then go a little bit deeper and actually showcase the ideal channels for where you should be advertising into, based off of Nielsen data that we have. So it actually creates a very solid foundation to show the entire market opportunity. Who's been looking in the last 30 days where we need to position ourselves, getting into the channels that matter most and then double tapping into that, if you would, and doing a very deep dive competitor analysis where we're doing content copy and creative analysis across all the different channels and where we need to differentiate ourselves. And that, that's just the first chapter of it. So a lot of teams don't have that documented. I would actually argue that most teams have been targeting the same audience for years, haven't thought about where to go next or actually how to properly document that whole go to market sequence, if you would. So we're amazing at strategic execution and planning, but the things that we're actually probably known best for are the before and after parts of marketing where you get really, really deep into that go to market strategy. The research that goes into that process and being extremely consultative up front, executing and of course world class delivery is one part. But then again, at the end of the day, actually how you measure against that is something that we have some advanced capabilities in. Really excited to be able to bring that to our clients, of course. But the more that we focus on penetrating those right audiences with more personalized campaigns, content, creative that really hits home, creates an impact and value for them. That's how we're going to build trust for our clients and of course their brands across the world.
- [11:44]
Interviewer
Yeah, I mean the channel focus alone, I would imagine, you know, if so many marketers are guessing instead of measuring and they're flooded with insights, you know, all that stuff we've already talked about, I assume they're also. It's kind of like the spray and pray approach to channels too. Right. Of just like we don't, you know, it's, it's the wanna maker quote. It's like I know 50% of my advertising isn't working, but I don't know which 50%. Right. I would imagine that some of those, those exercises that you're doing and you know, the, the research and the strategy that you bring to bear is helping to narrow the target and narrow the focus to the right dollars are being spent on the right channels. Right?
- [12:24]
Derek Gerber
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that when you look at different size clients, the resources available, the ideal target market, where you're trying to go, we're all trying to do the same thing. How do I most effectively, with confidence again take this to the executive board and say here are the channels that our audience cares most about. Here's exactly what our Personas want to see in that kind of messaging and here's exactly how we're going to go do it. And that 1, 2, 3 game plan is missing from a lot of core strategies. I've seen clients who just run ads just for the sake of running ads. I've seen clients who create content just for the sake of running content and they try to check that box. And then in the last couple weeks of a quarter are scrambling to get essentially in a stressful environment, prove out their value. Here's my value to the organization and I don't want to see that song and dance anymore. I want to create that confidence for our clients and as they start to walk into these meeting rooms, have a different kind of conversation, up level the conversation to where we actually get the CRO and the CFO in the room going. No one's ever shown me this before. This is really exciting to see. And again, of course we've driven some amazing results. But as I say, as we start to do this more and more and we grow capabilities only get better through our great partnerships.
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Can you, can you share an example maybe of how you know something like a test and learn strategy, Improved conversion rates for a B2B client?
- [13:46]
Derek Gerber
Yeah, absolutely. Have quite a few But a couple of software examples, if you would. I'll just say global leading cybersecurity client of ours were struggling to unify their go to market strategy across different regions. You had different teams, different goal sets, reporting into the exec team different ways. You also had three different divisions across the organization who were all geared under marketing, but not necessarily talking to each other or unifying their efforts together well across paid media, content strategy and also the branding division. So in the past about year and a half, if you would, focusing where we can make the greatest impact for immediate paid media campaigns and what we were able to do, a content strategy in unifying those efforts, we actually saw 133% surge in paid media qualified opportunities with an 85% increase in MQLs. And some might say that's a little bit of a vanity metric if you would to some. But about 70% of those turned into sequence SQLs, which was way above the benchmark threshold that we actually had for other clients. So driving quality pipeline and revenue and opportunities coming out of that is actually best leverage too when you're running global brand campaigns synonymously with that. So not only increasing the ability to better target these audiences, create differentiation, but also like doing those more creative activations, if you would, for elevating the brand, spending a couple million dollars on campaigns just to make sure that we were in the right kinds of airports and the right kinds of targeted programmatic sequences. Those are all a part of like, you know, creating that data driven holistic marketing strategy that teams are looking for. Now. This is a global enterprise brand, but again, still dealing with the same kind of struggles and challenges. How do I target, how do I personalize, elevate the brand and create more authority in the market? That's the 1, 2, 3 play that we put together for them as well.
