Account-based marketing is a powerful strategy, but how do you do it effectively? Join us with special guest Mason Cosby, Director of Growth at Gravity Global. In this episode, Mason shares what most marketers miss, and how to get alignment with customers to add value in B2B companies.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has become a fast-growing trend over the past decade, but why? What makes ABM so powerful for B2B marketers?
It’s simple. ABM speaks the language of executives and salespeople, which greatly benefits marketers. ABM also clarifies which specific targeted activities marketers need to do in order to add value and drive engagement in their accounts.
Being able to align marketing, sales, and executives is the most valuable growth strategy you can have as a B2B business.
Let’s explore a few ways to curate an effective ABM strategy so you can achieve that optimal alignment and close more deals.
In this episode of Markigy Podcast, your host Leanne Dow-Weimer welcomes Mason Cosby, Director of Growth at Gravity Global, to break down trusted tactics for creating a powerful Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy.
In this episode, we discuss:
Meet the Host:
Leanne Dow-Weimer, Founder & Host of Markigy Podcast https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannedow/
Meet the Guest:
Mason Cosby, Director of Growth at Gravity Global
https://www.linkedin.com/in/masoncosby
Links to content here:
Gravity Global: https://gravityglobal.com
Listen to The Marketing Ladder Podcast: https://apple.co/3eNBK4H
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This episode was produced and brought to you by Reignite Media.
Markigy - Episode w/ Mason Cosby
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Margy. Today we are meeting with Mason Cosby and he's gonna teach us quite a bit about ABM and different strategies that he uses. So I'm gonna go ahead and let you introduce yourself. Yeah, I'm, I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Leanne. So, my name is Mason Cosby. I as the director of Growth over at Gravity Global specific to our account based marketing team, which means that I get to talk a lot about account based [00:00:30] marketing with marketing leaders and help them learn how they can build their programs so they can scale revenue growth.
[00:00:35] So, very excited to be here and talk through just a couple of things that we've been learning. Great. Well, I am so excited. Yeah. So for the rest of the episode, we might call it account based marketing. We might call it abm. We might go back and forth between the two, but that's what that means. Um, and it's really been a growing trend in the last few years.
[00:00:55] What do you think makes it so powerful? Really, I think [00:01:00] there's three things. One, I think that account based marketing speaks the language of executives, and I think that many executives sometimes struggle to recognize the value that marketing can bring. Whereas account based marketing it, it talks less about brand awareness and exposure and you know, making sure we get our message out there and the right iconography and color.
[00:01:21] And I wanna be very clear, all of that is incredibly important for brand building. But really the value of account based marketing is talking about [00:01:30] we're gonna go after this customer and have them come into our pipeline. We're gonna close them . And again, executives can wrap their mind around that. Now, the exact tactics of how that happens, I mean that's, that's almost irrelevant for many of them.
[00:01:45] But to see, we made the intention to go after these hundred accounts for the next 12 months, and we closed 20 of them. And if we have an average deal value of a hundred thousand dollars, 20 deals, a hundred [00:02:00] thousand dollars at the deal, it's $2 million. So again, that that speaks the language of executives.
[00:02:05] The second piece that I think makes it so helpful and popular is it also speaks the language of sales. So again, The job of marketing is to drive revenue and it's to present opportunities for sales. And when you've partnered up with sales to say, Hey, let's go after these accounts together again, you get more buy-in, people get excited, and at the end of the day, you're actually able to then drive more revenue, make larger impacts, because you've gotten [00:02:30] sales on board.
[00:02:30] And then finally, I, I think. I think it has gained popularity because it brings such a clear focus for marketers. Marketers often struggle to know, who am I even supposed to be going after? Cause again, I think we got in our head, let's, let's generate a ton of m qls. Let's just generate as much traffic and as many people as possible and init.
[00:02:53] Eventually it will shake out. So what that has caused marketers to do is a lot of things, but those things may not actually have true [00:03:00] intentionality. So what account based marketing does is it provides that focus to say we're not gonna do do things to do things. We are going to do specific targeted activities that are aimed at providing.
[00:03:14] Value in helpful information that drives engagement within a hundred accounts or a thousand accounts. Again, you can, There's a lot that you can do with abm, but again, it's, it's named and it's focused. So I think those are really the three reasons. Account based marketing has [00:03:30] gained a lot of traction.
