Demand Generation Strategy

I would recommend building target account lists based on where that account is in their customer journey. Channels are usually pretty constant. Your targeting ability, level of intent, tactics/offers, messages, and the budget you're willing to spend on them will change. It will cost significantly more budget & time to acquire a new customer, so focus on where you see the biggest potential impact first. Within a tiered 1:1, 1:few, 1:many structure: what is the potential ARR of an account within each segment? That could help determine your effort & willingness to spend on a given account list. 

I don't think ABM at its core is all that different from landing net new vs cross/upsell/expansion. If you boil it down, you are taking a set of channels and tactics and deploying campaigns to get your prospects or customers to take a desired action or behavior. I will argue that you have more room for error when going into new prospects or markets where you might not have as much data or evidence to support your messaging, positioning and campaign strategy.  When marketing to current customers, you better know what you're talking about. There is nothing worse that being an existing customer of a brand and receiving messaging and campaigns as if you had never worked with that brand in your life. With cross/upsell/expansion, you not only have to know your customer, but you better make sure you let your customer know you know them. For example, if you're already in at Amazon and looking to upsell, you better be able to discuss pain points that came up at prior QBRs, understand their org chart, tech stack, and review how you can help them achieve their goals,

1. Sales Leadership If you're in the B2B SaaS space, you'll know that marketing alone does not generate deals. We engage prospects and customers, bring them to the surface, and rely on AEs and sales development to mature that relationship, converting them to meetings and subsequently, deals. If your target account list is not aligned with Sales, the efforts get largely wasted. ABM works when Sales is ready and excited for each of those accounts to engage. Ultimately all accounts on the ABM list should either be assigned to an AE or on a target list, ensuring strong alignment between teams.  2. Sales Development Digging deeper on the above, it's imperative that Sales Development is also bought into the ABM strategy. It could have a major impact on their workflow, from lead assignments, qualification thresholds, and follow up SLAs. In my experience, I've found the best partner here to be the outbound SDR team, as they're incentivized to work the same accounts in the ABM list. Also, it's important to consistently surface the efforts being made to warm these accounts, as well as to analyze and prove that a warm account has a higher likelihood of converting than a cold one. If you do run the numbers and don't find that trend, it's likely that something is broken, or your thresholds for account activation are set too low.  3. Business Development / Partners Partners can make a huge difference when trying to break into major accounts. The BD team can be an excellent partner to provide inputs from partner organizations as to which accounts may be more susceptible to purchase new technology, as well as which ones have strong partners involved already. 

Marketing cannot close business without sales. Sales is the most important partner to marketing, ABM or not. While you can gain the support of the leadership teams, sales ops, etc, if you don't have your sales team onboard with your plans, you will not succeed.  Bring your sales team into the process early and keep them informed ia regular status updates (bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly). Highlight your wins and your losses.

This is a great question! I can't tell you the number of times I've created content because someone in the C-suite thought it would be a good idea, or because a sales reply simply couldn't close a deal with a highly customized 1-pager. The truth is - content should be created with a purpose. Here are the questions I like to ask when conducting a content audit: * Does this content answer questions our customers are asking? Does it help our customers & prospects accomplish their goals? * How does the reader feel after consuming this piece of content? Does that feeling align with what our goal was when we created the piece? * What is the purpose of this piece of content? Is it still serving that purpose? * How often is this piece of content used, by who, and in what capacity?  * When was the last time this content was refreshed? Is this something we want to be a staple in our library? * In what other forms does this content exist (blog, podcast, short video, webinar, etc)? If the answer is none, should it be created in smaller, more digestible snippets? 

Work with your sales team!  You can use a lot of different tech and methods to identify target accounts, but if your sales team isn't bought in, you won't be successful. I suggest using tools or conducting a TAM analysis to narrow down the list of potential accounts a tad small. Have the sales team participate in the account selection process. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is allowing their sales teams to pick companies like Verizon, ATT, Amazon etc. These companies are broken out into several lines of business and divisions. Sales should understand the account and where they'll break in. If you are going to use digital channels, ensure you have a list large enough to meet audience size requirements on your preferred media partners.

