Recapping HubSpot User Group discussion on Inbound & Account Based Marketing, together

I presented and moderated what turned out to be a very vibrant discussion last night with the HubSpot User Group at HubSpot’s headquarters in Cambridge. 

I was told by Tony Paille, the spirited HUG leader, that it was the second biggest user group event of all time, only trailing a Q&A with Dharmesh Shah (who clearly deserves to be the bigger draw!)

It's always been about your integrated marketing mix. Audience getting thirsty looking at those mixed drinks. Photo Credit: Mark Goloboy; Back of Head Credit: Tony Paille (he of the ugly sweater)

As I was hit up several times with the inevitable question “can we get the slides?”, here they are below, as well as a link to an earlier post that formed a big chunk of the content: Stop debating Inbound vs. ABM and starting integrating your marketing (& that means with sales too).

Inbound Marketing & Account Based Marketing - HubSpot User Group from Bedrock Data, Inc.

Beyond the nitty gritty details of how to connect ABM & Inbound (which you can read about in the article above and/or the deck), here are my top four takeaways from the evening:

#1 – Inbound practitioners are on board with adopting a multi-channel, integrated marketing approach

It was interesting that in the course of the conversation, we had group members talk about their effective use of marketing channels such as events, direct mail and online advertising.

In the “early days of Inbound”, the narrative -- or at least how it was internalized by many -- was that Inbound required an exclusive commitment to prospects finding you, and not the other way around. Marketing channels such as these, were the enemy. 

It’s good to see that many Inbounders are now realizing the vision of Inbound as a centerpiece for a marketing program, but rounded out with marketing channels such as events, direct mail and advertising. The key is that you can still be helping people through these marketing channels - providing you are delivering the right message to the right audience. These marketing channels can amplify inbound and are not the enemy. 

The key point here is that don't define Inbound as a marketing channel (being 'discovered' through search), but rather an approach ('helping people'), and if you apply the approach of helping people to marketing channels such as events, direct mail or advertising - you can make those channels successful for you. 

One group member noted events are their top performing marketing channel (and we’ve also seen it as a key producer at Bedrock Data). I also took the group through the power of relevant, well targeted advertising and how it can serve to ignite inbound marketing as the intersection point between ABM & Inbound.

#2 – The lasting impact of Inbound, above and beyond any specific marketing strategy, will be the rallying together of like-minded professionals around a movement

This is a corollary of point #1 – with marketing channels blending and inbound not being defined as an exclusive marketing channel, but rather a mindset or a movement, it’s this movement and alignment between like-minded professionals that will be the lasting impact - centered around helping people through marketing.

There’s no other movement in marketing that can fill 17,000+ professionals at an event like Inbound did this past September. It's also what sets Inbound apart from other "movements", including account based marketing. 

#3 – There’s power in a vibrant user group meet up

The highlight of the experience for me was the awesome group discussion this topic prompted. Great questions – great answers coming from other group members. I didn’t see a single person on their phone (except live tweets), and in fact we ran overtime and everyone stayed, butts in seats.

One question came from the audience – “What’s your advice for getting started with ABM?”

So I asked back – “Do you have good alignment between sales and marketing?”

“Yes we do,” they said – one was the marketer, one was sales, I believe.

My next question: “Do you have a target account list identified?”

Got “Yes we do” to that as well.

I’m thinking – “OK that have the two most important boxes ticked.”

Mark Goloboy then jumped in with the advice, “The best thing to do then is just get started.”  Absolutely!  

#4 – Lots of curiosity out there about #NoForms

One of the hot topics of Q&A was input on #NoForms (speaking of movements, the hottest one around marketers).

One question was – does no forms really help you generate more leads? I summarized some of my findings at Bedrock Data of Five Ways Drift Helped Us Engage with More Web Visitors in the First Week, specifically:

Accelerating the typical back-and-forth with the “contact sales” leads and getting those engaged with sales immediately (and not running the risk of having competitors respond faster than you).

And

The web visitor who has questions and “wants to remain anonymously”, but getting them comfortable enough to share their information through a chat exchange – and often that these folks on your website, learning, because they have been directed there by a boss or colleague.

And once again it comes back to - helping people. 

For those who attended (or didn’t) – great spending the evening with you and let’s keep hanging out on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Online advertising is the newest oldest marketing investment to include in your mix (& now there’s proof)

When David Guerra at HG Data asked me to join their webinar earlier this week to talk about some of Bedrock Data’s success stories around targeted account digital marketing, I was happy to participate.

What I didn’t realize at the time – I was going to learn about some amazing research from my co-presenter, John Steinert, CMO of TechTarget.

I’ve been advocating for online advertising as a medium that should deliver payoff for most marketers – in this Inbound Marketing & ABM article, I characterized well targeted, on-message, relevant online advertising as the intersection point between Inbound & ABM.

Think about it this way – what’s so great about Inbound Marketing? It's that prospects discover you at a point when you can be of value to them, and then you create more, ongoing value for them through useful content.

But not everyone is going to find you. Well targeted online marketing helps you in two ways with your audience:

#1 - You may have some relevant content for your audience at that moment where they can take action (click through) or soon thereafter (view through). 

OR

#2 – You expand the awareness of your brand/company, so that over time your prospect is more likely to turn to your company as it develops the need for the types of problems you solve.

Number two can be extremely difficult to measure.

In some regard, you just need to have the conviction that delivering the right message to the right audience consistently is going to lead to positive results. For me, spending a decade with the top advertising agencies in the world at Omnicom Group has me pre-disposed with this conviction.

So back to the webinar: “Steiny” brought facts to the table to back this up.

TechTarget has just completed research-- which isn’t formally released but which is also covered here -- and the upshot is:

• TechTarget studied 111,000 planned IT projects, and 1,675 ad campaigns covering 700 million banner impressions
• For these planned IT projects, TechTarget found out from these companies which vendors were part of the consideration set for that project
• The analysis after aggregating this data showed that the companies consistently advertising had a +25% lift on being considered as vendors for these projects vs. non-advertisers. Those inconsistently advertising saw a +10% lift.

I wondered though about the chicken vs. egg question.

Were these companies being considered in more projects because they were more well known companies, and because they were more well known companies they had more marketing budget available to invest in online advertising?

Or, are the companies investing in online advertising getting considered for more projects because of the impact on awareness?

I asked John about this, and he said to correct for this "already well known" effective, the large brands that had been long-time advertisers were removed from the study. So most likely then the advertising investment was the "cause" and not the "effect" at play. 

So solid evidence to back the case for consistently running online advertising programs.

That said, doing online advertising right is difficult. Like most marketing mediums, it can get a bad rap based on mis-execution. If you are considering online advertising (or doing it but questioning your results so far), these are five things you  can do to best ensure success.

#1 – Target the right audience

Leverage account-based targeting to run advertising to the companies that matter to you. This is a great way to stretch your budget, and much rather have 25 ad impressions to 1,000 companies that matter to you, than 1 ad impression to a mixed bag of 25,000 companies.

#2 – Include context as part of your targeting strategy

The Google Display Network used to terrify me, because I often felt the context for my ads was going to be misaligned with the message -- and tracking Google Display Network results through to pipelines or deals usually disappointed. Now you can get much more granular with targeting and reporting on your ads by context, so choose the right context. Choose the topics that best align to both the problems you solve and the messaging for ads. That should continue to provide to be a winning recipe.

#3 – Build cross-channel marketing programs

Although I’m advocating for online advertising specifically here, it’s really as part of an integrated online mix. Your marketing programs should deliver a consistent message progressing through a storyline across multiple channels including online ads (multiple destinations), social media and email.

#4 – Look for successes and merchandise them

Look for successes – whether they are tracked through tracking a digital visitor through conversion, or looking at the pool of companies who are advertising to and connecting that to lead and opportunity data in your CRM. As you have successes, share those internally with marketing and sales teams to build confidence in the medium.

#5 – Be patient and skeptical at the same time

It will take time to see the full impact of online advertising, so you can’t expect immediate results. A three-month time window is the right time frame for a pilot. But at the same time be skeptical. If you are working with vendors or internal resources, work through the data to make sure it’s being executed correctly, and that you have good indicates that your targeting is hitting the mark-- click through rates vs. benchmarks, view through rates vs. benchmarks, reviewing the site URLs for fidelity to your plan. 