[00:03:31] Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that's one of the pain points that as marketing leaders, we have. Talk like managing up is being able to say, This is the roi. This is what we're doing, this is what we're getting, and this is the, the pipeline growth. And they don't want necessarily to hear or understand the complexities and nuances of how branding enables that to happen.
[00:03:58] They have to report [00:04:00] to their board, they have to report to their investors. They have to take it forward. And what they can take forward is those bullet points. Mm-hmm. these accounts this way, everybody's on it. Mission go. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I think that's really powerful. Um, so you told us a little bit about it and how do you define it in your current role?
[00:04:21] How, kind of, what's that scope look like for you? Yeah, so I, I'm glad you asked for a definition because if you ask a hundred marketers [00:04:30] what ab image, you'll probably get 200 different answers. . Um, so in the way that we define account based market, It is a focused B2B growth strategy that gets marketing and sales aligned on a set of shared target accounts.
[00:04:45] So a couple things to call out specifically is focused B2B growth strategy. Um, I love abm. I hate that it's called abm. I hate that it's account based marketing. It should be account based strategy. [00:05:00] Because it is not really a marketing strategy. It is a growth strategy that gets marketing and sales together.
[00:05:05] And honestly, great ABM also involves that customer success team as well. So you're getting really a holistic view of the revenue generation team that is all aligned towards how do we best serve our best fit customers. And when we serve our customers well, they typically pay us well. So again, that is our definition of account based marketing and why it's focused on growth more than marketing.[00:05:30]
[00:05:30] Absolutely. And, and I think that that's a really important distinction. Um, you know, being able to take it online. Kind of shake the reins a little bit because people really like to put things into one bucket. And while this is definitely in one bucket, none of these buckets in real life ever act independently.
[00:05:50] And so being able to team up with sales, some of my best friends are sales people. I've gotta say this whole like marketing sales rivalry thing, don't understand it. My job is [00:06:00] to support them. Um, So, you know, when we talked, I, you know, it really stuck out that you were taking this kind of, you, you took an ordinary method.
[00:06:10] You, one of your use cases was this specific approach that I'm gonna let you talk about. Um, but with the webinar and incorporating it into this extraordinary successful strategy, could you talk us through that? Yeah. So I, the. I'll give you [00:06:30] some backstory as to why we even took this approach in the first place.
[00:06:34] Um, my first Avian program was a complete flop. I built out this incredible, robust nurture path, and it was essentially a choose your own adventure. Like what's the problem that you're experiencing as a rapidly growing company? You click on it and you land on a page and then it take you through this email sequence.
[00:06:52] It was amazing. It took me two weeks to put together and it generated zero results. Oh. And what I, I [00:07:00] started to realize, and this is gonna sound dumb to realize it, but no one wants to feel targeted by the nature that account based marketing is highly focused and highly targeted. Your ABM efforts will be targeted.
[00:07:15] So then the question becomes, how do I create a message that is highly targeted, that is highly focused, that is highly relevant without making someone feel like. I just got singled out on targeted [00:07:30] and what we have started to do and have been doing for about the past year, I don't think this is a term anywhere else, if somebody has already claimed it, happy to, to give them credit in retrospect, but I, I call it publicly accessible, account based marketing.
[00:07:44] So you host public sessions, you host public things where anybody can join, but all of your promotional efforts, all of your ad dollars, everything that you do to get people to the event. Is through targeted account based efforts. [00:08:00] So what we did and what we have been doing are workshops that are highly tactical, highly focused, and the most successful, of which, which interestingly enough, we actually did yesterday.
[00:08:09] Um, so those fourth time we've done it in 12, 4, 14 months is called Fix your Site from Search to Sale. So what we do is we all hop in, we've got some experts on conversionary optimization and messaging and design and positioning, and we review homepages. and buyer processes. So what is it like from the homepage of your website to actually enter into a sales [00:08:30] conversation?
[00:08:31] And then what we do is we review our ICP fit accounts and, and to clarify ICP ideal client profile, so the best fit kinds of customers. And we also just review our named target accounts in a live format where again, they have actually submitted their website to us and asked us to review their website.