- [15:43]
Interviewer
Yeah, love it. So what's on your radar as far as emerging technologies trends that you're, you know, either already adopting or keeping your eye on from? From a B2B lead generation perspective?
- [15:56]
Derek Gerber
Absolutely. I was going to say the three biggest areas that I see right now as to where things are trending and where they're going. Where I see the most action that's going on in the market is going to be one, it's the push towards more AI driven personalization at scale. That only happens when you have the right kind of data structure like we were talking about earlier on the show. But if you have fragmented data, you're lacking those moments of true insights. You're never going to be able to Create personalization at scale. So a lot of platforms, lot of teams really focusing on how do I create this personalization at scale through technology to help better leverage what the marketing team can pull off. But then again also supporting the sales team, absolutely clutch and critical to get on your roadmap here in the next couple of years would say the next part of this, to call it the rise of the buying group intelligence. But in the B2B motions, very specifically, we've been used to having to eventually get to a salesperson if you would, to better educate me on the process or get me through. But I can tell you right now just up front, most of our audiences are looking to better educate themselves and they've been armed with better tools to do that now more than ever before. So beyond just the one struggle of buying teams increasing in size, where maybe you dealt with three or five people throughout the buying process and your deal cycles took, I don't know, maybe 30, 60, 90 days, maybe six months for mid size enterprise kind of solution, we're actually seeing buying committees increase to maybe 12 or 15 people and also buying cycles take longer throughout that process. And you have to convince more people who are more hidden than ever before. So those teams who can actually create more champions internally across larger buying groups and better enable the conversation to elevate the brand into being those top two or three considerations, like I like to say, they're the ones who are winning. So think about the bigger, longer game. How are you going to make an impact at scale like that when they're more self educated and have more resources than ever before? That actually kind of takes me better into. My third point is that people are still struggling to focus on what is the right kind of blend between brand and demand. Now I would just tell you right here up front, you can quote me on this, but 81% of B2B buyers who chose a solution in the end knew about the brand from the start. But yet every single conversation that we go into, I'm talking to a lot of leaders that again effectively are looking to drive performance for the organization, but are way too short minded. And there's how do I drive a lead today and forget any of this other stuff that I can't measure or understand. And there's a business case to be had there because those teams, like when they look to us here at power, we can explain the value of demand generation ABM and then also brand campaigns as well. We have advanced data scientists here internally across our data intelligence division. But ideally if you could put in the right kind of measurement and showcase the lift of your brand and how this effectively puts brands top of mind while building that relationship with those larger buying committees that is going to 3x your ability to make that shortlist at the end. And sometimes I'm asked again like how do I actually improve the effectiveness of, of my brand awareness if I can't get budget? How do I effectively reach this audience and do personalization? But then you know, hit these short term goals if these things take time. Like it is always the same ball of yarn that we're trying to untangle for these clients. So it's something that I feel like that we effectively do. But as markers that I want you to hear like, you know, you're not just judged by MQLs. There has to be pipeline and real revenue that comes out of it at the end. So if your brand is not out there building the story, being a part of the community, driving genuine, insightful and helpful information to your audience, you're not going to make it to the end of that cycle. You're not going to be that short list. So I just want everyone to hear is like, as you start looking towards the future in the next couple years, think of how you're best allocating yourself for almost more of an agent to agent like experience for where your buying committees will all have their own agent and when they go online to research the right kind of solutions, you need to have your agents in the right moment, being able to answer those questions better, educate audiences up front. So when you do bring them in and it does come time for that conversation, you are ready to go right there in that moment and you're already being shortlisted. Cause you've checked all the boxes along the way.
- [20:13]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, love it. So then, you know, as we wrap up here, what advice would you give to a B2B marketing leader that you know, excited maybe about some of these things, but still a little overwhelmed by, you know, the complexity, the platforms, all of the above that we've talked about today, you know, what would your advice be to them to start making some tangible improvements?
