Expert Perspectives Of Scaling ABM With Minimal Budgets

Summary

B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast: Expert Perspectives on Scaling ABM with Minimal Budgets

Podcast Information:

• Title: B2B Marketing Exchange
• Host/Author: Demand Gen Report
• Description: The B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast features candid insights from those who live and breathe B2B. Every week, industry top influencers and practitioners discuss content strategy, demand generation, account-based marketing (ABM), and sales enablement. Subscribe for intimate conversations and top-rated talks from premier events.
• Episode: Expert Perspectives Of Scaling ABM With Minimal Budgets
• Release Date: December 4, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of the B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast, hosted by Claudia Tirico and Kelly Lindenow, the focus centers on the challenges and strategies associated with scaling Account-Based Marketing (ABM) amidst constrained budgets. The discussion features esteemed marketing professionals: Claire Noble and Michael Taylor from Agent 3, and Gemma Davis from ServiceNow. Their collective expertise offers invaluable insights into maintaining ABM effectiveness while navigating financial limitations.

The Growing Pressure on Marketers

ROI as the Primary Concern

Gemma Davis kicks off the conversation by highlighting the increasing pressure on marketers, emphasizing Return on Investment (ROI) as the foremost concern. At [02:36], she asserts:

"Return on investment I would say is number one. And having sat in some sessions, the conference so far, it's something that I think is resonating across all themes." [02:36]

Gemma further projects that the marketing landscape is poised for rapid transformation, potentially "more in the next 12 months than it has in the last 10 years." [02:53] This bold prediction underscores the urgency for marketers to adapt swiftly to evolving dynamics.

Shrinking Budgets and Strategic Prioritization

Addressing the pressing issue of declining marketing budgets, Claire Noble and Michael Taylor from Agent 3 discuss the necessity of prioritizing spending to sustain ABM initiatives. Claire notes at [03:43]:

"We've been talking about that quite a bit this morning and what we're seeing is a real shift in not just marketing budgets decreasing, but also the mandates to do more with that with the limited spend increasing." [03:43]

This sentiment is echoed by Michael, who emphasizes leveraging technology and data to maximize efficiency:

"Use their technology and data to enable them to apply those principles... achieving hyper personalized engagement by leveraging technology and data." [07:42]

The Relevance and Importance of ABM Today

Building Customer Relevance

Gemma Davis delves into why ABM remains a critical strategy in today’s B2B environment. At [04:51], she explains:

"Customers want relevant experiences. They want support in helping understand how your product, your services really connect with their business challenges. And that is really the core heart of what account based marketing does." [04:51]

Gemma distinguishes ABM from mere personalization, emphasizing that ABM is about "building relevance". By focusing on a small number of key accounts that drive significant revenue, companies can glean valuable insights to fuel and scale their business strategies.

Enhancing Business Relevance and Revenue Growth

She further elaborates on how a customer-centric ABM approach not only aids marketers but also accelerates revenue closure and retention:

"Centering back to customers and using that really as your strategy and your driving force is not only going to help marketers become more savvy and help clients and customers and sales teams close larger deals faster, but it's actually going to help companies become more relevant in the world." [04:51]

Scaling ABM Without Losing Core Principles

Maintaining Customer Focus

When discussing the scalability of ABM, Gemma underscores the importance of maintaining customer-centricity. At [06:06], she advises:

"Put the customer at the heart of everything that you do and if you don't spend at least 30% of your time as a marketer with your customers, then you're doing something wrong." [06:06]

This approach involves immersing oneself in the customer’s environment, partnering closely with sales teams, and aligning marketing efforts to address customer pain points effectively.

Integrating Precision with Scalability

Michael Taylor adds that scaling ABM requires a balance between precision targeting and broader reach. He suggests leveraging technology and data to maintain hyper-personalized engagement even when scaling up:

"Achieve that sort of really hyper personalized engagement by leveraging technology and data to achieve that." [07:42]

Agent 3’s Role in Supporting ABM Programs

End-to-End ABM Solutions

Claire Noble outlines Agent 3’s evolution and their comprehensive support for ABM:

"We're an end to end agency, but we've evolved over the years to really support across the customer lifecycle... from strategy, through to creative development, and working really closely with the actual ABM practitioners." [06:46]

Agent 3 assists clients like ServiceNow by bridging the gap between demand generation and sales, ensuring that ABM strategies are effectively implemented and aligned with corporate objectives.

