Bhavisha Oza

This is where using Account Based Marketing and Demand Unit Waterfall (DUW) comes into play, especially for B2B Mid-market and Enterprise segments. Integrating a solution like Demandbase into your tech stack will help you identify accounts based on how they engage with your campaigns and execute channel tactics based on the DUW stages * Target Demand * This stage is all about sizing the market and identifying your Total Addressable Market or TAM based on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). * Which accounts are most likely to buy your products/solutions/services? * Pro Tip: Execute TOF (top of funnel) campaigns on paid social and third-party media partners * Active Demand * Of the TAM, how many accounts are in-market to buy in the near future * Pro Tip: Present TOF and MOF (middle of funnel) content via paid social and email * Engaged Demand * How many accounts have interacted with your website, campaigns or content? * Pro Tip: Continue the buyer’s journey with MOF content served up by paid social, email nurture and webinars * Prioritized Demand * In this stage, you’ll take all the target accounts that have engaged with you and prioritize them by Account Score. * Pro Tip: Build dedicated Outreach sequences for Sales Development teams / SDRs to use * Qualified Demand * SDRs have to start multi-threading to key contacts within the account. * Pro Tip: Work with SDRs to execute a targeted, high-touch direct mail campaign via solutions like Alyce or Sendoso * Pipeline Opportunity * More and more marketers are getting involved at this stage * Pro Tip: Execute brand campaigns on paid social, YouTube and display to stay top of mind

Below is how I would define the demand gen strategy, create content and plan campaign tactics aligned to the 5 stages of awareness UNAWARE: Demand gen strategy: Build awareness Content strategy: create blogs, media articles, podcasts to drive awareness Campaign tactics: Promote via organic social, YouTube, Spotify/Apple podcast PROBLEM AWARE: Demand gen strategy: Drive top-of-funnel demand Content strategy: Help them solve the problem with How to guides, best practice playbooks, cheat sheets, maturity assessment (online tool) Campaign tactics: Paid social, paid search, thought leadership webinars, content syndication, industry webinars/events SOLUTION AWARE Demand gen strategy: Drive engagement Content Strategy: Help them understand how your product can help solve their problem with product tours, video demos, checklists, tips and tricks, Campaign tactics:: Paid social, paid search, demo webinars, email marketing PRODUCT AWARE Demand gen strategy: Drive demos, free trials, bottom-funnel demand Content strategy: Help them understand how your product is uniquely qualified to solve their problem with an ROI Calculator, Success stories, Gartner MQ, Forrester Wave, Forrester TEI Campaign tactics: Events, executive roundtables, paid search MOST AWARE Demand gen strategy: Give them incentives to buy

First, I’d like to define a B2B campaign as a set of tactics that will drive pipeline revenue for a particular solution or a market segment. The campaign timeline can span over a quarter or 6+ months. To launch a successful campaign you first need to answer these 5 questions. * What are the campaign goals * Begin with the end in mind. * Keep your eyes on the prize and optimize relentlessly * Who is the Target audience * Persona - Business and technical buyer * Segment - Enterprise, Mid-market, SMB * Geo - North America, EMEA, LATAM, APAC * Verticals * What is the value proposition * What are the buyer pain points * How can our solution help solve * Why should they choose us over competitors * What is the content mix by persona and buyer jobs to be done * Buyer jobs to be done including problem identification, sol exploration, req building, vendor selection, validation and consensus building. Be sure to include different formats such as e-books, checklists, analyst content, video demos etc * By persona - business buyer and/or technical buyer * What is the budget * This will guide the channel/tactic mix * Define the tactic mix including both * Paid media - paid search, paid social, third party programs, trade shows * Owned media - website, email nurture, webinars, blogs Once you have the answers you are ready to plan and launch a solid campaign. Pro tip: Don't wait for everything (ads, emails, landing pages etc.) to be perfect. The mantra is to launch and optimize :))