[00:08:51] And then what we also do, It's following the event. Uh, I will spend the next probably 20 hours throughout the rest of this [00:09:00] week sitting in this room reviewing websites, and I create personalized landing pages for every account. I send a little intra video that says, Hey, so and so, so nice. Um, to have the opportunity to review your website.
[00:09:11] Really love the opportunity, you know, couple things. Just a high level call out, and then we send them personalized website reviews every single. And it's a homepage, It's technical audit, it's messaging. And out of that, I've sent out in the past year, roughly, I would say, a hundred websites, [00:09:30] um, or a hundred website reviews.
[00:09:32] And that has resulted in about 32 closed one, new websites. So when you send out a hundred and you get 32 to 32% conversion rate, which is fantastic, and that's not just conversion rate from pipeline. I mean total targeted effort, 32% conversion, and with the average website being 30 to 40,000, again, that's gonna be some different quick math, but it's.
[00:09:58] It's well over hundreds [00:10:00] of thousands of dollars. So again, it's, it's been a highly effective program, um, to run and it's not super complex to set up. Yeah. And what I really like about this, I'm just gonna call out like a couple of aspects that I think differentiate it, if you will. Mm-hmm. . Permission based.
[00:10:18] Right? So you have permission from the users to review their website and that's what takes it from uh, like generic, you know, fluff piece. Yeah. Into, uh, [00:10:30] this means something to me kind of action. Um, another aspect is that, that that care and consideration and value, that actual, like value and proof of concept, right?
[00:10:44] Because if in my mind, if I had. You know, a pain point and I wasn't sure whether or not someone was qualified or I liked working with them, or they could communicate well, or, or any of those like soft details that [00:11:00] go into the actual nuts and bolts of working with a vendor. Um, this proves what it would be like to work with you.
[00:11:08] Mm-hmm. in a no cost or, you know, low threat opportunity because everything that you are reviewing is public facing. Mm-hmm. . So it's not giving up anything confidential and, you know, I, that those are things that, like me as someone looking for vendors, you know, that's what [00:11:30] would make a difference to me.
[00:11:31] Absolutely. Um, I really liked it. So, uh, beyond those two points, you know, what are some other parts of your thought process when, you know, just thinking up this strategy? So I'm a big fan of this concept of iterative growth. So I think you just start with an MVP of what can we get out the door that we could do?
[00:11:53] So, I'll be honest, um, this, this idea really just started as a let's do live [00:12:00] website reviews cuz we. Could do that. And then what I realized is, man, we had like 50 people actually submit their websites. We, I, I guess we could actually just send out website reviews afterwards. And again, at that point, I, I didn't think through the concept of like, Oh, this could be personalized landing pages.
[00:12:20] A at that point it was, Well, I've got this incredible website tool. We're, we're on the HubSpot cms, so all of our website is built in the HubSpot. Um, and then the, [00:12:30] the theme that we're on, we actually built that is called Bojo Flex. And it just, it's really easy to use. So again, I could then actually create personalized landing pages at scale using data from our crm.
[00:12:42] So again, it wasn't that, I hate to say it this way. because I, again, we actually preached to our clients to have like very well thought out strategic plans. But it was for us, what can we do that would be helpful to people? And it was, let's do live website reviews. And then from that point, we had so [00:13:00] many websites is, Okay, well why don't we, why don't review all of them and see what happens?
[00:13:05] And I, I wish it was more well thought out. I wish there was a grander story, but at the end of the day, the, the goal was, I just tried something that was highly targeted and it completely flopped. So how do we engage people in a way that's helpful, in a way that is low risk, in a way that is less, I mean less invasive?
[00:13:26] And to your point, I think everybody that's been in an internal [00:13:30] marketing role, they've probably got a website review that was uninvited and, and that when I was brandside, I got many website reviews and my response is always, I actually. Just, it's not a priority right now, but all you've done is you've ticked me off to remind me that I, I can't fix this at this moment.
[00:13:48] So by creating an avenue in which we could then actually get people, for lack of word, uh, to show intent that they were interested in having their website reviewed again, it checked a lot of [00:14:00] boxes in a very low cost and low. Lift way. Um, so what, what I actually recommend to a lot of people is figure out for your business what is a problem that you can solve that you can then host in a live workshop type format.
