Chara: Yeah. So, um, it makes sense, especially since you said, um, you know, you're, you're, you're approaching traditional, uh, or traditional market.

So folks who aren't even aware of the problem, why would they give out, uh, you know, their email addresses and unless. They see, uh, uh, they keep reading about a problem, see you everywhere. And then, like you mentioned, uh, know that Verifiable, um, is the source to go to, uh, to learn about this problem. And then eventually trust you enough, uh, to give, uh, go the email address, right?

So somehow sounds like the everything, everywhere, all at once movie, marketing edition, where, uh, you just need to be wherever they are all the time. Okay. Uh, be classy about it and then, uh, win the trust. So, uh, I know that you touched upon, so I know that you touched upon ABM just a little bit. Um, and this might be decency bias, but, uh, ever since, uh, we put out the masters of learning demand generation on the first episode, I seem to be seeing ABM everywhere in LinkedIn.

So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, uh, how you're thinking about ABM and what it looks like today. Thank you. One of the things that you commonly see and hear about ABM is, uh, ABM is just sales and there are so many different opinion, uh, opinions from, uh, different marketers. So I would love to hear from you, you know, someone who's running it successfully, how you approach it and what people can learn from, uh, running ABM strategies.

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, for sure. I think ABM takes on a lot of different meetings and I've heard it be referred to as account based engagement or, you know, ABX. Everybody's kind of trying to apply different, different terms to it. Um, and everybody kind of does it differently. There is no, you know, really set rule book for how you do, um, ABM.

Um, but when we're looking at how we activate strategy around ABM, the first thing is, you know, making sure that we define that ICP really well, and that we know exactly like who those target accounts are and how we separate them into, say, like, industry buckets. So one of the big, uh, splits that we have in our business is that we have provider organizations.

So hospitals and health systems, dental offices, private clinics, things like that. Um, and then on the other side, we have, um, health plans. So, so insurance companies, um, also need to credential providers that are coming into, into their networks. And they have, um, different, different motivations for how they want to improve credentialing or how they, how they want to do credentialing.

So we need to approach those two different groups, uh, differently. But within those buckets, There are different types of organizations that are at different stages of innovation. I guess you could say. Um, so, uh, we need to go down to the, uh, persona level at that point where we can see within some organizations, um, you know, certain titles that indicate that they're interested in, you know, growing the provider network quickly or, uh, Um, you know, compliance titles that are, that are interested in, you know, making sure that they're staying compliant and they're not getting fined for any kind of, kind of violations.

Uh, so, so that's kind of the first step to launching a successful ABM program is really understanding, uh, who these companies are. Uh, and who within the companies are your, are your buyers? You know, you, you need to know those, those personas well, and, you know, the, the jobs that they do day to day and what, what they care about.

Um, we have, uh, been experimenting quite a bit with, uh, with intent data as well. So we kind of layer that intent data on top of that ICP and persona data, uh, to look at how people are shopping for solutions like ours or how they understand them. And that kind of takes us back a little bit to the, um, crawl, walk, run approach to educating people about a new way to approach this space, um, because a lot of them will think of, uh, our space as being, you know, primarily outsourced.

So there are a lot of companies, um, that provide services for credentialing or even individuals. That will go and do that manual labor. They will go and, you know, verify those credentials and pull those PDFs out and, you know, turn the turn them into a packet. Um, and we, uh, approach this problem from more of a tech first, uh, kind of solution where we're looking at, um, how we get that data from the back end and pull it into one place.

So a lot of our customers are actually. On, um, Salesforce as, as a front end and as a data repository. So we're pulling that data directly into their Salesforce instance. And it allows them to like have that data in one place and share it throughout departments in the, uh, in the company. And that's like a huge benefit.

So, you know, we have to understand, uh, what problem they're trying to solve, what kind of stage they're at, who's on the buying committee, um, all that kind of different stuff, and that influences how they go and shop. Uh, for these services or products and that's, um, what guides us to how we create our, our campaigns, our content, um, our segments, things like that.

So that allows us to create pretty detailed, uh, targeted segments. Um, we've also been experimenting with something that. We're internally calling, uh, micro campaigns and, uh, uh, my team laughs at me, they're like, you just made that up. And I'm like, it's just like, we're, we're, we're tagging it with a name. Um, so we're calling these micro campaigns.

They're basically integrated marketing campaigns that are targeted at a very specific segment, um, that is, you know, industry persona and, uh, intent data. So like what they're searching for, what they're shopping for activities they're taking on the, on the internet. Um, And guiding them through a journey that specifically addresses the problem that they're looking to solve and different accounts might be in, you know, 2 to 3 different micro campaigns at one time.

