Best of LinkedIn: Account-based Marketing CW 04/ 05

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgeier and Frennis, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about account-based marketing in CW four and five, Frennis is a B to B market research company working with enterprises to optimize their campaigns with account and executive insights far beyond AI.

00:00:15: Ready to get into it.

00:00:16: Let's

00:00:16: do it.

00:00:17: Welcome back to another deep dive.

00:00:19: Today we're unpacking a a really specific shift in the B to B marketing world.

00:00:24: If you've been watching the conversation on LinkedIn over the last couple of weeks, calendar widths four and five, the whole mood has just changed.

00:00:29: It really has.

00:00:30: For the last year, maybe more, it was all about the tech stack, right?

00:00:34: Yes.

00:00:34: Which tool is the silver bullet?

00:00:36: Exactly.

00:00:37: But looking at the sources we pulled, the pendulum is swinging way back.

00:00:42: We're moving from, I'd say, a tooling obsession to more of an execution discipline.

00:00:46: It feels like everyone's realizing that vanity metrics just don't pay the bills.

00:00:50: The patience for fluff is gone.

00:00:53: The focus in these posts is so much more on actual pipeline impact, the messy parts of sales alignment, and just the hard reality of enterprise buying cycles.

00:01:03: And that reality check is exactly how we've structured this.

00:01:07: We're going to hit three main clusters.

00:01:10: First up, ABM strategy maturity.

00:01:12: Basically asking, you know, are you doing real ABM or just pretending?

00:01:16: Okay.

00:01:17: Then we'll get into the core friction point, sales and marketing linemen.

00:01:22: And finally we'll touch on the evolution of segmentation and intent data.

00:01:27: Perfect.

00:01:27: So let's start with that first one.

00:01:29: ADM strategy and operating model maturity.

00:01:31: I saw this recurring theme that the, you know, the sauce playbook is just breaking when you try to copy paste it into other industries.

00:01:37: Oh,

00:01:37: this is such a critical distinction.

00:01:39: Yeah.

00:01:40: Stefan Reepin had a really strong post on this looking at near shore and technical services.

00:01:44: His whole argument is that if you run a standard sauce ABM play

00:01:48: where you're just looking for intense signals and blasting out,

00:01:51: right?

00:01:51: You are going to fail in these sectors.

00:01:53: Massively.

00:01:54: Because you're not selling a license key, you're selling a partnership.

00:01:57: Exactly.

00:01:57: You're selling a huge implementation.

00:01:59: Reapin points out that these are committee decisions that can take six, even nine months.

00:02:05: The buyers are comparing you against offshore, onshore, hiring internally.

00:02:09: It's a whole different calculation.

00:02:11: So relying on firmographics, Company X is in the right industry, or a simple, they visited the website.

00:02:18: That's just not enough.

00:02:19: It's worse than not enough.

00:02:20: He says it's misleading those traditional intense signals.

00:02:23: They don't capture what he calls committee readiness.

00:02:26: I like that term.

00:02:26: Yeah, just because a company looks like a buyer on paper doesn't mean they're ready to consolidate vendors.

00:02:32: You have to target based on actual conversion patterns, you know.

00:02:35: deep insights Not surface level stuff.

00:02:38: This whole idea of surface level ABM really ties into a question that Megan Hire raised.

00:02:43: And I think it's a question that makes a lot of marketers pretty uncomfortable.

00:02:46: Is this actually ABM question?

00:02:48: Is your programmatic ABM just traditional outbound marketing and a new outfit?

00:02:54: She's so right to ask it.

00:02:56: Her point is that a lot of teams, they take a target account list, but then they treat every single account the exact same way.

00:03:01: they treat a co-lead.

00:03:03: They're not using customer insights to tailor anything.

00:03:06: So if I have my list of named accounts, but I'm sending them all the same generic sequence, that's not...

00:03:11: No, that's not ABM.

00:03:11: That's just demand gen with a VIP list.

00:03:15: Real ABM has to adapt the message to what that specific buying group needs.

00:03:20: If the insight doesn't change the creative, what's the point?

00:03:23: But that means we have to change how we measure success, right?

00:03:26: If you're doing all this tailored work, the metrics have to reflect that depth.

00:03:29: Which is a perfect lead-in to Declan Mulkeen's insight.

00:03:33: He suggests we're all staring at the wrong North Star metric.

00:03:36: OK.

