Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze of 1:1 ABM? (with Briana Manrique from Bench Prep) | Ep. 228

Scrappy ABM brings practical playbooks that don’t break the bank to B2B teams who want more pipeline and revenue without wasting time and budget. In this conversation, host Mason Cosby sits down with Briana Manrique, head of marketing at Bench Prep, to walk through how a very small marketing team went from casting a wide net to getting more niche and seeing more impact.

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Briana shares how seven years at Bench Prep created space to take a hard, long look at who they serve and where they find success. The team moved away from trying to work with training companies and enterprise software companies and chose to go all in on nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high-stakes learning and exam preparation.

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From doing completely away with paid ads to doubling down on webinars and conferences, Briana explains how channel mix, content, ABM, and brand awareness all had to shift. She talks about the mindset shift from quantity to quality, the slow burn of long sales cycles, the time it really takes to run one-to-one ABM, and why every piece of content now needs a defined objective, audience, and CTA.

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👤 Guest Bio

Briana Manrique is the head of marketing at Bench Prep, where she has stayed for almost seven years and seen the evolution of casting a wide net and then getting a little bit more niche year over year. Leading a very small marketing team, she focuses on nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high-stakes certification and exam preparation.

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A former demand gen marketer, Briana leans into one-to-one ABM, brand, and content that is created with intention and tied to clear objectives, pipeline, and revenue. She is always happy to talk about marketing strategy or ABM and loves learning from others. Connect with Briana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamanrique/

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📌 What We Cover

• How Briana’s seven years at Bench Prep led from casting a wide net to getting more niche with nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high stakes learning.
• The mindset shift required to niche down, intentionally work with fewer kinds of people, and focus on quality over quantity so the juice is worth the squeeze.
• Why Bench Prep decided to do completely away with paid search and paid social, then double down on webinars and an evolving conferences channel as one of their best performing channels.
• How an inflection point with new and exciting features and use cases outside of just exam prep is pushing the team to reconsider brand awareness channels and re-explore programs that didn’t work in the past.
• The importance of setting expectations that ABM and brand are a slow burn, especially with six- to eighteen-month sales cycles, seasonality, and buyers who may not even know you exist yet.
• How Briana measures success beyond pipeline and revenue, tracking engagement, responses, LinkedIn activity, and any type of win week over week to show traction.
• What it really takes to run one-to-one ABM: the surprising time commitment for account and contact research, ongoing content creation, daily engagement, and why weeks with less time invested lead to slower results.
• Lessons from the first pilot ABM campaign, including why 100 accounts was way too many for a one-to-one approach, how they filtered down to about 50 accounts, and how ABM tactics are now influencing more account based selling on the outbound side.

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Bench Prep – Exam preparation software for nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high-stakes certification and licenses.
• Connect with Briana on LinkedIn – Briana welcomes connection requests and is always happy to talk about marketing strategy or ABM.
• Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.
• 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!