[00:14:17] Because again, what that does is it invites others in. You teach you, position yourself not just as an expert, but also potentially as a peer, but is in it with them. And it's again, super low cost, [00:14:30] super low effort, and highly engaging because. It's their website, it's their process. It's their hiring experience.
[00:14:38] Again, I've actually talked with recruiting companies about it and like they've done hiring process audits. So again, you could really cater it to your business. Cause again, everyone that has a business is solving some kind of a problem. Just figure out the problem you solve and how can you then present that in a workshop live format.
[00:14:55] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also, it, [00:15:00] it kind of answers these two sides of the coin, right? There's the, if you build it, they will come, and then the what if nobody comes. And it allows room for both possibilities and room to pivot from the results of that, because you know, there may be things upstream that need more support in order to get people to even know that this exists or to come or to show that intent.
[00:15:25] Or you know, there may be something else where like you [00:15:30] had so much success, you're like, Okay, now what? We had them come and we have to figure out these next steps. And I, I like to assign the value of, because you had written out that large nurture sequence, that large project, and it didn't perform, It did inform your next strategy.
[00:15:49] Yeah. And when you were ready to make the landing pages, And that process and that workflow, did you take away some of the, the learnings from your [00:16:00] previous experience to inform what you did next? Yeah. I mean, to be, to be really clear, that first flop was like June . We hosted the first to be in, when I say June, I mean like June of, what was that, 2021.
[00:16:14] The first fixture site was July. Mm-hmm. . So I mean, it was, I mean, I'm a solo marketer, so I pivot pretty quick of. . Wow, that didn't work. Let's do something entirely different. So again, it was the, the first program was entirely in isolation and it [00:16:30] was entirely email focused. So what I did instead was, let's do something that's that's publicly facing where people don't know and don't feel like they're being targeted.
[00:16:39] So, I mean, that was the, that was the critical learning for me is I need to, and again, I don't think this is a universal lesson. I think this is where you experiment and test within your audience. But again, what I tested with, I target a bunch of CMOs with email and that totally flopped because cold email to CMOs [00:17:00] doesn't work.
[00:17:00] Crazy concept . They're getting like a thousand emails a day and they're like, Cool. Like I already am stressed out and now you want me to give you my time, money, and attention. Exactly. So the flip side is targeting the entire marketing org because all I needed was one person to submit the. And then the website is reviewed and they can share it internally.
[00:17:24] And what again, I'm recognizing more and more through these processes is it is more important for me [00:17:30] to to target the key influencers in the initial programming than the decision makers because decision makers are often busy as they are decision makers, whereas key influencers. Are truly the ones that actually make organizational change and bring things to their decision makers to say, Hey, I think that we should do this because decision makers that are smart, hire smart people to help guide the organization and they're then the ones that help to bring it all together.
[00:17:57] So again, there's [00:18:00] obviously nuances to it, especially in a marketing role where I market to marketers. Um, you may have a completely different buying committee. But that's where the benefit of ABN comes in, is understanding your buying committee and then engaging them in ways that are most beneficial for them and for us.
[00:18:14] That's what worked. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think that part of what makes it with those key influencers is that they are informed as their, you know, what their internal stakeholders priorities are. Right? So if, so, [00:18:30] so you're sta you're allowing them to be. Like the gatekeeper, if you will, instead of, you know, trying to.
[00:18:39] You're, you're working with the process, right? Because all of these, these organizations that are a little bit larger, that are more likely to look for an agency to, to take on some aspect. They, they do have workflows and processes and hierarchies. And I, I would imagine that it would be easier for a key [00:19:00] influencer to take, uh, you know, the, the internal, the, the audit that you provide, and then speak to their person and be like, Hey, you know, this may be, uh, next year budget priority, but when we're ready to come to it, this is, you know, this is the translation of the value for you because we already have.
[00:19:22] Made for us. Yeah. Thing. Um, and you know, having sat through plenty of pitches [00:19:30] and sat through many of like, we're doing this demo and then this demo and then this thing, um, you know, being able to kind of have a tangible cut to the chase card that allows the next step to be more informed and a better match saves everybody.