00:03:36: Most B to B marketers, we obsess over ACV annual contract value, or ARR, all acquisition metrics.

00:03:42: Right.

00:03:43: But Mulkeen argues the real metric for ABM should be CLV, customer lifetime value.

00:03:48: That makes perfect sense in theory.

00:03:50: But in the real world, most marketing teams are, you know, hands off once the contract is signed.

00:03:55: And that's the failure point.

00:03:57: He emphasizes that ABM can't stop at the signature.

00:04:00: It has to flow right into customer lifecycle marketing.

00:04:04: If you see that closed one notification as the finish line, you are leaving so much money on the table.

00:04:11: I do want to push back on this a little or at least at a counterpoint.

00:04:14: We just said enterprise cycles are long, six to nine months.

00:04:18: But Vincent Plassard argues that just because the sale cycle is long, marketing can't afford to be slow.

00:04:24: Oh, I love this point.

00:04:25: It's a great paradox.

00:04:26: He calls a lack of velocity a silent killer.

00:04:29: He brought up companies like Ramp or Synthesia.

00:04:31: They sell to businesses, but their marketing moves incredibly fast.

00:04:35: Rapid experiments, quick content.

00:04:37: Right.

00:04:37: Even if the deal itself takes a year to close, your presence in the market has to be agile.

00:04:42: If you're taking three months to get a campaign out the door because, well, it's enterprise, you've already lost, you need that high velocity marketing to sustain a low velocity sales cycle.

00:04:50: But that sustainability, it relies completely on the handoff between teams.

00:04:55: That brings us right to our second big theme, sales and marketing alignment.

00:04:59: This is where it usually gets messy.

00:05:01: You can have the best strategy, the best tech in the world, but if the people aren't talking to each other, nothing works.

00:05:07: And when they're not talking, they're usually pointing fingers.

00:05:10: Ryan Young had a great post on this.

00:05:12: He called it the blame game.

00:05:14: The classic standoff.

00:05:15: Marketing sends leads.

00:05:17: Sales says they're terrible.

00:05:18: Sales builds a list.

00:05:19: Marketing says they're impossible to reach.

00:05:22: Exactly.

00:05:23: And Young's solution is pretty blunt.

00:05:25: Sales has to own the target account list, the TAL.

00:05:29: So marketing gets no say.

00:05:31: No, no, marketing validates it, but sales has to own it.

00:05:35: If sales builds a list based on, you know, gut feel or some wish list of logos, they have to own the failure when those accounts don't engage.

00:05:45: Marketing's KPIs shouldn't be tied to a list they never believed in.

00:05:48: That seems fair.

00:05:49: But even with an agreed list, the tactical handoff is where everything falls apart.

00:05:53: Karina Owens highlighted a really specific failure point.

00:05:56: It's between the BDR and the account executive.

00:05:59: The fumble on the one yard line.

00:06:01: She says this isn't a marketing problem, it's a collaboration gap.

00:06:04: And her solution is a really strict service level agreement, an SLA.

00:06:09: We hear SLA all the time.

00:06:11: What does a good one actually look like here?

00:06:13: It has to be super granular, for example.

00:06:15: If two different personas from one account engage with our content in seven days, the BDR has twenty-four hours to warm up the champion, and the AE has to immediately request a consensus call.

00:06:27: I see, so it's not throw a lead over the fence, it's a choreographed play.

00:06:31: It is.

00:06:33: And Stefan Merch took this idea of integration a step further.

00:06:36: He talked about a structural fix.

00:06:38: he calls the pod system.

00:06:39: That sounds like a big organizational shift.

00:06:41: It is.

00:06:42: He's saying break down the departments.

00:06:43: instead of marketing and sales you create these pods for a specific vertical or a geography.

00:06:49: You put a marketer, an AE, an SDR, and a revops person all in one mini-team.

00:06:54: So they're not just meeting once a quarter.

00:06:55: No, they're meeting by weekly.

00:06:57: The marketer isn't just in a void, they're translating engagement data into action for the SDR, right there in the meeting.

00:07:04: The AE shares stories from calls that help the marketer build better case studies.

00:07:08: It's a tight feedback loop.

00:07:09: And that feedback loop is so critical for content.

00:07:13: Dibjit Sen made a point that really stuck with me.

00:07:15: Content shouldn't be a marketing

00:07:17: guess.

00:07:17: Oh, absolutely.

00:07:18: If marketing is just sitting in a room trying to guess what to write, you've already lost.

00:07:24: Sen says content has to be built from what sales is hearing, what's slowing down deals.

00:07:28: Use patterns from close one deals to build your narrative.

00:07:31: Then

00:07:31: content stops being just a PDF you send out and starts being actual ammunition.

00:07:36: Right.

00:07:36: But for any of this to work, we have to stop lying to ourselves about the metrics.

00:07:41: Divina Bachetta had this reality check about the MQL, the marketing qualified lead that... It's stung a little to read.

00:07:48: I think

00:07:48: MQL trap.

00:07:49: It's hard to escape.

00:07:50: It is.

00:07:51: But she basically said, stop measuring MQL.

00:07:53: Sales ignores eighty percent of them anyway.

00:07:56: And she put a dollar amount on it.

00:07:57: That's what really makes it hit home.

00:07:59: She estimated that all that wasted time chasing bad leads costs about seventy two thousand dollars per rep per year.

00:08:05: Seventy two thousand dollars.

00:08:06: That's a person.

00:08:07: That's a salary.

00:08:08: Just gone.

00:08:10: Her advice is simple.

00:08:12: Switch to measuring sales accepted opportunities and win rates.

00:08:15: If sales won't accept it, it doesn't count.

00:08:18: It forces marketing to care about quality.

00:08:20: Okay, so we've got strategy maturity, we've got the people aligned, now for the fuel, the data.

00:08:26: This brings us to our third theme, segmentation, targeting, and intent evolution.

00:08:32: And this area is moving so fast, we are way past basic list now.

00:08:36: Felix Brandt actually proposed a new formula for an ICP, an ideal customer profile.

00:08:41: He says, ICP equals fit plus proximity.

00:08:45: I love that proximity.

00:08:46: We all get fit right industry, right revenue, but what is proximity?

00:08:49: Proximity

00:08:49: is visible interaction.

00:08:51: Are they commenting on posts?

00:08:52: Are they showing up in your ecosystem?

00:08:54: Brandt's point is that a perfect fit account that is totally cold is actually harder to close than a good fit account that's already familiar with you.

00:09:01: So don't just hunt for the perfect fit.

00:09:02: Prioritize where you already have some momentum.

00:09:04: Exactly.

00:09:05: And speaking of momentum, Trinity Guyan had a great piece on how intent data is evolving.

00:09:10: For years, we've relied on account level intent.

00:09:13: That's the classic.

00:09:14: someone from company X visited your website.

00:09:16: Right.

00:09:16: Which Nguyen says is now just too weak.

00:09:19: Yeah.

00:09:20: Knowing someone from IBM visited.

00:09:25: What does Rep do with that?

00:09:26: It's a waste of time.

00:09:27: So what's the next step?

00:09:29: Contact level signals.

00:09:30: The leap from company X visited to Shane, the CEO, visited the pricing page three times.

00:09:36: That's the home run.

00:09:37: You combine that with your first-party CRM data, and she calls it a signal command center.

00:09:42: That's a game changer.

00:09:43: But what about the other side of signals?

00:09:45: What happens when they just stop?

00:09:48: Mark Finnic had this fascinating psychological take on silence.

00:09:51: This is one of my favorite insights because it's so counterintuitive.

00:09:55: Sellers panic when a deal goes quiet.

00:09:57: They think it's over.

00:09:58: They start sending those just checking in emails.

00:10:00: Yeah,

00:10:01: silence feels like rejection.

00:10:02: But Phoenix says in big enterprise deals, silence often means internal decision making is happening.

00:10:07: It means your champion has passed it on to the people behind the scenes who hold the purse strings, the committee.

00:10:13: So silence isn't a stop sign.

00:10:14: It's a yield sign.

00:10:16: Exactly.

00:10:16: It's not time to panic.

00:10:18: It's time to realize the deal has leveled up.

00:10:20: You need to give them space to fight that internal battle.

00:10:22: That

00:10:23: is a very comforting thought.

00:10:25: Okay, back to the tactical side.

00:10:27: Steve Armenti says we need to stop stopping it just creating an account list.

00:10:31: Right, the static list is dead.

00:10:33: He's pushing the use of AI clustering to create micro audiences.

00:10:37: Instead of targeting healthcare companies, you use AI to find clusters based on why they might be buying.

00:10:43: Like healthcare companies that just hired a new CTO.

00:10:46: Or healthcare companies expanding into Europe.

00:10:48: It's about the context, not just the thermographics.

