AMA: Gong Performance Marketing Lead, Bhavisha Oza on Digital Marketing Strategy

Direct mail is an offline channel that, when done thoughtfully, can drive results. Below are some direct mail campaigns that have been successful for me. 1. Outbound direct mail: Empower your sales development teams to book meetings with prospects from target accounts. Have quarterly campaigns tied to seasonal themes such as summer, fall, etc., or topical themes. Get creative with concepts that will resonate well with your target audience. A memorable direct mail campaign I was the recipient of was a comic poster I received themed “Demand Gen Mastermind” 2. Direct mail to support new product launch: These help with getting existing customers to try another product your company just launched 3. Cross-sell or in-app direct mail campaign: We tested this idea of targeting in-app users with an incentive (direct mail item) and getting them to take a demo for a cross-sell product 4. MQL revival direct mail: This is a tough one, but it works! Target demo leads that went cold. A little nudge with a thoughtful gift may just be the incentive they need to take a demo.

Given the complexity of the B2B buying cycle, this is not an easy question to answer. Each lead source has a role to play in the buyer's journey and it is important to track the lead source with the right lens. Below is a five-step process that has worked well for me. 1. Define a baseline, track and monitor channel metrics, funnel metrics, and ROI of your paid media channels. * Paid Search and Paid Social * Channel metrics: * Ad CTR * Landing page conversion rate * CPL * Funnel metrics: * MQLs * MQL conversion rate * SQLs * SQL conversion rate * Pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio or ARR to spend ratio * Direct Mail * Channel metrics: Items delivered, engagement * Funnel metrics: Pipeline influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio * Trade shows and industry events * Channel metrics Registrations, attendance, and meetings booked * Funnel metrics: MQLs, SQLs, pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio * User conferences * Channel metrics Registrations, attendance, and meetings booked * Funnel metrics: MQLs, pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio 2. Continuously experiment and optimize every channel to improve efficiency 3. Keep the business objective in mind. Some channels, such as paid social, work well in driving top-of-funnel MQLs, whereas other channels, such as paid search, lean more towards bottom-funnel demo/pricing MQLs that are more ready to buy. Webinars and email nurture help with converting MQLs to SQLs 4. Rank the sources based on business objectives and ROI and adjust as needed 5. Keep an eye out for new sources and experiment to see if they work out!

Follow the Gartner B2B buying jobs framework referenced in the question on enterprise demand gen above. Address the challenges specific to the buyer persona and explain how your product/solution can help solve them. For example, a business buyer will have different challenges than a technical buyer. Personalize the messaging to their specific needs while maintaining your brand tone/voice. Be sure to test the messaging with select customers, or you can use tools such as Wynter to see if your messaging is resonating well with your audience.

Growth marketing is a full-funnel approach to marketing that focuses on strategies and tactics to drive revenue growth. It goes beyond driving leads. The focus is on driving leads that convert into pipeline and closed-won revenue. It is next-level digital marketing that requires a commitment to continuous experimentation and optimization to drive revenue growth. A typical growth marketing team comprises digital marketing experts who focus on SEO, website demand gen, paid search, and paid social. In addition to running continuous experiments to optimize their channels, this team is also responsible for identifying and experimenting with new sources of driving quality leads. The growth marketing team collaborates with field marketing, demand generation COE (Center of Excellence team that runs email marketing and webinars), and sales development teams to drive pipeline growth.

Enterprise demand gen is complex. Buying committees are large, and the buying cycle is long. According to a Google/Bain study, B2B buying committees have an average of 17 stakeholders, and on average, it takes 40 touchpoints for each of these buyers to influence the B2B buying decision. Below are four steps to help you get started. * Step 1: Start with creating the content by persona mapped to the buyer's journey. Create content for primary and secondary persona. According to Gartner, B2B buyers have six jobs to be done to make a purchase 1. Problem identification 2. Solution exploration 3. Requirements building 4. Vendor selection 5. Validation 6. Consensus creation Use this as a framework to create content. This will serve as the foundation for your campaigns. Also, in the age of AI overviews and search GPT, consider structuring your website to follow the above framework. * Step 2: Invest in integrated, multi-channel digital campaigns to drive awareness and engagement with an ABM mindset * 1:1 ABM campaigns targeted at 10-50 strategic accounts * 1:few ABM campaigns targeting up to 300 accounts grouped by vertical/industry * 1:many ABM campaigns targeting up to 5000 accounts based on ideal company profile (ICP) criteria * Step 3: Build a webinar program * Top-of-funnel thought leadership webinars * Middle-of-funnel How-to webinars * Bottom-of-funnel Demo webinars * Step 4: Plan offline tactics such as highly targeted executive roundtable events and direct mail campaigns to accelerate the pipeline and drive closed won deals