In this episode of “Digital Marketing from the Trenches,” your co-hosts Dan Nedelko and Joseph DellaVecchia discuss the differences between Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing.
B2B is a subset of ABM, emphasizing the importance of understanding ideal customer profiles and target accounts. While ABM focuses on high-value, personalized engagement, while B2B casts a wider net.
There is still a need for a strong sales and marketing alignment, effective cold email outreach strategies, and the role of platforms like LinkedIn Sales Navigator all play a part in getting better more actionable information.
We also touch on the importance of diverse content and authentic engagement on LinkedIn to build relationships and maintain interest throughout the sales process.
Dan Nedelko 0:09
And welcome everybody to another episode of live at the hive digital marketing from the trenches. I am your host, Dan Nedelko, and I’m here with
Joseph DellaVecchia 0:19
Joe dellavecchio, one of your other hosts as well. And I feel like it was co host, but I feel like at this point I’ve been promoted. I’m promoting myself,
Dan Nedelko 0:25
okay, promoting yourself to host. I am now the co host with Joe. There we go. We are. We are co hosts, truly co hosts. Welcome to another episode of digital marketing from the trenches. And in this episode. We are going to talk more about ABM. As we started out this process, we thought it would be an episode. We quickly realized it was going to be a whole bunch of episodes. There’s a lot to unpack today. We’re going to be talking about the distinct differences between Account Based Marketing and B to B marketing, which often get conflated. So we’re going to talk a little bit about the two differences between the two approaches, how B to B is actually kind of a subset of ABM, and you can actually prep your B to B or your ABM efforts, I should say, by creating a strong infrastructure on B to B marketing, which is really time well spent.
Joseph DellaVecchia 1:23
There we go. Bit of a mouthful there, little
Dan Nedelko 1:26
bit, little bit. And I ad libbed that
Joseph DellaVecchia 1:30
it was very it was very smooth, very well done.
Dan Nedelko 1:32
Thank you reliving my high school drama days. So yeah, but just
Joseph DellaVecchia 1:37
to build on what you were saying there, Dan, one thing that we talk about all the time. We’re talking about as the inspiration for this episode is just how often so many people think they’re ready for ABM, but they’re not ready for ABM. And we touched on that a little bit in our last episode, but and we talked about so too, the how sales and marketing alignment needs to be strong, and in order to that, you have to have a fair understanding of what each thing is. So let’s just quickly go back and let’s recap what is ABM from what we talked about last time, ABM is Account Based Marketing. It’s a strategic approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific, high value accounts, rather than casting a wide net. It’s a method that aligns marketing and sales efforts to create personalized buying experiences for key accounts. ABM treats individual accounts and markets as their own right. It involves tailoring marketing campaigns and content specific accounts, and it’s data driven and relies heavily on customer insights and also on teamwork as well, and being able to align your initiatives objectives and taking the data real time and reports and being able to adjust your strategies effectively.
Dan Nedelko 2:43
There you go. Actually, it’s funny because in one of our clips from the last episode that we put up on YouTube, someone said, like that, looks Joe looks like he’s this guy looks like he’s reading from his script. And actually, it’s funny because you weren’t reading from a script. No,
Joseph DellaVecchia 2:55
I was not reading from I did see that too and that, yeah, they were like, reading from a script and not talking to anyone, and I’m like, I am very much just talking to someone about marketing right now, and
Dan Nedelko 3:06
I’m the person that doesn’t exist in that conversation, which I don’t know if that says something or what it might mean. But anyhow, getting back to the matter at hand, yeah, so ABM, and I’ll talk a little bit about B to B as well, but ABM really has a significant portion of it that is philosophical and and structural to your organization, about how you sell, about understanding the customers, about aligning sales and marketing at a fairly deep level, and where BDRs and SDRs can Actually, in certain functions, be part of the marketing team, and in other functions, they’re part of the sales team, but you have this kind of very strong alignment between the two groups and that and that goes deeper than a platform. It goes much deeper than how you target accounts, etc. So it really takes a lot of heavy lifting, especially when it’s new for businesses to really get their heads around how this can work collaboratively. So it’s, it’s definitely a heavy lift, right? I mean, it’s, it’s not something you’re just going to walk in one day and say, Okay, everybody we’re doing ABM, and