In order for your segmentation strategy to work, it’s important to have product-market fit (PMF) and a solid understanding of your (ICP) ideal customer profile. This will help guide you in segmentation. Start with the question, “where does this segment of my customers hang out”? Depending on the “jobs to be done” and/or persona, you can then determine what is the best fit from a channel perspective. This could result in different channels for different cohorts of potential customers depending on your business. I encourage you to get creative and don’t feel like you have to default to the “typical” channels. This could work, but really think about your ideal customer and how do you effectively tell them why they should care about your message and the best channel to do so.

There’s plenty of tech out there to enable any number of strategies and subsequent tactics but the place I’d start is with customer data. Do you have the data you need to inform your customer marketing strategy? This can be as simple as the CRM & Marketing automation data or as advanced as a customer data platform that drives a personalization strategy. Reference program tech, investments in review sites like G2, Trust Radius, or Gartner Peer Reviews, Gifting platforms, PLG, and in-product coms like Pendo. Tech is only as good as the strategy it supports.

Depends on how you’ve defined the scope and priorities of the customer marketing organization but some to consider are: * Monthly active users or utilization rate * Engagement in onboarding/education programs * Percentage of customers that use “sticky features” * Number of customer advocates * referrals * Net Promoter Score * Retention rate * Avg. Customer Contract size * Account spend * Growth in customer communities * Influenced new deal/upsell/renewal Pipeline & Revenue from customer references, case studies, etc.

Most answers to this question focus on the buying journey and tend to sum up the post-sale experience in one bullet point but there's definitely more to it than that. Indeed the customer experience starts with the buying experience where you come to understand the problems your potential client is trying to solve and the outcomes they'd like to achieve and continues through the handoff to customer success or account management. The post-sale stages of the customer lifecycle generally include: a. Activation, Onboarding, Adoption b. Renewal & Expansion c. Advocacy

The way that Customer Marketing teams and functions should be staffed and organized will vary greatly from company to company, especially when looking at more traditional B2B or sales-led organizations vs Product-led organizations. In my experience, though, the best way to orient the team is around three core responsibilities: * Activation & Engagement: Measurement of activation metrics and time to activation, often in the form of lifecycle marketing. Driving customer education and programmatic communication that support enterprise onboarding, end-user training materials, and aircover to gain as much traction within paying accounts as possible.  * Upsells & Expansion: Driven through targeted programs that aim to increase revenue from existing enterprise accounts through targeting new teams, referrals, and surfacing new MQLs to account managers. Can be done through Customer Advisory Boards, 1:1 Account Events, Customer Webinars, and account-based acquisition campaigns. * Advocacy: Measurement of output-based programs that develop champions and put your customers on a stage like case studies, referencable logos, and customer stories across channels (webinars, events, content). When first starting out or when you have a lean team, I've found starting with an account-based customer marketing approach is the best way to drive meaningful impact and quick wins for your CSMs and on your company's bottom-line. Identify the top renewals or any accounts at risk of churning and create targeted account plans to save and expand each. This will provide the frameworks and structures to scale as the team grows.

I find the definition and scope of customer marketing vary widely from company to company. Still, the main work areas can be described as Onboarding/Adoption, Renewal & Expansion, and Customer Advocacy. Responsibilities can be boiled down to answering: how quickly can you validate that the customer’s decision to purchase was the right one? And then continue building on that foundation to create a raving fan base of customer advocates.

Before going into strategy setting, it’s important to align and joint plan with your fellow counterparts in sales, business, product, analytics, operations, PR, and other marketing functions, etc. to establish the topline business target for the year (or quarter). If your team is not currently involved in this cross planning process, I would advocate to be part of it. From there, identify the key products rollout and timing. This helps to develop the key marketing moments and activations needed to contribute toward business goals. Once your marketing plan is in a good spot, you can then walkthrough with your external stakeholders or vendors.

For strategy development, I recommend thinking about this similar to a RACI model (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed). You’ll need to include internal and external stakeholders who are involved to some capacity or need to be informed. You’ll want to be able to answer questions such as: * Who needs to sign off on the strategy? * Who needs to collaborate on the strategy? * Who needs to be informed? I like to operate from the perspective of over communicating. Transparency is key. Focus on what the goals are and who needs to be involved to accomplish said goals.