Emphasizing Technology and Data Integration

Michael Taylor further explains how Agent 3 integrates technology and data to scale ABM efforts:

"Use their technology and data to enable them to apply those principles... leveraging technology and data to achieve that." [07:42]

This integration allows clients to scale ABM without sacrificing personalization, ensuring that marketing efforts remain impactful even with limited budgets.

The Strategic Partnership with ServiceNow

Viewing Agencies as Strategic Extensions

Gemma Davis shares her perspective on the partnership with Agent 3, emphasizing the strategic value:

"We view our agency partners, including Agent 3, really as a kind of strategic extended group. They are part of our team, they understand our business, our business challenges." [09:24]

This deep collaboration enables ServiceNow to scale its ABM programs effectively, benefiting from Agent 3’s expertise and external perspective.

Future Directions and Innovation

Looking ahead, Gemma anticipates continued evolution in marketing strategies, particularly with the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI):

"As we think about the advances in technology, as we think about AI... make our programs more effective, to make them more efficient, to back to being anchored in the data and the insights." [10:05]

She emphasizes the importance of maintaining a human touch amidst technological advancements, ensuring that ABM remains both data-driven and personable.

Key Takeaways and Insights

Aligning ABM with Corporate Strategy

Claire Noble emphasizes that ABM should be intrinsically linked to the company’s corporate strategy:

"ABM means a lot of things to a lot of different people. But really ultimately it comes back to what your corporate strategy is... ABM is more than a series of tactics in your marketing toolkit." [08:23]

This alignment ensures that ABM efforts contribute directly to overarching business goals, delivering tangible value to stakeholders.

The Balance Between Technology and Human Interaction

While technology plays a crucial role in scaling ABM, maintaining human interaction and personalization remains paramount. Gemma Davis reiterates the necessity of spending quality time with customers to preserve the human element in marketing strategies.

The Future of ABM

The conversation anticipates that ABM will continue to evolve alongside technological advancements. The integration of AI and other innovative tools will enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of ABM programs, provided that the core principles of customer-centricity and relevance are upheld.

Conclusion

This episode of the B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of scaling ABM amidst budget constraints. Through the expert insights of Claire Noble, Michael Taylor, and Gemma Davis, listeners gain a deep understanding of the strategic importance of ABM, the challenges of budgetary limitations, and the innovative solutions required to maintain effectiveness. The discussion emphasizes the need for a balanced approach that leverages technology while preserving the essential human touch, ensuring that ABM remains a pivotal strategy in the evolving B2B marketing landscape.

Notable Quotes:

• Gemma Davis on ROI: "Return on investment I would say is number one." [02:36]
• Gemma Davis on ABM's Impact: "ABM is about building relevance." [00:00]
• Claire Noble on ABM Strategy: "ABM is more than a series of tactics in your marketing toolkit." [08:23]
• Gemma Davis on Customer Focus: "If you don't spend at least 30% of your time as a marketer with your customers, then you're doing something wrong." [06:06]
• Michael Taylor on Technology in ABM: "Achieve that sort of really hyper personalized engagement by leveraging technology and data." [07:42]

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the podcast episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who have not listened to the original content.

Transcript

[Gemma Davis]

I think often people can interchange account based marketing with personalization and for me, ABM is about building relevance. And just from years of experience in this space, when you're hyper targeted and relevant to a small number of key accounts that are driving such a huge amount of your revenue, there is so much you can learn from them and there is so much insight that you can then take to kind of fuel and scale some of that throughout your businesses. So centering back to customers and using that really as your strategy and your drawing driving force is not only going to help marketers become more savvy and help clients and customers and sales teams close larger deals faster, but it's actually going to help companies become more relevant in the world.

[Claudia Tirico]

The B2B Marketing Exchange brings together B2B marketing and sales practitioners from across the country to get the latest tools and tips they need to succeed. Now we're bringing the insights from the stage to your ears. I'm Claudia Tirico. And I'm Kelly Lindenow and this is the B2B Marketing Exchan Podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to the B2BMX Podcast. Obviously you hear a lot of commotion behind me because we are still on the show floor at B2BMX east in Alpharetta, Georgia and I've got a big solid, awesome group with me today. We have Claire Noble of Agent 3, Michael Taylor of Agent 3 and Gemma Davies of ServiceNow. So really awesome, strong marketing professionals here. Welcome. Let's just start conversation. We'll go down the line, introduce yourselves, your roles at your respective companies and we'll take it from there. Sure.

