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Jack Rawlings (strategicabm) - Welcome to another episode of ABM Under the Hood. I'm Jack Rawlings and I'm joined today by my colleague Xenia. Xenia is Head of Demand here at strategicabm. Thanks for joining me today, Xenia. 

Xenia Sapanidi (strategicabm) - Hello. Thanks for having me. 


Jack (strategicabm) - Good stuff, good stuff. So today we are discussing all things related to execution, reporting, optimization of campaigns. That's the kind of focus, obviously, you know, when it comes to ABM programs, there's a lot of kind of heavy lifting and work done on the sort of strategy side, the research, the kind of preparation side, but obviously the kind of second part to that is actually getting something into market, right? So we've got lots of things to cover actually, today. I think lots of different kind of areas that we could, we could focus on. 

But let's, let's kind of start at the beginning. So I guess when it comes to executing or building a campaign or program for ABM, what would you say are some of the kind of foundational steps, the kind of key things for people, for teams, businesses to consider when, they're kind of starting with, with their kind of execution process? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - It's interesting because if you asked me that question last year, I probably would have mentioned your marketing ecosystem. But this year I think that it's actually scoping. Scoping, that is essentially involving identifying who you need to speak with in the business to align on your objectives, determining what tools are available for use, and then understanding what approvals are required and what kind of information you need to provide for approvals. 

Where can you get this information and accessing what budget you can utilize. These are essentially the elements that they're foundational because they're going to determine your lines of your borders, of your framework, like what you can achieve, what you can utilize, and what you can't. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that makes complete sense I think, I think sometimes there's that kind of, you know, ambition or desire from a business unit, from particularly ABM teams to kind of, you know, do something different, do something, you know, completely out there and maybe large in scale, but actually in order to do that, or in order to know whether or not that's possible, you've got to really kind of dig into, you know, what your, what your setup is, what's actually feasible with the, with the tools and the teams that you've got available to you. Right? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. 

Jack (strategicabm) - And so on that point then, how, how would you say from a kind of execution perspective, how would you say that teams, businesses should set up when it comes to kind of getting that alignment across teams, thinking with regards to obviously sort of Sales and Marketing, we talk about, talk a lot about Sales and Marketing alignment, but also other teams that might be involved in the ABM activity. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - I think that it all starts from the senior leadership of the business. It's where I've seen programs being successful is where it is they are starting from the senior leadership of the business because the whole business is aligned on these key accounts that they're targeting for, with the ABM program. 

So they might need to identify these 15 accounts that are like either cash flows or have the potential to become so, and essentially all of the commercial plans need to be built from there. And this approach then guarantees alignment because in the meantime, no one is asking something completely different to what the ABM program is meant to deliver. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. That, that's definitely something I think we've seen, you know, repeatedly with clients is that if you've got that kind of leadership buy-in or, or kind of even directive from sort of top down. Obviously, you know, the actual kind of pulling together of the ABM program and getting it into market is something that's probably not going to be done in that kind of, that space. But having that kind of, that buy-in or, you know, collective agreement from the leadership team about the direction of the activity is always going to help with things in terms of setting stuff up that yeah, that's definitely, that's key. 

And I guess then on the, on the other side of things, when it comes to the technology and the tools that are available, how do you think that different teams and businesses should approach the kind of question around tech stacks, setting up the tech stack correctly, choosing the right tools, that kind of stuff. What's some of the kind of considerations there? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - You know, I think that there are some foundations that need to be directing the tech stack that need to happen from an ABM perspective before you choose the right tech stack for your business. 

Because like I usually describe it as like in the same way as when people are making New Year's resolutions, they usually say that I want to be healthier this year and exercise more, usually due to the over consumption of food and alcohol that preceded this, this time. And around this time sales of gym clothes also rise. So usually in January, or like starting from mid-December, gym clothes are selling like, like crazy and you can't step your foot in the gym either in January, but come February it all stops. 

I think that a lot of businesses approach in a similar way ABM. Essentially, before starting ABM, they're like, okay, so I'm going to start ABM, what do I need? I'm going to buy a new tool to use for ABM, but they have no idea how ABM is actually implemented in their business, how it can work for them. And then essentially this tool is really something that often is holding them back. 

I think essentially you can start even with the basics ABM. You don't have to, because I think you need to take baby steps initially. So you can just start by having a CRM and a marketing automation system, especially if it's just with good quality data you can, in the beginning, I think that the data is the key. 

So in that way, you do, you will be doing a lot of things manually in the beginning, but you will be paying attention to every detail before you automate it. And in that way, when you select a tool, you will know exactly what it is that you need to automate and what are your strong points that you can utilize and your weaknesses. 

But until you find this approach, it will be very difficult to guarantee a return on investment that you will need to present on the tool that you will buy. And that's going to, usually a lot of people are going for some of the big platforms and without knowing the recipe that you should scale, it's very difficult to succeed with these big platforms. And usually when you have such a big ticket item dragging your ABM ROI, 

Your ABM strategy will be deemed unsuccessful too early because it can't meet the monetary objectives quickly enough. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - So yeah, even if you decide to start ABM from a tool, you'll need to get your hands dirty in any case to understand how everything works and integrates and understand any potential points of failure as well. Otherwise, you'll just end up with a tool that consumes a large portion of your budget without being fit for purpose, I think. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah.

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, but let's say that a business is now ready, has identified the recipe and they're ready to scale. I think that there are a few really interesting tools that they can invest in, like social selling automation tools, like ABM intent data, programmatic advertising for ABM. Although you can do some of that also without the hefty price tag associated most of the time. 

And then you can do also some ABM, you can find some tools that can do ABM automated orchestrations, which usually require a bit more of an investment. And then the next big thing that you will want to automate is reporting. So any reporting tools, any personalized web experience tools. 

The interesting thing also, if you actually decide to take baby steps instead of embarking straight away on a big investment, is that you will find that some of the tools that you have been using so far until now might be replaced by some ABM tools. So as your business is shifting in mindset and in alignment, this, there might be investment freed from other marketing tools that you can utilize in ABM tools. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, I think that's, I think that's such a good point and really kind of comprehensive run through of the sort of choices that people need to consider. And I think, I think you're spot on. I think when it comes to the sort of important consideration, more than anything else, it's about that data being as solid as possible and having a process or a foundation in place, that means that when you start collecting more data or we start adding more data into the system, it's not going to become, you know, this kind of runaway thing that's just, you know, done in the wrong way. 

I think, I think so many businesses struggle because they haven't got that kind of, that absolute basic setup right in the CRM or whatever it might be. And then when it comes to actually kind of using that data in ABM kind of way, they struggle because the data isn't set up correctly and that causes problems in the long term, right. So yeah, I think, I think that's a, such a good point. 

On the, on the point around kind of reporting, you said, you know, getting to the stage where you would potentially think about automating some of that reporting sort of later on. But I guess before that, in order to really sort of report well and be able to demonstrate the impact of a, of an ABM activity, you need to kind of set some key metrics to focus on right, KPIs and things like that. What kind of KPIs do you suggest teams should be thinking about from a, from an execution perspective when it comes to ABM? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - I think this also depends on where a business is in that ABM journey, because I think, again, getting back to these baby steps at the beginning, you should be transitioning your business slowly from whatever model they were following. So it's going to take some time for people, for people to get aligned into the ABM program and how you should be reporting. 


So, however, for that reason, I like the Three Rs reporting method because the Three Rs essentially stands for Reputation, Relationships, and Revenue. And we've developed in the Agency a template where each area is defined with metrics that we monitor at the campaign level and these are offering a very nice transition from where a business is usually before starting ABM and where they're slowly getting to. 

So for example, in their Reputation we might be tracking impressions, clicks, visits to website pages like top, middle, bottom of the funnel pages, what type of pages did each one of the accounts visit and how many did they visit, how many visitors we had from these accounts. And then any responses to outreach type emails, calls, messages, like on the more moving to the Relationship area and then any strategy or commercial conversations that have started, or any revenue that has, or any pipeline or any revenue that has been brought in or has been actually closed-lost. That's also very interesting to understand where an account is and how they're slowly moving. 

So, and I think that the reporting from an ABM perspective is like a twofold strategy. You need the, you need to understand where each one of the accounts are and the impact that the program has on the accounts, but at the same time, you need to monitor the campaign against each one of the campaigns that you're running to these accounts against industry benchmarks so that you, you make sure that you deliver against your ABM objectives effectively. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, I think, I think that's such a good point because the issue that I think a lot of businesses have when it comes to defining the impact or demonstrating the impact of an ABM program, it will come down to not necessarily tracking the wrong things, but not having an easy way to kind of show that or bring that, bring that data back into the business in a way that's kind of actionable or useful, right? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Jack (strategicabm) - So like for some, for some teams just seeing the, you know, impressions or clicks on a page isn't necessarily going to be useful, but for the ABM team, for the Marketing team, they're going to need to know that information to be able to kind of then convert it into something a bit more interesting for say, leadership or Sales, which is going to be around those, you know, how well an account is kind of progressing through the Three Rs. 

And so, it's important to have that kind of more granular breakdown of the metrics, right? But at the same time, you want to be able to also communicate it in a more simplified way to other sort of teams as well. 

