Longer sales cycles and proving ROI

BambooHR built a massive brand on inbound marketing for small businesses. As the company looks to move upmarket to target larger, growing organizations, its strategy must evolve to cut through the noise. Hannah Forson joins Mason Cosby to explain how she layers account-based strategies on top of an existing inbound engine without bringing the bank.

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The conversation focuses on the practical steps of defining a target audience by analyzing closed-won opportunities rather than guessing. Hannah explains why marketers should rarely start an ABM pilot by creating net-new content and how to repurpose what already works. She also shares the honest reality of managing internal expectations when ABM sales cycles take twice as long as standard inbound deals, and how to partner with channel managers who worry about how targeted campaigns affect their metrics.

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About Hannah Forson

Hannah Forson is the Sr. Manager of Demand Generation at BambooHR, where she leads the programs team focused on mid-to-bottom funnel demand generation. She specializes in building efficient strategies that drive high-quality leads and pipeline. Before joining BambooHR, Hannah worked at Pluralsight and has spent years building marketing programs in both bootstrapped and public organization environments.

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What We Cover

1. Defining the audience through data: How to use historical closed-won opportunities to identify the right company size and industry "sweet spots."
2. The decision committee breakdown: Why finance professionals need a different message than HR leaders and how to prepare sales teams for those conversations.
3. Collaborating with channel managers: Specific ways to run ABM campaigns on paid social without ruining a channel manager's core metrics or CPMs.
4. The "If it's not broken, don't fix it" content strategy: Why you should audit your existing inventory and tweak successful assets rather than building from scratch.
5. Managing timeline expectations: Dealing with executive pressure when targeted deals take twice as long to close as transactional inbound leads.
6. Quality over quantity: Shifting focus from volume of form fills to capturing the right accounts that stick around longer.
7. Storytelling for buy-in: How to use individual deal journeys to prove the value of ABM to leadership and individual contributors.

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Resources

1. BambooHR
2. Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.
3. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM

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If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!