Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show

I got lots of spam emails promoting guests to my Full-Funnel Podcast. I never reply to any of them. Here is why.These BDMs try to show fake love to our podcast saying:“I love your podcast, especially episode #XX, keep up the great work!That said, I have a great guest for you.John Doe is a serial 7-figures entrepreneur who will happily join you as a guest. Here is his bio.Let me know when you want to set up a call with him.”Here is the truth.1. You didn’t listen to the episode. You just chose the recent episode which is completely irrelevant to your guest’s expertise.2. You didn’t check my podcast description and target audience - otherwise, you won’t suggest a bad-fit entrepreneur.All you did is:1. Scraping all podcasts from a business category2. Collecting emails from all hosts3. Scraping the names of the latest episodes — you even mark them in bold.4. You searched for some blog posts about pitching to podcast hosts or pitching a guest post, and copied the script5. You uploaded everything to the outreach software and spammed all the podcast hosts with the same templated message.Results?You sucked.If you want to get results from your outreach, here are 5 things you must learn:1. Connect and engage with podcast hosts and editors of target blogs way before you reach out: leave thoughtful comments, provide feedback, reshare content.2. Listen to the episodes and read articles to understand the audience.3. Ask about content needs - what topics do they plan to cover in the future?4. Present yourself and ask if you’ll find great guests that fit their content needs, would they be up to talk to them?5. When you’ll find a good fit, personalize your outreach by mentioning the expertise of the guest and what added value he/she can bring to hosts’ audiences.Don’t do what everybody else is doing: sending templates from “outreach best practices” blog posts, show fake love and spam everybody. You’ll suck.Do things that are not scalable but that generate ROI:- Invest in relationship- Do research- PersonalizeWith Rand Fishkin we nailed the entire pitching approach. Join us to learn:- Why does marketing through sources of influence work so well?- How do you find true sources where PR will have the most impact?- How to get your pitches acceptedRESOURCESOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogRand on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelHere are 5 things CitizenLab does to drive international demand in a niche market.Ctizenlab helps governments solve a problem that's hundreds of years old (constituent engagement). Unfortunately, this also means that a lot of would-be clients are not aware of modern tech solutions.During an interview at Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show, Amir Bolouryazad shared 5 things they do to create that awareness and drive demand for their product:1. Involve their customer in content creation and distribution Next to creating case studies, CitizenLab runs webinars, bringing other civil servants from different cities who have used their platform successfully.They get a chance to tell their peers a community engagement platform can be extremely helpful into their day-to-day lives, and how their citizens become more satisfied with how their government is engaging them into the decision-making process.They also invest a lot in creating content that makes their customers more successful. Very often, the customers share such content with their colleagues and peers.2. Involve the whole revenue team in content planningThe marketing team works closely with sales and government success teams to define the priority topics and content to be covered.The sales share the most common prospect questions, trending vertical use-cases, and new legislations. By creating content about these trending topics, CitizenLab taps into the existing demand (for information) to create awareness and demand for their product.The CS team who's more involved in day-to-day customer projects share the specific challenges that different types of customers are having with implementation. By creating handbooks for these challenges, CitizenLab helps the existing customers — while addressing the objections of the prospects considering the platform.3. Leverage content partnershipsIn each (local) market, CitizenLab identifies the most relevant publications and associations catering to their audience.And since their content strategy is already aligned with local trending topics, very often the content partners will be happy to publish informative and educational content on these topics.The key is to produce high-quality pieces that inform and educate their readers or members, not to promote your brand.4. Align sales and marketing on an "allbound" approachIn a lot of companies, sales does outbound, and marketing does inbound — independently of each other.And they are leaving a lot of money on the table by doing just one or the other and not combining the efforts.CitizenLab takes an allbound approach:- Their marketing helps their SDR efforts by running highly-targeted ads educating the prospects about the same topics the sales reps are mentioning in their outreach- Marketing also targets events their salespeople are visiting to create awareness and help sales meet more prospects- Sales uses first-party intent data about e.g. website visitors to learn about buyers and governments to understand their interest, so they can run timely and personalized outreach and follow-up campaigns5. Localize their content and channels for local marketsThe culture of governments varies dramatically from one market to the other. Add to that the different use-cases driven by different legislations and trends.To localize their approach to each market, CitizenLab:- Adapts the tone of voice and appearance. For example, European markets tend to be more functional and require more details about the product and features, while in the US the storytelling behind the features becomes more important- Uses the local customer stories and case studies- Identifies local content partners to help with content distributionTune in to the full episode below👇Amir Bolouryazad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bolouryazad/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelWe're meeting with Vladimir Blagojevic to discuss the recent research we did with B2B tech companies about marketing strategy.