it’s just going to start happening. So, yeah, yeah. So you know it’s, it’s definitely non trivial, and then, you know, we’ll get into it, but on the B to B side, and we have this little visual that I drew in, like two seconds. But if you were to imagine a circle of ABM and encompassed inside that completely is a smaller circle of B to B. Like a lot of what you need to do in the ABM side, you need to do for effective B to B marketing, but just to kind of follow on exactly what you said, then what is B to B? Right? If that’s all that stuff is ABM, then what is B to B? Well, there’s some real distinct property. Of what B to B marketing is. And one it obviously does come down where target accounts are really much more granular at the B to B level, they’re a little bit more general, but you still do have to understand your ideal customer profiles. Who are you selling to? Right? And one of the things that I will often hear, and I know you do too, Joe, is you’ll hear, oftentimes people say, I’ll use an example. We sell to government. That’s our ideal customer. And then the reply would be, okay, well, let’s look at government. It’s a huge topic. If you were looking at government, you’ve got everything from small townships to cities to municipalities to major centers like the GTA, for example, and then you have provincial, and then you have federal, and then you have provincial, and in the US, you’d have state level. And then inside of that, you’ve got various departments, from military to civic, civic works to, I mean, all sorts of stuff, right?
Joseph DellaVecchia 6:11
And then to just, sorry, just to build on that, though, like, I think that’s part of like, the battle too. I think that people don’t realize that knowing this part is half the battle. You say to someone, do you know who your target account is? Do you know who you’re going after, who you’re marketing to? And they say, just build on your example, yeah, government. So let’s go market to government. But they don’t realize that that’s knowing the industry, or possibly even the persona, but the specific contexts and who you need to talk to, the decision makers, the people who are going to champion you, who are going to be interested, who are going to sign on the dotted line you need to know, not in you don’t have to have met them in person, or them particularly, but you need to know those to effectively market to them with an ABM strategy,
Dan Nedelko 6:54
yeah, yeah. And you need to for a B to B strategy as well. Because again, we’re going to go through some of these brush strokes as we go through this conversation. One of the things is, if you don’t really know who in the government and what department and who the buying group is and where you’re trying to get to, and if you start advertising on a LinkedIn, for example, for brand awareness and government, 90% of your spend is going to be entirely wasted on the wrong people that have absolutely no connection to where it is your your what it is you’re selling and who you’re selling to. So step one in B to B is developing an ideal customer and an ideal account profile. Now that’s ahead of target accounts, right? Like you, you have to know what that is in fairly specific terms, right to understand your sales to in order to be able to develop that target account list. So we’re not there yet. We’re but in B to B, the first step would be, who are you selling to? And and be ruthless with yourself if you’re in B to B sales, to really dissect this and really understand it, because nine times out of 10 in a conversation, the definition of that ideal customer profile is far too broad. It’s far too encompassing. It does not specify, you know, is it procurement? Is it a field operations person? So I’ll give you like another example. In government at a certain level, various managers and directors within a government will have discretionary budgets throughout a year. They can purchase up to some level, right? If your product falls below that threshold, call it $100,000 a year. Maybe that’s your threshold for the service or product that you’re selling. Well, if that’s within a discretionary budget for those people, then you can market directly to them, right? And that sales process can begin within any allotted period of time, not fixed to budgetary restrictions, unless that becomes part of, you know, a lack of budget on that director’s position or that manager’s position. That’s like scenario one. In scenario two, you’re above this threshold, and so therefore your marketing into the next fiscal year and possibly going through a procurement process where you would use a platform, say, like, go bonfire, to find procurements and RFPs and RFQs and begin submitting those now so that you’re in time for the next budgetary cycle. Like, that’s a, that’s a. I mean, admittedly, I think you would agree, whether you know you’ve been through that process or not. Those are two big differences, right? And traditionally,
Joseph DellaVecchia 9:50
