Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Ben Romberg
Head of Strategy and Planning at Gilroy
Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Ben Romberg
Head of Strategy and Planning at Gilroy
About Ben Romberg
Ben Romberg serves as the Head of Strategy and Planning at Gilroy, specialising in overseeing strategic programs for B2B tech clients. His key responsibilities include setting measurable objectives, defining client value propositions, and focusing on targeted account-based marketing strategies. Collaborating closely with media, technology, and creative teams, Ben ensures the alignment of campaign plans with client goals and leverages partnerships to enhance account engagement. His role is pivotal in maintaining Gilroy's long-standing reputation for delivering comprehensive and effective marketing solutions.
Considering your wealth of experience, how do you view the shift towards account-based marketing (ABM) as reshaping strategies in B2B marketing? Could you share any specific examples or case studies that illustrate the impact of this shift?
ABM has been around for about 15 years and is now integral to B2B marketing. It involves focusing on accounts, understanding target prospects, and aligning marketing efforts to support effective communication with those accounts. The alignment of a large programme depends on leveraging both historical and predictive data. The reputation, relationship, and revenue pillars align well with an account-based focus, providing clear data sets and KPIs that are measurable in relation to a campaign.
We recently worked with a large enterprise client, using intent data and account engagement scores to create a highly targeted ABM campaign. By analysing the data, we identified a specific account that showed a significant increase in intent signals related to the client's product offerings. We also noticed that the engagement scores for key decision-makers within that account were steadily rising. Armed with these insights, we crafted a personalised content journey that addressed the specific pain points and interests of the target account. The campaign was delivered through a multi-channel approach, including targeted ads, personalised emails, and direct mail. As a result, we saw a 200% increase in engagement from the target account, leading to a significant pipeline contribution and a closed deal worth over $500,000.
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Allowing visibility across that data set will really set the tone for how you can be more strategic with future campaigns.
You mentioned that reputation, relationships, and revenue are key pillars in account-based marketing. Could you provide examples of how you measure each of these pillars in practice?
Sure. From a reputational standpoint, you might look at current brand sentiment regarding your products and solutions within a target organisation or assess performance sentiment. What do recent NPS scores indicate? Have you conducted surveys that reveal whether you're meeting KPIs or need improvement? Additionally, sales teams often possess qualitative insights that surpass what you can capture from data alone. Gathering this kind of information can help set the context for a campaign and establish a benchmark for improving your reputational standing.
Relationships are somewhat easier to gauge because you can directly measure aspects such as the number of high-level connections within an organisation, engagement with marketing content, contacts in your CRM, and connections between your sales team and the account. These factors allow us to quantify and also assess the quality and potential for improvement in these relationships.
Then there's revenue, a metric particularly sensitive politically within marketing campaigns. It's quantifiable, but its evaluation depends on the methodologies applied. The focus often lies on pipeline contributions: How much pipeline was generated by this campaign? How much can we attribute back to our initial strategies? What's the close rate, and how does this reflect the value of our efforts? In all, it's about showing the value of our work through these pipelines and developing an effective scoring system to gauge the success of the campaign.
In your experience, what are the key factors that contribute to successful collaboration between sales and marketing teams in an ABM context?
It really varies. There are some organisations where the collaboration is very hand-in-glove, while in others, it's quite siloed. Marketing supports sales, provides a bit of collateral, improves the website, and that's about it. However, all the research, data, and metrics point towards sales and marketing alignment showing a much greater level of return and success, particularly in an ABM program, compared to when they're disjointed.
I think the key thing is to make sure there's an agreed objective right at the beginning that both sales and marketing leadership can sign off on. If they agree on that shared objective, such as winning a certain number of strategic accounts over the course of the year and ensuring the programme generates pipeline from each of those accounts, then you're much more likely to see success, especially with measurable KPIs against it.
The way we've been trying to support that alignment is by bringing it back to the systems in place that measure and monitor the progress. For example, the KPIs that align with the campaign programme or the dashboard that shows visibility from both a marketing and sales perspective to ensure ongoing alignment. All of these components are critical and help both sales and marketing teams look at the same pipeline, recognising that they may have different incentives and goals at the end of it, but ensuring that the campaign efforts are aligned.
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If sales and marketing leadership agree on a shared objective, such as winning a certain number of strategic accounts over the course of the year and ensuring the programme generates pipeline from each of those accounts, then you're much more likely to see success, especially with measurable KPIs against it.
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For many large enterprises that have been sitting on mountains of data without knowing its value or the opportunities within it, this is like opening the gates to a treasure trove. It allows them to see opportunities they haven't been able to find on their own.
You've spoken about your partnership with 6sense and how it has been a game-changer for your ABM initiatives. Could you share some specific ways in which 6sense's technology and predictive analytics have enhanced your ability to identify opportunities and create targeted campaigns?
Our partnership with 6sense has been a game-changer for our ABM initiatives. We're using 6sense technology every day, both for our own visibility of the market and to inform things like intent data for our clients. For example, we're running some LinkedIn media campaigns at the moment, and we're combining that with the performance data from 6sense. We're essentially "drinking our own champagne," as there's a lot to be made of it.
One of the key things about 6sense's model is that before you even sign an SLA with a client, they'll do a data cleanse. They'll absorb and ingest all the data they can, make sense of it, and then start making clear recommendations based on that. For many large enterprises that have been sitting on mountains of data without knowing its value or the opportunities within it, this is like opening the gates to a treasure trove. It allows them to see opportunities they haven't been able to find on their own.
We recently contributed to a thought leadership piece for a B2B marketing agencies report, where we dedicated a section to predictive buying behaviors. What you're able to do with 6sense is look at the five buying stages and allocate where the accounts sit within all of that. This allows you to be much more strategic and future-focused around where you want to put resources, spend media budget, or create dedicated campaigns. It gets to a very smart place that B2B marketers have wanted to reach for years, which is knowing that you're going where the opportunities are and avoiding the churn problem of running big campaigns that generate leads but go nowhere.
We also have our own dedicated data reporting and orchestration platform called SmartEngine, which can be powered by 6sense and other tools, but primarily has been used with 6sense in the context of some of our flagship campaigns. This allows for better management and actionable recommendations around customer data sets.
About Gilroy
Gilroy, a prominent B2B technology marketing agency for enterprises, was established in the 1970s. Known for delivering innovative and impactful marketing solutions, Gilroy focuses on strategic planning, demand generation, ABM, and brand campaigns. By leveraging industry insights and a collaborative approach across media, technology, digital, and creative teams, Gilroy has become a trusted partner for businesses seeking growth and measurable results in the complex B2B tech marketing landscape.
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.