​Key points we are going to discuss:​Key challenges and the root reasons why B2B companies are struggling to create an effective marketing strategy.​The ROI taxes almost every B2B company is paying nowadays.​The core elements of the 2022 B2B marketing strategy​The linear mindset, and how to get executives buy-inRESOURCES:Video: https://youtu.be/BmSPuG_o0qcOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogVladimir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/Andrei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel4 things Datadobi did differently to **create a new market**.(+ 5 indicators that the strategy is working). 🤯Datadobi pulled off one of the most difficult, expensive, and risky go-to-market strategies: category creation. And they did it WITHOUT external funding. Here is how: **1. Piggybacked on an existing platform** If your team has experience with a major technology platform, you might be able to turn it into a unique advantage: - Access to qualified prospects (the platform customers) - Potential partnerships (e.g. integrators specialized in platform implementation)- Potential for acquisition The trick is to identify common deployment and use-case challenges for which no software has been built yet. That's exactly what the Datadobi team has done, I learned during a podcast interview with Michael Jack, Datadobi's co-founder and chief revenue officer. It turned out that the problem they solved for a data storage platform was a much larger problem in the market. 2**. Leveraged strategic go-to-market partners** Instead of casting a wide net, Datadobi focused on a few key strategic partners.And since they solve a common problem with storage platforms, storage vendors became the obvious choice. Because it makes their sales easier and removes friction from deployment. 3**. Laser-focused education** Here's a simple truth about market creation: If the market doesn't exist, your buyers won't have the budget for you. You can try to educate the market, but that requires really deep pockets. What should a bootstrapped company do? Datadobi focused on: - Educating their *partners* - Leveraging the partners to find accounts with a "bleeding neck" pain - Educating qualified accounts, so they foresee the budget in the next yearAgain, instead of casting a wide net, they educated the key market players — while getting to revenue quickly (essential for a bootstrapped business). 4**. Focused on the largest market from the very start**European companies often start by selling in their home country, and gradually expand, region by region. Datadobi did something different: they focused on the US from the get-go. Why?Making 70% of the global storage market, the US was the place to be if you wanted to create a new category (and fund it with revenue). Interestingly, they kept their product development in Europe, while growing their revenue teams in the US. Five indicators that the strategy is working:1. Repeat partner sales 2. Retention 3. Self-preferencing, i.e. getting traction from a few specific verticals. While Datadobi is a horizontal product, they're selling to a few specific verticals very strongly4. Partners willing to invest in co-marketing 5. Competition: once Datadobi started seeing competitors appear, they were sure the market was created. Tune in to listen to the complete interview.RESOURCES:Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjackpmp/On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelTune in to learn:— The lowest hanging fruit to build an effective account list for a pilot campaign— How to validate your message before the outreach— Why do most B2B companies suck with warm-up programs— How to personalize your pitch— Overview of campaign materialsRESOURCES:Video & slides: https://youtu.be/6bliQXAhtxAOn-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-cFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is a breakdown of a simple ABM campaign that generated 6 sales opportunities, 2 deals and helped to validate the idea of launching my company Fullfunnel.io in September 2020.But before we’ll dive in, here is the context.Before launching our company, we partnered with Vladimir Blagojević on one project developing an ABM strategy for 30+ B2B tech companies from Belgium.When we were running office hours, the majority of companies talked a lot about ABM, but their understanding of ABM was limited to:1. Create a list of companies that fit firmographic data2. Identify decision-makers, find their LinkedIn profiles and emails3. Upload the list to LinkedIn and run some product ads4. Reach out via email and/or LinkedInTo my biggest surprise, lots of B2B companies still think about account-based marketing that way.We decided to launch a pilot campaign for 6 weeks with a $300 budget to validate if there will be demand for developing