Want more insights like this on driving growth through integrated marketing?
Follow me on Twitter @MoneyballMktr

Stop debating Inbound vs. ABM and start integrating your marketing (& that means with sales too)

The loudest voice in the marketing stratosphere is usually the marketing software vendors. Unfortunately that means a lot of brain cells are often spent on solving a problem that isn’t the most important problem for you, the marketer, to solve.

To witness - the debate on Inbound Marketing vs. Account Based Marketing, or some variation thereof. The HubSpot team literally wrote the book on Inbound Marketing and since then has positioned outbound as the antagonist (or at the very least, a non-performer). This 23 Reasons Inbound Marketing Trumps Outbound Marketing lays out their position, originally published in October 2011.

Engagio has since come along with their Account Based Everything positioning, which is basically: it’s all about aligning around the customer, but it’s more than just marketing it’s about all departments and functions (hence, the “Everything”). The Engagio team, which is the best & brightest from Marketo, have not been shy about knocking Inbound Marketing towards the betterment of ABE or ABM.

You’ll see the phrase “Drunk on Inbound Marketing” suggesting Inbound Marketing is not effective or poorly applied and misused as part of the case for Engagio, in outlets such as Ray Carroll’s “why I joined Engagio” piece to Jon Miller’s talk at B2B MarketingProfs last year.

I have massive respect for Jon & Ray, so this is merely included as background example of the “us vs. them” that has creeped into the Inbound & ABM conversation at times, no knock on them.

I’m here to not only advocate for ABM + Inbound together, as an integrated marketing approach, but bringing five specific ways you can use ABM + Inbound together.

Let’s start by acknowledging that there is a ton of overlap in the fundamentals you need to get right to be successful with inbound marketing or account-based marketing. In both cases your foundation requires:

• A tight definition of target audience / persona

• An in-depth understanding of how customers’ buy

• High quality, relevant content

• Close alignment with sales

• Significant commitment, to drive sustainable growth

Let’s also debunk the myth that it’s either-or. Because even if the heyday of the Inbound movement, HubSpot still had outbound in their mix. I mean, c’mon, they cold called me on my cell phone in October 2014! Which led me to say this.

True story: @HubSpot tele rep interrupts me with call to my cell phone, I said this isn't #inboundmarketing is it? #hypocrites

— Zak Pines (@MoneyballMktr) October 17, 2014

I realize that's a little mean but scroll up and remember they built a business on "Outbound" being the bad guy. But it's still part of their marketing mix.

I'm a HUGE fan of HubSpot - both the company and the product - so my Tweet from 2014 was more a reaction to outbound tactic being in conflict with everything they were positioning at the time that inbound was the only marketing strategy. 

And if you still aren’t convinced that it's not Inbound or Outbound or ABM only -- it's Integrated -- just search “Outbound Sales Manager” “HubSpot” on LinkedIn.

Yes they had/have one. Good guy too. 

So now that we know that Inbound and ABM have a ton in common, and that they aren’t polar opposites never to be mixed, let’s get to it - 5 Ways to get Inbound & Account Based Marketing Working Together.

#1 - Use account-based insights to feed your content strategy

Any criticism of Inbound marketing is rooted in companies misapplying the strategy. If your content is aligned to issues your buyers care about and how you ultimately help them solve those problems, then the buyer interest generated from inbound marketing will be effective.

Companies should develop content that is aligned to target accounts - their problems, challenges and buying questions.

For larger companies, this means that the content team needs to work closely with the account based marketing owner and/or sales team. Interview customers and sales reps to gather this insight. If they are part of the input process for content strategy, then by definition the content produced will be more likely to be utilized with target accounts and in attracting attention from those accounts and similar accounts.

Don’t be this content team (cartoon credit to the great Marketoonist Tom Fishburne).

#2 - Deliver inbound insights to sales reps for target accounts

The simplest thing ever is a natural bridge from inbound to ABM. If you have target accounts engaging on your website, let your sales reps or SDRs who own those accounts know about it.

There have been tools to identify accounts on your website for over a decade - LeadLander was founded in 2004.

There’s a slight tweak though to make this something that will help sales: remove the noise.

However you choose to provide this intelligence to sales - and there are a slew of options from email alerts, to reports, to custom applications - don’t include “general interest” engagement. If a prospect is on your website reading an educational blog, categorize that differently (more of an FYI).

For the real good stuff for sales, identify web pages that align to some level of purchase intent - they are looking at topic XYZ, which probably means they are in the early stages of something brewing at the organization.

If you keep this insight focussed, it will maintain high credibility, and you’ll help motivate the sales team on how to engage in those accounts.

Plus, if the sales team has been proactively prospecting to the account, it will be both satisfying and motivating to them to know that something is going on “on the other side”. And they can tailor their next steps based on topics of interest expressed by the prospects.

#3 - Leverage ABM techniques for inbound follow-up

Taking this one step further, the tactics often associated with ABM (outreach via email, phone, direct mail, online advertising) can be coupled with the identification of accounts engaging on your website through an initial inbound touch.

For website visitors, you can identify the account of that visitor (even if they have been an ‘anonymous’ visitor), and then identify specific contacts aligned to your persona using skills or titles (and informed by the topics of content they viewed).

You can then orchestrate retargeting and outreach aligned to the initial content topics they have consumed.

If you are asking - what’s the difference between this and traditional “remarketing”? Remarketing is limited only to that specific individual and their cookied web browser. This technique would retarget the entire account, based on your ABM strategy of role-based content, and use multiple integrated marketing channels. Because when it comes to driving results - multi channel touches absolutely matter. The more your prospect sees you, the more of an impression, literally,  you will make.

#4 - Use ABM to “Ignite Inbound”

Another misnomer of inbound marketing is that it came with a “if you build it, they will come mantra”. Part of inbound marketing or content marketing is engaging with influencers and social media to promote and amplify your content.

I take that one step further to leverage target account advertising to drive engagement to your content.

I view entertaining and relevant advertising, linked to quality content as an extension of inbound marketing. It’s helpful to your buyer if it’s well targeted and contextual.  Here’s an example of a Bedrock Data targeted ad (companies with traditionally challenging marketing automation & CRM integration pairings) linking to an interview with a subject expert.

#5 - Sales Enablement for using inbound content in 1:1 account development

Tying it all together by going back to #1, if produced the right way, then the same content you produce for inbound (not all of it, but a sub-set, and individual elements) should be useful for your sales team. Enable sales people to use the content (which remember, they had input in the topics for relevance to prospect) so it can be used on a 1:1 basis for account targeting, people map expansion & opportunity development.

An example of this may be a customer interview snippet where a customer speaks to a specific approach they took to solve a problem, with universal insight. Maybe it’s a video clip, maybe it’s an audio clip, maybe it’s just a call out quote on a graphic. These kind of assets can be leveraged by salespeople in an account targeted approach, just as they are used to provide educational, not product specific content to fuel inbound marketing and SEO.

This is where you get immediate payback on Inbound Marketing.

Interested in this topic?

I recently spoke on this at an Engagio user group and will be discussing live at a HubSpot user group on November 28. Missed it? - Check out the recap here.

Let’s talk about these and other ideas, and how to incorporate both Inbound & ABM in your integrated marketing.

Register here to attend.

Ten Truths about Inbound Marketing vs. Account Based Marketing – What’s the Same, What’s Different and How Do They Work Together?

Update May 15 2017

The topic of this post comes front and center with news that The Inbound Marketing Company HubSpot is investing in Terminus, a key player in Account Based Marketing and the originators of the #FlipMyFunnel event series. With forthcoming product integrations, it also represents a marriage of sorts between #MarTech & #AdTech, top of mind for me following conversations at last week's MarTech Conference in San Francisco. 

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Inbound Marketing and Account Based Marketing are usually seen as opposite sides of the spectrum of B2B demand generation strategies – but in reality the two have much in common and complement each other well.

The best Inbound program benefits from Account Based Marketing (or similar targeted outbound strategies) to feed short-term demand until Inbound results are realized, while the best Account Based Marketing programs will leverage key principles of Inbound Marketing.

With that in mind, I present Ten Truths about Inbound Marketing vs. Account Based Marketing, to understand the differences, the overlap and how they can work together for scalable demand creation.

#1 - Once fully realized, an Inbound Marketing strategy should yield lower customer acquisition costs than Account Based Marketing…

The main business rationale behind an Inbound Marketing strategy is significantly reducing cost per lead and customer acquisition costs. Account Based Marketing on the other hand says that there is value in investing more resources and program $ to build more in depth and targeted programs that puts a premium on a very specific target audience.

#2 - …. So therefore Inbound Marketing is attractive for companies with a lower average order value.

For this reason, businesses whose economics demand low customer acquisition costs based on their AOV should strongly consider the merits of what an Inbound Marketing strategy can deliver. The threshold for this will depend on multiple factors including the company’s ability to invest $ and resources for a long term payoff; I’ve generally considered the thresholds for Inbound vs. Account Based marketing as the leading strategy to be somewhere between $10-20K average order value for licensed software or $1-2k/month recurring for SaaS software.

#3 - Account Based Marketing should yield higher conversion rates through each step of the marketing funnel.

Both account based marketing and inbound marketing make strong cases for their method to yield strong conversion rates through the marketing funnel (e.g. MQI to MQL, MQL to Opportunity, Opportunity to Win).

Account Based Marketing suggests that a highly targeted audience will yield high conversion rates because there is full alignment with sales that this account is one who has a strong fit for your product or service.

Meanwhile Inbound Marketing suggests that conversion rates will be strong because a prospect who comes to you will be already educated and more ready to accelerate through their buying process.  A counter-force on Inbound Marketing conversion rates however is that inbound marketing casts a wider net such that a lower percentage of leads will be in your true target profile. So for that reason conversion rates should be higher on the Account Based Marketing side.

#4 – The impact of Inbound Marketing is on a longer time horizon than Account Based Marketing.

Inbound Marketing is not the right strategy to drive short term results – if you are looking at driving results say within a 12-month time frame, temper expectations on Inbound and ensure there are other demand strategies to complement it while the Inbound tailwind can be built.

That said, Account Based Marketing isn’t an overnight fix -- as strategies, data, assets and programs need to be developed -- but in the category of expected timeframe for impact on Pipeline I’d rank Account Based Marketing a step ahead of Inbound.

#5 – Both Inbound Marketing and Account Based Marketing require a tight definition of target audience.

Now we get to some of the key attributes these two approaches share. A tight definition of target audience is critical to success for both.

In the case of Inbound Marketing, this is a market segment (usually defined by a set of people – roles, within certain types of companies) for whom there is an opportunity for the business to develop a stronger community within that segment with their brand as a central resource. Being crystal clear on that audience is a prerequisite to success.

And in the case of Account Based Marketing, working with Sales to define a set of target accounts for whom your product/service can offer significant value is a key input to build demand.

#6 – Both Inbound Marketing and Account Based Marketing require an in depth understanding of how customer’s buy – the customer buying process.

It’s more than just knowing who you want to target – and in the case of both of these a truly winning strategy will be differentiated by just how well you understand (and have aligned your go to market team) around how and why customers buy.

In the case of Inbound, these insights will inform what questions customers need to answer for every step through their buying process – starting with the awareness phase of just getting to understand their problems and then why it’s important to change. This content and the way it’s architected to nurture buyers through their buying process will be what creates scale and velocity for the Inbound program.

In the case of Account Based Marketing, understanding the buying process, the roles involved and how they interact – will be key for both breaking through the clutter and getting the attention of that company. And then once engaged, this will also be key for creating velocity through the buying process, by engaging the various roles to ensure they understand problems they are facing, how they are relevant to them and how to address most effectively.

#7 – High quality, relevant content is crucial to success for both Inbound Marketing and Account Based Marketing.

No matter how you cut it, high quality content will be required for both. In the case of Inbound, it’s the content that serves as the bait to attract your audience and move them through the buying process. The exact same principles apply to account based marketing – there is just typically more investment applied to attract the attention of that audience to initiate awareness vs. relying on them to find you when they are ready.

#8 – Both Inbound Marketing and Account Based Marketing require close alignment with Sales to be successful.

Another must-have for both.  Inbound Marketing is more than just generating that inbound lead – it’s every step through that buying process to ensure buyers are accelerated through their buying process. Alignment with sales is critical both around expectations for the time horizon for the impact of Inbound and how to most effectively engage Inbound leads.

In the case of Account Based Marketing, alignment on who to target and how to engage them is a fundamental – the premise is hyper-targeting will yield overall efficiencies and pay off what will be a higher cost per lead.  

#9 – Companies employing an Inbound strategy, should look to complement that with an Outbound strategy (that may or may not involve the extreme of account based marketing) to drive demand while Inbound impact develops.

Here’s the rub. For those companies employing an “Inbound First” strategy, there’s a time horizon, often more than a full year associated with seeing meaningful results – so ways to leverage their inbound content through outbound programs such as account based marketing or similar will be crucial to drive short term demand.

#10 – Companies employing an Account Based Marketing strategy should leverage “Inbound principles” for account based success.

And likewise Account Based Marketing success will require many of the same principles of Inbound Marketing –in fact much of the content one creates for an Inbound marketing strategy can be applied and leveraged for an account based marketing strategy – while it doesn’t “speak to the account” it will be effective in speaking directly to that role/persona through each stage of the buying process.

For more on the interplay between these two strategies, see my article “When Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough”.

When Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough

I caught up with John Marcus at Bedrock Data last week, talking about his business’ next step of moving from an nearly exclusively inbound demand model to one that will blend both inbound and outbound and also entail selling to more enterprise businesses with buying teams.

In kicking around ideas we came up with this list of key areas you need to get right in expanding from an inbound model, often 1:1 selling to a single buyer who has found you to solve an immediate need – to an approach requiring creation of new demand.

I’ll list them in reverse order of buying process.

#1 - Create role-based content for your Champion Buyer to enroll his buying team

This is truly the make-or-break juncture of the enterprise buying process – the difference between deals which move forward at an accelerated pace vs. those that flame out due to no decision.

A relentless understanding of the buyer journey includes what types of questions, issues and objections those in different roles will have for your buyer champion. Equipping your buyer champion with this content (e.g. videos, tools, FAQs) will serve two objectives: #1 it will differentiate you in the eyes of your champion vs. any competitors and #2 it will remove potential roadblocks proactively.

Interestingly I was part of a buying process around HubSpot that did not move forward, and found that although HubSpot has a hugely successful content creation machine, this type of role-based, buying process content was not one that they had yet developed -- likely due to being relatively new to enterprise selling at that point.

#2 - As part of the sales qualification process, work with customers to identify, articulate and align around critical business issues – and make these the centerpiece of the selling process

Enterprise buying gets messy – multiple personalities, multiple agendas. Centering around critical business issues from the start of the sales process gives the vendor a way to work with the Buying Champion to align that buying team around what matters. It also serves as a qualifier to ensure you’re in fact working the right deals.

Once you’ve established those critical business issues, these should become the ‘themes’ that drive all conversations and meetings to advance that deal to close.

#3 - Create content focused on moving prospects from the Status Quo to “We Have a Problem”

This is the often overlooked step in the buying process required to create new demand.

To demonstrate this consider two different customer story videos that could be used as part of a marketing program:

Video A: Prospect Says, “Company ___ was great because they helped us solve ___ problems and got us ___ results.” - pretty typical case study / customer story featured on a website. 

Video B: Prospect Says, “What’s amazing is we thought our ___ was fine, until we got a better understanding of ___ issue. Once we realized that ___ issue was actually having ___ impact, it became clear this was a real problem we had to solve quickly. And aren’t we glad we did…. (then could proceed with Video A).”

Video B addresses that crucial step needed to first empathize with and then move early stage prospects forward in their buying process… which is from a place where you may know you have an issue, but it’s not top of mind, and it’s not the most urgent thing you need to fix. Hearing that from a customer, how they moved from that point of malaise to having this become their most important thing, is where content will make a significant impact, and that's the key step to propel buyers forward.  Most businesses have a gap in this area.

#4 - Build and Brand Teleprospecting team as value-add experts to your prospects

The Tele function is vital to creating demand through outbound (as well as moving early stage inbound prospects forward). I’ve described this as applying Inbound marketing principles of helping your prospects to Teleprospecting – so that they play the role of providing the right content at the right time to move a prospect forward in their buying journey (in exactly the same way a good website does).

I’ve covered this in detail elsewhere including this CMO Essentials article, and this was TechTarget’s take when I took them through my program.

#5 - Drive and measure outbound programs across a range of marketing channels – with the goal of initial engagement

Once you have the Teleprospecting engine in place, it’s a matter of finding the right channels to reach your audience where you can get strong return. This includes many options and I'll highlight three below:

• Webinars – becoming more and more challenging but when done right can still be very effective (Hint: that’s the right content, for the right audience, through the right publisher and promoted in the right way – I covered ideas and best practices around this here).
• Content Syndication – need to be very careful here and make sure the economics are right. It’s easy to waste money here so you need to be sure you do it right. Also Integrate is a vendor particularly effective in helping customers get content syndication right.
• Direct Mail – Often overlooked but can be a great way to breakthrough the clutter today. Especially when you look at it as…  you are trying to create that initial engagement and then have your Teleprospecting/Nurture work from there. So the job of your direct mail program doesn’t need to be to sell your solution, just to engage on an initial piece of content (e.g. a “State of Industry” or “Industry Best Practices” report)

#6 - Build and drive influencer relationships

I put this into outbound because this is something that needs to be driven in a highly proactive matter to support demand generation growth. Influencer relationships, and having them link back to your blog/website or content is doing to be a key feeder to the above as well. In addition to traditional Analyst and PR relationships, here we are talking Bloggers and anyone in your customer’s target profile (e.g. peer group) with significant online social following.

This is far from easy but executing the above gets a business to a mature steady state of demand generation covering both inbound and outbound which will then further scale with greater investment over time.

Introducing Moneyball Marketing

In January 2010 I moved from LiveTechnology, a growth startup with funding from Omnicom Group that for nearly a decade gave me amazing access to the top integrated marketing talent in the world to Avitage, a B2B marketing specialist firm outside of Boston. The timing could not have been better. Over those next few months I became deeply engrained in a fast moving, rapidly evolving B2B marketing landscape that had three emerging concepts.

Inbound Marketing – HubSpot defined and took ownership of this concept, stating that the new age of marketing was one not led by outbound, disruption tactics, but fueled by a content driven web presence that attracted prospects. HubSpot became the technology of choice, particularly for small businesses aiming to drive top of the funnel lead generation through their websites.

Content Marketing – I started following Joe Pulizzi who espoused the virtues of content marketing. Some came to say “All marketing is content marketing” (to dismiss the notion of content marketing as a new insight), but the point regardless was that the value of thinking like a publisher and creating content to serve the needs of your audience was going to be a key driver for marketing success more than ever before. And I noted in this interview with Aberdeen Group, Content Marketing is essential to Inbound Marketing success and is in fact bigger in scope than Inbound Marketing as it fuels interactions with buyers at all stages including existing customers.

Revenue Marketing - The momentum of Revenue Marketing trailed a bit from the other two concepts, I seem to remember both Marketo and Eloqua stepping into that theme around early 2011. To me, Revenue Marketing meant that the marketer could now impact and measure all the way through to opportunity/pipeline and wins in connecting marketing investments and programs to business impact.

Interestingly, as I Google search these phrases today, we can see how they compare in terms of broad appeal:

• 117,000 results for Revenue Marketing
• 1,140,000 results for Inbound Marketing (10X Revenue Marketing)
• 5,570,000 results for Content Marketing (48X Revenue Marketing)

So the Revenue Marketers are a more concentrated bunch, you might say, while the other concepts have more a broader following. Which is interesting because it's Revenue Marketing that drives sustained growth, through a variety of strategies, of which one will be Content Marketing. So you can make the case that Revenue Marketing is a much broader concept than Content Marketing in spite of only having 1/50th the buzz.

Which gets us to, the compilation of all three of these -- Moneyball Marketing. Moneyball Marketing is Revenue Marketing with a focus on data-driven business growth. Moneyball makes the mainstream connection to say we will do to Marketing what Billy Beane did to Baseball.... an analytics driven approach to building success. 

Moneyball Marketing requires a systematic and programmatic approach to scaling revenue through a marketing-to-sales end to end process.

Within this space we’ll discuss how to drive Moneyball Marketing including areas such as the Closed Loop Marketing process and systems required to power this and all the aspects of Demand Generation required to maximize the impact including digital marketing, marketing programs such as webinars,  customer marketing, influencer marketing, teleprospecting and sales prospecting programs.

I’ll get us started in the next post by defining three key behaviors of the Moneyball Marketer.