too, regardless if you look at like, even just a step back from ABM, but look at B to B as a whole, it’s usually a long sales process when you’re selling. Something B to B, ABM, especially if you look at it from beginning to end, if you look at someone who starts up with ABM from a cold outrage, you’ve sourced that contact. You find out who you’re contacting, and you’re going out, and now you’re sending out cold outbound emails. You’re advertising to them. They’re in your audience. You’re trying to get their attention on social with that, and building that out from the point where you they will eventually get engaged, start to be warmed, take a call with you. Understand your product, take that back. Then corporate boards have to make their decisions. It becomes a long, long process right there. And so ABM has its benefits of not just supporting that long process throughout, but keeping people engaged throughout the entire time, and they’re not going to lose interest or suddenly just forget about you. It keeps you top of mind. So even if Dan, for example, I’m trying to sell to you and get you to buy my product, but you got to take it back to your board of directors. It’s going to take you guys three months, because currently you’re reviewing this other project, then you have to go through next year’s budgets. Does it fit into your fiscal year? Etc, etc. I’m still sending you emails every week, or every two weeks. You’re still seeing my content online on social media. We’ve connected on LinkedIn, maybe once a month. I’m just reaching out to send you our latest case study, so you know what’s going on and how it can continue to benefit you, what you can bring up to your leaders. So there’s it supports that process the entire time. And so if you do end up one of those situations, you’re not just trying to do a cold outreach every three months or just trying to as well, reach out, reach out and close the deal, close the deal, close the deal. Because traditionally, especially in B to B, doesn’t work like
Dan Nedelko 11:32
that, right? And I now I’m compelled to say something about cold email outreach that is also oftentimes misconstrued. Right the point of cold email outreaches to develop a relationship where you you that person knows who you are, it is not to sell immediately. That is the number one feedback that we get from from any sales team is, well, like my cold sales outreach, I want them to book a meeting, I want them to book a meeting, but booking a meeting is is very close to potentially closing a deal, right, like it’s within that funnel, and so you’re going for it too quickly and misunderstanding what the idea of a cold outreach cadence is all about. Is about building that trust they know who you are. So many multiple opens on a cold outreach, where someone is engaging with that and where you can just send a personalized email, like, that’s a B to B, function often done improperly, because it’s the first email you’ve seen them, right? I get, like, I get like, three a day, same
Joseph DellaVecchia 12:41
I think we get them from the same people too, which is funny enough, but especially too and like, and let’s say you have a five step core, and I’ve talked to clients about this before, you’ve got a five step cold outreach sequence, and they’re like, oh, but you know, I want to have book. I don’t want to, like, knock without saying, book a meeting. Like, in like, the fifth step, you can put that out there. You can make the offer for the meeting and have it as a button, a link, however, you have it set up with your CRM, but you can have that option for book a meeting, but don’t just come out of the gates on the first one firing, hey, I’m Joe. You’re gonna love this. Let’s book a meeting and talk about it like you know nothing about me. You know nothing about the product I’m selling. You know nothing about the benefits or what pain points I’m addressing. Like, it’s, it’s a, it’s like, when someone comes to your door, door to door, sale, someone knocks on your door, and they’re like, you you need this like, no, no, I don’t What do you know? It’s building that relationship and having that understanding and showing them not only do you understand, you care and you’re going to help solve it Well,
Dan Nedelko 13:36
exactly. And I mean oftentimes that the misappropriation of this ideal customer profile is C suite executives and higher level directors are included in these lists. So the lists are not well thought out, because the I the ideal customer profile needs to be well thought out. It needs to be targeted. Because again, to your point, if you are going after VPs and senior level directors or C suite folks, their calendars are jam packed, right? Booking a call is a privilege in that world, and that’s the first thing you’re asking for. It’s, it’s, it’s, there’s a certain level of entitlement that comes with that that could be misread by a very important person in your target what is your ideal customer profile, and potentially within one of your target accounts. So you could be hurting yourself by doing this too quickly. So when we, when we just to roll back a little bit, because I think we’ve got a few items to get in here, like, what are the elements of B to B that can be implemented before Account Based Marketing? And just the cherry on top of that, I’ll throw that one over to you, because I know you’ve got a bit of a laundry list on that. The second part of it is, is, don’t feel bad. Add about saying I’m not ready for ABM. We’re not organizationally ready. ABM is a buzzword that everybody wants to use, like a badge of honor, that they’re doing, but a lot of people are not. Do. They’re say they’re doing ABM, but they’re not doing it properly, which means you might as well not be doing ABM,