inhouse ABM operations.Here is a step-by-step overview.1. Ideal Customer ProfileBelgium B2B Tech (Hardware / SaaS) with ACV more than $50k, long sales cycle, execs background not in sales or marketing.2. Warm-up by leveraging Content Networking (credits to James Carbary).We invited our target buyers to appear as guests on our Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Podcast.From the 21 accounts, we got a response from 16 (76%), and 9 accounts agreed to an interview (46%).Our goals:— Connect and discuss with strategic decision-makers the challenges they face in growing B2B tech companies + what works for them— Create unique content we can use for LinkedIn and guest posts— Share a new initiative and validate our idea by asking if a service like this makes sense to them and might be valuable— Mention the case studies we have to create a demand3. 1-1 Personalized Outreach.The interviews allowed us to understand our target accounts’ priorities and challenges, identify the accounts that were a good fit with an existing need.We decided to activate these accounts using a 1-1 personalized outreach via direct mail.Our swag included:— 100% personalized proposal with a clear plan on how to tackle their challenges— QR code that redirects to a content hub with relevant case studies— Personalized gift4. Follow-up.Most opportunities are created during follow-ups. We had a chance to explain our proposal, align it with their needs, get the team’s buy-in.As well, we received direct qualitative feedback on our proposal.I sat down with my co-founder Vladimir Blagojevic to share the behind-the-scenes of this campaign.Tune in to learn:— The lowest hanging fruit to build an effective account list for a pilot campaign— How to validate your message before the outreach— Why do most B2B companies suck with warm-up programs— How to personalize your pitch— Overview of campaign materialsVladimir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/Andrei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/

We sat down with Thibaut Souyris on a new live episode of Full-Funnel Podcast to discuss:1. How to find relevant triggers to start a conversation with prospects2. How to turn conversations into opportunities3. How to add non-sales touches to your prospecting4. How to boost sales presence with demand generationTune in to see a live prospecting masterclass: https://youtu.be/IkRy_2Di7e0RESOURCES6-Weeks ABM Playbook: https://fullfunnel.io/account-based-mFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newslJoin our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here are 4 things that are broken in modern sales prospecting.1. Lack of ICP.SDRs make a list of contacts and accounts based on broad firmographic data (job role: founder, industry: computer technology) and end up with a junk list.Why junk?Because the majority of the selected accounts have 0 intent to buy and/or are a bad fit, which leads us to the 2nd problem.2. Lack of personalization.To contact a big volume of contacts SDRs won’t be able to do account research and personalize outreach messages. They end up with a generic, copied from sales blogs, a pitch that is being ignored by everybody.3. Lack of context.“I saw you are the founder of a SaaS company. We help SaaS companies to ... Let’s have a call” is the worst way to do outreach and the fastest way to get banned from LinkedIn.Why?Because the majority of people I spoke to about this, replied simply:What made you think I want to talk with a random dude from an unknown company? Just the fact that I’m the founder?Block the connection and delete.4. Lack of conversation.Everybody agrees that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. To fulfill these 3 criteria, SDRs should do thought leadership and know-how to start conversations.As Thibaut Souriys says:If you can’t get prospects to reply, you won’t book meetings.If you can’t book meetings, you won’t get revenuesIf you can get revenues, you’ll go bust.The one thing that matters is your capacity to generate conversations.Thibaut on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibautsouyris/

Here are 5 things that helped Rydoo get to $63 mln in ARR:1. Nailed the ICP and positioningAsk yourself: - Are we really focusing on your ICP? - Is our ICP up to date? - Does everyone in the team have the same understanding of who the ICP is?- How are you different and worth buying? - How do you position your product in the market? - Do sales people so NO to some prospects?Jan Dejosse shared a simple "bear hug" technique to keep your ICP up to date during his interview. Jan is Rydoo's VP of marketing and my guest at the latest episode of the Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show. 2. Aligned marketing and sales on qualified pipelineEverybody in the marketing team is The pipeline is NOT "booked meetings", but the opportunity being accepted and declared by the AE. Everyone in marketing (even brand and product marketing) is responsible for the whole pipe:- Inbound pipe- Outbound pipe- Partner-generated pipe Marketing works closely with the sales team on opportunity development. Interestingly, deal expansion campaigns are owned by product marketing. 3. Using leading indicators and reverse engineeringRydoo uses leading metrics and campaign performance... with a pinch of salt. Because the problem with attribution is that you can only attribute things you can measure. That's why they reverse engineer deals and ask new customers about touchpoints. For example, they've discovered that 30% of the deals that came through SEO were in fact, referrals. 4. Transitioning from gated content to content experiencesInstead of pointing the person to one piece of content, take them through a content journey. Offer them a stream of relevant content on the topics they're researching (including articles, case studies, videos...). The analytics are more meaningful too because you get insight into content performance and the level of the buyer's engagement. And engagement has been proven multiple times higher. 5. Focusing on execution The marketing team most often doesn't miss ideas. They miss execution. Jan shared a simple prioritization method that the team uses to plan. But then the focus is on execution. Focusing on the highest priority initiatives and campaigns. * Jan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jandejosse/

