Tag: DemandBase

Demandbase Takes ABM Leadership to the Next Level

The ABM Tech Stack published by the AMBLA identifies a broad set of technologies involved in implementing Account Based Marketing.
The ABM Tech Stack published by the AMBLA identifies a broad set of technologies involved in implementing Account Based Marketing.

For several years, Account Based Marketing (ABM) was discussed by Demandbase with little interest from other firms.  In the past twelve months or so, it has taken off and become a full blown marketing fad well into its hype cycle (time will tell whether it becomes a movement).  Now that other firms are discussing ABM, Demandbase has formed an ABM Leadership Alliance with Oracle and several other firms.

Account Based Marketing identifies a firm’s best prospects and then looks to deeply market and sell to those organizations.  As B2B purchasing decisions span multiple individuals and departments, targeting single decision makers is no longer sufficient.

“If you are only looking at an individual, you may only get a part of the picture; seeing the collective acting together helps you to truly understand how interested an account is in your solution,” said Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson.

Last month, SiriusDecisions released a “2016 State of Account-Based Marketing,” report which found that over seventy percent of B2B companies are looking at implementing ABM and have dedicated staff to ABM-specific programs.  The process is still relatively new with 58% of surveyed firms only in the pilot or test phase.  The percent of B2B marketing departments with full ABM programs in place grew from twenty percent in 2015 to 41% last year.

This year’s data shows ABM continues to gain rapid acceptance for B2B marketers.  What is most exciting is that marketers are rapidly building ABM skills so they can deliver on its promise. Marketing teams understand there are many ways ABM can deliver business impact and are reporting on a range of metrics focused on both demand creation and relationship improvement objectives. In the coming year we’ll see marketers continue to invest in ABM technologies to deliver on their goals.

  • Megan Heuer, VP of research at SiriusDecisions

The alliance is expanding ABM beyond Demandbase’s original programmatic marketing slogan to a broader concept spanning Engagement, Account Selection, Infrastructure, Measurement, and Sales Enablement (Sales Intelligence).

Sales Enablement is broken into three categories all supported by traditional sales intelligence platforms: Sales Intelligence, Account Insights, and Contact Development.  ABMLA has defined these terms a bit differently than I have.  By Sales Intelligence, they mean improved coordination between sales and marketing including target account intelligence gathered by marketing.  Account Insights focuses on buying signals to assist with outreach prioritization.  Contact Development focuses on deeper intelligence around decision-makers.

Missing from their model is ABSD (Account Based Sales Development) services that provide sales reps with pre-defined messaging and campaign cadences  which can be adjusted by sales reps.  ABSD firms provide what SalesLoft refers to as “sincerity at scale.”  Other firms in the ABSD category include QuotaFactory and KiteDesk.

“For ABM practitioners, being able to go beyond the account to the contact level is critically important to drive deeper relevance and specificity,” said Matt Senatore, research director at SiriusDecisions. “For those companies focused on lead generation within target accounts, technology that can help automate this is an important component that enables their ABM programs to scale more efficiently.”

The alliance noted that “B2B companies face a set of unique marketing challenges, which require specific technology to address. As you navigate the space, you’ll need to identify the technologies and vendors that have solutions built for the unique needs of B2B.”

The founding members of the alliance include

  • Demandbase – “Full Funnel ABM”
  • Oracle Marketing (Eloqua) – Marketing Automation
  • LookBookHQ – Content Marketing Automation
  • Get Smart Content – Content Personalization
  • Optimizely – Testing and Automation
  • Bizable – Attribution and Reporting
  • Radius – Predictive Analytics

At this point, the alliance does not have any Sales Enablement members which is understandable because Demandbase operates at the very top of the funnel targeting anonymous individuals at named companies.  However, several sales intelligence firms have already adopted ABM positioning including Avention, Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, and DataFox.

The alliance was announced on the opening day of Demandbase’s annual user conference.