Joseph DellaVecchia 15:17
right? Yeah. It’s, it’s the next stepping stone. Gradually, you start with B to B, and then you can take that next step to ABM, and that’s why we say and how you said a little bit earlier. Dan, you know, if you’re doing ABM, you’re doing B to B, but if you’re doing B to B, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing ABM, and that’s not a bad thing, especially if you’re just getting started. Because if you’re starting off with B to B, you’re able to start your advertising, and you’re able to start building those target account lists and understanding your target account, your target customer, and being able to get to that end point of having that list built and start targeting them individually. And at that time, too, you’ve probably done some cold email outreach, you’ve done some cold calling, you’ve built some relationships which are going to help you along the way. Now, how do ABM and traditional B to B marketing though? Defer, which was, I know, the original question you asked me, ABM inverts the sales funnel. It starts with identifying specific accounts, like we’ve went over, while traditional B to B casts that wider net. Now your traditional B to B advertising could be, you know, your target audience, for example, like, you know, it’s in government. So you’re going to start advertising out with government, with that vertical, and building an audience from there, maybe building a look alike audience, building some remarketing to then start to strengthen that audience as well too. ABM is going to focus on quality of leads, though, instead of the quantity of leads, where you might get a lot of people doing B to B with ABM, you’re able to focus on those high quality leads, the ones that matter and that are engaged and that are those decision makers. Yes, there’s going to be less of them, but they’re the people that you’re going after, the people that are more likely to be engaged, and the people that will actually matter, because they’ll sign on the dotted line, you’ll get their business, versus if you’re going after someone who is maybe just a manager at a company when you need a senior VP. ABM, results are really, really great from recent studies. They typically show results of a higher ROI. 76% of companies actually reported higher ROI with ABM compared to other marketing initiatives last year.
Dan Nedelko 17:10
Yeah. And I think one of the important things to highlight on that is one of the reasons you do report higher ROI is fundamentally because you understand your customer, you understand their needs, and you’ve created these target account lists that are fairly specific, so you’re doing a better job of fundamental sales, which is understanding my customer, right? And that turns into but like to start with where B to B is different, where we will cast a wider net is you could start by casting a wider net by saying, We’re in government, and then doing a workshop and working through, okay, what areas of government? Well, you should know that. And then who’s a typical buyer, you probably know some of that. And you can get the starting points of casting a slightly wider net, watching what’s happening with both the advertising and we’ll go over some of the channels for B to B that can be used to be to start this effective program, and watching this work and seeing who’s engaging and where you close the deal in that process, is understanding and mapping it. That’s like the first step to getting over into Account Based Marketing?
Joseph DellaVecchia 18:24
Yeah, it’s like, I said it’s a stepping stone. I think we’ve highlighted that it really is important, though, to just understand that it’s not something you can just dive into. So many people want to just dive in, and they’re like, I’m a thought leader. I can get in there. I know who I’m selling to. And we talked about it in our last episode, too. Sales people always like, Oh, if you can just get me in front of the person i The person. I can sell, I can close the deal. Just get me talking like, right in front of the person. You need to build to that point, though, I can’t just pick you up and plop you right down and then you’re able to just have that conversation. Need you to the point where, because the conversation was a two way street, they need to be engaged. They need to be interested. Sure, you can maybe get them at a show and just walk up and talk to them, but everyone’s doing that. And not to say shows aren’t a valid way of doing business and building relationships. You can’t just go in and close. You can’t just get that coffee that’s for the closer right away.
