Achieving Growth During a Downturn Economy

Quotes

• “ABM is all the more impactful now more than before and the primary reason for it is, I don’t know any marketer, maybe with the exception of a big brand like Taco Bell or Coca-Cola, that wasn’t asked either to stop their programs or seriously look at slowing them down while their company took stock to find out what was going to happen during COVID and what a post-COVID world looks like.” -Daniel “That really put pressure on marketers to figure out how to do more with less, how to really double down on their ideal customer profile which I think kind of naturally put in the wind in the sails of an account-based approach.” -Daniel“I saw a lot more people go back to basics. The conversations I had was, ‘how can I still engage with my target audiences when they themselves may notbe in a buying cycle right now. The answer to that is, how can you figure out what’s the most relevant to them and how can you lean in and educate them.” -Daniel“We do know that from past experiences during economic downturn particularly in the 80s, itwas really the companies that doubled down on their brand, so they still have a bit of performance marketing spend there, and they turned it into a brand play where you’re educating the market, getting close to your audience versus trying to convert them or acquire them at the moment.” -Daniel“The performance marketing reckoning related to COVID will something that will really hit the B2B segment the hardest. I think on the consumer side, you still saw some ecommerce brand spend and some of them spend aggressively depending on what industry they’re in.” -Ben “You talked about right message, right time, right audience and that’s really the basics. These are the dream for any kind of revenue-facing team. It’s how can you get that right mix and get my customer acquired for the cheapest amount possible and this has really forced us to do that.” -Daniel “It means looking at your messaging, who are you trying to connect with in the first place, are you using the phone or email, are you using social and why are you doing it. If you’re doing it a thousand times a day and you’re only getting half a point conversion, what happens if you were to do it only 500 times a day but double or triple that conversion. Would you be able to get better and better incrementally by doing less with more?” -Daniel“If you are a company that has 100+ customers, go to your customer data, what are the trends there. Is there a 60 to 70% of them in there that are in the same industry, adjacent industries, and if you can find that mix go back and score it against your database. Is your database with your best customers? If the answer is yes, then start to prioritize that.” -Daniel“Another step we did at Sendoso when COVID hit is, I joined different revenue communities and learned from other revenue professionals. One that I learned from was an OPS professional who had acquired a list of 80 different industries and had a score base on how they’re gonna fair during COVID.” -Daniel“The biggest thing you really need to focus on is hyper-relevance. That’s really getting some sort of feedback loop in place both internally and it’s also talking to your customers. It’s going out with messaging but constantly making sure that your audience is resonating with it and if they’re not, continue to refine it until they do.” -Daniel“I also think that the most important thing now is we are almost like new cycles. I would call it the same in B2B right now. We have content cycles and people are so much more connected digitally right now that the same message over and over is going to fall on its face after a while so you have to continue to up-level yourself, change it a bit so you keep your audiences engaged.” -Daniel“We all got a lot of impressions these days and your content has to be fresh and memorable. Thinking about what your frequency caps are from an ad impression perspective is an important metric maybe more now than ever before.” -Ben “In staying relevant, I think about it on STR/AE side when you’re actually prospecting in and I still think that it’s anywhere between 8 and 20 touches and a cadence before you’ve exhausted it. Then on the marketing side, I think it’s slow and steady. If you’re having them on your database on nurture, I’m an advocate for every other week. I think weekly is overkill.” -Daniel“I think of how much to market towards someone as you can pass the ball around the court and work your way closer to the goal. You’re gonna send a little onboard messaging, do a little SDR upfront. For me, we do a little 3 -4 email cadences to get someone started and if they’re not gonna bite there, you move them into a nurture campaign and some of that is education, case studies, but then there are also events. So you’re able to deliver what should be relevant information in a couple of different contexts.” -Ben “I do think that performance marketing budgets will rebound and my hope that marketers are going to be forced to go back to the drawing board, figure out how to be more personal, work with less and not just spend the money as it helps us be better marketers, deliver better results and get more effective. So that when the budget comes back, it becomes a more effective tool.” -Ben “We see a large percentage, probably about 40% of our outbound SDR opportunities are actually created from people that they have worked in the past that are actually coming in through our inbound channels.” -Daniel“I think performance marketing is very complementary if your outbound and database strategy is sound. I think it can work very well together and you can see a profound attribution point that goes back to the ICP that you’re trying to hit.” -Daniel