[00:19:50] Absolutely your time. Their time, everybody's time. And I even think to that point, what, what's interesting cuz some of the deals that have come through that were separate from those [00:20:00] 32 websites, we have people that that got a website review that didn't really engage with another content, but when they needed an agency, they contacted us because we'd already built trust and showed value.
[00:20:11] So again, Again, for, for, to some extent, for better and for worse websites. Brand and marketing are often kind of lumped together in specific agencies. We have the capabilities to do all of it. That is not always the case, but by the nature of that, we can do websites, we can do marketing program, we can do branding.
[00:20:28] We've had clients [00:20:30] that, you know, got a website review and then needed a new brand. So we helped them with their rebrand, or they got a website review. They ended up fixing up their website based on their review, which was fantastic, and then said, Okay, we need to drive better quality traffic to now actually convert on our website.
[00:20:44] I was like, Awesome. We can help with that. So again, it's, it's the recognition of my goal in this situation is counterintuitively not to sell. It is to add value and to build trust. And to know that if [00:21:00] I can consistently show value and build trust for my best fit customers, when they are ready, they will buy.
[00:21:07] So I, I think to your point, yes, there is a, there's a value in, Hey, look at what they could do specifically on this thing. But I think the even grander value is, wow, look at what kind of partner they could be. They took time out of their life to spend 30 minutes reviewing my website. From a homepage perspective, from a content perspective, from a technical [00:21:30] foundation's perspective, and that's just 30 minutes that they could have spent doing something else, but they chose to spend that 30, yeah, they chose to spend that 30 minutes reviewing my website and trying to add value and help me.
[00:21:43] Yeah, absolutely. And, and trust is a two way street, right? So you have to trust them to make decisions for themselves. And I think that this is a, a key component of relationships, of marketing, you know, relationships at scale. Sales is, is that two-way street of [00:22:00] trust. Because what, and, and I'm, I'll stay off my soapbox about this, but.
[00:22:07] I'll get on it a little bit. The thing is, is that you have to treat adults, like adults, and so much of these like old, like hard sales tactics that were really cool in the nineties that aren't cool anymore is that it wasn't trusting people to make decisions for themselves. It was trying to manipulate or trying to assume [00:22:30] that you know better than them instead of the, you know, This is our, our value.
[00:22:36] We want to help you. You tell me, is this a good fit? You, you decide if, you know, I can trust you to move forward when you're ready to move forward, if it makes sense. Yeah. And I think that's so foundational. I, I agree and disagree to some extent, right? So the agreement is, I mean, if we go back to the nineties, for example, um, [00:23:00] There wasn't a better way to buy.
[00:23:02] There wasn't. You're right. So to that point, yes, there are certainly peop salespeople that probably use that to their advantage and said, Look, we're gonna, we're just gonna hard sell and call out a day. And there were others that were consulted with. But also, to be completely blunt, it was far harder to keep people engaged because there were less ways to reach people and there were less ways to actually add value from a content perspective and educate.
[00:23:28] The difference here and the [00:23:30] important piece is that there are many organizations that still use those tactics and haven't adapted to recognize that today. That is no longer the case. Buyers are in control. They have the ability to self educate. And again, we see it at time and time again that this statistic is, you know, a buyer's 80% of the way through their journey before they've even contacted sales versus where it used to be.
[00:23:53] They may not even be problem aware. When they start their buying journey in the nineties, again, [00:24:00] they may be 20% of the way through the buying journey, and then they rely on that salesperson to get them the rest of the way. Again, that's flipped. That's the importance to. Understanding your customers, understanding the buying committee so you can proactively engage and get content and helpful messages in front of them as they're going through their buying decisions before they've ever formally reached out to you.
[00:24:20] Absolutely, and I think that, Another nuance where maybe I was being too, too general or too thing is that, [00:24:30] um, there, that still leaves room for offering an upseller offering additional or cross, you know, abilities that it still leaves room for that. But I think it the. The kicker, the de the devils in the details, right?