So they're seeing. They're seeing campaigns and content on 1 problem as well as this problem as well as this problem and they kind of overlap and they're. You know, this title, you know, it will be more interested in this, but then this title within the buying community is going to be more interest, uh, more interested in this topic.

Um, so understanding all of these things has, has allowed us to create, you know, really nimble campaign strategy and really, um, reduce wastage when we're, we're buying advertising and, uh, you know, really improve our, our conversion rates at the top of the funnel. I hope that answers that question. I feel, I feel like these answers could go on for a very long time, but 

Chara: Hey, uh, abm is complex.

Uh, so I think it needs to be detailed. Uh, so Just to quickly summarize, um, really segment your audience, right? Um understand Where they buy and how they buy understand their behaviors And try to, uh, bring all of this together in, uh, micro campaigns where you make sure that you keep serving them, uh, relevant information, but don't restrict it to just Uh, one campaign because you never know, uh, what stage of buying they're at.

Right. Uh, did I butcher it or 

Amanda Poetker: No, no, not at all And I think that you know We do have some indicators of what buying stage they're in and what they're interested in based off of that third party intent And that kind of is what puts them in into a certain segment and targeted by a certain campaign um But the same person or the same account can be searching for three different things at the same time, right?

But we want to be really solution focused in in what we're showing them based on what they're looking for 

Chara: Yeah, makes perfect sense. So, seems like a lot of thought, um, goes into the way you define your ICPs, uh, right? Try to understand where they're buying, how they're buying, and what they might be interested in, uh, which always gets me thinking, how do you make sure that all the effort that marketing puts into, uh, all of this, Uh, translates, uh, I'm sorry about that.

Of course that happens. So, uh, how do you make sure that all of this, uh, translates into, uh, meaningful outcomes with the sales team, uh, in terms of how you align with the sales team to make sure that they have all of this information when they're reaching out to these, uh, accounts, right? So I think what I'm getting at is how do you ensure sales and marketing alignment, especially given such a complex, um, ABM motion, uh, that you're setting up.

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, for sure. I mean, sales and marketing alignment in ABM and in, um, you know, revenue generation in general can be make or break. Um, and I know it's a, it's a sore spot for a lot of demand marketers, a lot of people that are being, you know, asked to create more MQLs and, you know, just generate more leads, get more pipeline kind of thing.

It is very much, it needs, it needs to be a team effort and that kind of, Starts from from the top down where, um, leadership of these teams needs to be aligned when it comes to the strategy for how we're going to create, uh, we're going to create pipeline, um, and that relates to strategy as well as goals.

And I think 1 of the things that that kills a lot of teams, or, you know, causes division between these teams is, um, when the goals are set in such a way that it creates competition between the between the 2 functions. If you think of marketing and sales as, you know, two different stages within the same, within the same funnel or the same process versus looking at them as like two different lead generation or opportunity generation, uh, functions, um, then you can create a cohesive strategy to make sure that account based marketing is, is, is successful.

And in general, yeah. You know, you're, you're pushing people through, um, efficiently and getting them to the right place. So, uh, first thing, like I said, is, is goals, making sure that the goals are set correctly. So we're looking at marketing goals. Um, you know, setting MQL goals for an ADM function is misguided in a lot of cases, you know, sometimes, uh, sometimes these accounts are going to come through, they're going to do that education.

They're going to be, Motivated enough to come and fill out a demo form. And we're always pleased when they do that, you know, often those accounts close pretty quickly. Um, but there are limitations, you know, generally, um, that skews towards the, uh, you know, lower end of mid market or, or kind of the mid market space.

But as you head up into enterprise, you've got more people involved in the buying decision. Um, it's less likely that somebody is going to come in and fill out a form. They they're going to want to, you know, interact with somebody, uh, one to one. So, uh, we're dealing with this by having a pretty cohesive motion with the business development team, uh, over on over on the sales side and making sure that we are aligned.

And, you know, what segment we're approaching, uh, what what messaging we're approaching them with, you know, what solution we're focusing on. Um, and making sure that that team is prepared to have those conversations. And we kind of have, uh, a variety of different playbooks that we use to make sure that, that we are be, we are being aligned, um, as, as two different functions that are working towards the, towards the same goal.

Uh, so, you know, in a lot of cases, uh, marketing the top of the funnel is influencing these accounts. You know, we've got this target account list based off of ICP and persona and, and intent data. And we're, uh, feeding them campaigns and content and, you know, nurturing them and getting them educated and when they show a certain level of intent, that's when we start bringing in the BDR team and they start outbounding one to one with, uh, with the right contacts within that company.

And we can kind of see who those contacts are. Um, based on the content that they're consuming further, further up the funnel. So, uh, the first party intent data becomes very important in that, in that process that we know within these target accounts, you know, what content they're looking at. We can't match exactly the contact to the content in a lot of cases, that's kind of, you know, there, there's privacy stuff around there.