- [20:38]
Derek Gerber
Yeah, I was gonna say my first piece of advice for those B2B marketers that are out there looking to make an impact today. Right. Just take those small little moments to focus on your content strategy because that is more powerful than ever before and we've seen how we interact with brands changing. But remember, for those B2B audiences, you may be in the middle of the day using all the B2B jargon in the world, but at the end of the day, we're all just people and you're looking to build relationships with brands and people that you trust. And if you don't have your spokesperson out there, if you would creating that kind of personalization and trust, you're going to miss the boat. You're also not going to be ready for AI as we continue into what LLM search would look like. So again, from an SEO a content perspective, the mediums in which we communicate, short form video content, 600% more likely to convert. What have you done to verticalize the impact of your work and really focus in on each one of your TAM niches? Like that's a powerful place to be, that can make a ton of impact for you. So don't be generic, don't be general, be ultra focused in those, those great little moments. That's a great way to build your brand and trust. I'd also say here too is just kind of thinking ahead, like when you're asking yourself the right kinds of questions in the room, right? The most costly mistakes that I see is thinking about. You can't just lead with feature rich components and hoping that is the thing that creates your differentiation. You need to be thinking about your audience who's waking up and going how can you solve my problem? Can you communicate that effectively and clearly and consistently? And that's the thing that I think a lot of teams miss. So as you start thinking about how do I get away from trying to just advertise a feature into what does this product mean for me in the next 30, 60, 90 days? What's the kind of impact is it going to have on me personally and also for the team? Now you're going to start to see the reality of those outcomes as you start to communicate better and you focus on business leaders who are focused on tangible outcomes, but like also again your ability to affect maybe better pipeline revenue as well. So just say as you start to think about those things, don't be generic, don't be too high level. But again, start with the true business value of why you're doing what you're doing. Focus on building that personalized connection down into each TAM and then start focusing on each one of the buyer committees, buying committee's level of influence throughout that process. And if you can hit those different checkboxes along the way, you'll eliminate millions of dollars worth of wasted ad budget. You'll eliminate the mess that you've created of just trying to create content for the sake of creating content. But you'll also make sure that you're driving a much more impactful funnel.
- [23:19]
Interviewer
Love it. Well Derek, thanks so much for joining today and sharing your insights. One last question for you before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Derek Gerber
Greg, thanks so much for having me on the show. Absolute honor. Pleasure to be here. If anyone wants to reach out to me directly on LinkedIn, I'm always or you can visit www.powerdigital.com to learn more. But for me, staying agile really, I would just like summarize it into two habits that I have. So first, I take time every week to block out time for myself and then reassess what is happening within the landscape and do the strategies that we use internally also click for our clients as well. Things are advancing faster than ever before and it's not going to be so much about people fear mongering about how AI is going to take my job. But you need to think about how you're AI ready and are your strategies doing those core critical movements here in the next couple years that get you ready for more of that agent to agent like communication like we've talked about in the future. That's how you know you're going to put yourself in the right spot. But again, zoom out. Don't do the same playbook from last year. You need to think about how your playbook will evolve over the next couple years. Secondly, staying agile. We're really, really big on testing and learning here with our frameworks. Sometimes teams can struggle with having that communication internally, but it's good to set aside some budget, some frameworks and some structuring that give you the freedom and flexibility to go and try new channels, try new, more creative campaigns that make an impact and make your brand extremely rememberable while elevating thought leadership. Those are going to be the ways that you're going to be able to find that right blend between demand generation and brand campaign performance. And so staying agile, again, watching out for that technology, but making sure that we're always testing and learning new opportunities. That's the way to win the game here in 2025 and beyond for B2B marketers.
- [25:12]
Interviewer
Well, again, I'd like to thank Derek Gerber, director of growth B2B at Power Digital, for joining the show. You can learn more about Derek and Power Digital by following the links in the show notes.
- [25:23]
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the B2B Agility podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show as at www.b2bagility.com. That's B2B agility.com while you're there, check out my series of best selling Agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics. Or you can search for Greg Kilstrom on Amazon. Until next time, stay focused and stay agile.
- [25:58]
Derek Gerber
The Agile brand.