Hello, everybody. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Hi, Howard, how are you?

Hey, Sourabh. How are you? Good morning.

I'm doing well. Like you, we are just crazy busy, right? It's a good thing.

It is a good thing, beats the alternative.

Yes, and we have a lot of questions. We got a lot of questions going into this, Howard. Apparently, people know you. That's a good thing. But before we jump into the rapid fire Q&A specifically about demand gen, I'd like to back up, Howard. You and I have been doing B2B marketing, especially tech marketing for a very long time. I think you'd agree with me that throughout the 2000s and 2010s, if a tech CEO, a B2B tech CEO missed his sales numbers, he didn't turn to a CMO. He didn't say, "Hey-

Right.

... Karen, why didn't I make my revenue?" He turned to the heads of his product and service departments and said, "Guys, what happened?" Right?

Yep.

I'd love for you to start from, has that really changed? Are CMOs really responsible for revenue? Or if it has, how much has that changed?

I would agree that it has. I can only talk from the perspective of an agency owner, and the change that you're mentioning is reflected in our business in so much as our responsibility as a marketing agency has extended further and further down the funnel. Meaning that 10, 20 years ago, a demand gen agency like ourselves, a demand gen company like yours would be primarily responsible for top-of-the-funnel leads. Those leads get thrown over the fence to sales, and from there, it's sales and the chief sales officer, VP of sales' responsibility.

Now, we marketers are responsible for not just leads, but MQLs and opportunities and the rest of it, and our involvement as an agency extends into that sphere. So we're doing so much more sales enablement than we did five, 10 years ago, or ABM is another reflection of that, which is very much as you know a very orchestrated program that involves both sales and marketing. So I agree wholeheartedly, and I think marketing's role is frankly continuing to migrate further and further to the point where we're delivering sales quality, sales-ready leads as much as possible.

Especially given the very limited attention that our tech buyers have, and I love how people talk about tech buyers, you and I are tech buyers, too, right?

Darn right.

[inaudible 00:02:39] technology for our companies as well, it's people just like us, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

[inaudible 00:02:39] technology for our companies as well, it's people just like us, right?

I think there's been a better increased understanding of what different leads are and what they represent in the funnel. I'm oversimplifying for the sake of this conversation, but there was a time when a lead was a lead was a lead, and every time someone filled out a form that lead went over to sales. Now I think we all recognize that there are early-stage, mid-stage, late-stage buyers. The other trend, and I won't be the first to say this, obviously, is that buyers spend much more time doing their own research largely online, right before they engage with sales.

So it's incumbent upon, again, us marketers to make sure that we're engaging with those people at every one of those different stages, be it with different content, different channels, et cetera, so that when they are ready to engage with sales and they're ready to click that Contact Us button or check that box on the reg forum saying, "Yes, I do want to talk to someone," or they take that phone call, we've built credibility. We've nurtured them, we've educated them, and the salesperson is in a better position than they would be if they were talking to them cold, if that makes sense.

Yes, no, absolutely. So let's pick up on two things specifically that you mentioned there. I just want to remind the audience, 25 minutes goes by really fast, so please get your newer and additional questions in. I'm already channeling the questions you asked leading into this. So we had questions in two of those areas, specifically, Howard, and especially for B2B tech, right?

Yep.

Content and channels.

Okay.

How is content marketing different now when you're looking below the top of the funnel, when you're in the middle or the bottom of the funnel? What content works in that scenario?

Yeah, I think there's a tendency to focus, I believe, too much on the form factor, meaning that it's webinars that work best or it's video that works the best or it's a certain type of content in that sense. Whereas, I think what makes the difference and what makes one content asset a better fit for a particular part of the funnel than another is really the topic. So in very general terms, top-of-funnel content is generally better thought leadership trends, industry surveys where you're really not trying to sell per se, but you're trying to generate engagement from people that at minimum have the problem that you can solve, whether or not they're in the market for a solution.

As you move further down the funnel, the topic changes. So as you get into mid-funnel, it's more about use cases, case studies, customer stories, that sort of thing. Then obviously late stage, it's buyer's guides, it's analyst reports, it's ROI calculators, it's things that help the people make a purchase decision. I'm one that believes that any one of those categories could be a video or a webinar or an eBook. It just depends on what the particular focus is that would make it appropriate for one part of the funnel versus another.

It depends on your audience. Some audiences are going to consume video more than-

Very much so.

... than others. You know your audience, or you should know your audience better than you or I could ever explain to a customer.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. For me, it's audience, yes, it's also just on a personal level. I don't know about you, I'm one of these people that scrolls by every video in my LinkedIn feed. I just never watch them. I'm an old school, I'll download the white paper, I'll even print it out and read it off my desk. Whereas, but you can't count on an audience whether it's whatever the job function or type of company or industry being of one particular type or another. That's why it's always important to have those different form factors out there, have video be part of the mix, have webinars, have recorded podcasts like the one that we're recording today and have that mix because you just never know whether a particular CEO is more inclined to watch a video, watch a webinar, read an eBook, et cetera, et cetera. So mix is really important.

