Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelWhile demand generation creates awareness and demand for your brand, it's not predictable. You can't control the outcomes of your content and demand activities. Account-based marketing is predictable but doesn't work effectively without demand generation when scaling. If you sell a B2B product or service with a 5+ figure ACV, you need both. Demand gen activities bring more prospects that fit your ICP and create awareness. They are just curious and not ready to buy. Your next step is creating dedicated programs to activate these prospects. Here is a practical example. 1. We plan a partner webinar with one SalesTech software and promote it to our audiences. 2. SDR from our future client signs up and sends a link to the marketing team. 3. One of the marketers checks my profile on LinkedIn and starts following me. 4. The same marketer searches our website and reads some of our case studies. Then, sends a link to the COO, recommending to sign up for the webinar. 5. After the webinar, we send a content hub with our case studies, benefits of implementing account-based demand generation for marketing, sales, and COO. 6. We see that the team spends in total more than 40 minutes in our content hub consuming the content. 7. I reached out to the marketer & COO asking for feedback about the webinar and the content hub. 8. After hearing back, I asked if they would be interested in a quick chat where I could explain to them how to implement the same strategies. 9. A few calls later, the contracts were signed. Could we sign the contract without manual activation (ABM)? Probably, yes. But there is always a risk of "let us try doing it ourselves first" and losing the momentum. Could we sign a contract with that account without creating awareness and demand first? Probably, yes. But it'd take us way longer to build relationships and gain trust with that company.-----------------------------------------------------------------As you see, this case study has nothing with the linear sales funnel most B2B companies try to create. You must understand how your customers are buying. Then, marketing (creating awareness & demand) and activating them accordingly. I sat down with Katelyn Bourgoin to share with you: ​- How to run effective customer research for B2B tech companies to understand how your customers are buying ​- How to identify buying triggers and adapt your marketing to capture the demand of customers that are not aware of your product ​- How to align your marketing with the buyer journey - Full-funnel marketing case studiesOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogRESOURCES WE'VE MENTIONEDTurn your customer’s Job-to-be-Done into innovative marketing ideas: https://strategyn.com/trigger-framework-and-jtbd/Why We Buy newsletter: customercamp.co/newsletter/Katelyn on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebour/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelJoin me and Kyle Lacy, SVP of Marketing @Seismic talking about building a great marketing team and discussing lessons learned after growing Lessonly for 5 years.​We cover:​- The most important skills of VP of marketing​- How to build a great marketing team​- How to onboard and serve new team members to help them to deliver asap- Lessonly growth breakdown: what made Lessonly so successful in the SalesTech space?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RESOURCESOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE EPISODEHere is a story I witnessed a year ago.CEO: Welcome on board. You are a prominent growth marketer, and with your help, we are looking to achieve our growth targets. Sales: Hope you'll help us to generate more leads. Marketer: Anything I need to know before starting out? Executive and sales: No, just go ahead and feel free to do whatever you think will help us to grow. 3 months later. CEO: I'm not satisfied with your performance. You didn't hit our leads' quota. Also, the CAC is higher than expected. Marketer going red-face: Well, but you didn't give me clear priorities. I set up a Google Ads campaign, booked a sponsorship for an upcoming industry conference, hired an agency to help us with content and SEO, published and promoted an ebook on LinkedIn. All leads were sent to sales. Also, I'm negotiating with a web agency to redesign our website. Sales: But the leads are not sales-ready. We just wasted our time. CEO: Google Ads never worked for us because our target market is not actively buying. Also, we played several times with promoting e-books, and it didn't work. I expected you'll help us to grow...---------------------------------------------------------------------The moral of that said but a true story I witnessed a year ago: If you don't onboard your marketer properly, set up clear priorities, share with them marketing documentation (what worked and what didn't), marketing performance will be always far from expected. Many B2B companies make the same fundamental mistake when hiring a marketer or growing a team. That's why I decided to kick off the new season of the Full-Funnel Podcast with Kyle Lacy, SVP of Marketing at Seismic (ex Lessonly by Seismic) talking about building a great marketing team.

In this episode, Shelby Torrence, Head of Marketing at Deliverect, shares three things the marketing team did differently to sign 14K establishments. They focused on continuous learning about their customers, amplified word-of-mouth through customer stories, and embraced a global-local approach with transparent budget distribution. The episode also covers personalizing content for the top of the funnel, leveraging customer stories, a successful 'hidden gems' contest, marketing efforts, scaling the team, and the importance of understanding partner needs.