I guess from a kind of, moving into that maybe sort of scaling up phase or kind of developing the reporting side of things, do you think there's any kind of, is there any kind of ways to expand that reporting strategy? Is there any sort of tech or tools that you think is sort of like the first step to kind of scaling up the reporting side of things that businesses can consider? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, I think the foundation for that is definitely the data, like the quality of the data. The higher quality data allows for more automation, scalability. If your data is not of good quality, then it'll be very difficult to automate it or scale it. It's essentially you're scaling the problem, like you're making it even bigger than it is. 

So this is why it's one of the first questions I ask our customers during the tech audit, is about the data quality, it's, this defines many of the limitations. Once your data is in order, there are various things that you can utilize, like I like Looker, and then this is what's known as, it used to be known as Google Data Studio, or Whatagraph or Dreamdata. There's some nice solutions that some customers can utilize to automate the reporting or at least parts of it.

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, and I guess that's the, that's the key thing, right? Is it's trying to, trying to automate anything too quickly if you haven't got that data, it kind of comes back to what we were saying before of the data foundation being one of the most important things. Because if you start automating anything and the data side of things isn't correct or the process to collect that data isn't correct, then you're just automating bad data basically, which isn't ideal is it? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Jack (strategicabm) - When it comes to that kind of monitoring of the data and turning that data into something that's maybe more actionable and usable from a program perspective, what are your thoughts on the kind of real time side of things? I know that there are a lot of tools that can kind of, or claim to maybe show some level of real time data. Do you think that there's a specific sort of level of detail required when it comes to real time or is it something that, is it better to just have, you know, good data that works on a weekly or monthly refresh or whatever it might be? How would you approach that? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - I think it's probably, there is a risk with real time because every platform has a learning phase wherever you might be running a campaign, whether it's a paid or a free campaign, but there is a learning phase. The algorithm is learning how the audience is engaging and et cetera. This can take a couple of weeks. You might be just seeing data and freaking out in this real time instance. 

I definitely advocate like for optimizing campaigns weekly and essentially looking at the data weekly after you allow a few, a couple of weeks for the system to learn. And I definitely also recommend having like a check in 48 hours after the campaign launches just so that you understand that there isn't anything that you might filter on that is limiting the campaign learning phase and like the campaign might be underspending and et cetera. 

But I think that real time is beneficial in some instances of like, you know, like communicating straight away to the Sales Rep, to the Account Manager or that their account is actually on the website or their account have visited quite a few times in the past week, some specific pages on the website so that it helps with arming the rep with account intelligence that they can action. So in that instance it's very, very handy. But from a campaign perspective, an overarching campaign perspective, it would, I would be very cautious on how we use it. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, I mean I think as well, you know, the other element is we've, your point there around giving kind of actionable data to Sales teams or Account teams, which potentially could be real time, it might not necessarily be real time, but potentially could be. That's, that's clearly one benefit of having, you know, access to that kind of, that level of granularity. 

But also I guess like the kind of continuous improvement optimization of campaigns. That's something that needs to be, needs to be watched, right? So when it comes to kind of optimizing, improving how a program is performing or a campaign is performing, how do you kind of go about that? What's, what are some of the sort of factors and thoughts that you have to kind of keep in mind there? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - I think the most common, the common area that I see that often requires optimization in ABM campaigns is the user experience and the journey. So it's crucial every time to consider, where are you taking your audience? Whether it is compelling enough to take action and whether it is relevant to the stage that they are, or their role in the business. 

So this is essentially what's driving all of the optimizations and like, you know, looking at all of the different metrics that are showing you for each one of the accounts, how they are engaging with your content, how relevant it is, what kind of angles they like, what kind of angles they don't like. And this is what's driving, I think, the optimization, the user experience and the journey for each one of the accounts. 

Jack (strategicabm) - That's really interesting. Yeah. And I hadn't really thought about that being the kind of the lens or I suppose the framework that you can kind of put things through, right? If it's, rather than thinking about maybe whether or not a specific campaign or ad is hitting like a kind of a threshold or benchmark potentially, it's more about whether or not that it's hitting the right path or the right action that you are looking to achieve with the campaign. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

And I guess, when it comes to optimizing, you have to factor in, you know, like AB testing or multivariate testing as well, right? That's something to bring into it. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And AB testing is a topic I'm really passionate about. Yeah, especially testing is just one thing at a time. If you want to generate actually, you know, actionable insights that you can use, learnings that you can use afterwards and know exactly what it is that helps. 