[00:24:46] It's, it's how you cross sale, it's how you do it. Um, you know, for example, instead of like, just like, Oh, well you're gonna need the, the shiny [00:25:00] rims, You know, like, Sorry, the car salesmen get a pad wrap. But I, I apologize. Um, it's just the, the analogy we're gonna run with. Yep. So now instead, you know, Offering the choice of rims, like, Hey, you know, while we're here, you're already here, we're, we're already going this step.
[00:25:18] Do you think that rims, which might make your car look better, do you think you might wanna just do that now so that you don't have to do it later so that it's easier or more convenient and you get, like, you should [00:25:30] enjoy it longer? You know, there's different ways to go about it and, and. again, it's the how.
[00:25:36] Mm-hmm. and that's one reason why it really, the way that you're doing the fixture website really resonated with me and the way that I think marketing should be. Is because the how is in a way that is customer led. Mm-hmm. and e. Even with Fixtures site for example, we, we have clients that have never engaged in a website project.
[00:25:56] So we can invite those clients and say, Hey, if we had a better [00:26:00] website, it actually improves your marketing programming in these ways. Or, Hey, we just did an incredible branding project. But your website is entirely built using custom code that's hard coded into your cms and we can't change anything on the website.
[00:26:14] So we, we need to build it. And again, in the way that we build websites, it is designed to actually give people control better markers. I'm non-technical. I've managed our website for 18 months and split up programming and like actually be able to capture [00:26:30] customer data and activate that customer data.
[00:26:31] And again, it's. It's built in such a way that it actually equips people to grow versus handcuffing them to an agency. So in all of that, there's value. So again, it makes sense contextually, or if I may provide another example. We were recently acquired about four months ago. So we have a number of new clients that are a part of Gravity Global that aren't working with our team, but they're doing specifics around potentially paid media or content or pr.
[00:26:56] And there is a potential that an account based marketing [00:27:00] strategy, Only further elevates what is currently happening within those paid media programs or their content programs or even pr. So again, it's making it contextualized and you can run account based programs toward your existing customer base.
[00:27:13] Honestly, it's one of the best ways to do account based marketing cuz you already have great understandings of the customers cuz they're your customers. So again, you can expand customers in that way, but that's a whole, they're tangent. , Absolutely. Um, So, you know, you talked [00:27:30] about quite a bit of this ai and I'm just thinking, you know, what advice would you give someone trying to ab I their strategies, abm, if I is gonna be a coin phrase now?
[00:27:41] No, that's totally fine. So I. I love and hate the question . Cause I, the, the problem that many people run into with ABM is they kind of bolt it on and they're like, Oh, we can just kind of sprinkle in some abm and the, the running joke for us is it, [00:28:00] ABM in many ways is used the same way the SEO was when it first kind of came on the scene of like, Oh, can we do some seo?
[00:28:06] It's like . Yes, sure we can, but like, do you want on page? Do you want off page or you white hat, black hat? Anyway, all that to say what, What I would first do if you want to kind of run some ABM specific plays within your existing programming is figure out what is the programming that could be.
[00:28:29] [00:28:30] Personalized from a promotional standpoint. So if you're hosting workshops, how can you potentially change the title a little bit and nuance it to where it focuses maybe on a specific audience? Quick example, we ran one that was called Content strategies for Rapidly Scaling Companies. So who did that focus on rapidly scaling companies?
[00:28:50] Who do we target? Ink? 5,000 organizations in the tech. So all of our promotional tactics were focused around those people. I didn't say content strategies for in [00:29:00] 5,000 companies in the tech space said rapidly scaling companies. So again, at that point it was nuanced for the targeted audience. Not a radical shift, but a small shift.
[00:29:11] And the other thing to consider is talking to. It depends on the, the sides of your sales team, but you would wanna pilot this. You wanna have a small number of sales people involved so you guys can really partner well and talking to sales to say, Hey, look, what, What is [00:29:30] a really great customer that you're talking to right now that's in our pipeline that maybe taking a little bit longer, but is a huge opportunity.
[00:29:37] What is something we can do to support? And again, it's not this robust ABM strategy. But it's a targeted approach. It is some ABM like plays. Um, we have a partnership with Sendo, so, and we have Sendo. So what I love to do every 90 to 180 days is I look at our dark, lost and delayed deals [00:30:00] and. These are deals that have come through our pipeline but didn't close for any number of reasons, and I build out a list, maybe 10 to 20.