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel1. Keeping product positioning differentiatingThey key to monitor the market and keep the positioning unique and meaningful. The ClickShare product went through three stages: 1. Startup phase, where ClickShare was positioned as a Barco product, adding credibility to the new proposition2. Scaling phase, where they looked for the core value, and positioned ClickShare as the "cable killer". This positioning did wonders because all of a sudden, everybody knew, "hey, here's ClickShare, I can get on screen with just one click (an no cables)"3. A few years later, the team realized that the "cable killer" may not do 100% justice to a product that's become fully networked and targeted primarily at the IT manager. With COVID coming along, they repositioned the product as a better way to do hybrid meetings, with a new series of product ClickShare Conference.2. Using stringent criteria for MQL, as qualified by salesMQL at Barco is qualified by sales.Inside sales speak with the prospect, and qualify their need, budget, timeline and decision authority.An amazing 99%+ of MQLs end up being accepted by sales. 3. Running a free trial program — for a hardware product This program has a whooping 50% conversion rate (from a trial to a deal). Barco actually ships a box with a base unit, the receiver, and also the click share buttons — along with instructions on how to set it up. There is also a helpline available that can assist you if need be.4. Investing in thought leadership that gets you PRYou don't often think of thought leadership when it comes to hardware product. But Barco recognized early on the opportunity to claim thought leadership around the future of meetings. For example, Barco introduced the meeting barometer research around the question "Did meetings get better for you over the last six months?". This brought them: - Major media attention (e.g. interview on Sky News on Sunday morning and lots of press)- Sales enablement material that sales people could use as a conversation starter5. Running a sales enablement program Barco has a combined go-to-market: - Indirect, via a network of 5000+ resellers globally- Direct for Fortune 1000 accounts (Barco's internal sales team) The sales enablement program has three pillars: - Creation, making sure that partners and the internal sales team have the right assets available. The key is to have lots of conversations with the sales team, partners, product management, customer councils... - Communication, because you can build the best possible set of assets, but they are not valuable if nobody knows where to find them- Evaluation, which is a continuous process of checking which assets are actually getting used and liked, and which of them need an updateRESOURCES:Lieven on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lieven-bertier/ClickShare https://www.barco.com/en/clickshareOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelI've analyzed 100+ sales opportunities we've generated in 2020-2021. Here is the #1 reason why our prospects lose most deals: "Our leads don't fully understand the value of our product and how is it different from our competitors". Which could be translated into marketing languages as: "We have a weak positioning and don't have a unique value proposition". If you face this challenge, then it doesn't matter what marketing campaigns you are running — you'll be losing most of the deals. At Fullfunnel.io, we have developed a 6-step framework to create a killer positioning and defined 11 positioning strategies you could use: 1. Choose your focus go-to-market segments2. Develop an Ideal Customer Profile. 3. Analyze your competitors' positioning and marketing message.4. Pick your positioning category by leveraging one of 11 positioning strategies (check them here: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-posit...)5. Do positioning panel tests and validate it with existing clients. Refine after the tests.6. Update your marketing message and all marketing assets with new positioning. The goal of this framework is to get your special unique value into the center of your positioning so that it is obvious to customers. Done properly, this positioning should focus your customers on your strengths so that they can quickly understand what you do and why they should care, as April Dunford says. We sat down with April Dunford to nail positioning exercise and share with you: 1. How to identify what positioning strategy will work best for you. 2. How to validate your positioning and make sure it emphasizes your unique value and resonates with customers. 3. 5 components of positioning you'd use 4. The most common positioning mistakes B2B companies make without realizing it.RESOURCES:April on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog

I got lots of spam emails promoting guests to my Full-Funnel Podcast. I never reply to any of them. Here is why.These BDMs try to show fake love to our podcast saying:“I love your podcast, especially episode #XX, keep up the great work!That said, I have a great guest for you.John Doe is a serial 7-figures entrepreneur who will happily join you as a guest. Here is his bio.Let me know when you want to set up a call with him.”Here is the truth.1. You didn’t listen to the episode. You just chose the recent episode which is completely irrelevant to your guest’s expertise.2. You didn’t check my podcast description and target audience - otherwise, you won’t suggest a bad-fit entrepreneur.All you did is:1. Scraping all podcasts from a business category2. Collecting emails from all hosts3. Scraping the names of the latest episodes — you even mark them in bold.4. You searched for some blog posts about pitching to podcast hosts or pitching a guest post, and copied the script5. You uploaded everything to the outreach software and spammed all the podcast hosts with the same templated message.Results?You sucked.If you want to get results from your outreach, here are 5 