I sat down with Andy Culligan to nail down the process and discuss:- How to build a centralized ABM playbook from scratch- How to onboard and train sales on ABM programs properly- How to scale ABMRESOURCES6-Weeks ABM Playbook: https://fullfunnel.io/account-based-marketing-playbookFull-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blogHOW TO DEVELOP A CENTRALIZED ABM PLAYBOOK AND SCALING ABM: 5 STEP PROCESSHere is a 5-step process I use to develop a centralized ABM playbook for marketing and sales teams.1. 𝐈𝐂𝐏 & 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.Playbook includes:— Buying committee structure (job roles), typical goals, needs, and pain points.— Account qualification and disqualification criteria including verticals, geo & firmographic— Buying triggers (triggers that prove the account might be potentially interested in a product)— # of accounts for the ABM campaign2. 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.Playbook includes:— Information should be collected about accounts (Account strategic initiatives, Persona’s KPIs, challenges, and potential needs)— Proofs that the product might fulfill accounts’ needs— Value hypotheses (how product can help to fulfill existing needs/achieve goals)3. 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦-𝐮𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐬.— Type of warm-up programs (paid content nurturing, content collaboration, social engagement, etc.)— Length of a warm-up program— Engagement threshold/outreach triggers (proofs that account might be interested in a further product discussion)4. 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤.Playbook includes:— # of outreach touches via channels (direct mail, email, phone, social, SMS)— Conversation scenariosSales should always start from a phone call because this is the best opportunity to:— Address all the concerns and generate sales opportunities— Identify the root and the real objections that can be used as new disqualification criteria you can use for account list building.— Figure out what grabs the attention and pass this info to marketing to refine the value proposition.5. 𝐀𝐁𝐌 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝.Dashboard includes:a) Metrics— # of engaged accounts— # of positive replies— # of sales-qualified opportunities— sales pipeline valueb) Account research status including every buying committee member.c) Account engagement (website visits, event sign-ups, etc.)d) Campaign analysis and takeawaysTLDR;Without a centralized playbook that aligns sales and marketing, even the most creative ABM campaign is doomed beforehand.Andy on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-culligan/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel"At a certain moment, we had monthly acquisition offers". This is quite a feat for a B2B company like Tenforce, active in a narrow B2B niche. What made them stand out? The fact that they landed some of the biggest chemical manufacturing companies as clients. Tune in to listen to Bastiaan Deblick sharing his key lessons in enterprise sales and marketing: - How to run 1-1 personalized campaigns to engage your target accounts - How do you address the roles in target accounts- 3 approaches to get attention of buyers busy running factory operations (and not hanging on social media)- How to personalize the content and make your stories relevant to your buyers' specific situation (even when you're dealing with a complex world of manufacturing processes)Bastiaan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bastiaandeblieck/

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnelCopying what others are doing and being a commodity is a safe decision, but you’ll always be struggling.GTM strategy shouldn’t be dictated by your competitors, but by your customers. Yet in any given B2B market, companies never talk to their customers and just copy what others are doing.Same press releases, social media updates, and blog posts nobody cares about.Same boring ads and landing pages with 0 differentiation.Same boring webinars that are pure product pitches.Same obsolete tactics of promoting gated e-books with sales follow-up.Here is an honest truth:The more you copy others, the more commoditized your product becomes. You’ll be always dealing with a question: “Why should I buy from you?”Tune in to learn:1. How to differentiate your B2B product to stand out2. How to measure the efficiency of your messaging3. What’s the right way to run a message validation test? What questions should you ask?4. How to combine research insights and improve your message?5. Message teardown of 3 companiesPeep on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peeplaja/On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenchesUpcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/eventsFull-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog