T2d3

The T2D3 acronym stands for tripling your ARR for two consecutive years (T2) and then doubling it consecutively for three (D3). (Location 156)

After getting to PMF, the next goal for a SaaS venture should be to get to $100 million ARR. (Location 197)

I still believe that the best long-term marketing foundation is relevance, great content and product-market fit. Ideally, we should make people find us, instead of us having to try to find them. The reality however, for most early-stage companies who do something truly innovative, is that those efforts may not be enough. (Location 245)

Driving “brand awareness” for early-stage companies typically means you need to go do some outbound marketing, including the potential creation of noise that is not relevant for everyone. (Location 248)

I loved using spreadsheets for a lot of my leadership and management work. I fell into the trap of creating a lot of great marketing plans using 12-month or 24-month outlooks with theoretical conversion rate assumptions, working my way back from target revenue numbers to assumed lead volume and sales funnel projections. I often spent too much time doing this vs. focusing on short-term execution. Doing A/B testing, interviewing customers and finding out what they really valued in our products should be a higher priority. Understanding how they made their buying decisions, and what parts of our funnel had the most friction or leakage. Only in the last 10 years did I start focusing on these short-term priorities and get extremely focused on Objectives and Key Results (OKR[14]) (Location 251)

If you engage on long-tail channels like Reddit or Quora, you can find the innovators in your niche, vs. just trying to get as many followers or likes as possible. (Location 291)

For software startups, the best recipe to scale is to go through the successive steps of getting to MVP, then to PMF followed by T2D3. (Location 331)

The journey for B2B SaaS companies resembles a baseball diamond. (Location 332)

While the statistical accuracy of the data is limited, the goals at each stage consistently apply: (Location 343)

Can it achieve sustainable, scalable ARR growth with SaaS T2D3 flywheel momentum? After that, how do you take your company global, optimize your cost to service customers after scaling fast and diversify your go-to-market with, for example, a channel model? (Location 353)

While a $10 million SaaS company needs to be growing by more than 55 percent to be in the same top quartile. Even companies up to $10 million in ARR need to be growing by at least 20 percent annually to avoid falling to the bottom quartile. Consider this your benchmark when signing up to get a B2B SaaS company to scale. (Location 362)

2.3  Category creation (Location 369)

What is your company maturity versus product-market fit, compared to the maturity of the category you are in? (Location 385)

Building brand awareness will be more expensive when you create a market, given the cost of educating the market. (Location 392)

T2D3: Are the number of users per account growing? Are users referring others, possibly benefiting from a referral program you have rolled out? Is user churn after initial usage going down? A great metric is “engaged advocates,” users who use your product, like using it, and tell others about it. 100M: To get to Unicorn status, your initial group of 1,000 raving fans must multiply. Are user communities forming where they support each other? Have independent user groups and events been organized? Are books being published by 3rd parties to cover your solution with educational content? Are you being named by analyst firms as a leader or category innovator? (Location 423)

2.3.3   SaaS category maturity If your category, or market, is still to the left of the chasm, chances are that you must help “make the market.” If the chasm has been bridged, and your audience is educated on their needs, actively seeking solutions like yours, you are entering an established market. You now must carve out your niche to be special. The following questions can help you understand how mature your market is. (Location 440)

Startups who “build it” and hope their customers will come rarely realize they must make the market themselves through targeted outbound marketing (or account-based marketing for most B2B solutions) to drive awareness of a need. You will need to get attention from niche media that your audience trusts and can help educate the market. If your solution is truly remarkable (meaning, people who benefit from what you do are making unprompted remarks about it), you can use inbound marketing and count on word-of-mouth to spread your story. (Location 469)

While pay-to-play providers of leads (like Capterra and Software Advice) are dominating SEO and SEM, you can still earn long-tail keyword searches (Location 482)

After that, the attention needs to shift to funnel growth, content leadership, SEO improvements, and product marketing. (Location 507)

Marketing is about influencing behavior. Great marketing drives someone to learn, understand, believe, or do something new. Marketing professionals do this through the commonly used funnel stages—awareness, consideration, engagement, and conversion. Your marketing efforts need to answer the audience questions: (Location 526)