And there are some new apps that are coming out that say they can do that, but it's still kind of a fuzzy gray area. Um, but in a lot of ways we can look at the, um, Success of the campaign and who's engaged with ads and who's who's clicked through or view through, uh, on on these campaigns are engaged with certain pieces of content and kind of, you know, extrapolate from there and figure out which contacts the BDR should should be reaching out to.

So these, these things kind of happen in, in tandem where we don't start, stop marketing to that account because we always want to continue to bring in more stakeholders and, you know, more support for, uh, for the product. We also have pretty strong playbooks around, um, uh, events. So events have been a pretty big part of our strategy this year.

Uh, because we have such a targeted industry, and there are a lot of events within healthcare, um, I think we're at about 10 events this year that we've done or planned, which is, which is a decent amount. I think we did, Two last year, two or three. Um, so we're wrapping up that side pretty, pretty quickly.

And we have a pretty strong playbook going into that, where we actually put a account, we put account and contact lists from events into campaigns. Um, at least a couple of weeks before the event. And then we also have like one to one outreach, um, for those, for those contacts and accounts so that, you know, when they get to the event, they already know who we are.

They, they at least have some understanding of what we do, uh, and they're more, they're more willing to have a conversation. And, you know, that, that gives us, um, a good opportunity to kind of build that trust, um, with those, with those people. Um, but yeah, when it comes down to it, it really comes down to.

Like I said, the goals, um, making sure that, you know, marketing is measured on influence and not MQL generation. Like you're going to, you're going to kill an ABM motion by measuring it by MQL generation. Um, but our, um, our demand gen motion, uh, influences over 70 percent of the leads. That are the opportunities that come through the funnel, regardless of how they're closed.

So it's really important for us to get those nurtured and then, um, pass them over to the BDR team when they they're showing enough intent to be interested in a sales cycle. And then it's way easier for the BDR team to go in there and like, and close those opportunities. Um, so that's, that's a lot of how that functions.

Chara: Yeah. It sounds like, um, it, it looks like ABM, uh, is just, you know, going after a set of accounts from the outside. Uh, but then the amount of alignment, the amount of communication, uh, involved, uh, is extremely intense. Uh, so while you were going through that, I figured out the alignment between my camera and my MacBook.

It just had a tumble there. Uh, so given everything that just, uh, spoke about Amanda, how, um, you know, you make sure that you have, you communicate your goals for your ABM campaigns upfront, make sure that it's not an MQL goal because we keep hearing this over and over again, right? Like marketers get. MQL goals from founders and, uh, you know, their execs and, you know, they give into it and then they just start driving leads.

And then sales comes back saying, Hey, you're hitting your, you're getting me so much junk. I don't know what to do with it. Um, so it's great that, um, you track your ABN campaign success based off of influence, uh, and you're able to deliver, um, the right set of accounts to BDR so that they're successful.

Across different touch points, right? Uh, whether it's outbound, events, uh, and would love to share about all the logistical, uh, Nightmares that you had to solve for to go from two events last year to like 10 to 11, uh, this year, uh, down the line. Uh, but one of the things that got me thinking was given all of this, uh, I myself am also curious about your tech stack, right?

Uh, Like how do you manage all of this, uh, at Verifiable? What products? Because You When it comes to ABM, it's very easy to hate a lot of the products that you use out there, but it's also always good to hear about using those products effectively to run effective ABM campaigns. So what does your tech stack look like and what works well for you?

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, for sure. I feel like this is one of the advantages of moving a little bit further up market, moving into a series B company that, um, you know, is going after enterprise accounts versus being at, you know, a seed rounds or a series A or bootstrap company. Um, and that I can get into a little bit if you want to, you know, learn a little bit about hacking early, early ABM approach.

Um, but yeah, the tool set is, is pretty important to this approach. And, um, I'd say when we look at our stack, uh, we're using Salesforce as our, as our central source of truth when it comes to, uh, account status, account lists, things like that. So that's kind of where that lives. Um, where we can see, you know, data on, on past deals, whether, uh, one or lost, uh, things like that.

So that kind of becomes a central source of truth. Um, and then we, we layer on top of that as our intent provider, um, as well as our sales intelligence tool, we're, we're using Sixth Sense for that. Um, so I used, uh, Sixth Sense at my, uh, previous company as well. Um, and, uh, It is 1 of the better, um, I would say companies in the market when it comes to 3rd party intent data.

Um, uh, so we're so we're using that for 3rd party intent data as well as 1st party, uh, intent data. So engagement with our website engagement with our ad campaigns, all that kind of stuff. So that that's a really important tool for us. We also use it to report on account engagement in a lot of places. So we're able to see engagement with, um, Sixth Sense display ads, which is a, which is a big function of the platform that we use, um, to get super targeted about where our ads are being shown as well as, uh, LinkedIn ads and, and, uh, platforms like that.

So it kind of serves a few different functions where we've got The third, the third party intent, looking at the intent in the market of these target accounts within ICP, we've got first party intent when they hit the website or they're engaging with ad campaigns, and then we've got reporting on the back end to look at, uh, engagement with, uh, with our overall campaigns and content.

Um, I mean, we're also using for inbound and workflows and things like that. We use HubSpot, uh, on the marketing automation side of things. So, so people, you know, coming into certain campaigns are being pushed into nurtures. And, you know, if they come in inbound, we're, we're pushing them through to Salesforce.

And that kind of becomes the, that, that's kind of the trio of our primary stack. Obviously we've got Revenue Hero implemented on the Um, inbound form field. So we get those leads routed as fast as possible. And I know I've talked to, um, RCS rep over there a couple of times about this, but we went from, uh, routing inbound leads, uh, taking like 20 days to get from, uh, a form field to an opportunity down to down to 20 hours.

So we have a little delays here and there when people don't book off of that initial form fill, but for the most part, you know, we're getting people into that into that opportunity stage and into those first discovery calls way, way faster. So if they do come in through through inbound, we're making sure that we're not dropping the ball there and that's.

That's been pretty huge for us on the inbound opportunity generation. Um, but we're also using it on the campaign side as well. So, so adding those links into that one to one outreach and making sure that people can book into meetings right away. Um, so, so that's kind of the marketing stack that's primary, I guess.

You know, we've got all of our ad channels and, and things like that as well. But wondering if you have any follow up questions on that. 

Chara: Oh, no, I'm just listing it down, uh, to, uh, the audience. So how do you weave all of this together? Are you able to get data in and out of all of these platforms, uh, just with their native integrations?

Or do you rely on like, uh, uh, is the 6th sense take care of all of it? Is there a Zapier or a metadata, like, Who takes care of all the orchestration magic? 

Amanda Poetker: Yeah. So, I mean, we've been working pretty heavily with, uh, revenue operations lately to look at how we're like, which data we're pushing into Salesforce as that, um, as that single source of truth, basically, we do use segmentation in six cents a fair bit to push that data over.

So if an account has interacted with a certain set of content or, you know, as that interacted with an ad campaign or shown a certain level of third party intent. We're assigning, um, segmentation to them and pushing that segmentation over to, over to Salesforce. And that allows us to flag, uh, via workflows to the, to the BDR team where, you know, this account has taken this action.

Yeah, it's time to it's time to reach out to them. So, um, that I feel like is 1 of the biggest gaps that you could experience with this intent data. If you are not actioning on it in a very, like, systematic way, you would easily miss those those signals. Um, so we've built these systems. Surrounding segmentation to, to make sure that that BDR team, um, can get on those leads, uh, right away and, um, you know, first party intent flags account for like 50 to 60 percent of the opportunities that that team generates.

It's it's been huge for their, for their opportunity generation and for, for us overall as a go to market, uh, function. Um, but that wouldn't happen if they weren't bought into that idea. Uh, so I, I think part of it is showing, you know, these early successes of that, you know, this first party intent flagging that does really matter.

It shows that somebody is researching that, you know, they're in a buying phase, um, and that we need to get them into a sales process as as soon as possible. So that we're, we're considering on the table when they're looking at at different service providers. Yeah, so that's definitely one of the biggest things there.

Chara: Got it. Uh, so it sounds like just the stack that you have right there, uh, with six, six cents segmentation works well enough to send data to Salesforce. You don't necessarily need like one more workflow orchestration product, uh, at least yet. 

Amanda Poetker: Well, and we are digging further into attribution when it comes down to channels and, uh, individual campaign touches and stuff like that.

So a lot of that stuff right now is manually exported from Sixth Sense. We're looking at Google Analytics, we're looking at Hotspot, uh, where we have available data. Um, to look at the success of of individual campaigns, uh, as well as individual channels. So that that's more of an internal marketing thing to make sure that we're putting our time in the money and money in the right strategies in the right channels.

Um, and the right and the right content. So so that's definitely we kind of smash that all together. We've been looking at, uh, potential tools to to advance that a little bit further, but I think a lot of that comes down to like, how you're modeling attribution and influence, right? So I think that's the stage that we're in right now is looking at, you know, which touches really matter.

Um, and, you know, within a micro campaign journey, and somebody's hitting middle of funnel, um, you know, what matters, like, what should we do? What should we do next? And, you know, looking at historical data, making sure that we're pushing them to the, to the right thing after that. Um, so, so a lot of that data, you know, we're kind of mashing together manually right now.

