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On 23rd Oct, we'll host a new webinar Develop Your 2025 ABM Program in Two Weeks and want to invite you.   During the webinar we'll show: - The step-by-step process you need to plan your pilot ABM program and the data you'll need to collect - Team, stack and reports to run a successful program - Examples of our account development playbooks (warm-up, nurturing and activation) Sign up below.

How expansion playbook looks like in B2B companies: 1/ AEs desperately send outbound messages to other business units, stakeholders or regional teams. 2/ AEs don't collaborate with marketing, but marketing is challenged to drive expansion revenue. 3/ Marketing has limited overview of the deal history and doesn't have access to Champions and power users. 4/ Relationship with enterprise accounts is managed by account owners that don't cross-share the insights about the strategic initiatives of the key client, the value they get from the product. 5/ There is no culture to leverage client success process to build relationship with key clients and accelerate their time to value.

The way how target accounts become aware of product is very different from how B2B teams assume they do. HERE IS HOW MOST B2B TEAMS CREATE AWARENESS. Marketing: Write articles and create landing pages optimized for certain keywords. Marketing: Run PPC ads optimized for certain keywords. Assumption: The buyer is searching for a specific keyword, hence might have a buying intent. They will click the link and will have a desire to learn more about the product. Sales: send cold emails and cold messages. Assumption: The buyers have a challenge or jobs-to-be-done the product helps with, so they'd be interested in learning more about the product. HERE IS HOW MOST B2B BUYERS BECOME AWARE OF THE PRODUCTS. 1. SOCIAL / COMMUNITIES. - See a relevant post (video / podcast episode / newsletter, etc) in the newsfeed (or being tagged) -> check the profile of the author -> check the product - See an interesting comment to the post of the thought leader -> check the profile of the commenter -> Check the product. - See a mention of a product (or case study, or use case) from a thought leader, partner or colleagues -> check the product page -> visit the website. - Asking for recommendation -> Check the product 2. PRIVATE CHATS. - Peers shared a post, infographic or screenshot from the event -> Check the post -> Check the author -> Check the product. - Asking a colleague or mentor for recommendation -> Check the product 3. OWN RESEARCH. From my conversations with B2B buyers, they rarely jump to this step without finishing two prior steps. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? As a GTM team, you need to proactively work on brand awareness in places your buyers hang out and consume non-product information. To be considered, you need to be known. Direct ads and outbound support demand capturing, but not brand awareness and demand generation. To keep growing in 2025, the winning B2B companies adjust marketing and sales to how their customers are buying. They stop running utopian lead generation funnels and their playbooks to the buying intent.

Here is a list of the best posts we read this week. 1. The POWERFUL checklist for the B2B CMOs by Vladimir Blagojević  - https://lnkd.in/gT9p6frq 2. Is Your ABM Campaign on track for success? by Dipak Vadera   - https://lnkd.in/gfqnCmrZ 3. When Andrei Zinkevich was an ABM lead, here is an expansion playbook he used to grow revenue with one retail chain by $1mln in 10 months - https://lnkd.in/g92QPdrz 4. The best way to learn content marketing by Sara Stella Lattanzio - https://lnkd.in/g-p5MwHx 5. Wanna stop wasting money on marketing that doesn’t work? Katelyn Bourgoin - https://lnkd.in/gupJSc6c 6. Product marketing is the linchpin of your paid social strategy by Jonathan Bland - https://lnkd.in/g2bhSy2q 7. By the time B2B buyers first contact sales, 80% of the time they already have a preferred vendor, and that vendor is the winner 80% of the time by Jon Miller - https://lnkd.in/ggq-8vYH What was your favorite post this week? Share in the comments. 4 Product Marketing Ads for Paid Social @Jonathan Bland #marketing #b2bmarketing #content #strategy #linkedin #ABM #contentmarketing #contentstrategy #accountbasedmarketing   #b2b #saas #gtm #brand #digitalmarketing #omnichannelmarketing #demandgeneration #martech #marketingoperations #socialselling #LinkedInAds  #growthtribe

Here is a funny fact about measuring LinkedIn ads in B2B. Let's say, you've spent $20k and didn't generate any sales opportunity attributed to LinkedIn ads. What's your decision? It's costly, let's stop doing it. But what if you look at the engagement with your ads and see that several deals with a total of 250k came after SDR picked up engaged accounts and started conversation? I think in complex B2B the only way to measure B2B ads is to measure pipeline and revenue vs total budget spend. This also requires to have end-to-end analytics to capture all digital touchpoints. Only when you have it and clearly see that they don't influence the pipeline generation, you can make a decision they are expensive and ineffective. Another problem is how most companies run ads. It's just a pure lead gen: either download a gated PDF and get a call from our SDR or Book a demo. This is for sure expensive and ineffective. ---- B2B marketing is an ecosystem. LinkedIn ads is a channel with guaranteed distribution of your content but it should be paired with organic thought leadership and engagement. It doesn't guarantee direct conversion same way it does for B2C or low-ticket B2B SaaS. Same as your organic thought leadership doesn't guarantee conversion from any single post you publish. To embed LinkedIn ads into your overall budget, shift your budgeting from: - What conversions I want to see from my LinkedIn ads to - How much I'm willing to spend to ensure my strategic accounts will see a certain piece of content or messaging that can educate them, nurture and influence their buyer journey?