Marketing is the new Sales. Sales is the new Service. Service is the new PR. PR is the new Marketing. (Location 547)

3.2  The funnel and the flywheel (Location 570)

These are the additional stages that complete the flywheel: Retention: Now that the customer is paying, it is all about holding on to them—and perhaps encouraging additional purchases or higher tiered services. Advocacy: Existing customers refer new customers and drive your ability to create (user generated) content that drives more leads. (Location 588)

3.3  Measuring impact (Location 599)

3.3.1   Acquisition Qualified Lead Velocity rate (monthly growth of MQLs). Lead Quality (I like to use win rate percent * ACV). Discretionary Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). CAC recovery time (typically in months). We can measure lead quality multiple ways. I like to use win rate (MQLs converting to paying customers multiplied by the ACV of these conversions). (Location 602)

To convince your audience to act, you must connect with either their fears or their dreams. What are their pain points? What do they worry about? What keeps them up at night? What would they like to do and what stands in their way of achieving that? (Location 1646)

Persona 2: The decision maker (Location 1695)

Another extreme time drain is debating definitions of stages of the funnel and arriving at an agreement on what should be discussed in the first place. Get your definitions straight at the beginning so everyone is singing from the same song sheet. I will discuss some examples here. Let us start with the contact lifecycle stages that define your funnel. (Location 2497)

Note: Speed of follow-up when leads become MQLs is one of the most critical parts of the funnel. These days, prospects expect near-instant gratification, and they usually shop with multiple potential vendors. Minutes matter. When your follow up is delayed, it gives your competitor a chance to get that follow-up call scheduled before you, and you risk that the prospect will only want to continue the process with one party—the fastest. (Location 2526)

This area focuses on the status of sales and marketing right now, this week. Status should cover everything that is driving the business. It is the finger on your marketing pulse that allows you to keep your marketing ship on course. For example, what is the state of the marketing funnel? What is stuck and what can you do about it? Are there parts of the funnel where a certain channel is not performing anymore? Is there a leak somewhere and conversion in that stage of the funnel has dropped significantly? (Location 2611)

Your status dashboard is all about fixing the clogs in your funnel happening at this moment in time. Examples to put on yours are: Conversion rates by channel Time that leads, MQLs, SQLs or opportunities have been in a certain state New visitors, subscribers, and leads coming in Cost/per KPIs for various marketing tactics (Location 2618)

I like to track things on a weekly basis as a week provides enough time to have meaningful change and it is fast enough to act when necessary. Monthly is less meaningful for your status dashboard, as you will be relatively late to respond, and the different length in months makes it harder to compare your data vs. historic trends quickly. (Location 2625)

Example status KPIs, updated weekly: New leads generated per campaign Current number of leads per funnel stage Lead status by owner (marketing, SDR, sales) Pipeline value per stage Key opportunities to close Sales pipeline by sales rep Forecast for current month and quarter (Location 2628)

I have found it helpful to have a spreadsheet version with weekly numbers in the early lifecycle of the marketing and sales team. Focusing on entering and validating the numbers manually on a weekly basis helps your team dial in the definition, understand the metric, and confirm accuracy of the data before automation. (Location 2636)

For strategic meetings, you need information about trends and an ability to benchmark the alternative methods you use to drive your marketing and sales tactics. Ideally, you combine both outcomes and the cost of achieving those outcomes in one view, like the following example comparing MQL volume with the cost of getting those MQLs. (Location 2653)

In addition to a time series, it is important to drill into the underlying drivers of either the cost or the results. For example, the following graph that shows the lead sources that have driven MQLs. (Location 2656)

This would not be the dashboard that you used to run your weekly sales meeting. It does not tell you much about what is happening with your funnel right now. But it does tell you a lot about where you are trending, what is working, what is not. You can ask a lot of questions about the numbers on this dashboard, which is helpful to do monthly. (Location 2661)

Example strategy KPIs: Lead velocity rate (leads vs. previous month) Expected revenue by marketing channel Top campaign performance tracker Reasons for unqualified leads Cost per MQL/acquisition per channel Months to recover CAC Churn per acquisition channel ARPU expansion from nurture campaigns (Location 2681)