Gartner Cool: Radius, Everstring, SalesLoft…

SalesLoft, DemandBase, Datanyze, and Leadspace made Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Tech Go-to-Market, 2016” list.  According to the report, “Marketing and sales enablement leaders should consider these software-as-a-service applications to complement existing CRM tool investments.”  Gartner also recognized predictive analytics firms Everstring and Radius in the data-driven marketing category.

Providers are doing a better job in responding to the changing B2B technology buying cycle and the higher expectation that buyers (both prospects and customers alike) have when they look to make a purchase. Some of this involves process and training improvement, improved messaging and positioning. But there is also a technology element, particularly as it relates to things like data, analytics, content, targeting, personalization and engagement.  And clients are increasingly leveraging the latest tools that allow them to make better, smarter decisions.

  • Gartner Research Director Todd Berkowitz

Here is what Berkowitz said was cool about the firms:

  • Datanyze – The technology tracking firm helps identify “when a particular piece of SaaS or mobile software (say from a competitor) is added and fire off alerts.” This feature helps SDRs and sales reps see “which companies are in market and engaging with them.”  Datanyze also offers a “cool” Chrome browser extension called Insider which displays firmographics and technographics from a company website, performs on demand email detection, and uploads this information to Salesforce.
  • Demandbase – The firm supports Account Based Marketing (ABM) marketing with IP-based advertising and personalization tools.  The firm delivers “a unique ‘one-two punch’ of real-time IP identification and technology that makes it possible to deliver company advertising (targeting and retargeting) and website personalization to help marketers increase awareness, drive up conversions, generate net-new and upsell/cross-sell leads from named accounts, and measure program effectiveness across the funnel.”
  • LeadSpace – The predictive analytics vendor helps customers “generate demand, enrich and prioritize accounts/leads from companies with a higher propensity to buy.”  Berkowitz also commended their “virtual data management platform that drives their models and recommendations.”
  • SalesLoft – The Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) firm assists sales development reps (SDRs) with lead qualification and prospecting.  “Their suite of templates, an integrated dialer and real-time analytics are a lot cooler for SDRs than the old way of working. And they work much better.”  Their Cadence tool helps streamline prospect communications such that “some of their customers reported more than doubling the number of successful connections, appointments, demos and sales-qualified leads (SQLs), while reducing follow-up time from leads by more than 75%.” Their new Sales Development Cloud provides prospect intelligence to SDRs from DiscoverOrg, Crystal, Owler, InsideView, Datanyze, RingLead, Sigstr, and ExecVision.
  • Everstring – A more recent entrant to the predictive analytics space (founded in July 2014), Everstring offers predictive demand generation and scoring models at both the lead and account level.  Everstring covers eleven million B2B companies and 20,000 different attributes with “rapid deployment of models across many points in the funnel.”  The firm is also a strong proponent of ABM and helps marketers identify accounts.  “EverString’s predictive account models enable marketers to identify high-potential ABM candidates and then push them to third-party ABM platforms for use,” said Berkman.
  • Radius – The predictive company was lauded for its segmentation tools which help SMBs “determine total available market, create attractive segments and identify accounts to target.”  Radius was also praised for its  “clean interface,” “data and analytics tools,” and the ability to train and validate models within one business day.  Berkman warned that Radius has faced little competition in the SMB market to date but is likely to face stiffer competition as both Radius and the market for predictive analytics solutions grow.

Berkowitz noted that these tools are all focused on making it easier for marketers and down-the line sales to make better decisions” noting that they all rely on the “heavy use” of data and analytics.

Radius provides easy to interpret segmentation, success analytics, and net-new lead prospect acquisition tools from within SFDC.
Radius provides easy to interpret segmentation, success analytics, and net-new prospect acquisition tools from within SFDC.

While many of these firms provide predictive analytics, Berkman contends that vendors will soon be offering “prescriptive analytics” that help firms decide what should be done.  Thus, analytics will shift from predictions based upon historical analysis to recommendations concerning which actions to take.  Prescriptive analytics utilizes graph analysis, simulation, complex event processing, neural networks, recommendation engines, heuristics, and machine learning.