I usually, with A/B testing, I like to categorize A/B tests based on the effort that is required to implement the insights later. So for example, the highest priority of that would be to determine which content resonates best and as this will inform the value proposition for that segment or account and the type of content you need to develop more, that is usually requiring a bit more time to do value. 

And then again, I access what kind of content resonates in various, in different stages of the decision making process. I think I read somewhere about a week ago that there is quite a high percentage of businesses that claim that they have lost business because they didn't have the right content at the right time for the accounts. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Okay. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - So imagine someone is already doing research on how to solve the problem and potential solutions for their problem and you don't have the right content so that they can understand how you're differentiating to your competitors. So that's something that is, that could be detrimental to that, to the sale for this account. 

So yeah, that's, that's why this is quite a high priority for me as a test. And then there there could be also some secondary tests like, you know, testing channels, where can you find these accounts, the personas within these accounts, what are the angles that are working, what are the content types they like consuming? Like is it videos, infographics, carousel, various design elements and et cetera. Like, you know, how can you stand out against your competitors?

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, yeah. No, that's really, yeah, that's really interesting. Because I think yeah, as well, I think AB testing is one of those things that people, it is talked about a lot, right? But actually I'm not sure that everyone really actually knows what it is or how to do it properly, I guess is probably, is probably the more the key thing, right? People talk a lot about doing AB testing, but actually you see then like what comes out the end of it isn't something that's actually a fair test or actionable, useful, you know, they're testing the wrong things in some ways and that, it's almost like people do it to tick it off and say, yeah, we're doing AB testing, but actually why are you doing it? What's the reason for it? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, the objectives of the AB testing is the priority. Like, you know, what is it that you're trying to learn and how are you going to use it? That's what should be driving the AB testing. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned before about, kind of, that sort of user journey or the account journey being the sort of the lens I suppose of for which you could potentially optimize a campaign or multiple campaigns. But do you also potentially take into account any actual interactions with the account or individuals within the account as well when it comes to optimizing campaigns? So like if someone's had a conversation with a Sales Rep or if they've had a meeting or that kind of stuff. Does that factor into the campaign optimization at all? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And there are items that can be, there are pieces of feedback that we might be getting from Sales. Like, and this is usually informing a lot of the Dark Funnel information that from a Marketing side we might be missing. And there is a lot of, there are a lot of metrics that we can utilize from a marketing perspective. Like, you know, just even the bounce rates on the landing pages can reveal how well the assets and creative align for the promotion of the asset, how well the angle is working, how interested is the account in consuming content on the topic. So that's really key. 

Then the feedback that we get from Sales is even more important because for example, like for a podcast it would be very difficult to track like how many people would click actually on the link from the podcast and get to the website. Very few, they will, it's usually coming from Dark Funnel. 

But if you are trying to drive accounts to consume podcast content, Sales Reps might be actually the ones that will be telling you how these accounts were really wowed by the content. Like they found it really relevant to what they were doing at the moment. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - So that's important for various channels that are not usually what people think like when they're running ABM campaigns. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that's such a good point. Because sometimes you can look at, you can look at the data or the reporting on a specific channel and it doesn't give you that whole picture. Right? 

And particularly as you mentioned with the kind of Dark Funnel side of things or Dark Social, it's not always data that's easily accessible for Marketing teams or ABM teams to see, you know, the impact. But actually, yeah, as you say, if you can get that feedback directly from a Sales Rep or conversation that they're having, then that's information that you wouldn't otherwise get. So that's, that's great. 

I mean, another thing that we kind of sometimes recommend is having potentially like free text form, you know. Ability to kind of add that onto a form or a submission so that they can kind of talk about where they've come from or what they've, what their specific sort of engagements have been. That kind of stuff I think is, is also something to bear in mind. Right? 

So, okay, awesome. And then in terms of, you've kind of, you've described that sort of setup phase, you've described the kind of reporting and then how that feeds into the optimization, but then the sort of, I suppose next step, right, is in that more longer term is going to be iterating and building from what you've got. So not just kind of optimizing from a kind of channel perspective, but maybe optimizing at a program level. 

So what tactics have worked, what channels have worked, you know, all of that kind of stuff. How do you think about that? What's the, kind of, the approach or the sort of method that you have when it comes to that iterating or, you know, building out on channels that have either worked or not worked in the past for clients and for businesses?

Xenia (strategicabm) - Yeah, I think that in general, like the same principles that apply to other marketing strategies are effective for ABM campaigns in terms of scaling. You kind of look, you test, you identify the effective strategies and then you invest further and scale. 

And the reason I mentioned other marketing strategies is because very, a lot of people think like, you know, that B2B and B2C are very different and you can't be like, the strategies are very different. But there is a concept that I like that I'm not seeing that much, like at least talked in the same way in ABM or B2B and the concept of lookalikes from B2C. 