Old vs New Account-Based Marketing (ABM). 1. 𝐆𝐎𝐀𝐋𝐒 Old ABM: We need more leads New ABM: - Focusing on new logos with a high probability to buy, and have a high ACV - Accelerating pipeline and increasing win-rates - Expanding business with existing clients - Preventing churn of the key accounts 2. 𝐈𝐂𝐏 Old way: Broad firmographics + decision-makers. We sell to CFOs from the US-based healthcare orgs. New way: - Firmographics & technographics - Account clusters w/ similar use-cases & challenges - Qualification criteria - Tier segmentation - Complete buying committee - Account enrichment (business insights, common connections, where account is in their journey) 3. 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 Old way: Sales wish lists + databases/industries+role targeting New way: - Accounts that fit ICP and demonstrate a high level of engagement or interest - Prioritize accounts that are more likely to buy this quarter, while nurturing future pipeline 4. 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐙𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 Old way: Vertical or job-role message distributed through programmatic, landing pages, and email outreach. New way: - In-depth account research - Content aligned with the buyer's journey and buying committee - Personalization based on in-depth account research 5. 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌 𝐔𝐏 Old way: Programmatic display ads/LinkedIn account list targeting + sales outbound cadence (the infamous 21-touch). New way: - Multithreaded engagement with the buying committee on social and communities - 1:few or 1:1 events - Content co-creation - Personalized content hubs 6. 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 & 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 Old way: Lead handover from marketing to sales when an account clicks ads, downloads gated content, or sign ups to the event, sufficiently, reaching a Marketo score. New way: - Alignment on GTM elements: target segments, ICP, buyer journey, message, warm-up and activation - Joint playbooks that include interactions with the buying committee - Joint reports - Weekly ABM sprints and pipeline review meetings 7. 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐒 Old way: ABM success is measured by account engagement and booked meetins. New way: - Revenue that is generated from new logos, existing pipeline (accleration) and existing customers (expansion) - Sales pipeline velocity and revenue metrics: ACV, win rate, sales cycle length - Leading indicators for every program *** You can't simply buy an ABM platform, prospect thousands of accounts and expect to land enterprise deals. ABM requires good GTM fundamentals and close collaboration between marketing and sales to: - Select accounts with a high probability to buy your product - Creating awareness and demand through manual engagement with the buying committee members and personalization - Thorough playbook planning and review Yes, this requires a lot of manual work (as does any relationship). But this is the only way to generate enterprise, 6-7 figure deals. #abm #accountbasedmarketing

We should move away from siloed goal/KPIs setting for marketing and sales and focus on revenue metrics and pipeline velocity to define our targets... TRADITIONAL GOAL SETTING Marketing - Generate MQLs under target CAC - Distribute budget across demand capturing/lead gen activities: ads, SEO, tradeshows and conferences Sales - Hit revenue targets - Hit outbound KPIs: dials, cold emails and messages This framework puts both teams in the lead generation hamster wheel and prioritizes the siloed work. Outcomes: - Missed annual company revenue target - Celebrating individual contributors aka top performers while creating frustration across teams - Blaming and fingerpointing between marketing and sales during the annual review meetings I firmly believe that every B2B company that sells to mid-market/enterprise orgs should flip the funnel and start from revenue metrics and pipeline velocity analysis. Then, do the revenue decomposition by markets, segments and account tiers. ACCOUNT-BASED GOAL SETTING Here are the questions that both marketing and sales should answer together: 1/ How our revenue metrics look like across different markets, verticals, tiers and clusters? - ACV - Sales cycle length - Total revenue - Win rate - # of new qualified sales opportunities - Successful use cases - Churn 2/ How should we distribute revenue targets among: - new customers (new revenue) - current pipeline (acceleration) - existing customers (expansion) considering historical churn? 3/ How can we distribute new pipeline revenue targets between Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 accounts? 4/ How many sales opportunities do we need to generate across different these three tiers? 5/ What is (or might be) our account-to-opportunity conversion? How many accounts should we actively target? 6/ How can we identify accounts with a high likelihood to become sales opportunities? What criteria should they match? 7/ What programs should we run to drive awareness and generate demand from these accounts? Getting clear answers helps both marketing and sales to get on the same page and develop a clear path to revenue targets. It also shifts their approach from "doing everything at scale" and prioritizing volume to: What are the best activities across the full funnel that are aligned with the buyer journey of our target accounts. ---- Getting more budget for air cover and doing more outbound touches is not a panacea to revenue gaps. This is rather the fastest way to burn out and demotivate the entire GTM team. Putting revenue metrics in front of them and doing full funnel revenue targets decomposition together is what helps teams to actually achieve the results.