No, it's not fantastic, but it's just kind of one of those things where it's like, one, one thing at a time, right? We'll continue to layer on and to, and to build better attribution models. Uh, for those channels and campaigns. 

Chara: Yeah, makes sense. And I've got to give a shout out to HockeyStack. We just recently implemented HockeyStack.

Of course, at a different scale and a different size of company, but it's like magic being able to visualize, um, you know, which touch points influence conversions. So maybe, uh, you know, one of the vendors who could help out there, right? And, uh, before I jump on to the next question, I love it when this happens.

Um. And when we sent out the emails for this event, we had a question from Ian, uh, who wanted specifically to, uh, understand, uh, strategies and tactics for launching an ABM type of campaign, uh, to 10, 000 accounts, uh, with 50, 000 a month, right? Uh, so very specific in terms of, uh, the goal. So how should it be structured?

What channels should be used and what's the time until which, uh, you should wait to see Um, and the goal here is to generate pipeline that ultimately closes within Q4, but shows early signs of working in Q3. Uh, I love, it's an extremely specific question, uh, right? With very, very specific parameters. So would love to hear your take on it.

So the, uh, broader audience can also benefit from it. 

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, um, I kind of love when questions are, are structured this way, because it's like, please help me win in the next two quarters, kind of thing. 

Chara: Exactly. 

Amanda Poetker: So I'll try, I'll try and get to the, where, where, where I'm seeing flaws, or, or, um, you know, how I would optimize.

Set of parameters, basically. Um, so I think the first thing is 10, 000 accounts for an ABM approach is, is too many accounts to start with, especially looking at the budget that we have here. Um, it's it. I think in order to be successful, uh, with an ABM, uh, structure, you need to narrow that down to really like, what's.

Um, best fit ICP. Uh, so when we're looking at our ABM structures, we're really only targeting, um, 1, 000 to 2, 000 accounts at, at any given time. We have broader, um, you know, more organic or, uh, you know, paid search kind of ongoing campaigns that are meant to catch, you know, stuff that's outside of their work.

People are. Are looking to buy a solution, we kind of captured that intent at the bottom of the funnel. But when we're looking to, uh, engage and nurture, uh, a target list of accounts, we need to get way more narrow because you want to be hitting those accounts from all sides. Uh, you want to be hitting all the buyers that, that, that are within those accounts that are going to care about the product.

Um, and that means that you need to narrow your list, uh, a fair bit. There are ways that, you know, at about 50 grand a month, you know, it's a respectable budget to get an eight, like a mini ABM strategy off the ground. Uh, tooling is probably going to be the hardest part. Uh, so if, um, intent data or ABM platform is not within the budget, you know, you can kind of.

shift your thinking to a more manual process to build a target account list. And this is something that we do internally as well. Like we, we get target account lists from, um, from Salesforce in some ways, as, as a Salesforce app exchange partner, they kind of feed us, they're like, Oh, this is, you know, the health cloud list of companies.

And we kind of cherry pick ICP fit. Or, uh, we look at industry directories and things like that, where we can start to, to cherry pick accounts from there and start to pull those, pull those into the CRM and create target account lists. That have been, uh, heavily vetted as, as being high fit ICP. Um, so, so that's one way that you can kind of get around, you know, having to have, uh, a proper ABM tool, uh, when it comes to targeting them.

So, so when we started to launch, uh, you know, a, a mini ABM motion at Verifiable before we had Sixth Sense, uh, we were doing that manual account creation or account list creation. And we were doing a lot of. Uh, title and job function targeting on LinkedIn, um, using those lists as well as, you know, matching contact data into, uh, Google ads to do demand gen campaigns.

Um, so a bunch of different places that you can, uh, do display ads to, to build up that influence and build up the awareness and get people into your own property. Um, but once they're on your own property, once they're on your website, like how do you follow up on them? I think the biggest thing that I would push on for Tooling at the beginning of, you know, testing out a strategy like this is, is a first party intent provider.

Um, so the, the first party intent provider that we had, uh, when I first started, um, is, uh, called Koala. Uh, so, so this product looks specifically at, you know, target accounts within this certain, uh, space where you can set criteria on size of company and industry and. Um revenue and things like that and have them flag when they when they hit your website or hit, you know, certain pieces of content Um, so that was really helpful for us, uh to kind of like do that manual list build Uh get it into a few platforms Uh, it kind of helped us stay on track Study the persona within or the personas within these accounts to build better, um, you know, ongoing campaigns in organic and, and paid search and, and things like that.

Um, and then once those accounts were fed into the website, we had that first party intent flag, uh, to the BDR team so they could start that outreach. Um, and that was kind of the, you know, the first version of, of our account based marketing, um, approach. And, uh, if it's something that, that people want to start testing, uh, it's an approach that I would encourage, um, before buying tools that are, you know, six figures or, or more in, in some cases.