Lead velocity rate (leads vs. previous month) Expected revenue by marketing channel Top campaign performance tracker Reasons for unqualified leads Cost per MQL/acquisition per channel Months to recover CAC Churn per acquisition channel ARPU expansion from nurture campaigns (Location 2682)

Finally, here is an overview slide of both your marketing and sales outcomes, vs. the cost of those outcomes. (Location 2689)

So, what do you measure while the team is working toward these lagging indicators of success? I liken this to when someone wants to get healthy and measures their weight, or maybe cholesterol levels as a desired outcome KPI. It does not really help to stand on the scale every day. A better ongoing KPI to drive progress is the number of steps you take in a day, or weekly calorie intake. (Location 2697)

Your team should know what you expect from them. These more activity based KPIs like personalized emails sent, discovery calls made, and demos delivered are great weekly drivers for the monthly and quarterly goals associated with them. (Location 2700)

Example marketing outcomes to define success for the role: (Location 2779)

Improve organic search marketing to drive 50+ percent of leads generated (vs. paid). (Location 2794)

Personal leadership & culture (Location 2806)

Marketing management (Location 2817)

Create quarterly objectives and OKRs, supported by a budget that allows the team to its goals. (Location 2820)

Manage discretionary spend (i.e., paid search, events) to maximize lifetime value to customer acquisition ratios (LTV/CAC). (Location 2822)

Content marketing is the most undervalued, over-hyped, misunderstood, and over-complicated part of modern marketing, and this question should yield at least an interesting perspective. (Location 2857)

Digital marketing You have demonstrable experiences making marketing decisions based on data (Cost per MQL, OKRs based on funnel projections, efforts based on chance). You can summarize data and show you understand which metrics affect conversion and a healthy pipeline. You can report on data to make investment decisions. (Location 2895)

Funnel friction is your enemy. You are constantly finding ways to make it easier for prospects and buyers to move ahead in the funnel to make decisions, provide you with information that allows you to better support them and drive conversions. (Location 2926)

Driving ROI by achieving the right outcomes at the right cost, balancing long- and short-term growth priorities. Managing the day-to-day marketing function, with all its complex moving pieces. (Location 2948)

I think you need to provide some form of reporting at the same cadences, and of course management tools like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or something similar. A weekly report can be a simple email to your leadership team with key developments, insights, and challenges. (Location 2954)

While we need a marketing and sales plan that supports the revenue goals, it will be mostly based on broad assumptions regarding funnel growth, ACV, CAC, and conversion dynamics. Big-ticket items like entering a new market or a product launch can add specific budget or resource trade-offs. The core of marketing planning, however, is done at the quarterly cadence, as marketing just changes too fast for it to yield to a static annual plan. (Location 2958)

I like to provide performance feedback, however, at least quarterly, and sometimes more often. While OKRs are not meant to be used for performance reviews, they are a great tool to discuss opportunities for development, align focus of talent and make resource changes to the team as needed. (Location 2962)

I have always believed that the CMO needs to spend at least 10 percent of their time devising ways to let the SaaS product drive growth through the user experience, user nurturing, product usage scenarios and of course turning all the captured data into value. (Location 2968)

By using your OKRs, you set quarterly priorities. I like to do this in a day-long marketing strategy meeting, where we spend about half the day learning and reflecting on the past quarter, and the other half planning, and locking in our new OKRs. I believe a set of great OKRs answers the questions: “What are you going to do?” “Why are you going to do those things?” “How will you know if it was successful?” (Location 2970)

In the following OKR example, the objective is to drive demand for your products and services. Now, there are many ways to do that. One key result would be growing the sales funnel by a certain number of net new qualified leads in HubSpot. (Location 2979)

Another key result worth achieving would be to drive a certain number of new marketing-qualified leads to the sales team. Tactics might include the execution of campaigns to specific vertical markets that have clear ICPs. (Location 2981)

Objective 1: Drive demand for our products and services KR A: Grow sales funnel with XX net new qualified deals in HubSpot Increase conversions of MQLs to deals through A/B testing   KR B: Drive YY new marketing qualified leads to sales Execute ABM campaigns to 2 two specific verticals with clear ICPs Improve channel attribution to drive optimization & agency accountability (Location 2986)

Once a month I like to hold a meeting of about half a day to review progress against OKRs and manage discretionary spend (i.e., paid search, events). It allows for in-flight optimizations to reach our goals and to maximize LTV/CAC ratios. (Location 2997)

believe the weekly cadence is the most important of them all. Laser focus on tactical execution and short term KPIs is the only thing that can lead to marketing success. Focus on lead generation, funnel friction, hand-offs to sales, content optimization, vendor management and focus on completion of projects every week. (Location 3001)

In my weekly 1-1s with team members, I like to check-in on any blockers, and what they are learning. I want to make sure they are always leveling up. Of course, the OKRs are part of the 1-1 conversation at least monthly. (Location 3007)

To keep everyone in sync on urgent activities, emergencies or just to share interesting insights and events, I like to have my team meet daily in a virtual standup. You do not even need to do this all at the same time, just be sure if it happens relatively early in the day. We like to use Slack or an equivalent team messaging platform and ask all team members to post their daily top priorities, and any insights, blockers, or anything else that is worth sharing with the rest of the team. (Location 3011)

Here is my simplified recap of how a leader can support team members in the 4 different levels of competence and confidence. (Location 3027)

At least weekly, dive into both the macro metrics (leads, channel performance, cost per KPIs) and detailed leading micro metrics (like search rankings, visitors, email open rates, etc.) (Location 3035)

Weekly activities for a SaaS marketing leader This is how all the above typically ends up filling my weekly calendar when I run marketing for a small software venture: (Location 3036)

Your marketing investments also must account for limited available inventory of paid search clicks, advertising real estate, prospect attention span and ultimately the number of customers who need what you have. So, to get a more realistic understanding of our potential growth path, and the required investments, we need to apply a so-called logistic growth model. The logistic growth model of your company pertains to the growth per invested capital unit, which gets smaller and smaller as demand generation channels approach a maximum imposed by the limits of your target market. This is also known as the carrying capacity (Location 3098)

Therefore, a typical startup budget spends at least 20 percent of revenue on marketing efforts, and maybe more. (Location 3169)

How to calculate your marketing budget? (Location 3175)

5.15.1    Inspect your funnel The first steps to improve demand generation are all about funnel quality. Walk your way back with the end in mind. Find the areas where your funnel is leaking or clogged before you pour in more fuel, aka content. Here is a quick checklist: (Location 3268)

Here are some types of content to use for nurture campaigns: (Location 3333)

Customer nurture The second most important campaign is marketing to your existing customer base, including a referral program. Make it easy for existing customers to share their excitement with their friends, family, and peers. (Location 3354)

Throughout the customer journey, there are a few logical moments to provide (or ask) for information. Here are some major events or triggers to drive above campaigns: (Location 3374)

Getting one of these demand generation formulas working can get you to PMF. To scale, you will have to diversify your demand generation. In parallel, you also need to optimize the conversion rates in your funnel and focus on customer retention. (Location 3409)

Doing all these things at the same time, diversifying demand gen, optimizing conversion, getting churn under control, and driving ARPU up, form the foundation of driving exponential revenue growth. (Location 3413)

6.1  The T2D3 formula Per this book’s title, the expected growth is often expressed as T2D3—triple your annual recurring revenue two years in a row, then double it three more years in a row. T2D3 is a good guideline to follow when you have got to drive exponential growth. What is the best and fastest way to do this? To multiply ARR multiple years in a row (T2D3), I have found that you need to do three things at the same time: Scale your demand generation Keep the customers you have Increase your revenue per customer (Location 3417)

The product needs to be improved to help support retention and upsell. The sales team needs to sell in ways that drive high retention and provide high-quality feedback to marketing to improve lead quality. (Location 3427)

To really accelerate growth, you will have to develop new channels of prospecting. It is time to place some new bets. (Location 3441)

Here are a couple more examples: Expand SEO with a targeted video search optimization effort. Expand search engine marketing with other pay-per-click or pay-per lead (PPC/PPL) channels like Capterra, Software Advice or G2. (Location 3444)