[Claire Noble]

Great to be here. My name is Claire Noble. I'm SVP of Agent 3 North America. I work with some of our biggest clients in the region to devise, implement and optimize their ABM strategies.

[Claudia Tirico]

Awesome.

[Michael Taylor]

My name is Michael Taylor. I work at Agent 3 also I run our RevTech business where I support clients with their marketing operations typically and anything technology and data related. I'm your man.

[Gemma Davis]

And yeah. Hi there, Gemma Davis. So I lead our group global account marketing program at ServiceNow. Have been with the company nearly six years, so we have a very mature program with lots of kind of great lessons along the way.

[Claudia Tirico]

Awesome. So yeah, ABM will definitely be a hot topic of the conversation. I do want to start with marketing professionals, CMOs, even lower level marketing professionals. Everybody is under some pressure these days. So what do you think are the primary reasons for the increasing pressure on marketers today?

[Gemma Davis]

Return on investment I would say is number one. And having sat in some sessions, the conference so far, it's something that I think is resonating across all themes. The world of marketing I truly believe is going to change more in the next 12 months than it has in the last 10 years.

[Claudia Tirico]

Wow, that's a bold statement.

[Gemma Davis]

It is a bold statement. Let's chat in 12 months and see if I was right.

[Claudia Tirico]

Okay.

[Gemma Davis]

But again, I think that just comes down to some of the advancements that we're making. The skills that we're building in our marketers is ever more important and then just having more relevance to the business. Putting marketing right at the top of the business strategy and enabling our teams to not just be connected to pipe creation, but actually revenue closure and retention is absolutely critical and one of the themes that we're seeing. And of course ABM is one of the key drivers for that.

[Claudia Tirico]

Very interesting. And obviously I'm hearing a lot of marketing budgets shrinking. Right, That's a big hot topic. So how can marketers these days, you know, under this increasing pressure, how can they prioritize their spending?

[Claire Noble]

Yeah, it's going to come up in our conversation in a little while here, but we've been talking about that quite a bit this morning and what we're seeing is a real shift in not just marketing budgets decreasing, but also the mandates to do more with that with the limited spend increasing. And one of the topics that we'll be looking at is scaling ABM in relation to having less budget and needing more focus on your top priority accounts. I think the very interesting perspective that Gemma brings to the equation is the servicenow enterprise view of scale and the really kind of hyper focused account based go to market motions at the sort of precision end of the spectrum and the viewpoint that Michael's bringing. And I think this goes back to Gemma's point about the criticality of ROI is how to really apply those precision principles at scale in more of those sort of rev op supported programs. So, you know, kind of applying precision principles to an ABX world.

[Claudia Tirico]

Very interesting. And Gemma, why do you believe ABM is particularly relevant and important in today's B2B industry?

[Gemma Davis]

Yeah, so if we just look at some of the trends, if we look at how consumer behavior in the B2B space is evolving, our customers want relevant experiences. They want support in helping understand how your product, your services really connect with their business challenges. And that is really the core heart of what account based marketing does. I think often people can interchange account based marketing with personalization. And for me, ABM is about building relevance. And just from years of experience in this space. When you're hyper targeted and relevant to a small number of key accounts that are driving such a huge amount of your revenue, there is so much you can learn from them and there is so much insight that you can then take to kind of fuel and scale some of that throughout your businesses. So centering back to customers and using that really as your strategy and your driving force is not only going to help marketers become more savvy and help clients and customers and sales teams close larger deals faster, but it's actually going to help companies become more relevant in the world.

[Claudia Tirico]

Very interesting. And how can marketers actually ensure that they don't really lose sight of the core principles of ABM when trying to scale their programs?

[Gemma Davis]

Put the customer at the heart of everything that you do and if you don't spend at least 30% of your time as a marketer with your customers, then you're doing something wrong. Get out in the field, go talk to customers, partner with sales, go sit in executive briefing moments, like really immerse yourself in the world of the customer and align everything you do back to what they're struggling with most and how your company your solution can help them.