Um, the only other thing I'd say around this is just to, to really understand the persona that you're going after within these accounts. You know, you want to narrow that list to, you know, 1000, 2000 accounts, and then you want to know exactly who the, who the buying committee is within those accounts. Uh, and create your campaigns in such a way that they're targeting those, those job functions, um, with the right, you know, solution messaging that's going to, going to speak to those people.

Chara: Got it. Uh, I think the other two questions, which is as a founder, always the questions I'm asking my team is also what time until we, uh, expect results, uh, right? Need to generate pipeline in Q4. Uh, is that the right approach to ABM? Uh, how should we thinking, uh, how should we be thinking about it? 

Amanda Poetker: It really depends on what, like, kind of stage you're coming from.

If your, if your website is in a good shape, you've got a lot of content to draw, and you're not creating a lot of new stuff, you're just kind of like, reworking it into campaigns that make sense to approach a target account list, and you're, you know, You know, you're, you're building that, that playbook or that process to, to get it to the right people, then you're going to see results, uh, a lot faster where you can start seeing results within days and then bringing in that first party intent and then acting on that first party intent.

Um, you know, you can, you can start to see opportunities come in from, from days to weeks of, of launching a campaign like that. If you look at your set of content, your website, you know, your, your existing ads and things like that, and you realize that, oh, you know, we're not speaking to the right buyer.

We're not speaking to the, to the buying community committee properly. It's going to take you a little longer to, to, to get there. And it's probably going to be a full, you know, quarter of build and making sure that you're creating campaigns that are speaking to the, to the right persona within, within these target accounts.

Um, so it really depends on, on, you know, what your current situation is. 

Chara: So essentially cracking, uh, the first, uh, uh, few pieces that you mentioned, right? Uh, narrow the ICP 10 case, probably, uh, too broad an audience to go after with an ABM strategy, build a target account list. If you're not able to purchase one of the established ABM vendors out there.

Then, uh, look at directories, uh, and other vetted audiences, right, uh, target using job functions, uh, and titles, uh, and then start analyzing your first party intent data on your website and all your different assets. And from there, uh, I think you'll start understanding, uh, when you might see results. It's not all black and white to say, Hey, this is the exact strategy that leads to success.

Results in Q3, uh, or Q4. Right. Um, so would you say that that's a 

Amanda Poetker: little bit, it's going to depend a little bit on, you know, what, um, average account, uh, value you're looking for as well. Uh, you know, whether somebody is investing 2, 000 in your product versus 30, 000 in your product or 150, 000 in your product, that's going to change your, your sales cycle.

Um, so it's kind of a different, difficult question to answer because even within our cycle, you know, For us, for a mid market account is less touch points are needed. The sales cycle closes a lot faster versus our biggest, um, accounts closed. You know, they can take from six months to a year or, or potentially more to get to that closed, uh, to closed one stage, but it's worth it because, you know, you're bringing in that much more revenue versus the smaller accounts that close faster, but we like to have a good mix.

Um, so when you're looking at your strategy, you know, there are going to be some lower is, is there's going to be some lower hanging fruit, right? You know, smaller contracts that you can go at a higher volume, um, versus, you know, these larger contracts that you're going at, you know, more narrow targeting, um, to, to bring in those larger accounts.

Chara: Yep. Makes perfect sense. So Amanda, would you say, so earlier in our conversation, you said, You have some tips for tracking ABM, uh, at earlier stage companies. Would you say that covers most of it? Uh, is there anything else that folks like us can think about? 

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, I think that covers a lot of it from a, from a digital perspective.

Um, I do want to reiterate that events can be really useful for this. As long as you're running a good playbook around them. Um, thankfully, a lot of events when you're sponsoring, even if you're sponsoring at the lowest level, you've got a kiosk or something like that, they're going to send you attendee lists and you need to make sure that those attendee lists are branded and solution aware before you get to those events.

Um, but it can be a good way to build up, um, a contact list, basically a list of target accounts, uh, email database, uh, things like that. So so that's another kind of hack in the, in the background there. But yeah, initially, you know, if you know, who your is, and you can kind of define them by industry and size and revenue and.

Things like that, you like, that's your first layer and then you layer on top of that kind of, you know, what stage of company they're at, you know, do they have the buying mindset to buy to buy our product right now? Do they have? You know, who's, who's the person or the buying committee within this company that would be logical to, to approach.

And those things can all be done. Uh, you know, looking at, at open information, basically, you know, looking at directories, looking, looking at events, uh, attendee lists, and, you know, comparing that to, to contacts in, in LinkedIn and places like that. Um, it's not. super fast or easy. Um, but it's something, you know, in earlier stage companies that I, that I worked with, um, earlier on my, in my SAS marketing career, we, we did things like this and, and that kind of strategy worked well for us, you know, executing.