Dan Nedelko 19:10
Yeah, for sure. And and no, like, live events, conferences are key. Like, they’re critical. It’s how you kind of manage that and deal with it. And I think another element of this is understanding it all comes down to understanding your customer, and who are you targeting? Because so much comes from that into there was a threat I was involved in on LinkedIn earlier this week, which was which type of a presentation should you send? Do you send a PowerPoint? Do you send a Word doc with this was the context of that with a bunch of bullet points. Do you send a very brief summary in an email? My response was, Well, it really depends, like it depends on if you’re talking to the CEO that typically you know the profile of the CEO that writes the entire email in the subject line. You might want to be very brief if you were talking. Talking to the CMO, you may want to go with the PowerPoint. If you’re talking to the COO, you may want to use the word doc that has a bit more detail, because they’re in operations like it depends. And what you’re
Joseph DellaVecchia 20:11
saying Dan is you need to understand who you’re speaking to, and you need to target your approach that way. That’s similar to what you would do in ABM, exactly,
Dan Nedelko 20:19
well, and these are the fundamental pillars that cross over like you need to do it in B to B, and you need to do it more and in a more refined way. For ABM, yeah, of course, yeah. So totally okay. So moving on. So let’s talk about, you know this B to B approach is casting a bit of a wider net, not completely randomly wide, but let’s say you’re ahead of the curve. You’re a bit ahead, you know, maybe you, and this is a good kumbaya moment, is admitting we don’t have a perfect handle on our ideal customers. Because it’s like knowing is half the battle, right? Like GI Joe and saying, Okay, this is going to be a focus for three months, six months, whatever it might be, and an ongoing focus, ideally, right to say that’s going to evolve. And so we want to keep a finger on the pulse of how that works. So we cast a slightly wider net. We’re doing B to B, we’re getting into market. We’re keeping an eye on who we’re connecting with, what their role is, and looking at the sales process, because oftentimes this is not documented. But then what we want to do is look at, you know, what are the channels? Okay? So we’re going to start doing this right? So we have several channels that we can use in B to B and in ABM, but starting with the B to B side, right? We’ve obviously got cold email and lists, so you can start from wider lists and start to pull those down as you start to see engagement on it. That’s kind of thing number one. The second one is your website, right? What does your website say? Is it full of billboard or poster style? Like it’s pretty, but there isn’t a whole ton of information, because people didn’t want to use words on the website, you know? So you have to look at that as well.
Joseph DellaVecchia 22:18
I find the biggest issue with website, just in what we see all the time is that your eye people are either doing too much content because they’re like, oh, there’s so much you have to tell them about their brand, and they have to understand this, and they have to know that. And that’s just classic overthinking and over complication. Like, you know it makes sense. You’re so close to it, you know it so well. And that’s why it helps to have a third party, or just someone come in, take a step back and say, this is the basic information. But then where people fall a little short is they make it a little too small, and then there isn’t enough information, or it’s not providing context, or it’s just not providing value, it’s not engaging, it’s not interesting, versus the competition or a competing product,
Dan Nedelko 22:56
yeah, absolutely. And I think part of it is also looking at the content on your website and saying, strategically, there’s lots of paths like so yes, there’s a product page that’s kind of front and center, but we have Cornerstone pages that I can use in my cold outreach. If I see somebody is looking at a certain type of content, that we can prepare this content, so I can easily send it to somebody and they can find it right? So, yeah, it’s it’s all about understanding how to chapterize your content and tell a story, right, depending on which way you go. Because if you’re talking to someone in finance, it’s a different story than if you’re talking to someone in product or in marketing, right? Would typically be very different. They have very different concerns. So that’s kind of the first place you want to look at your website. Second one, and I know you’ve got some firm thoughts on this, Joe, is that LinkedIn, and what companies are doing with LinkedIn? So I
Joseph DellaVecchia 23:55
was gonna say, speaking of providing value LinkedIn in their tagline. It’s where B to B happens. And the important thing about B to B, whether it’s sales, your cold outreaches, whatever you’re doing, when it comes to B to B, you have to have value in what you’re saying. We’ve already established CEOs, these decision makers. They’re busy. They’re hectic. The corporate life is always running. It’s a machine that never stops turning. And if you don’t have something of value to say, nobody cares. You know, at the end of the day, Let’s call a spade a spade. If you don’t have something of value, this thing to offer, nobody cares. And that’s why it seems to be important that you’re not repeating yourself so taking your company’s content and just reposting it without adding anything additional on that. If they’re already following their company and they’re following you. They don’t care that you’ve reposted. You’re not adding anything extra there and value to help elevate this and bring it more forward. You are showing it to more of your audience and your network. But that’s also not only you building on that. You want to build on the actual content itself. If you’re a thought leader, write something that relates to it. Have actual thought. Leadership and have something to say. And also, then don’t just say the same things over and over and over again. You know, this is your one core message, repeat, repeat, repeat. At that point, I’ve seen it once this week. I’ve seen it three times this week. I’ve seen it 10 times this month. I’ve seen it enough times where I get it, you know, it’s like, it’s a bad soap opera. I get it, tell me something new. Tell me something new, tell me something interesting. Tell me something that is going to appeal to me, address a pain point or engage me. And that’s the great thing about the world. Things are always changing. Things are always becoming new. Focuses right now, a really big focus is inflation. Is the economy. So how are you helping solve that pain point? Possibly, maybe in a year. Now, it’s, Hey, there’s a lot of excess spending. You know, you have to finish using your budget by the end of the year. Here’s what you can invest that money in to actually help further your company, further the technology that you’re using. So there’s always a different angle that is timely and relevant and that will get people’s attention and say something new and interesting and keep people engaged, which goes back to what we were talking about before, keeping people engaged through that long sales process. Yeah, if you don’t have something valuable or new to say, you’re not going to get your point across, sorry, Dan, go ahead.