* Messaging and content should be funnel specific and aligned with the buyer jobs to be done. I have used the Gartner B2B Buying methodology which is based on the foundation that the buyer’s journey involves a common set of “jobs” that must be completed to their satisfaction before they decide to buy. To enable buying, marketers need to meaningfully help buyers complete a set of specific buying “jobs” including: * Problem identification - Thought leadership content, blogs * Solution exploration - E-books, E-guides * Requirements building - Checklists, Cheat Sheets * Vendor selection - Analyst content such as Gartner MQ and Forrester Wave * Validation and consensus building - Success stories and customer testimonials * Webinars work across all of the above * Visual design plays a crucial role in making sure the buyer experience is cohesive. The way I have ensured this is by looping in the creative team early on and sharing the campaign strategy and timeline with them so they can see the big picture and can create consistent visuals

There are three scenarios I can think of here: 1. New product launch 2. Thought leadership campaigns 3. Campaigns with the theme of Business / Technology / Industry Trends In all of the above scenarios, it is important to target both new business and existing customers for your campaign. In case of a new product launch, you would execute a full-funnel integrated campaign with content such as analyst reports (ToFu), best practice webinar (MoFu), video demos (BoFu) and promote it across digital channels to drive new business pipeline and create upsell opportunities. Thought leadership campaigns and campaigns such as “2023 Trends” have a mass appeal. Buyers always want to stay on top of their game and topics such as these are sought after by new business prospects and customers alike.

The most important "tactic" (if you may) that has worked well for me is alignment with sales on strategy before launching the campaign. And regular ongoing reviews, updates, feedback, and alignment on any course correction needed during the course of the campaign. I also do campaign retrospectives once the campaign is complete to celebrate wins and identify what can be done better for the next campaign.

Below are 9 best practices for scoring leads 1. Build your scoring model with demographic and behavioral scoring. 2. Collaborate with your Product Marketing team to define the ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. These will help with demographic scoring attributes such as company size (# of employees), revenue, vertical/Industry, job title, job level. Use data enrichment tools such as Clearbit, Zoominfo etc to populate this info wherever possible 3. Collaborate with your Campaigns team to define behavioral scores for triggers such as downloaded content, registered/attended webinar, visited website, multiple high-value pages visited in the same session (product page, pricing page), opened/clicked an email, requested a demo/pricing. Be sure to give conversions from students or job seekers (careers page visit) negative scores 4. Build the lead scoring matrix. This is typically a table with 16 cells. Low to high Behavior 0 - 100 points. Grade these as 1,2,3,4. Low to high ICP score 0 - 100 points. Grade these as A,B,C,D. Leads would then be graded into 16 buckets ranging from A1 (High ICP score and high behavior score) to D4 (low ICP. low behavior) 5. Collaborate with SDR/Sales teams to define the MQL threshold. You don't want to send premature leads over to SDRs/Sales. When you have alignment document it and train the SDR/Sales team on the model 6. Plan for ReMQL. Sales will want to send some leads back to marketing when MQLs aren't ready to buy 7. Test the lead scoring model before implementing 8. Track MQL to SQL conversion rates. Also, ask the SDR/Sales team for feedback. 9. Refine and optimize the model every 6 months

It is important to recognize that the B2B buying cycle is not linear. Various buyers can be in different stages of the buying cycle and the best way to address this is to have: 1. Always-on tactics such as paid search, paid social, and email nurture. These are by nature evergreen campaigns and must be optimized quarterly or based on performance 2. Time-sensitive tactics such as webinars, tradeshows and in-person and online BOF events such as executive round tables That said, it is important to have the MOF/BOF tactics such as email nurture and SDR outreach sequences live before you launch paid media campaigns. This will ensure the right follow-ups are triggered the moment the first content lead or the first demo lead or the first event lead hits the CRM.

The key variable that affects the choice of channels is -- target audience. 1. Audience type - Is this a new business campaign or install base, cross-sell / up-sell campaign? New business campaigns are heavy on paid media and install base campaigns are heavy on owned media 2. Market segment - Is this an SMB/mid-market campaign or an enterprise campaign? New business SMB/Mid-market campaigns are largely driven by inbound tactics such as paid search, website, SEO whereas Enterprise campaigns require an ABM strategy Other key variables that affect choice of channels are of course pipeline goals and budget.

A demand gen strategy should be a mix of campaigns tied to funnel stages. Content must be created to align with each of these stages 1. Brand Awareness 2. Top of Funnel campaigns 3. Middle of Funnel campaigns 4. Bottom of Funnel campaigns Also see the answer to How do awareness stages influence your demand generation strategies?