[Claudia Tirico]

Very interesting. I love it. I love it. Obviously ABM is here to stay, not going anywhere. It's going to be constantly evolving. So how does specifically Agent 3 help help companies with their ABM programs? Yeah.

[Claire Noble]

So Agent 3 has evolved. Our heritage is completely ABM. We were founded to support clients with ABM. We're an end to end agency, but we've evolved over the years to really support across the customer lifecycle. So again, when we're talking about ABM at scale, we're talking all levels of scale and it's really bridging the gap from demand generation, chucking marketing qualified leads over the fence to sales, through to true ABM at scale programs where we focus more on marketing qualified accounts at the scale end. And I'll defer to Michael to talk a little bit about that in a moment. But at the much kind of defined point of that triangle where we're looking at kind of traditional one to one and one to few programs, we support clients like ServiceNow as extensions of their team, helping from everything through strategy, through to creative development, and working really closely with the actual ABM practitioners to make sure that we are delivering on the promise of ABM and the organization. But I think Michael probably has a thing or two to say.

[Michael Taylor]

I always do. Yeah. I think the other way we support clients especially is where they Want to take quite a technology centric approach, still want to retain the principles that we've talked about here, especially in the enterprise space, and sort of more targeted abm, but then sort of think about how to use their technology and data to enable them to apply those principles. Maybe do ABM at a sort of bigger scale, maybe not quite with the same depth of personalization that the sort of programs that Gemma can put into market, but still achieve that sort of really hyper personalized engagement by leveraging technology and data to achieve that.

[Claudia Tirico]

Awesome. So your session is taking place in just a few hours. Tell us what the audience will walk away from from the session.

[Claire Noble]

Sure. Well, I think we're hoping it'll do what it says on the tin and give a, give a sense of, you know, what's front of mind for CMOs right now, how you can apply those principles that Michael was just mentioning at any level of skill in your ABM programs, but really also making people aware that I think ABM means a lot of things to a lot of different people. But really ultimately it comes back to what your corporate strategy is, what's going to be delivering value for your shareholders, working back from there, and the ABM model and fit follows and then all the goodness around that, the storytelling, the personalization, the tools and the platforms, they're all enablers for your ABM strategy at the end of the day. But in and of themselves, they are not an ABM strategy. ABM is more than a series of tactics in your marketing toolkit.

[Claudia Tirico]

Right. And I think it'll also kind of represent like the importance or the beauty of working with an agency. Right. So maybe not everybody has the opportunity to work with the agency. So what does it mean to you to be working with Agent 3 on your current efforts?

[Gemma Davis]

Yeah, So I think we view our agency partners, including Agent 3, really as a kind of strategic extended group. And they are part of our team, they understand our business, our business challenges. They're truly an extension. And I think that's really important when you're scaling up programs, when you're trying to take an outside in approach, especially when you're in house. Having someone to kind of keep you guided on some of the external principles and take a slightly different perspective is super, super valuable. And it's been a great partnership over the six plus years.

[Claudia Tirico]

Awesome. So my final question would be, what's next for this partnership? Big plans? Can't say yet.

[Gemma Davis]

Yeah, I was going to say there is so much, as I say, marketing over the next 12 months or so is going to continue to evolve. And so as we think about the advances in technology, as we think about AI, I couldn't not say it. How do we incorporate those in our programs to make them more effective, to make them more efficient, to back to being anchored in the data and the insights and leveraging the tools that we do have access to to prove even great to roi, to get continued investment.

[Claudia Tirico]

Right. While still maintaining that human touch.

[Gemma Davis]

Right.

[Claudia Tirico]

Everybody's so worried about AI taking that human touch away, so we have to kind of stick with it. Well, thank you all so much for being with us here today and for taking the stage later. And B2BMX is so lucky to have you. And our audience, I'm sure, is going to walk away with so many new ways to kind of expand their ABM practices. So thank you all so much and thank you all for listening today. We will be replaying this awesome session as soon as everybody gets off stage. So tune in next time and don't forget to subscribe. And like, obviously, so you don't miss any new episode drops and be sure to leave us any kind of feedback that you may have on Twitter or LinkedIn. So that is a wrap on us. We're going to go get some coffee and continue the day and go to learn some more. So thank you everyone and we'll catch you next time.