[00:30:07] We just send 'em a popcorn 10 that says, Hey, we're popping back in. Hope you've had a great couple of months. Just wanted to see how you were doing and if we might be able to to talk through your marketing programs. Simple, easy, and every time we send 10 to 20, we get, typically it's roughly 25% conversion.
[00:30:25] So you know anywhere from two or three, sometimes five, six [00:30:30] or seven new meetings on the calendar that are talking through, they're programming again and reengaging those customers. So again, to Avi, amplify what you're currently doing. Looking at your existing programming, figuring out how can I personalize this from maybe a promotional perspective, maybe give it a different slant to go after a specific audience, Or what are some really easy, simple plays that I can run in our existing pipeline towards our existing customers that show the value of a really [00:31:00] highly targeted approach.
[00:31:02] Absolutely. And then for people who don't know, Sendo, so is an organization that does corporate gifting. I like to think of them as the Etsy of corporate gifting because they, they do such an amazing job of like making it not like two cookie cutter, Right. Like, like it's, it feels more thoughtful. Yeah. Um.
[00:31:26] So I just, I like that, that it's like that approach of stuff that you would get [00:31:30] that wouldn't be, you know, so. so far where you're like, Here's a key chain, You know? Yeah. It it's just more thoughtful corporate gifting. Absolutely. And there's a number of gifting platforms like reaches or postal.io or Alice, or, there's so many.
[00:31:46] There's, there's one more that is escaping me. You could also use a, uh, if you just wanna do gift cards called presi. Um, so there's a lot that is related in the gifting space, but, Everybody loves to receive a gift. It's gifting, right? Yeah. It's, but it, [00:32:00] and, and I remember hearing someone from Sendo, so do a talk at a conference, um, that it's not just sending a gift for gift's sake, is that it's taking that MBA ABM mindset of what does this account.
[00:32:16] Care about. Mm-hmm. , what, You know, if I do my homework on them and I look at them as a customer, what do these people have in common? What, what it was gonna make a stronger stickiness, like stronger [00:32:30] impression, and less of a generic, Here's a key chain, here's a, here's another Tumblr type of thing. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with Tumblr.
[00:32:39] Please, like, by all means, send Tumblrs, but make sure it's what the person wants. Yeah. I mean I, I've seen specifically those, those gifting companies go to some, some incredible extremes of, like for, I'll give you the example of on fixture site yesterday one of our team members was talking about how they were from Atlanta trying think exciting [00:33:00] about Atlanta.
[00:33:00] So what I actually said is, well, fun fact about Atlanta, Captain America Civil War was filmed in Atlanta at the airports. You've had superheroes fight in your. Somebody could send me or her a Captain America Shield and say something to the extent of, Thank you for being an incredible marketing superhero.
[00:33:16] If you'd ever like to talk about how we can level up your, you know, heroics, let's schedule a call. Highly personalized. Yeah, that would be so great that, that, that's exactly the type of example that [00:33:30] I think would show just that, that, that care about who you're talking to. Um, and I think that that's where a lot of marketing strategies get lost is, is not knowing, not know, not like knowing how or, or really taking too much into a cow.
[00:33:46] Yeah. Um, so now, There's so much going on in marketing and there's ABM in the way that people are saying things are, you know, once again like seo, like, oh [00:34:00] yeah, I'm, you know, like CEOs are like, Can you do this new buzzword? But where, where is it that you think marketing is going and where is it that you think marketing should be going?
[00:34:14] I am a big, big fan of Sangam Verge. Sangram was really the godfather of account based marketing. He found a Terminus and he is recently started a new company called GTM Partners. Um, I happen to be associated with them. I [00:34:30] think they're fantastic, but what, what we have started to recognize, and if you go look at the messaging of a lot of account based marketing platforms, they've changed away from account based marketing and they've started to call themselves go to market platforms.
[00:34:47] and what, where I think we are headed is truly that marketing is becoming a highly, highly strategic function and less of just sales support and is more the galvanizer of [00:35:00] the vision of a company and is really focused around how do we take an idea, how do we take a product? And actually become a category leader.