“We have seen it [prescriptive] used a little bit on the sales analytics side already,” said Berkman. “It is likely that we will get to that stage with marketing so the marketer will know not only who is most likely to buy and what they will buy.”

For marketing, prescriptive analytics will assist with prospect identification, optimizing customer communications, and improving prospect offers.

Another trend you will find amongst the cool vendors is the heavy citation of ABM and ABSD tools amongst these vendors.  Everstring, SalesLoft, and DemandBase are all strong proponents of ABM while Leadspace recently partnered with ABM vendor Engagio.

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

The task of software product developers has become increasingly difficult.  It used to be that marketing could “put lipstick on a pig” and sell a poorly designed product based upon futures, a few cool features, and a high ROI claim.  But increasing competition and higher user expectations make dressing up a weak product more difficult for several reasons:

  1. Buyers do much of their research upfront, so marketers and sales no longer control the narrative.  Purchasers are now able to frame their requirements and conduct much of their basic research before raising their hands.
  2. Review sites such as G2.com (FKA G2 Crowd), TrustRadius, and PeerSpot provide input on what users like and dislike about software products.  If there is a disconnect between promises and reality, these problems will be surfaced.  If there are connectivity, performance, or scaling issues, these will also be flagged. (Warning: be wary of reviews that are manufactured by vendor campaigns.  Look at the review dates and note if reviews are tightly bunched in time or if a small vendor has several-fold more reviews than its larger competitors.  These reviews are often derived by campaigns, some with rewards, for reviews.)
  3. We’ve all come to appreciate great design thanks to Steve Jobs and Apple.  Most of us are not experts in what makes for great design, but we are much better at identifying poor design, balky workflows, and ugly interfaces.
  4. Services must integrate with each other.  It is no longer possible to build a product that only weakly integrates with key vendors.  Simply providing a download CSV for enterprise software platforms is unacceptable to admins.  The AppExchange has thousands of vendors on it.  In SalesTech and Martech, it is expected that your service integrates with Salesforce, MS Dynamics, Adobe/Marketo, and Eloqua/Oracle.  Other common integrations are Chrome Connectors, Hubspot, Gmail, Exchange, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (SNAP).  We are already seeing Sales Engagement vendors such as SalesLoft and Outreach.io build their own partner ecosystems.
  5. Competition is fierce.  In the Marketing Technology space, Scott Brinker identified approximately 3,500 Martech vendors in his 2016 graphic, up 87% over 2015.  By 2019, the vendor count had doubled to 7,040. That is a large gaggle of voices calling for attention.
"Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2016)" courtesy of Scott Brinker and Chiefmartec.
“Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2016)” courtesy of Scott Brinker and Chiefmartec.

Products rarely succeed if they are backed by poor marketing.  But is increasingly difficult for poor products to gain traction by marketing alone.  Firms now must tie strong marketing to strong design and an unmet user need.  A company like SalesLoft identified an underserved market (Sales Development professionals) and gave them “sincerity at scale.”  Likewise, DemandBase was talking about Account Based Marketing for years (and supporting it with their programmatic marketing platform) before other vendors recognized the value of targeting your best clients and prospects.

In a blog, Gartner Research VP Jake Sorofman warned marketers:

When your value proposition, use cases and features are all in perfect harmony with a high-value need, customers take notice. You’ve won their minds. When the user experience doesn’t just fulfill these use cases, but does so with artful simplicity and deep respect for the user, you’ve won their hearts, too.

When I’m evaluating which products to profile, a poor UI is a red flag.  I’m also wary of profiling products that lack an integration story, have typos on their website, push marketing puffery into bald-faced lies, or whose pitches suffer from featuritis.

So be wary of the firms that sell features over value, that promise ROI with gauzy claims of indirect benefits, or that fail to understand the underlying needs of their customers.  A pig with lipstick is still just a pig.