Direct mail in conjunction with LinkedIn ads and things like that, you know, kind of surrounding this, this small list of contact of accounts and making sure that they see us 

Chara: got it. So I think on top of everything that you just mentioned, uh, don't sleep on events. If you're in early stage, right? Use those audience audience lists, run LinkedIn ads.

Direct mail also, uh, works well, right? So, uh, taking a step back, um, and one of the things that you mentioned in ABM strategies is it's all dependent on, uh, the first party signals that you eventually get, uh, once your ABM campaign has been running for a while and your ICP, um, audiences start interacting with your different marketing assets.

So let's say that, um, you have some of those signals, uh, for specific accounts, how do you prioritize from there in an ABM motion, uh, right, to make sure that sales effort and marketing effort, um, you know, ends up in as much bang for the buck as possible.

Amanda Poetker: So it's kind of a combination of things where it's. the level of first party intent. So, you know, one website hit is very different from, you know, five different people hitting five different pages across a website in one week. Um, you start to kind of seal, see the scale of intent and, you know, need to react proportionally, I guess.

So, you know, in the earlier stages where we've got, you know, one or two website hits, we're going to put those guys into more of like a retargeting approach. Um, where we are starting to, to, uh, we're continuing to educate them with the kind of content and the campaigns that we're hitting them with, and if they're a really good ICP fit, we're also going to feed them into a, into a one to one approach, um, and a one to a few approach starting, starting to invite to VIP events.

Or, uh, or webinars and things like that. So, you know, if they're starting to show awareness or they're there at the beginning of their buying stage, but they're a really good fit, you know, you need to get on that as soon as possible. It also depends on the size of company, right? Like bigger companies are going to have.

more structured budgeting cycles and RFP process and, and things like that. So, um, in a lot of those bigger accounts, it's important to get in earlier, uh, and to approach them in any way you can. So that's kind of a priority where, you know, if a, if a larger account that's perfect for us starts to show intent, even if it's the smallest bit of intent, we get on that right away.

Versus if we're looking at, you know, the more volume based conversions, we're looking at bid market, the smaller accounts. Um, we're going to trigger that first party intent when they've shown a little bit more intent because their buying cycle is going to be shorter. Um, so, so it's generally going to be a little bit more aggressive in how we reach out to them.

Um, once they've, once they've hit that, that certain level of first party intent and they're looking at like three of our product marketing pages and they've hit the get demo page, but haven't, you know, filled out the form, you know, those ones are usually pretty easy to get into, uh, get into a sales process by at that point.

Chara: Got it. Uh, so like everything else, it's a combination of different factors, uh, like cluster together, uh, all the information you have in terms of first party data, check if they're an ICP, if the person who's hitting, uh, these, uh, assets are, is somebody who can buy, and then based on that prioritize, bucket them into different strategies, right?

Invite them to an event or try outbounding them if they're perfect fit ICP and have probably, uh, lingered on your pricing page and your request for 30 minutes. Also, 

Amanda Poetker: we also kind of studied the, we do study the inbound flow as well and look at kind of a reverse goal path. So, so companies that have converted, um, coming inbound, we'd look at the touch points that they have, um, gone through to get to that point and kind of reverse engineer.

So if we see that happening with an account and it doesn't convert inbound, you know, we know that, you know, that level of intent is there for some reason they haven't filled out that form and we need to go and figure out why and how we overcome that. So that, that's the data point that we look at as well.

Chara: Awesome. Uh, so reverse engineer your inbound patterns and, uh, do you start targeting, uh, specific accounts to optimize for those patterns as well, Amanda? Or is it mostly just observing folks who've been through the pattern, but not converged? 

Amanda Poetker: No, we definitely do. And that's kind of where the retargeting comes into it.

It's part of the segmentation as well, where we study those reverse goal paths to help us inform the segments and the campaign journeys that we're creating, where it's like, okay, this campaign journey is typical for somebody in this industry to experience on the, on the way to inbound conversion. We're going to reverse engineer that and turn that into an ABM, uh, campaign where the journey kind of, uh, Cop copies that emulates that and then put, you know, people that show that that original intent into into that campaign to guide that journey 

Chara: makes sense.

Awesome. So about six minutes away. So one of the things I also always ask when we're discussing abm Amanda is. Who would you say ABM is for, right? Um, I'm an early stage, uh, not yet, uh, CSB, uh, founder, uh, right. With a not so, uh, high ACV and short sales cycles as of today. I'm sure we have, uh, folks listening in, uh, with different ACVs, different sales cycles, um, across the board, right?