How to plan long-term marketing and sales programs (and get executive buy-in). 1. Prepare quarter sprints instead of marketing plans Sprints include detailed tasks, metrics, outcomes, and responsibilities. They are capacity- and priority-based, not based on wishes. 2. Prepare 4 categories of metrics: - Positive signals that prove traction (e.g. engagement from target accounts) - Activity-based indicators: actions the marketing team will do regularly (e.g. posting 3x weekly on LinkedIn) - Leading indicators: significant milestones leading to desired results (e.g. conversations and discovery calls with target buyers) - Lagging indicators: sales velocity and revenue metrics 3. Prepare a visual framework Connect the dots and explain how the planned activities will impact pipeline velocity and revenue and help to achieve the goals. 4. Plan team capacity You might need to involve multiple team members. Make sure they have enough time to execute specific tasks and that they will own them. Avoid multi-ownership and where possible the dependencies. 5. Create weekly pillars and program review meetings Break down activity-based indicators into weekly pillars: actions everybody involved in the program should perform. Plan in the calendar 30-60 minutes meetings to review the accounts progressing through the pipeline, program progress and metrics, identify and remove bottlenecks, and cross-share the results and insights. 6. Prepare monthly program report and integrate them with the revenue metric Not every program should be measured the same way. Running thought leadership programs v.s. demand-capturing ads would have a completely different set of metrics. Develop the reports accordingly. However, make sure that you have an ultimate revenue report that shows marketing-sourced revenue and pipeline, revenue metrics, and sales velocity. --- The most common reasons long-term marketing initiatives don't get support from stakeholders and sales? Lack of clarity. (not because they "don't get marketing"). Vague presentations full of marketing slang like, "We'll run a demand gen program, ungate all content, and deliver value consistently on social", are often shut down, because executives: - Don't understand what exactly the marketing team will do - How it helps to achieve the GTM goals and hit the revenue targets Avoid ambiguity and flip your marketing planning: - Present the goals and outcomes you want to achieve - Next, present sprints with clear tasks and task owners - Then, present the key leading indicators, positive signals, and reports - Explain how these sprints will impact the revenue and GTM goals. Then, you get all the support and buy-in.

Here is a list of the best posts we read this week. 1. Last year I've witnessed how CRO shut down the ABM program that drove $2.5mln pipeline in 6 months. Here is why by Andrei Zinkevich - https://lnkd.in/ddk_j6Jf 2. Here's a 4-sentence email buying team execs love by Nate Nasralla - https://lnkd.in/dnat6KBQ 3. 10 steps to go from 0 to a full ABM motion by Vladimir Blagojević - https://lnkd.in/dpeYDMM7 4. Multichannel vs Omnichannel for B2B Marketing in 2025..here's the scoop by Justin Rowe - https://lnkd.in/dHJNKQMa 5. Don't fall into this trap. Here are some practical ways to make sure your strategy is driving your technology stack, and not the other way around Darrell Alfonso  -https://lnkd.in/dyqe4VYm 6. The real reason most Google Ads campaigns fail to drive pipeline by Jonathan Bland - https://lnkd.in/dFhBhxUQ What was your favorite post this week? Share in the comments. 0 to ABM by Vladimir Blagojević #marketing #b2bmarketing #content #strategy #linkedin #ABM #contentmarketing #contentstrategy #accountbasedmarketing   #b2b #saas #gtm #brand #digitalmarketing #omnichannelmarketing #demandgeneration #martech #marketingoperations #socialselling #LinkedInAds  #growthtribe

Accounts that fit your ICP ≠ buying intent. Instead of broad targeting and outreach, segment all accounts into 3 lists and adjust your playbooks: 1. CLUSTER ICP. These accounts fit your ICP but are not vendor aware, and there is no clear evidence they have a challenge your product solves. Instead of pitching to them and targeting with ads, your goal is to make them vendor aware first. Opportunity likelihood: <5%. 2. FUTURE PIPELINE. These accounts are vendor aware (there was some engagement, but no buying intent), but you have no idea if they have a challenge your product solves. Nurture these accounts with a segment content while connecting, engaging and profiling the buying committee. Your goal is to validate if an account has an actual challenge, and if they prioritized it. Current opportunity likelihood is <30%. 3. ACTIVE FOCUS. These accounts demonstrate a strong engagement, there is a relationship with the buying committee members and a strong product need evidence. These are the accounts your marketing and sales team should focus on opportunity development. ---- The benefits of this framework are: - Increase ROI of the GTM team - Increase marketing-sourced revenue - Create a future pipeline while generating short-term pipeline results