things you must learn:1. Connect and engage with podcast hosts and editors of target blogs way before you reach out: leave thoughtful comments, provide feedback, reshare content.2. Listen to the episodes and read articles to understand the audience.3. Ask about content needs - what topics do they plan to cover in the future?4. Present yourself and ask if you’ll find great guests that fit their content needs, would they be up to talk to them?5. When you’ll find a good fit, personalize your outreach by mentioning the expertise of the guest and what added value he/she can bring to hosts’ audiences.Don’t do what everybody else is doing: sending templates from “outreach best practices” blog posts, show fake love and spam everybody. You’ll suck.Do things that are not scalable but that generate ROI:- Invest in relationship- Do research- PersonalizeWith Rand Fishkin we nailed the entire pitching approach. Join us to learn:- Why does marketing through sources of influence work so well?- How do you find true sources where PR will have the most impact?- How to get your pitches acceptedRESOURCESOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogRand on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelHere are 5 things CitizenLab does to drive international demand in a niche market.Ctizenlab helps governments solve a problem that's hundreds of years old (constituent engagement). Unfortunately, this also means that a lot of would-be clients are not aware of modern tech solutions.During an interview at Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show, Amir Bolouryazad shared 5 things they do to create that awareness and drive demand for their product:1. Involve their customer in content creation and distribution Next to creating case studies, CitizenLab runs webinars, bringing other civil servants from different cities who have used their platform successfully.They get a chance to tell their peers a community engagement platform can be extremely helpful into their day-to-day lives, and how their citizens become more satisfied with how their government is engaging them into the decision-making process.They also invest a lot in creating content that makes their customers more successful. Very often, the customers share such content with their colleagues and peers.2. Involve the whole revenue team in content planningThe marketing team works closely with sales and government success teams to define the priority topics and content to be covered.The sales share the most common prospect questions, trending vertical use-cases, and new legislations. By creating content about these trending topics, CitizenLab taps into the existing demand (for information) to create awareness and demand for their product.The CS team who's more involved in day-to-day customer projects share the specific challenges that different types of customers are having with implementation. By creating handbooks for these challenges, CitizenLab helps the existing customers — while addressing the objections of the prospects considering the platform.3. Leverage content partnershipsIn each (local) market, CitizenLab identifies the most relevant publications and associations catering to their audience.And since their content strategy is already aligned with local trending topics, very often the content partners will be happy to publish informative and educational content on these topics.The key is to produce high-quality pieces that inform and educate their readers or members, not to promote your brand.4. Align sales and marketing on an "allbound" approachIn a lot of companies, sales does outbound, and marketing does inbound — independently of each other.And they are leaving a lot of money on the table by doing just one or the other and not combining the efforts.CitizenLab takes an allbound approach:- Their marketing helps their SDR efforts by running highly-targeted ads educating the prospects about the same topics the sales reps are mentioning in their outreach- Marketing also targets events their salespeople are visiting to create awareness and help sales meet more prospects- Sales uses first-party intent data about e.g. website visitors to learn about buyers and governments to understand their interest, so they can run timely and personalized outreach and follow-up campaigns5. Localize their content and channels for local marketsThe culture of governments varies dramatically from one market to the other. Add to that the different use-cases driven by different legislations and trends.To localize their approach to each market, CitizenLab:- Adapts the tone of voice and appearance. For example, European markets tend to be more functional and require more details about the product and features, while in the US the storytelling behind the features becomes more important- Uses the local customer stories and case studies- Identifies local content partners to help with content distributionTune in to the full episode below👇Amir Bolouryazad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bolouryazad/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelWe're meeting with Vladimir Blagojevic to discuss the recent research we did with B2B tech companies about marketing strategy.​Key points we are going to discuss:​Key challenges and the root reasons why B2B companies are struggling to create an effective marketing strategy.​The ROI taxes almost every B2B company is paying nowadays.​The core elements of the 2022 B2B marketing strategy​The linear mindset, and how to get executives buy-inRESOURCES:Video: https://youtu.be/BmSPuG_o0qcOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogVladimir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/Andrei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel4 things Datadobi did differently to **create a new market**.(+ 5 indicators that the strategy is working). 🤯Datadobi pulled off one of the most difficult, expensive, and risky go-to-market strategies: category creation. And they did it WITHOUT external funding. Here is how: **1. Piggybacked on an existing platform** If your team has experience with a major technology platform, you might be able to turn it into a unique advantage: - Access to qualified prospects (the platform customers) - Potential partnerships (e.g. integrators specialized in platform implementation)- Potential for acquisition The trick is to identify common deployment and use-case challenges for which no software has been built yet. That's exactly what the Datadobi team has done, I learned during a podcast interview with Michael Jack, Datadobi's co-founder and chief revenue officer. It turned out that the problem they solved for a data storage platform was a much larger problem in the market. 2**. Leveraged strategic go-to-market partners** Instead of casting a wide net, Datadobi focused on a few key strategic partners.And since they solve a common problem with storage platforms, storage vendors became the obvious choice. Because it makes their sales easier and removes friction from deployment. 3**. Laser-focused education** Here's a simple truth about market creation: If the market doesn't exist, your buyers won't have the budget for you. You can try to educate the market, but that requires really deep pockets. What should a bootstrapped company do? Datadobi focused on: - Educating their *partners* - Leveraging the partners to find accounts with a "bleeding neck" pain - Educating qualified accounts, so they foresee the budget in the next yearAgain, instead of casting a wide net, they educated the key market players — while getting to revenue quickly (essential for a bootstrapped business). 4**. Focused on the largest market from the very start**European companies often start by selling in their home country, and gradually expand, region by region. Datadobi did something different: they focused on the US from the get-go. Why?Making 70% of the global storage market, the US was the place to be if you wanted to create a new category (and fund it with revenue). Interestingly, they kept their product development in Europe, while growing their revenue teams in the US. Five indicators that the strategy is working:1. Repeat partner sales 2. Retention 3. Self-preferencing, i.e. getting traction from a few specific verticals. While Datadobi is a horizontal product, they're selling to a few specific verticals very strongly4. Partners willing to invest in co-marketing 5. Competition: once Datadobi started seeing competitors appear, they were sure the market was created. Tune in to listen to the complete interview.RESOURCES:Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjackpmp/On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelTune in to learn:— The lowest hanging fruit to build an effective account list for a pilot campaign— How to validate your message before the outreach— Why do most B2B companies suck with warm-up programs— How to personalize your pitch— Overview of campaign materialsRESOURCES:Video & slides: https://youtu.be/6bliQXAhtxAOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is a breakdown of a simple ABM campaign that generated 6 sales opportunities, 2 deals and helped to validate the idea of launching my company Fullfunnel.io in September 2020.But before we’ll dive in, here is the context.Before launching our company, we partnered with Vladimir Blagojević on one project developing an ABM strategy for 30+ B2B tech companies from Belgium.When we were running office hours, the majority of companies talked a lot about ABM, but their understanding of ABM was limited to:1. Create a list of companies that fit firmographic data2. Identify decision-makers, find their LinkedIn profiles and emails3. Upload the list to LinkedIn and run some product ads4. Reach out via email and/or LinkedInTo my biggest surprise, lots of B2B companies still think about account-based marketing that way.We decided to launch a pilot campaign for 6 weeks with a $300 budget to validate if there will be demand for developing inhouse ABM operations.Here is a step-by-step overview.1. Ideal Customer ProfileBelgium B2B Tech (Hardware / SaaS) with ACV more than $50k, long sales cycle, execs background not in sales or marketing.2. Warm-up by leveraging Content Networking (credits to James Carbary).We invited our target buyers to appear as guests on our Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Podcast.From the 21 accounts, we got a response from 16 (76%), and 9 accounts agreed to an interview (46%).Our goals:— Connect and discuss with strategic decision-makers the challenges they face in growing B2B tech companies + what works for them— Create unique content we can use for LinkedIn and guest posts— Share a new initiative and validate our idea by asking if a service like this makes sense to them and might be valuable— Mention the case studies we have to create a demand3. 1-1 Personalized Outreach.The interviews allowed us to understand our target accounts’ priorities and challenges, identify the accounts that were a good fit with an existing need.We decided to activate these accounts using a 1-1 personalized outreach via direct mail.Our swag included:— 100% personalized proposal with a clear plan on how to tackle their challenges— QR code that redirects to a content hub with relevant case studies— Personalized gift4. Follow-up.Most opportunities are created during follow-ups. We had a chance to explain our proposal, align it with their needs, get the team’s buy-in.As well, we received direct qualitative feedback on our proposal.I sat down with my co-founder Vladimir Blagojevic to share the behind-the-scenes of this campaign.Tune in to learn:— The lowest hanging fruit to build an effective account list for a pilot campaign— How to validate your message before the outreach— Why do most B2B companies suck with warm-up programs— How to personalize your pitch— Overview of campaign materialsVladimir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/Andrei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/