How ABM is changing SMB marketing — Randi Barshack // Rollworks

Quotes

• “If you’re an SMB and you’re doing B2B marketing, arguable the efficiencies you’re gonna get and the focus of ABM are, in many ways, more important for smaller companies. You don’t have resources the way of doing advertising to the world at large. You need to focus your resources whether that’s time or budget.” - Randi“Now as we understand what you can more digitally and how you can scale ABM it becomes the most efficient way to tackle B2B marketing. RollWorks has the most accessible series of packages and pricing for companies of all sizes. A lot of these companies have been kept out of the game there haven’t been price points that are attractive to smaller companies and let you sort of step in. So we’re sort of leveling the playing field.” - Randi“In order for ABM to work, you’re gonna need a sizable training data set. Like you have 200 deals, that can give you some sort of predictability. Before that though, it might be a more manual exercise  and we've seen success and here are some characteristics and we’ll sit with the team and agree what the list looks like. So you start with assumptions and maybe you iterate a little bit more often than you would if you’re a company that’s working purely on data.” - Randi“With our partnerships with Bombora, our intent partner there are thousands of listening topics that you would say, ‘I’m looking for companies that are doing research on these topics’ and when they are, I can presume that there’s a degree of readiness that they are potentially in-market for a solution of what I have to offer.” - Randi“Engagement signals are when you see accounts visiting your website, being able to look at account activity against a baseline and bubble that up to your sales team. So it would be again, helping to prioritize. I would argue that if you’re an SMB budget is an issue but time is even a more valuable resource.” - Randi“The other thing I haven’t talked about is our integration with marketing automation platforms. We’re really proud to have partnerships with Marketo but also Hubspot that a lot of companies start their journey with and many continue as they grow into large enterprises. So, with our HubSpot by-directional integration, you can take the account list you have in Hubspot you can feed them by directionally into RollWorks and activate them. So that’s how SMB can perform some of these at scale.” - Randi“That’s a great example of building your MarTech stack where you’re using RollWorks as your ABM technology, you’re defining who your target lists are, you’re feeding that into your CRM.” - Ben“Obviously CRM is key and then marketing automation. They are the bare bones of that target account list then being able to slice and dice it in a variety of ways.” - Randi“I think about ABM as understanding who are your highest priority leads and then understanding what their behaviors are so you can personalize the messages and make sure you deliver it at the right place and at the right time. CRM and marketing automation make a lot of sense.” - Ben“You also mentioned before that there’s the ability to be very specific with your advertising. Just because I’m an SMB doesn’t mean that I don’t build awareness before I go into my sales cycle.” - Ben“You’re constantly iterating. Some people in the industry talked about headlines, saying ‘the funnel is dead,’ and ‘leads are dead,’. They’re really not. It’s just a filter. If you’re a little off in terms of how you’re identifying value because you’re early on and you have to go through several rounds, then make sure that you’re not excluding people that are coming in just because they’re not in your top tier target account list.” - Randi“Honestly if you’re a one person company or a ten person company, I could argue that anything beyond CRM is overkill. But then I would say, ‘You know what? You’re probably doing it in your head.’ If you’re really that small of a business, give yourself credit for what you’re doing in your head. But if you’re a 50-person company and you have a sales and marketing team, then you’re ready for the basics.” - Randi “I think that’s my big takeaway here. ABM is for everyone. ABM software might not be for everyone. You need to have a minimum threshold where you are doing coordination and you’re taking essentially the algorithm the founder has created in their head and now you’re documenting that and using software to communicate it to the rest of the organization and help them understand who should be a priority.” - Ben“As you start to get to the point of growing your business and needing to communicate who are the priority customers, that’s really where the software piece comes in. But the ABM strategy is day one project.” - Ben‘I would argue that you can benefit more from it than the big guys. Don’t be scared. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Just because ABM has become a bit of a buzzword, people sometimes feel like they have to boil the ocean or they are not ready.” - Randi