Beyond the Hype: A Peek Behind the ABM Curtain Part 4

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Kelly Waffle

An interview with Russell Glass, Former VP, Products at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

Kwanzoo: Looking at your background, it looks like you started in Sales, moved into Marketing, wrapped yourself around Products and Data–and found time to be an entrepreneur along the way. What impact do you think your early jobs had on the way you think about B2B sales and marketing?

Glass: I saw very early in my sales career the importance of capturing and pulling together conversations as well as the value propositions and benefits that my customers cared about—which helped in setting follow-up meetings and reminders, etc. Then as a marketer, I learned the value of organizing that aggregated data. Leveraging that organized data made me a smarter marketer. I see it today with Account Based Marketing (ABM). Understanding all the customers that a group of salespeople are engaged with, understanding how those customers are moving through the lead funnel and leveraging that data to influence your targeting and campaign strategy—ensures alignment and assures that marketing is not wasting dollars on companies that just aren’t in the conversation yet.

So, if you are focused on the bottom of the funnel, you want to focus on the people that the salespeople are talking to. If you are focused on the top of the funnel, you want to focus on the people that salespeople would want to talk to. All my early jobs and experiences came together to help steer how I think about B2B sales and marketing—and how I founded Bizo.

Kwanzoo: Yes, thanks for bringing that up. You founded Bizo. What is the impact that you think that Bizo has had on the B2B marketing and sales tech landscape? Continue reading →

ABM Display Advertising Platform Evaluation: Do Your Homework. Six Questions to Answer.

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Kelly Waffle

Be An Educated Consumer.

Recently I attended an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) conference and had the opportunity to speak with three attendees during different breaks who told me that they were already using a display advertising platform. “Great.” I said. “What made you choose that specific platform?”

Response #1: “A board member recommended it to us.”

Response #2: “I saw their advertising everywhere so I figured they were popular.”

Response #3: “They put on their own user conference so we thought they were big with robust features.”

“So, how did that choice work out for you?”

In all three cases, the person I was talking to put his or her head down and said something to the effect, “It is a bit frustrating. We had expected different results.”

How can you have any expectations when you didn’t bother to do due diligence on your display advertising platform? Two of these folks were VPs of Marketing. The third was responsible for all ABM marketing programs for his company. Continue reading →

A Peek Behind the ABM Curtain (third in series)

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Kelly Waffle

An interview with Anudit Vikram, SVP, Advanced Marketing Solutions, Dun & Bradstreet

Kwanzoo: Thank you for your time Anudit. Let’s start off with an easy question. What is your role at Dun & Bradstreet?

Vikram: Sure, my role is to drive the product technology and data sciences behind our digital efforts. Within our Sales and Marketing line of business we have been building out our digital products over the last few years and that is what I drive. My primary focus is digitizing our data assets and building products for digital marketing, online advertising, or to use in the adtech ecosystem.

Kwanzoo: The data provider and data management vendor space is getting more crowded every day. How do you view and segment the different players out there?

Continue reading →

A Peek Behind the ABM Curtain (second in series)

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Kelly Waffle

An Interview with Mahesh Jeswani (aka MJ), Principal Product Manager/Head of Product for Account Based Marketing Products Marketo

Kwanzoo: Mahesh, your CEO Steve Lucas recently claimed that “We’re the Best in Marketing Automation” – a space that focuses on lead generation, contacts, and MQLs. So why roll out Marketo ABM?

Jeswani: When you listen to a lot of the people who are talking about or doing Account Based Marketing (ABM), a lot of what they are discussing sounds similar to marketing automation software-related requirements. If you look at the large enterprise companies that Marketo sells to, you will see as they use Marketo for their broad-based or lead-based marketing that the next question that comes up is “What if we had account-based marketing built right within the same Marketo platform that we have been using over the years for traditional marketing?” It is a natural thought progression from a marketing perspective. That is why at Marketo we believe that ABM should live within the Marketo engagement platform and now we have made it a reality by delivering a new best-in-class ABM product few months ago. Continue reading →

A Peek Behind the ABM Curtain

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Kelly Waffle

An ABM Interview with Niraj Deo, Sr. Director, Product Management, Oracle Data Cloud—B2B Products

Kwanzoo: Niraj, can you start out by telling us why Oracle Data Cloud (Oracle BlueKai) is moving into Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Deo: We really see our ABM progression as an extension of the three core capability offerings we have in the Oracle Data Cloud:

Audience Data Marketplace—A community of more than 40 third-party data providers that have access to a massive amount of data.
ID Graph—Pulls together the many IDs across marketing channels and devices that comprise a given person and enables marketers to tie their interactions to an actionable customer profile.
Data Management Platform (DMP)—Leverages integrations with modern activation channels (Google, Facebook, etc.) to build cross-channel campaigns and audience targeting.