So let me dive into the second piece here around channels, right?

Right.

We talked about the various ways that we are reaching people, right? There's email, there's social, there's still the phone. The phone is working just fine, especially for senior decision makers, right?

Right.

But I want to ask, because this is especially pertinent to tech marketers, the best brands you're working with and you've been working with for a while, Howard, how are they using their partners to reach decision makers or to get further down the funnel? How has partner marketing from a demand gen perspective evolved?

It really varies by company. I don't know that there's one answer to that question. It depends on the maturity of that particular channel and the degree to which those partners are ready and have the resources to market and sell on your behalf. So I won't name names, but we've got a couple of our clients names that you'd recognize with whom we're actively involved in partner marketing, and their partners are generally small business resellers, integrators, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's primarily incumbent on the ISV, the company itself to really take up most of the burden for lead generation and even to some extent lead qualification to where they can then pass off those leads to the channel. Whereas, we've had circumstances certainly where we're doing partner marketing with a very large consulting firm type partner, and they have the machinery and the resources and the talent and the expertise to really do that co-marketing campaign, that sort of thing. So that's a wishy-washy answer. I'm sorry, but it really depends on the makeup of your partner landscape.

No, I was expecting a real answer. That's what I got. I appreciate it. Like you said, partner marketing is both complex, and I would say is largely misunderstood. The idea that if you demo to 500 salespeople at a partner, you're a great solution. That you're going to pick up the phone and start selling for you tomorrow is just absurd, right?

Yep, very much so.

I think a lot of brands don't understand this until they've been doing partner marketing for two to five years and they realized, "Wait a second, we didn't understand what they were selling, the incentive, et cetera." But I want to switch gears to the direct selling model, and specifically something you mentioned around ABM. Okay?

Right.

ABM, as you know, has gained a lot of traction and a lot of, I would say, larger deal sizes, so six-figure deals. Almost the entire focus now for those companies is on ABM, right?

Yeah.

But from a demand gen perspective, as far as measuring the progression through the funnel for the buyer, what's different when someone's using an ABM strategy from what you've seen?

Well, it's an entirely different way of going about demand gen. One of the biggest differences is how we measure success. In our model and how we approach ABM, we measure success not universally across the board, but depending on where a particular set of accounts or even sometimes individual account is in the buying cycle. So for example, if the ABM initiative is one based on greenfield net new logos. The initial measurement or success metric might be account engagement, website visits, form fills, that sort of thing. Whereas, on the other end of the spectrum, let's say you're targeting existing customers and it's a more land and expand type strategy and you're trying to get into different divisions, etc., then the success metric might possibly even be meetings or opportunities or pipeline acceleration.

So there's no one answer, but as different from demand gen in the broader sense where for most companies it's about, if not leads, at least MQLs for example. With ABM, it really varies depending on where people are. So yeah, I will say this. We do a lot of ABM. It's probably, I don't know, 25, 30% of our business on a day-to-day basis. But I'm not one of those that believes ABM is the silver bullet for every company, that it works for everyone. It's a great strategy when planned and executed well. It makes a lot of sense for companies that have big-ticket enterprise solutions and long, complex sales cycles. But the companies that are doing it well are rarely going all in on ABM where their entire marketing strategy is encompassed by ABM marketing. Where we see the most success is companies that are melding it into their overall demand gen mix. So they're still doing that broader demand gen, generating awareness, generating engagement, but they've got that more targeted ABM strategy going after the whales as it were-

Right.

... at the same time.

Right. The accounts they can't afford to lose, right?

Yep.

It's going to shift the business because they need to get at least some of that revenue away from a competitor sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I sound like a total cynic when I say this, but ABM is a very vendor-driven conversation, and there's a lot of very smart, talented people with wonderful products out there that are driving a conversation that is really oriented to, "This is all you need to do. Stop what you're doing. The MQL is dead. It's all about ABM." Listen, ABM is great, and it's been a real boon for a lot of our clients, but it's not the all and everything for every company. It's just not. You see a lot of companies, unfortunately, I think, just diving into a BM, we call it ABM light, where it's really target account marketing. What you and I were probably doing 15, 20 years ago. Sorry, I'm dating us.

That's okay.

But I think it's forcing people sometimes prematurely to attempt ABM when really it needs to be done in a more strategic way.

You mentioned something, we got halfway through this conversation without talking about technology. Congratulations, Howard.

Thank you.

We will get through the second half, right? We're going to talk about tech. But just before we shift gears, I have a very specific question from a member of the audience here that just came in, and it's about the number of contacts, the number of leads within a particular account. As you've been working with large B2B tech companies and even startups that are pretty well funded, right? That are competing-

Right.

... in that space. Have you seen the perception of the number of leads or contact within an account change to where... 'cause some campaigns are designed in a way where they only want a few leads per account, and then we've gone from-

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

... others, 'cause especially Forester and Gartner have been pushing, "Wait a second, there's 10 plus people involved in this decision. Why aren't you finding more buyers?"

Yeah. Well, and again, I'm going to tap down around your question, Sourabh, by saying that it really depends on the solution that someone is selling. So some tech solutions have a lot of stakeholders. They've got IT, they've got finance, they've got risk, they've got operations, it might be sales, etc. Whereas, others are much more focused in the CIO suite, that sort of thing. So I think it really depends on what you're selling and how large that buying group is. Again, most companies generally will have a good sense of, or at least an idea of the kinds of people that they're seeing involved in their buying cycle, and all of those should be covered. It's not just the person that signs that PO or is the final decision maker. It needs to be the influencer. It needs to be the IT manager that signs off on the authorization. It needs to be all those different kind of stakeholders.

Exactly. Right? As decision makers ourselves, as we talked about earlier, even when you and I have read something and we know that we could start a trial with a particular vendor or solution, on my part, I'm definitely going to ask one of my team members to look into it.

Sure.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's going to be their life that gets screwed up if I make the wrong decision, so-

Yeah, very much so. Yeah.

So, talking about tech, you mentioned there are so many vendors, there's so much VC money around more tech, right?

There has been for a good 10, 12 years.

Right.

Can you help us back up? Where is tech really making a difference and where do you think we are clearly over-rotated and over-focused on it?

Yeah, marketing, it's very technology driven as you know. It's both a good and a bad thing. Again, I'm going to date myself, if I look back to the way we were doing marketing 20, 25 years ago, let's face it, we can do marketing at a scale and at a level of efficiency much greater than we could back in the day. I think there's a limit to that efficiency, and that's where we get to the point of, well, how much technology is too much technology? I'm old enough to remember when marketing automation burst on the scene. That now is, it's a staple of the tech stack and along with CRM, it's like the first thing that our startup clients invest in.

I think you're starting to see the ABM platforms, the demand base is 6 Sense is the Terminus, approach that level of acceptance. But again, it depends on who the company is and whether that investment makes sense. Can you do ABM without those platforms? You can, but much in the same way as you can do lead nurturing without a Pardot or a Marketo, you can do it, but it's clunky.It's difficult to measure and it's difficult to do at scale, and it's the same with the ABM platforms. They just allow you a level of efficiency. One area where, and I'll confess this personally, I've been really surprised at the impact that we're seeing is the whole chat area with solutions like Drift. I was a total cynic about that technology when we first started working with them, but I'll tell you, and we use it on our site as well, it's amazing the impact that that technology has.

We talked earlier about how buyers have changed and the buying journey has changed. I think it's a reflection of how much more comfortable people are engaging with that channel and engaging with live chat as part of the buying cycle. We're seeing web conversion rates and sales cycles and metrics like that really impacted in a major way by that kind of technology. So that's another one where we're seeing some pretty consistent success, I would say.

Yeah. On that specific point, Howard, I think it's an excellent observation around Drift, is that I think there was some coupling of live chat with bots that I think Drift has been able to decouple and explain that what you really want on your website is a safe space. Because when someone fills out a form and says, "Yes, please pitch me," they know it's not really a safe space right now. The salesperson's almost added it to their quota.

Right. Yeah, I will offer up another theory also. I think it's also a function of how poor a lot of companies are in lead follow-up and lead nurture. So you fill out a form, you want to talk to someone. You wait a day or two, someone sends you an email and a week's gone by before you've even gotten an appointment. So for people that are at that point where, "No, I have questions, I want a demo, I want to talk to someone," chat is, it gives a level of immediacy-

Right.

... that you just can't get with other channels. Again, we're seeing it really penetrate not just the classic use cases, stick it on your website and convert more web visitors. But now we're seeing it on online pages and thank you pages and as part of Lead Nurture campaigns as a way to get people find out more about leads, those kinds of things. So the use case as often happens with these kinds of technologies is expanding and changing and companies are coming up with new ways to use it, and that's really exciting, I think.

I'm not going to say that this is your answer based on what we're talking about here with live chat, but I'm going to ask this question. We only have time for one or two more questions, so I will remind the audience. I said it goes fast, it really does. Where do you see the greatest opportunity for B2B tech demand gen? I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but do you see it in the bottom of the funnel, this awareness or acknowledgement already buyers?

I don't actually. This is going to sound like an old school answer, but where we see the greatest potential for improvement with a lot of our clients is really at the top of the funnel. Even now, 10, 15 years after the emergence of marketing automation and really sophisticated lead nurturing strategies, there's a lot of companies out there that are just generating leads and either tossing them over the fence to sales still or dumping them into a CRM database and just sending them random webinar invitations and e-newsletters. What happens is, at least in my experience, is that those same companies then will start to do very late-stage campaigns. They'll start to just do demo offers and contact sales and do that.

The reason for that is because they're just not able to convert those top-of-funnel leads in an efficient way, and so they're looking for ways to shortcut the process,It's like, "Oh, well, we'll just go out and find people that are ready to buy." Well, that's just not how it works. You have to respect the buying cycle and why it's really important to reach people wherever they are on that journey, but make sure that you've got a really structured engine in place to move people along that journey, build credibility, educate them, give them opportunities to engage. The companies that are getting the most bang for the buck in terms of demand gen have a really sophisticated lead nurture engine where any lead that comes in the door, no matter where that person is on the journey, is responded to in a very personalized, relevant way, and that's where you win deals. It's not at the end, it's in the middle, in my view.

Now that you've mentioned it, you really made me realize, I think at least two or three times a month, I am talking to a senior salesperson or a CMO about a leaky funnel. Now that you've said it, right?

Absolutely.

It's [inaudible 00:24:05]

Absolutely.

In 2022, but I am.

Totally.

I'm still talking hundreds of leads that they're like, "What do we do with these?" I'm like, "Well, what have you done? They've gone cold now."

Yeah, no, I agree. It's mind-boggling in a way because it's the same conversation we would've been having 10, 15 years ago. Again, this is perhaps the cynical view, but I think there's an idea out there that technology can solve all issues. If we just have the right intent data and the right ABM and the right everything else that we don't need that, we'll just find the right people who are ready to buy and that's all... We can shortcut the process if we just have the right software-

Right. [inaudible 00:24:54]

... and the right data.

Just the way you described it sounds like very alpha driven, almost frat boy mentality, 'cause no relationship is built that way. That just sounds horrible.

No.

Right?

Well, but in fairness, it's also, and again, you and I live and breathe in the the B2B tech space, but let's face it, a lot of companies in that space by default have very short-term horizons. There are windows of opportunity. It's always about the next board meeting or the next quarterly report or hitting the numbers. So there's a natural tendency to be very short term, and it's like, "We've got to make our numbers. I don't want to hear about lead nurture. Where are the people that are ready to buy?" That's the conversation. So that's where you tend to veer into these very sales-driven, short-term marketing strategies where, again, ultimately, I don't want to say it's a long game, but ultimately it's really about respecting the funnel, respecting the journey and having that machinery in place at every point along the way.

The irony of this, and again, you and I have been around long enough is that yes, if you're a hot startup, you're looking at a three to five-year horizon, but most successful startups exit in 10 years. It's not five years. That's the irony. It's still not as short as you think-

Right. Right.

... that you will be successful acquired or go public, and going public is just another step. You still have to build the company. So last question, Howard, and we are out of time. So when you do make those changes, when you fix a leaky funnel, what metrics change, Howard? What numbers can you rely on as a seasoned agency-

Sure.

... to say that this is working or there is a problem?

Yeah, so it's really simple. It's lead conversion rates. It varies by client in terms of what their key metric is. But for some, it might be as simple as lead to MQL, so raw form fills to MQLs, or it might be lead to opportunity, or it might be lead to close, but it's that total conversion rate. Typically, what we'll do with clients is we'll assess their current funnel metrics. I hate to get all marketing nerd on you, but assess what those different conversion rates, a different part of the funnel. Identify where the opportunities are, because typically one or two will really jump out as, holy moly, that's way lower than industry standard. So we know where to focus, and we'll use that particular metric as our goal. Okay, that's the number that we want improve. If we can do that, then we're going to generate much more pipeline out the backend. Right?

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I just want to close, Howard, I know most people in the industry know you, right? And you-

I'm not sure, but thank you.

Yeah, no, my metrics are telling me for this webinar that they know you, right?

Okay.

The stickiness was high. The time from awareness to registration was very short, okay?

Okay.

But going forward, as an agency owner, if there was one thing in marketing, a trend or a tech that you were most excited about except for chat, what was that?

Wow, that's an interesting one. I'm not sure I know. I think where there's a lot of uncapped opportunity for companies is in the whole social space, and both, I don't want to say monetizing, but in really harnessing the power of social media for things like a demand gen. I don't know if you're the same, I look at LinkedIn ads all day, every day. It's just a great medium. There's a lot of really bad LinkedIn ads out there. We share them on Slack at our company and comment on them behind people's back, so that kind of area and Facebook, and I think a lot of that is really unharnessed for B2B. There's a lot of potential there for people to do more than they're doing currently.