00:10:51: He claims it takes click-through rates from, like, point four percent up to five, or even ten percent, just by being more relevant.

00:10:59: But we have to be careful where we're applying that.

00:11:01: There were some interesting reality checks about LinkedIn specifically from Justin Rowe and Carl Newlin.

00:11:06: Yes,

00:11:07: a big warning for any leader who likes to cut marketing budgets to save a buck.

00:11:11: Rowe pointed out this delayed effect.

00:11:13: If you turn off your LinkedIn ads today... You won't see the impact immediately.

00:11:17: It hits you four to twelve weeks later.

00:11:19: Why

00:11:19: so long?

00:11:20: Because LinkedIn is the upstream brand building.

00:11:23: It's warming up the committee before they ever think to search for you.

00:11:26: You cut that off and eventually your Google search performance tanks because people just stop searching for your brand by name.

00:11:32: And Carl Newlin added a point about the algorithm itself that was a little terrifying.

00:11:37: It

00:11:37: is scary if you're relying on organic.

00:11:40: He said that the algorithm shows your posts to people who are like the people who engage with it.

00:11:45: So have a bunch of other marketers like my post.

00:11:47: It shows it to more marketers, not the CFOs on your actual target list.

00:11:52: You can't just assume your content is reaching the right two hundred people.

00:11:55: It's a huge echo chamber risk.

00:11:57: That's a massive blind spot.

00:11:58: It is.

00:11:59: It shows why you can't rely on organic alone for true ABM.

00:12:03: Okay, we have covered so much ground.

00:12:05: Strategy, alignment, beta.

00:12:07: Let's shift to our lightning round.

00:12:09: We pulled three super specific tactical plays that you could go do, like today.

00:12:14: Let's

00:12:14: do it.

00:12:14: All right.

00:12:14: Play number one is from Morgan J. Ingram.

00:12:17: He calls it the former customer play on sales navigator.

00:12:21: Classic, so effective, and people forget to do it.

00:12:23: The setup is so simple.

00:12:25: In SalesNav, you filter past company equals a company where you have happy customers.

00:12:31: Then filter current company equals one of your target accounts.

00:12:35: And this is the key filter for roll tenure less than one year.

00:12:39: That last bit is everything.

00:12:42: You're finding champions who already love your product, who just landed at a new company where they want to make an impact.

00:12:49: It is the easiest warm intro in the

00:12:51: world.

00:12:51: Play number two comes from Guillaume Jose and Hlib S. It's about using AI, but not for writing emails.

00:12:58: No, this is for research.

00:13:00: They're talking about using Claude specifically with a clay integration to replace manual prospecting.

00:13:04: You use it to map out org charts, find the exact right angle before you ever hit send.

00:13:08: So instead of a rep spending an hour on Google.

00:13:10: The AI does it.

00:13:11: It synthesizes the YSY Now logic for you.

00:13:13: It's automating the research, not just the writing.

00:13:16: And finally, play number three from Finn Thormeyer.

00:13:18: This is about executive thought leadership.

00:13:21: This one takes an internal buy-in, but the payoff is huge.

00:13:24: You interview your CEO or your CTO for one hour.

00:13:28: Record it.

00:13:29: Then you slice that up into a bunch of LinkedIn posts for their personal profiles, not the company page.

00:13:33: What's

00:13:34: the kicker?

00:13:34: You retarget anyone who engages with those executive posts.

00:13:38: You're leveraging the personal trust of the leader, then using paid ads to capture that high intent demand.

00:13:43: It just bypasses that corporate filter everyone has.

00:13:46: Simple, smart, high leverage.

00:13:47: I love

00:13:48: that.

00:13:48: It really just wraps up the whole theme of this deep dive, doesn't it?

00:13:51: It's not about more tools.

00:13:53: It's about using the assets you already have, your customers, your data, your leaders.

00:13:58: more intelligently.

00:13:59: Absolutely.

00:14:00: Well, that brings us to the end of this deep dive.

00:14:02: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:14:06: Also, check out our other editions on Field Marketing, Channel and Partner Marketing, AI and B to B, Martag, Goto Market and Social Selling.

00:14:14: And if I can leave you with one final thought, please stop treating ABM as a campaign.

00:14:19: It is not a campaign.

00:14:20: It's a business strategy.

00:14:22: Thanks

00:14:22: for listening.

00:14:23: Subscribe so you don't miss the next deep dive.