Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Bhanu Chawla
Global Director of Demand Generation at ComplyAdvantage
About Bhanu Chawla
Bhanu Chawla is the Global Director of Demand Generation at ComplyAdvantage, leveraging nearly 14 years of experience in B2B SaaS marketing. She plays a pivotal role in developing strategies that help payments, fintech, and financial institutions combat financial crime. Bhanu's expertise lies in crafting innovative demand generation approaches, with a particular focus on account-based marketing (ABM) and data-driven decision-making. Her leadership drives ComplyAdvantage's marketing efforts in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-driven fraud prevention and anti-money laundering solutions.
Can you explain the dual funnel approach in ABM and how it benefits your marketing strategy?
The dual funnel approach in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has been a game-changer for us. It involves maintaining a traditional Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) funnel alongside an account-focused funnel. This system allows us to distinguish the specific objectives of our ABM campaigns and simplifies how we view individual aspects within the broader narrative of marketing, including revenue growth and brand equity.
The account-focused funnel integrates various scoring systems but concentrates on accounts rather than individual leads. Instead of just having a Marketing Qualified Lead, we look at a Marketing Qualified Account. This is based on a combination of intent scores, firmographics, technographics, and the overall maturity of the account. For instance, when selling advanced software like autonomous driving technology, we might consider Tesla too advanced due to their in-house development, whereas Porsche could be a more suitable target due to different needs.
This approach helps us tailor our strategies to be more effective, especially for the 10% of accounts that could drive the most sales. It provides a focused view on key accounts without skewing broader marketing metrics. The dual funnel is instrumental in measuring and managing these distinctions, allowing us to adapt our sales processes to these insights with distinct metrics and dashboards.
"The dual funnel approach in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has been a game-changer for us. It involves maintaining a traditional Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) funnel alongside an account-focused funnel."
"Establishing a real ICP involves a thorough analysis of existing accounts, sales dialogues, your product's capabilities, and the specific market pain points you aim to address."
How do you approach developing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for effective ABM implementation?
Developing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a critical and evolving process. It's crucial because without a well-defined ICP, there's a high risk of targeting the wrong accounts. For instance, a company might aim to engage with top-tier corporations with revenues in the billions when their product is better suited for mid-market or SMB sectors.
Establishing a real ICP involves a thorough analysis of existing accounts, sales dialogues, your product's capabilities, and the specific market pain points you aim to address. This comprehensive approach helps ascertain product-market fit, which ultimately defines your ICP. Within this profile, you can further identify various personas.
I strongly advise undertaking this step early in your ABM journey to avoid foundational errors. If you refine your ICP later, you might discover that your initial strategy was misguided from the start. This foresight is essential for anyone embarking on their ABM journey and helps ensure that your targeting and segmentation efforts are aligned with your company's true capabilities and market position.
How do you approach segmentation in the context of ABM, and what challenges have you faced?
Segmentation in ABM is crucial and closely tied to finding the right product-market fit. We approach it by considering multiple factors beyond just company size or revenue. It's important to also consider potential conversion rates and whether accounts truly align with your company's capabilities.
We've developed an internal scoring model, which includes various dimensions such as company revenue, size, whether it's a Greenfield opportunity or requires a displacement strategy, firmographics, technographics, and competitive intelligence. This model helps us effectively segment accounts into tiers and determine the most appropriate engagement strategy, whether it's one-to-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many.
One of the main challenges we faced, especially in the early stages, was refining our approach to segmentation. It's not just about categorising accounts into tiers, but about determining how to engage with each tier effectively. We focus primarily on tailoring our strategies for one-to-one and one-to-few engagements, as these require more nuanced approaches compared to one-to-many strategies.
What challenges have you faced in aligning marketing and sales functions, and how have you addressed them?
The primary challenge in aligning marketing and sales was their differing priorities. Marketing focused on lead generation, ABM, and brand awareness, while sales concentrated on revenue targets and closing deals. To bridge this gap, we've implemented regular communication and collaboration between teams. We've worked on developing a unified understanding of the customer journey and agreed on a common approach to target accounts.
Another hurdle was dealing with data silos and disparate systems. We're addressing this by integrating our marketing automation and sales CRM platforms, ensuring cohesive data display. We've also aligned on key metrics and KPIs, which we review in weekly OKR calls. These include pipeline generation, sources of high-intent requests, and their trends over time, focusing on how they contribute to overall revenue.
How do you ensure stakeholder buy-in and alignment when implementing ABM strategies?
Ensuring stakeholder buy-in and alignment is essential when implementing ABM strategies. We often start with ABM 101 to set a foundational understanding across the organisation. There's a common misconception that ABM is just about targeting accounts with customised marketing, but it's much more comprehensive than that.
We focus on educating our sales teams and providing them with the necessary tools – it's an enablement journey. We must be clear and visible about what ABM is, what we aim to achieve, why it's important, and how we plan to accomplish our goals. If this clarity isn't there, people can develop divergent expectations and may not understand or value the ABM programs.
It's crucial to bring everyone along on this journey from the start. We emphasise that ABM is not just the domain of marketing or sales, but a synergy between marketing, sales, and customer success teams. This collective approach is vital for the success of ABM within our organisation. By fostering this understanding and collaboration, we ensure that our ABM strategies are well-supported and effectively executed across all relevant departments.
"We focus on educating our sales teams and providing them with the necessary tools – it's an enablement journey. We must be clear and visible about what ABM is, what we aim to achieve, why it's important, and how we plan to accomplish our goals."
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About ComplyAdvantage
ComplyAdvantage is a pioneering fintech company at the forefront of financial crime prevention. Their AI-driven platform provides cutting-edge solutions to help financial institutions, payment companies, and fintechs effectively detect and prevent illegal activities such as money laundering and fraud. By leveraging sophisticated machine learning and data analysis techniques, ComplyAdvantage offers real-time insights that enable clients to understand and manage risks more efficiently, ensuring compliance with global regulatory standards.
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.
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