When you are offered to buy a list of prospects (or better... suspects) the examples may look too good to be true—and usually, they are. But sometimes, they are not. So, what do we do? We will typically: (Location 3457)

Funnel speed Finally, make sure you understand your Lead Velocity Rate (LVR). LVR[39] is an important metric as you grow your demand generation. It combines absolute growth in volume of leads, and the speed of this growth. The best SaaS companies grow their LVR faster than their target ARR growth rate. (Location 3482)

The reality is that those people will work harder, and you will get more talented resources, if you inspect what you expect, through good KPIs, regular reporting and reviews, and setting clear expectations. (Location 3490)

Weekly reporting has worked well for me to keep things on track. If a vendor convinces you that it is hard for them to measure impact on the bottom line at that interval, challenge them to come up with solid leading indicators that help measure progress. (Location 3492)

In the below graph, you can see the number of months it takes to recover the initial CAC through customer revenue. As B2B SaaS companies grow, we usually see that this metric, usually called “months to recover CAC,” (Location 3499)

Here are ways to better manage your customer acquisition costs: Channel optimization across search engine marketing, content marketing, social media outreach, events, influencer campaigns, and email marketing. Conversion optimization. Make every lead count. Consider affiliate marketing programs. Create leverage with your leads. Create a referral program. Allow your customers to refer others, especially right after they are excited about what they just bought. (Location 3503)

Managing sales meetings Whether you meet with your sales team every week, twice a week, or every other week, it helps to have them answer four simple questions the night before they attend. This will drive some CRM discipline and will help the meeting be focused and time efficient. Email them and ask: (Location 3514)

What genuine progress has been made since the last meeting? (Location 3517)

What new leads have entered the pipeline since last meeting? (Location 3520)

What opportunity in your pipeline is most likely to close and why? (Location 3525)

Is there anybody who could help you with this? (Location 3530)

To be honest, your salespeople may balk at this and push back. Should this happen, say, “If you spend 10 minutes writing your answers the night before, we will save five minutes per person in the meeting.” (Location 3533)

Sales meeting cadence and calendar A status meeting would have more of a weekly cadence, while a strategic planning gathering is more of a quarterly activity. (Location 3536)

The following list of special topics span a 13-week quarter and repeats four times a year. (Location 3543)

Special topics by week and frequency (Location 3545)

Analyze funnel health (shape, speed, friction) (Location 3552)

This example is geared toward weekly meetings. But your meetings should be aligned with using OKRs (Location 3561)

What is good about a quarterly agenda like this is that if you know what each meeting’s going to cover. You do not have to (Location 3563)

ingredient to the whole recipe. It is fine to have your weekly pipeline cadence and drive purely for revenue outcomes. But it is also important to have a clear understanding across the team of your objectives. What are you trying to do? Here is an example of what a personal objective might be and the results on which to measure progress. (Location 3568)

As to how to think about quarterly planning, I love the systems that are based on the Rockefeller habits (see the book by Verne Harnish), whether it is traction, scaling up or, in my example, OKRs. Use them to frame your weekly cadence and measurement of funnel performance against those for the quarter. (Location 3577)

One other aspect of managing a B2B SaaS sales team is that you need to get the giving of discounts and agreeing to special terms under control fast. Given the long-term impact of the wrong discounts (say, for example discounting the subscription revenue vs. a one-time onboarding fee), it is paramount to have clear rules as to who can approve what type of terms to close a deal. (Location 3580)

Here are a couple more specific questions that can help you dig a bit deeper, beyond the “aging” BANT method: (Location 3592)

ABM basically is the new term that combines enterprise marketing—focused on larger accounts with complex B2B buyer’s journeys—with outbound outreach and nurture campaign tactics that use modern digital marketing technologies. ABM concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts within a market and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with the individuals within each account. With ABM, your marketing message, channel, and timing are based on the specific attributes and needs of the people and accounts you are targeting, hence the name account-based marketing. (Location 3702)

When founders, CEOs and board members tell me they need to drive brand awareness for their great solution (“if only people would know about us and find us it is easy to get them to sign-up and pay”), I usually discuss ABM as an alternative with them. Driving broad brand awareness is costly, and unlikely to bring success. ABM is targeted and can help you test, confirm, and execute your ICP, value proposition and messaging and go-to-market approach. (Location 3713)