[00:35:11] How do we effectively take these ideas into an already crowded environment? Cause again, we look at a lot of tech companies, many of them are actually founded on the basis of we're gonna solve this one really specific problem that [00:35:30] no one else is solving. So at that point, you then have to go to market and create a category and.
[00:35:38] Again, you're, you've got the advantage of not direct competitors, but again, people have already been solving this problem. They're in their own ways. So as we see more and more companies created to solve highly niche specific focused problems, marketing's job is to help lead in the initiatives around go to market.
[00:35:56] So I think that the direction of marking is going is [00:36:00] I think we're gonna see a shift from the main partner of a CEO being a coo, and I think it's gonna become more of a c. Is the main partner that is tied to the hip of the CEO and is helping to bring a company to, to the market. So I, I think that's where we're headed.
[00:36:19] Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely hear a lot about that, uh, especially because if you look at it from another lens, um, the jobs to be done lens, right? And you're looking at [00:36:30] what, what job? is that niche company doing and is that job being done by someone else? A marketer is really gonna be the one that that puts it into words.
[00:36:40] Puts it into fields, puts it into experience what that customer can expect by becoming a customer. Yeah. And painting that, that picture. And, um, I'm gonna steal a phrase from someone that I know and they talk about the shift from being order takers [00:37:00] to, um, innovation leaders mm-hmm. and, you know, change management comes into play and, and there's this cultural thing that has to happen.
[00:37:09] in all organizations, whether small, you know, like four or five startups or very large organizations where you know what's going to, what's gonna be life like in five years? Are you going to be coming up with trends? Are you gonna be following them? Yeah. Are you going to be able to reach your, your people?
[00:37:28] Do you know who your people [00:37:30] are? And that's where marketing more so than you know, ops, like you, you have to have everybody working together. But you also need to bring revenue in, and marketing plays a pretty important part of that role. Um, so I, I also, you know, this concept of the chief revenue officer.
[00:37:52] What do you think of that? I really love it when it's done correctly. So when I say done correctly, a [00:38:00] CRO should not be a chief sales officer. A CRO should truly be somebody. When done appropriately, I think ease is the person that actually is tied into the CEO more so than a cmo. But again, what I'm seeing is that Chief Revenue Officers, Chief revenue officers are really just sales people in an executive seat.
[00:38:19] I don't think that's a a bad thing to have sales in the executive seat that needs to happen, but a CR is someone that should holistically view the [00:38:30] revenue teams, which is marketing, sales, and customer success. and the goal of a CRO should be how do we pull the appropriate revenue levers to grow the business?
[00:38:43] Is it deploying more dollars into marketing to generate larger awareness and bring more people into pipeline? Is it deploying dollars into sales to then close the right customers in our pipeline, or is it the, do we need deploy dollars to customer success to expand our existing customer base? Again, as [00:39:00] as I look at CROs, Most of them have exclusively worked in a sales background and are really focused on sales.
[00:39:09] Again, I, I think that's needed in the executive seat, but a true CRO is somebody that can look at all three and as an objective view of how to best grow the business. Definitely. That's well said. I don't have anything I could possibly add to that I like. Yes. Um, 100%. So we're, we're just about [00:39:30] out of time and if someone wanted to follow up with you or learn more about you or what you're working on, what's the best way for them to contact you?
[00:39:39] LinkedIn. So very active there. If you just type in Mason Cosby, um, You'll see my headshot pop up. And to be clear, does Mason Cosby know r I am not the kicker for the Green Bay Packers? Um, and the only place, if you would like to learn less about me and [00:40:00] learn more about a lot of other great marketing leaders, I host a podcast called The Marketing Ladder, where I just interview marketing leaders on how they built the career so you can learn how to build yours.
[00:40:07] So those are the two places that you can. Yes. Thank you so much. Um, and I am so excited to learn more and watch more and see how all of your strategies grow. I am so thankful that you joined me and to hear, to be able to pick your brain is just such a wonderful experience cuz I really think that, you know, there's people that [00:40:30] say that they know marketing and then there's people that can prove that they know marketing and you're one of the people that have proved that they know it and they understand it and they can take it to the next.
[00:40:39] Which is really cool. I think you were overly kind and I appreciate it, . Thank you so much. All right, well that's it for today. Uh, thanks again.