Tammi Tan: Empty your Toolbox: Use Multiple Marketing Channels to Reach, Engage, and Convert Target Accounts

Sourabh:
What channels are best for B2B tech companies, growing companies like yourself, right, to build that pipeline?What channels are best for B2B tech companies, growing companies like yourself, right, to build that pipeline?

Tammi:
Right. So first of all, Saurabh, thank you for having me. Now, to your question. So as marketers, I think we are all looking for that golden path, right? And if I ever say to you, you know, one day that I have a special playbook here, every marketer will be successful if they follow this. I will be lying, right? And so, but here's the way that I think about it, right? There's three things that I kind of think about. So first of all, what are all of my available channels? What are all of my relevant channels and how does it align to my goal, right? So first one, available channels. This one is really simple here. So this is really making an exhaustive list of all of my paid and owned channels. What are my competitors investing in? And, you know, what are the up and coming new channels I should be taking advantage of?

Now, it doesn't mean that I need to be investing in each and every channel. And it also doesn't mean that I have to invest in all of these channels now, because there's always a now strategy, there is a future strategy, right? And when we talk about the relevant channels, you know, this is, this sounds really cliche, right? But at the end of the day, I think as marketers, we sometimes tend to be, you know, really attracted to shiny objects, this new product offering, you know, like that new tech and intent is the new gold, right? But at the end of the day, what we really need to do is to understand, you know, who is our ideal customer? Who are my ICPs? How do they educate themselves, right?

What content are they consuming and where do they find information that they need to compare, you know, between like the purchase decisions? Where are they having these like peer to peer conversations, right? And so once you understand this really well, it helps you to narrow down, to narrow down what channels are really important to you and what is not. And, you know, from there, you know, it's really a critical thing, you know, thinking about how do you align these investments to your goals?

Sourabh:
Right, to your ICP, yeah.

Tammi:
Yeah, and the question that you have here is really about building pipeline, not just about driving leads, right? If it was purely about driving leads, then it's probably a volume game and we don't have to have this conversation about what's my, what are my, you know, favorite channels. So if I take, for example, Tom and Mary each have like $20 million in pipeline goal. Tom's product has, you know, like average deal size of $250,000. He has a long and complex sales cycle and Mary has the same $20 million in pipeline goals, but she has an average deal size of $25K and usually closes within a quarter, right? So you see that Tom and his team just needs to generate about, you know, 80 sales qualified opportunities a year that translates to about, you know, 20 a quarter. Mary, on the other hand, needs to generate about 200 of these.

Now, the goal here is really quite different for both of them, right? So like Tom needs to be reaching the executive decision makers. He needs to generate these like high quality conversations and leads that are pre-qualified, right? So they, when he puts it in front of his small sales team, you know, the conversion is going to be better for him. So based on his target audience, he might be looking at, you know, skewing towards like more high touch programs. He might be looking at executive roundtables, dinners, one-to-one meetings, introductions and referrals. He might invest in certain conferences that might target the executive audience. He might invest in certain conferences that might target the executive audience.

Now, for Mary to hit the same goal, does that mean that she's going to take Tom's playbook and just 10x that and invest 10 times and she's going to be as successful? So what is working for Tom is not going to work for Mary because she's going to probably be looking at more scale. She's probably would be, you know, needing, you know, a broader audience to work with as opposed to Tom. So she might be investing more in digital, in good quality content in, you know, content syndication, webinars, some selective events and conferences. And more importantly, have an engine behind that for nurture and for, you know, to score those leads and help to, you know, convert those leads to opportunities. So I guess, you know, that's, that's where like, there's a, there's a difference between, you know, different marketers and different goals and objectives there.

Sourabh:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And thank you. I thank you for setting that foundation, right? Like let's, let's recap just a couple of things there. So, so as you said, Tammi, right, first of all, we've got to look at our ICP. Who is our buyer, right? Why are they buying? And the second here is, is a combination of both the deal size, right? And the sales cycle, right? And then based on that, there are channels that make more sense for us than they would for someone else. And then based on that, there are channels that make more sense for us than they would for someone else. I'm still going to dive into some of those channels. I'm going to take one channel off the table for the conversation because everybody knows in B2B, this channel works for middle to bottom of funnel. So we're not going to talk about events. Okay. I'm taking events off of your plate. You can cross that off.

Between the other channels you mentioned, and you mentioned like six or seven there, Tammi. In the channels that you talked about, which ones do you think are better suited for that top of funnel getting into the target accounts we want versus the bottom of funnel where they're more ready to buy. And we have to work more closely with sales to make those ones work.

Tammi:
So, you know, when I think about the top of funnel versus the bottom of funnel, in my mind is really less so about, you know, the channels, but really it's really more so about the content and the offerings that you are kind of like offering at, you know, at those different stages. But even so, I think, you know, when we talk about top middle and bottom of funnel, it really is more so a way for us as marketers to organize our thoughts and organize the way that we will execute our content and offerings. In reality, do I really think that buyers and customers are following that trail? Maybe, maybe not, because, you know, as a buyer, when I shop for a B2B product, I actually go straight to customer stories and, you know, use cases to look at how my peers are using the product.

What do they think of it? Now, if we, if you follow kind of like, you know, a traditional content map, that will be like a bottom of funnel type of content. And do I really read, you know, like the buying guide, the last thing before I buy? To be honest, I actually read it first, right? So when I start to do my research, when I start to consume, you know, this information, I would start to think about, you know, what are the things that I need to pay attention to? What are the points that I need to start comparing as I start to consume different information and compare different vendors and offerings across the board? So, I'm not sure if I answered your question that way, but that's kind of the way that I think about it.

Sourabh:
No, you very much did. I actually took a note. This might be a conversation for us in the future, because you just actually told us something a lot of people don't think about. There's a psychology, you know, very well-studied psychology to buying decisions in business context. It's very different from buying decisions in a personal context. And what you just said lines up exactly with that, Tammy. You're someone with authority. People with authority tend to resonate towards bottom of funnel content first, because they're looking to understand if that vendor is even worth the time.

Folks that don't have authority, so the more junior members of your team that you may have sort of tasked to do the research, they look at the product and the offering first, and then they determine if it's something that someone else would use because they genuinely don't have the experience or knowledge that you do, right? Which is someone who is more experienced, who's trusted with authority. That was wonderful, by the way, Tammi.

Tammi:
You know, I think we do need both types of information to hit like different, you know, every member of the team has a different role. And when we come together, that's when we kind of make a collective decision. Because, you know, when I look at kind of the purchase from my point of view as, you know, a line of business leader, I might be missing out, you know, certain fine points of the technicalities that maybe another team member can bring to me. So it is really important for us to kind of like, you know, be thinking about who is within the buying center, and, you know, what is it that, you know, we need to provide to them to gain the kind of education that they need, right, to make certain decisions.

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Sourabh:
So you just segued perfectly, and I promise folks, we didn't practice this, right? But she segued perfectly into my next question. Because you do have very different perspectives, very different motivations within a single buying group for a particular technology they're buying for their company, right? And we just talked about two. There could be seven or more folks involved in a buying decision, right, over the course of the sales cycle. What are the key metrics? I'm going to try to hold you. What are the two or so key metrics that you look for across all that data from a buying center to determine if your marketing is working?
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Tammi:
You know, at the end of the day, right, if I were to, if I kind of read back your question to you, really, the question is about like, how do I determine if my marketing or my campaign is a success? And because I'm in this demand gen world, really, you know, I think the metrics that I'm looking for is, well, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, right? So at the end of the day, I think, you know, it's a question of like, what is the goal of your marketing campaign? So, you know, it could be pipeline, it could be a collective understanding of like, this is the number of sales accepted opportunities that both sales and marketing wants to achieve, right?

But of course, that's, you know, because my focus is in demand gen, not all marketing campaigns are demand gen campaigns, right? Brand is still a really important component here. Because, you know, brand and demand really work hand in hand, I can spend a lot of money in demand gen programs. But if there's no brand awareness, it takes a longer time in our sales cycle, because now I have to spend time educating our customers on what this, what our company is about, what the brand is about, what do we do? Versus, you know, when we have that ongoing foundation of building the brand, you know, when you get to the buyer, there's, it takes a lot less time to kind of like explain yourself.

Sourabh:
Yeah. And then there's actually, this is a really, really great point, Tammi. It's not the question I asked, but I'm going to roll with it, because it's a really good point. Which is that there's actually quite a bit of new research from Forrester and Gartner and others, that the brand preference is not just shortening the sales cycle. In many cases, it's already determining who's going to win, because they already had a bias towards a certain provider, and that bias was built on brand. It wasn't built from all your digital signals or your demand gen, right? So you sort of became that preferred solution, but of course then you have to activate the demand. You've got to then, you know, close the sales cycle. You still have to do all the work.

Okay, so I'm going to ask a question. I'm going to get even more specific, Tammi, because you're avoiding falling into my traps, okay? So the next one is very specific to what we do, and you're familiar with us, right? We're a content syndication provider, biggest tech brands. That's what we do. We've seen something very interesting over the last couple of years since the pandemic, and I'm hoping you can help us explain this to the audience. We've seen a significant amount, a chunk, of paid media budget. Paid media, so paid social, paid search, right? Or even OTT or programmatic. So the four different, four or five different categories of paid media, we've seen that budget move into content syndication programs. And we've seen this time and time again with larger brands. Why do you think that is, Tammi? What's happening?

Tammi:
So, you know, I don't have the stats or, you know, obviously I didn't make like the first-hand observations around that, but, you know, I think I could probably offer some personal observations, I think. I think, you know, in the past years, CMOs and marketing leaders, they are increasingly being asked to approve the return on marketing investment. And, you know, that definitely trickles down to the team, right? So content syndication offers a pretty straightforward ROI calculation, attribution, and it helps you with forecasting in the sense that there is predictability. If I pay $5,000 today, I can get a lead guarantee. I can choose, you know, the parameters around like, you know, who are the leads that I want to be getting. If I spend $5,000 on PPC, I may or may not get such a straightforward, you know, one-to-one kind of attribution. And so I may not be able to generate the same number of leads. That's not to say that it's not a good channel, because if done well, you could definitely, you know, benefit a lot from it.

But I think it's that directness, and I think at the same time, vendors are also getting, you know, really a lot better at their product offerings. There's better ways to, you know, select and choose and reach the target audience that you want to reach. There's intense signals and whatnot. So marketers are a lot more willing to kind of like give it a go. You know, I think my last observation here, and this is kind of like in part like something that I've experienced is that, you know, we talk about streamlines, whereas your marketing departments kind of like get bigger. I've seen this situation where like the same vendor is trying to sell, you know, a content syndication product to the demand gen team, to the field marketing team, to the, you know, the digital team. And finance sees it and goes like, hey, wait a minute, why are you guys like signing three different contracts? So then we start to have to, you know, rationalize that decision to consolidate the spend under the digital team, because, you know, content syndication is paid media. And so I'm not sure if like there is an actual shift on, you know, from the paid digital or paid media budget to some content syndication, or is it the case of like you are kind of talking to the digital marketing more than before?

Sourabh:
That's, that's a wonderful observation that I think you're right. I think that's exactly what's happening. And you've seen this. I mean, even in the first few months of the year, there's been a massive consolidation by most companies on the number of vendors or suppliers they want to use for the rest of this year and even going into next year. So I love that. Okay, now I'm going to switch and just a reminder, everybody, this goes really fast. We only have about five or 10 minutes left.

So if you have a question, please drop it in or we will run out of time. But I am going to switch, Hammy, over to another area of expertise for you and something that's very, very important for teams that are getting shrunk, which is everything we talked about. How does it change when I'm going after only a particular set of accounts? How do I, how do my metrics and channel consideration change when I'm running ABM programs?

Tammi:
So, you know, I think I always go back to asking this question, right? Like, why do we do, do ABM? What are we trying to achieve that is different from regular programming, right? And so there's also different schools of thoughts here. Like some will say that everything is account based, right? Some organizations will say, hey, no, let's just select these 10 accounts to be in the ABM program. And this ABM program will be, you know, a white glove experience. And the reason we do that is because we now have a goal that, you know, we not just want to like build, you know, pipeline, but also we have a goal to specifically grow these 10 accounts, for example, from let's say, you know, $1 million to $6 million in three years. So there needs to be a compelling reason behind why you, you choose these accounts and how you justify the investments and in budget and resource, right? It's not just money, but it's the people that are working behind that. So with these goals in mind, you know, you're not just trying to kind of like do like a one off deal or renewal.

So remember that we are growing an account, not a single deal, right? So I have to start looking at a scorecard of different account based metrics because I'm trying to grow an account. So I'm looking at things like, you know, what is the growth of my contacts by their department, by their job levels within the accounts. I'm trying to look at, you know, what's the utilization of the licenses, the growth of my ACV over that three years that we talked about, and not just like that one deal, one year. And are we expanding use cases into different departments? So, you know, for example, like, you know, I was part of a marketing department where regular KPIs are usually your pipeline from net new acquisition and business expansion. And we normally do not get involved in, let's say, user enablement. But when it comes to ABM, you have to think about really differently about how to get users to build on their use cases and more users to utilize their licenses. Because if there is no utilization, it does not build towards a renewal. And if it does not build towards a renewal, you're not going to get that kind of growth in your account. So the thinking behind that is a little bit different.

Sourabh:
Right. And the assumption is very fair that any account worth putting in an ABM program would have been sizable or are strategic enough that putting the resources towards maintaining that growth, that retention, that customer satisfaction, right, is worth it. More than, say, a regular account that's just coming in through the door.

Tammi:
Yeah. So, you know, you typically you would have to stay with that account enough to kind of like really understand the potential in there. So, you know, you know that that is, you know, the potential growth you're going to get from that account is definitely justifying that investment.

Sourabh:
Right. Exactly. So last thing I can cover, because we are going to run out of time, last thing I can cover is there's only so much we can do as marketers. Right. And we are generally a smaller team compared to our colleagues on the sales side. Right. They're necessarily a larger team. That's where the revenue for the entire company comes from in B2B. Right. What agreements do you have or have you had in your career with your sales team when you've been responsible like you are now for running DemandGen?

Tammi:
I think really importantly, just, you know, having kind of like looking at the same set of goals, you know, understanding that, you know, we are on the same side. And if we are, for example, like, you know, looking at collectively looking at, you know, the same set of X number of sales acceptor opportunities for the quarter, that is the collective goal that everybody will center around. And also, you know, really having an agreement on follow-up actions, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I drive like, you know, a thousand leads for you, if those leads remain untouched. So understanding that this is what we have to do collectively to get the pipeline going, I think that's really important. And for, you know, marketers, you know, I would say don't be afraid of having honest conversations with your sales counterparts, because at the end of the day, you know, we are on the same side and we all want to do, you know, track towards the same goal.