Is it something that you can point to pointedly say, uh, right. In a sense. If you have at least 20k ACV with like a, uh, one month sales cycle, ABM is for you. Anything lesser is not for you. What's your take on that? 

Amanda Poetker: I honestly think that any company that's B2B can execute some level of account based marketing.

Um, so we've kind of talked through the manual hacking of it, you know, in early stage companies where you're looking at directory lists and you're, you're being very, um, I don't know gorilla about it, I guess, you know, that that to me is still some level of account based marketing. Um, when you're looking at scaling intent based marketing or account based marketing, which is basically what we're doing at verifiable right now, you know, you're looking at layers of, you know, 1, 1 to many and 1 to few and 1 to 1 and that takes, you know, a little bit more a little bit more resources.

You want your CV to be a little bit higher or, um, you know, Yeah, that's that's basically the defining factor there. If you're going to really scale up, uh, ABM, you need to make sure that it is, uh, the ROI on it is, is good. Um, so it definitely, it definitely is for us, and it's helped us to, to push up market and make sure that we're getting in front of these, these bigger accounts.

Um, and I think there are very few B2B companies that don't want to push up market in some way. There's some people that are playing a volume game and they're like, we're good with, you know. 50 subscription fee every month kind of thing. If that's your approach, then ABM probably isn't for you. You're playing a volume game.

You're looking at capturing intent. Um, if you're looking to really create intent and to head up market and to, you know, continually increase your ACV, um, then, you know, starting small and scaling that function is a good move. 

Chara: Makes sense. Uh, would you say that the scaling of, uh, like folks who, who are looking to scale their ACVs and going up market, uh, being a better fit for, uh, ABM beyond the Gorilla, uh, ABM strategies.

Is that a function of the fact that ABM tooling out there is. extremely, um, I would say pricey, or is it just more of the entire strategy and amount of time involved as well? 

Amanda Poetker: Uh, it's a combination of the two. I think, you know, ABM platforms are a little bit pricey because they, they have a lot of data that we need to access in order to execute a good ABM strategy and a good, you know, intent data activities.

Um, so it's kind of a combination of the two. All right. 

Chara: Makes sense. Okay. Uh, I think we're in the last few minutes. We do have a question, uh, from the audience. Let me quickly put that on stage. So how frequently do you review and refine your ABM strategy? Um, or is that even something that's time based or is it more, uh, based on signals?

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, I think when we're looking, like, at our process, our playbooks and things like that, that we're standardizing a little bit more, we're, we're kind of tweaking on a quarterly basis, um, but we're also looking at, um, you know, campaign engagement and, you know, from a theme perspective, from a messaging perspective, what's performing, what's not performing.

On a monthly basis right now, or if something doesn't doesn't, you know, start to pick up steam, basically within a first month of its running, we'll, we'll shut it down or, you know, a lot of our campaigns as, as we're starting to pick them up, you know, in the first month or two, we'll, we'll show, you know, 30 to 50 percent increases in account engagement off of a target segment.

So that's a sign that we continue to run those until that kind of. And until that kind of dies off, um, the thing you really want to avoid is like anything getting stale, I guess, because you're often targeting the same list of accounts over and over and over again. Um, and if they're seeing the same ads for months on end.

Um, they're gonna, they're gonna check out in a lot of cases if they haven't converted, if they haven't moved through the process, by that point, you need to show them something new. You need to like, figure out what the next thing is. That's good. That's going to hook them. Um, so when it comes to themes and messaging and things like that, you know, we're setting overall umbrella themes probably on a quarterly basis, but looking, you know, and measuring on measuring on a monthly basis to to make sure that we're keeping things fresh.

Chara: Um, so. We're just a couple of minutes away. Uh, so I also, uh, always end this with where can people find you and what are your go to resources, uh, when it comes to ABM so folks can check all of those out after the session. 

Amanda Poetker: Yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. You can go and search for me on LinkedIn. I don't have my link, uh, ready right now.

Um, or you can find me at Amanda. Petker at verifiable. com. Um, when it comes to learning, uh, There are a few sources right now, uh, B2B revenue vitals as a, as a podcast. And, uh, I think his name is Chris Walker has been, uh, a good thought leader in that, in that space. Um, other than that, hockey stack has actually been a really big one for me as well, uh, looking at hockey stack labs lately has, has gotten my attention looking at the, the way they're compiling, uh, data there.

Um, especially from like a channel performance perspective, I found those really helpful. 

Chara: Got it. All right. Amanda, this was really great. Uh, I learned a thing or two. I'm going to try out some of those early stage, uh, APN guerrilla tactics to see if it works out as revenue hero. Thank you so much for taking time to do this and thanks everyone for dialing in.

Thank you. It's been fun. All right. Yeah. Likewise. See ya.