While the inbound approach is cheaper to scale, and leads to higher conversion rates faster (since prospects have already found you and swam into your net), the outbound approach, when done well, will yield better fitting customers who will likely pay you more over time, and stay longer. (Location 3719)

The challenge with inbound marketing is that it expects your audience to do the work. They must become aware of a challenge they face and turn this into a need that drives them to start an inquiry. Short of someone reaching them through word-of-mouth marketing, you are relying on your audience to type something into a search engine to find you, either through paid ads, organic search results or the social equivalent of those. Content marketing focused on education, awareness and thought… (Location 3722)

It means that the awareness of a need must be discovered by your audience. Especially when you are creating a new category, or have a new approach to an existing need, this may depend on you doing some form of awareness building. Companies who realize the above conundrum, and decide to attempt to reach the audience, sometimes fall in the trap of doing traditional outbound marketing, where they try to turn the sales pitch into an email campaign or do cold calls trying to convince the audience of their superpowers. This… (Location 3729)

The solution is to meet your audience where they are in their journey. As you realize they still need to become “problem aware,” your content must be extremely… (Location 3735)

Be willing to play the long game ABM is about marketing, not about sales. Hence, it is called account-based marketing. The people you reach are, by definition, not ready to buy. As they become problem aware, they might allow you to keep nurturing them and educate them. That is really all you can hope for as a first step. As you cultivate your digital relationship with them through high-quality nurture, you can influence how important the need you solve for is, and you will be top of mind when they are ready to consider their options to solve for that need.… (Location 3740)

Why ABM often fails Many companies fail at their ABM efforts because they are impatient or are not prepared. Impatient because they give up early or want to immediately go into sales mode when the prospect is not ready to buy. Not prepared because the company does not have the necessary nurturing materials… (Location 3748)

When you show up in someone’s inbox, on someone’s phone or LinkedIn account, you are an unexpected guest. To maximize your chances of being “accepted” you must be extremely targeted in your… (Location 3751)

ABM lets you nurture the key sponsors in the journey with content that they can use to convince others. (Location 3757)

Another reason ABM can fail is that the solution you are trying to sell, and the positioning and messaging, are all too complex to understand. If companies cannot articulate their benefits and value propositions, outbound efforts may work as desired, but in-person conversations fail to demonstrate how, what, and why the prospects would gain anything from the proposed solution. (Location 3764)

Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns have a much greater chance for success by adopting a solid ground game than by throwing a Hail Mary pass. Account-based marketing targets high-value companies to convert them into customers. Key to this effort is defining your ICP—those prospects with all the qualities that make them the best fit for the solution you provide. Criteria may include geography, revenues, size, tech platforms, and, most importantly, a felt need for the product or service you offer. (Location 3771)

The reality is that this usually takes more than one calendar quarter, usually at least two and, often, three quarters. Most CEOs and sales- and marketing leaders make the mistake of expecting results in the first few months and abandoning the ABM approach too early. (Location 3775)

Tags: orange

Similarly, an effective ABM campaign relies on a consistent “outbound and pound” campaign, such as a multi-touch email effort. The first few emails may not result in many clicks. But, by pounding away with intriguing and compelling messages, there will come a time when more and more prospects respond, leading to conversations, sales presentations, and marketing qualified leads. (Location 3780)

Early “plays” may be introductions and relating to recipients’ pain points. Later emails may show concrete benefits, provide client testimonials, or offer a product demo. Any one of these plays may be the one that breaks down a recipient’s defense and produces a big gain. (Location 3787)

Tags: orange

In ABM, sales and marketing must also work in concert. Social media ads must recognize the prospects’ pain points; emails need to show recipients how your solution provides a tangible gain; calls to action need to move the prospect one step closer to a sale by asking for a meeting, consultation, or conversation, or by offering a guide, linking to a landing page, or offering a product demo. Be ready for the door to open Remember: ABM is not sales. Your prospects are suspects at best. They are not ready for a sales pitch. By definition. At first, ABM is at first a tool to drive awareness. After you get people’s attention, you can nurture them to consider you. Do not make the mistake of selling on your second email or touch point. Cultivate the digital relationship. Consider relying on the earlier framework shared in 5.7, using the pain to wow your suspects (drive awareness) and after that share your claims, in a way that communicates benefits for them, to drive consideration. For example: Pain (Location 3790)

