Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Tommy Powell
Senior Marketing Director at Reapit
Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Tommy Powell
Senior Marketing Director at Reapit
About Tommy Powell
Tommy Powell is a Senior Marketing Director for Reapit, leading his organisation's marketing efforts in the UK and Ireland. His role involves setting strategic direction, ensuring effective strategy execution, and monitoring performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). Powell's responsibilities are central to driving growth, increasing brand visibility, and conveying the company's value proposition to its target audience efficiently.
Your observations on the shift towards account-based marketing (ABM) in B2B marketing suggest significant changes. How does this influence the way we measure marketing performance today?
The shift towards ABM is a game-changer, moving us from a generic outreach model to one that’s deeply personalised and engagement-focused. This shift impacts not only our tactical moves but fundamentally alters our objectives. Engagement has emerged as a paramount metric, especially in ABM. It's about recognising the value of multiple individuals from the same account showing interest. This focus on engagement demands that we refine our metrics, valuing quality interactions over sheer quantity. In essence, it prompts a reevaluation of success, urging us to quantify the intangible—how effectively are we resonating with and engaging our target accounts on a meaningful level?
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Engagement has emerged as a paramount metric, especially in ABM. It's about recognising the value of multiple individuals from the same account showing interest.
Given this emphasis on engagement, what metrics have become central to assessing the success of your marketing initiatives?
Our metric ecosystems reflects the intricate dynamics of the SaaS landscape, where customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and churn rate remain pivotal. Yet, in the realm of ABM and beyond, engagement metrics take precedence. We delve into the depth of interactions, prioritising signals of genuine intent over superficial metrics. The value lies in identifying concerted interests from various stakeholders within the same organisation—a testament to the efficacy of our engagement strategies. This nuanced approach helps us discern between mere curiosity and real buying signals, guiding our efforts towards fostering meaningful connections.
Aligning marketing and sales, especially within an ABM framework, can be fraught with challenges. How have you approached this integration?
Marketing and sales alignment is crucial, yet historically, it's been a battleground of competing objectives and metrics in many organisations. The simplistic division of lead source as either inbound or outbound is a binary that can foster unnecessary friction between teams. By focusing on a unified strategy and ensuring aligned bonus and commission structures, we have leveraged our collective strengths effectively. It's about championing a collaborative ethos, ensuring that marketing and sales move in concert towards shared objectives. Striving for this synergy, we’ve shifted towards a culture where joint goals and mutual respect underpin our efforts.
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By focusing on a unified strategy and ensuring aligned bonus and commission structures, we have leveraged our collective strengths effectively.
Looking ahead, what technological trends do you foresee shaping the collaboration between marketing and sales?
The technological landscape is brimming with potential, with artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront. But while AI's integration into marketing strategies offers huge potential, the real game-changer lies in aligning technology with human-centric strategies. Beyond AI, the cohesion of marketing and sales hinges on shared goals and open communication channels. Technology facilitates, but it’s the alignment of objectives and the fostering of an environment conducive to truly transformative collaboration. In essence, the synergy between marketing and sales is predicated not just on technological advancement but on building a culture of shared vision and mutual support.
With generative AI making significant inroads across sectors, how is your team leveraging this technology in ABM?
While AI offers incredible efficiency in content creation and customer engagement strategies, the necessity for a human touch remains paramount. Everybody in marketing needs a deep understanding of AI's capabilities and limitations. Our current approach to generative AI is cautious yet optimistic. We use AI as a tool to augment our human-driven processes, ensuring that every piece of AI-generated content is infused with the insights and nuances that only our team can provide. This balanced approach aims to harness AI’s potential while maintaining the authenticity and relevance of our communications.
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While AI offers incredible efficiency in content creation and customer engagement strategies, the necessity for a human touch remains paramount.
Finally, with an unlimited budget, what strategic investments would you prioritise to amplify your marketing impact?
While an unlimited budget would open up many possibilities, my focus would be strategic and forward looking. A priority would be to harness generative AI's potential, ensuring our marketing strategies remain cutting-edge. Another would be to invest in technologies to deliver insights into the increasingly complex buyer's journey and help identify in-market prospects early. Such investments would refine our ABM efforts and ensure our marketing strategies are robust, dynamic, and aligned with future trends.
About Reapit
Reapit is the original, end-to-end business technology provider for estate agencies of all sizes. Their technology connects property professionals in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand with buyers, sellers, tenants and landlords to power the relationships that build businesses and change lives. In the UK and Ireland, Reapit’s market-leading product suite provides estate and letting agents with powerful tools covering lead generation, sales, lettings, property management, client accounts, reports and analytics, underpinned by a robust security infrastructure.
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.