So like very often when you identify the accounts that are, that you have successfully sold to, you can use a lookalike audience by adjusting the demographics, or in B2B specifically, technographics, to identify the next best audience to sell to, the next best accounts. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - And it's like, in B2C it's so common that you use this, it's like you have a percentage of match rate, of matching for the lookalike, it's like from one usually to 10%. So I think that this is definitely applicable for ABM, like you can just, like 1% is usually just could be approaching targeting companies that are in a slightly smaller revenue bracket. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - And then 10% could be like changing 10 different attributes, 10 different technographic attributes for the accounts that you're going after. So I think that once you find the methodology for, the methodology that worked in your ABM program, then you can scale it to the next 1% of lookalike accounts. 

Jack (strategicabm) - I love that idea. I think that's such a good, good approach because then it becomes something that can be a lot of the, a lot of the groundwork and a lot of the foundational work can be reused, right? It's not a case of having to sort of start again every single time. 

And I think that's potentially one of the concerns that some businesses have is that they put a lot of effort into their first ABM program or the first few ABM programs and it's kind of like, but then how do we do this again from another, for another category or another segment? And they think, well we're going to have to start from scratch again because in order to get this one off the ground, we have to do all of this work and the kind of research and discovery phase. So then it's kind of quite daunting, I suppose to think, right, well we've got to go all the way back to the beginning and do that again. 

And actually what you're saying is such a good point is that instead of doing that, you could think about the kind of the small tweaks that can be made to then find lookalike accounts, lookalike prospects and focus on them and then repeat, most, probably of what was done before with the, you know, small tweaks here and there. So yeah, I think that's such a good, good tip. 

And I guess, final kind of question is around sort of the downside of campaigns and execution activity, right? So obviously we love to talk about the wins and we love to talk about the successes and why ABM is such an effective approach, but we know, you know, from experience and realistically that, that there are also going to be failures, there are going to be, you know, campaigns that aren't successful that don't hit the mark in whatever way. 

So how do you kind of go about that and when you're talking to teams that we work with, how do you, how do you kind of suggest that they think about campaigns that have maybe not hit the expectations that they had for them, that haven't maybe hit the objectives? What's the kind of way to approach that, would you say? 

Xenia (strategicabm) - I think I like very much the concept of failing fast, which is discussed very often by industry leaders in marketing. So I think that often in organizations, teams are taking failures personally because they have been really invested in the ABM program and that's great that they get invested, but they, they're not able to move on from underperforming elements. So it's crucial to understand the cause of the failure and continue to iterate by replacing ineffective elements. 

So, and then continue testing. I'm also, when you are failing fast, that means that you should be also learning fast. And this is a concept again, that is, that was introduced to me by various vendors and essentially that's something that very, very few companies are comfortable doing, learning fast. 

Because like, imagine all of these companies that are running test campaigns and they're trying to understand like, you know, in AB tests, what's working, what doesn't work. Usually they try to cover many priorities with these test campaigns. They run it as a test campaign, they run it as a air cover campaign. 

So essentially, instead of running a test for three to four weeks, they run a test for three months. And the budget that they would have, they have allocated for this is essentially spread to three months, three, four months. And at the end of this three, four months, three months, you have learned what is working and what isn't working if you have run the AB testing properly, but you have spent actually three months trying to learn this while you could have spent three to four weeks learning that. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - And that is, in terms of media budget, that's probably the same investment, but it's the opportunity cost that you're missing, that you have invested all of this time and effort into strategies that weren't effective. And you could have learned that from the first month and then you could have moved on to the next big thing. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Yeah, yeah. Such a good point. Yeah, this kind of, the need to sort of stretch out a program or set out the kind of goals and targets and the approach for the sort of longer term without thinking about, well what if it doesn't work? And we can see that from month one or week one, even. That it's not the right approach. How do you, how do we, you know, make a quick pivot and learn from that. I think. 

Yeah, such a good point. And it's definitely something that we've experienced and we've seen with businesses where if they don't have that kind of flexibility, that agility, then it can cause issues, you know, later down the line for the sort of the long-term effectiveness of the program. Right? So yeah, really good points.

Well, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today, Xenia. I think you've covered a lot of really good, interesting topics there around execution and optimization. I know that we could probably go into even more depth on a lot of these points, but I think we've given a really good overview and snapshot there. So thanks, thanks for joining me today and yeah, look forward to catching up with you soon. 

Xenia (strategicabm) - Thank you Jack. Bye. 

Jack (strategicabm) - Cheers.