Claim (Location 3803)

In Section 5.4.2, I introduced word-of-mouth (WOM) as the most effective marketing channel. (Location 3833)

Following are the details of the five steps that make up the ABM approach that I have seen work for B2B SaaS ventures. These are also called the “Kalungi ABM 5 Cs ©.” As part of the Kalungi methodology I developed over the years. (Location 3841)

The first and most foundational thing you can do for an effective ABM campaign is to know who you need to target. (Location 3844)

Account-based marketing is more like spear fishing, you need to be conscientious about who you target. Because this type of marketing revolves entirely around who you reach out to, it is imperative that you pick companies that would be the top tier customers if they converted to purchase your service. (Location 3849)

For the latter there are a lot of AI-tools now, and I have used many providers. If you are new to this, I can recommend grata.com. (Location 3878)

Tags: orange

We often give messages in our inbox a quick skim of the subject (and maybe if the sender is lucky, a glance at the first sentence) before throwing the message in the trash.  Because of this, your initial outbound messages need to immediately provide value for the reader with a few key elements: (Location 3944)

One example of completing steps 3 & 4 that we have seen work well has been to ask prospects for their input in an industry whitepaper that we are putting together, (Location 3958)

ABM outreach process via email: ABM team will outreach to 50 new emails per day using Outreach.io. The campaign will be fully automated and have 8 steps: (Location 3973)

Set goals for your ABM efforts. In this case, as with outbound and direct mail campaigns, it is a numbers game. But diligence and persistence pay off as those numbers grow every month. Here are some sample outreach benchmarks for an email and LinkedIn campaigns: (Location 4004)

LinkedIn is Kalungi’s most utilized ABM channel because of its messaging capability, as well as its list enrichment abilities. (Location 4064)

What’s more, one of the best parts of LinkedIn outreach is that when you reach out, you are considered a person, not a bot. You have a photo, a background, and a resume, which humanizes you. Because of these factors, LinkedIn is one of (if not) the most accurate and up to date B2B outreach lists available, as everyone is constantly updating their LinkedIn profile with every big professional milestone that they achieve. (Location 4067)

The most common way in which marketing can generate air cover is through display and video ads to custom audiences based on your ICP. Custom audiences can be created at the account and contact level through platforms like LinkedIn. (Location 4095)

Remember to address the three questions that must be answered. Why change? Get recipients’ attention by building on their pain. Meet them where they are. Show empathy. Why with you? Have a plan. It is not about the features you offer. It is how those features benefit the user. It is about those things you do better than anyone else, the things you do best, those claims that only you can make. Why now? This is the point when you can move into sales mode. (Location 4101)

6.3.13    Kalungi ABM (Location 4110)

As mentioned in section 3.3, industry analysts and investors have come up with a rule of thumb called the “quick ratio” (QR) based on what is happening with monthly recurring revenue (MRR). (Location 4132)

The more customers who are engaged with your offering, the less churn you will have. Here are examples of what to measure for these three attributes and how to drive them. (Location 4143)

Drive product usage by creating a user on-boarding program. Share tips to get more out of the product in weekly newsletters. (Location 4148)

Pricing strategy (Location 4183)

As a rule of thumb, a combination of three pricing dimensions is the most you should consider. (Location 4230)

6.5.2   Feature matrix (Location 4248)

Start with collecting the basic info about your competitors: (Location 4320)

Consider mystery shopping each competitor. Research the pricing for their products and services. Try to buy the products/services (Location 4334)

If you cannot afford a freemium-premium model because your cost to service is too high, an alternative can also be the try-buy model. The key to this model is having a robust onboarding and nurturing program paired with helpful customer service. The quicker your prospects become comfortable with your product or see the maximum value of your service, the sooner they will convert into paying customers. (Location 4416)