Dan Nedelko 26:05
Yeah, no, I was going to say, I think, I think one of the things is, is don’t be afraid. And I think a lot of people that are not native to social have real hesitancy to do this. But as a professional in your field, you will have a take on almost everything that happens, and don’t be afraid to convey that. I mean, the point about LinkedIn is it’s like the business cocktail party, where you’ve got a chance to open a conversation, but also participate in conversations. What I personally see a lot of is a lot of thankfulness. Posts like, we’re grateful for our partners doing this. We’re grateful for this show. Thank you so much for this. Thank you so much for that. That’s great, but not 100% of the time, because it does become fairly repetitive. And what you want to also do is look at industry, industry highlights, industry changes, what’s happening? What is your specific take? Because if you’re in sales in 2024 I’m of the firm belief that you are selling a solution, so you are a domain expert that can help a client solve a problem. And when you could do that, your sales will magnify incredibly right? So what’s the editorial take that you’ve got on either your company, right? So if you’re if, if, if, if your company has just been handed a major award, great, what is the implication of that on your target client? Right? Right? If we won great place to work, and we have the badge, and we’ve gone through that process, it means that our team is highly engaged because we’ve gone through this process. I’m using a very poor example there. But how does what your company has done as an organization impacting you and your potential customers in a more specific way. So expanding upon something that’s happening, there’s industry moves and industry happenings that you can comment on as if you know it’s an op ed, right? This is going to be a net benefit for our industry for these three reasons, right? That could be new legislation. It could be anything that’s happening there, but this provides a depth of content on LinkedIn that people will see and people do react to. So please stop trying to gloss over social content and overproduce it, because it shows and when you look at it contextually, it doesn’t look great. It looks very forced, right on the social selling and LinkedIn side, the second part of it is participate in conversations. And oftentimes I’ll go look at people’s LinkedIn profiles, and you see a lot of like, great, great stuff. Great job. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations, congratulations. Like, very good. It’s nice to do those things, but how about engaging in a thread of conversation where you’re able to give your professional opinion and participate in the conversation more substantially. It takes a little bit of effort, not a ton, but it can also make a huge amount of difference. So with LinkedIn, there’s a ton of work both to do organizationally, to provide that value of thought leadership at a micro level, at the individual level, it is actually a lot easier. What’s your take on XYZ that’s happening, right? Because that stuff, that stuff really does exist,
Joseph DellaVecchia 29:47
I think too, just to kind of tie it all together, is that there’s just such a hesitancy on LinkedIn to diversify your content. And it gets to the point where everything kind of starts to see the same, like we were saying. But it also. It reads and feels like everything’s an ad, even when it’s not trying to be. There’s always that very obvious call to action, or that obvious book that then gets you reading about the product and what it does, even if you don’t directly mention the product, but you’re mentioning the pain point that you’re solving, you suddenly have that call to action, or that book of collar. Let’s talk more. Right at the bottom, it’s an ad. And the one thing that you have in common between B to B and your B to C is that people are still we’re all still humans. And the last thing we want to see is every single post be an ad. Whether I’m looking at what my friends are doing on Instagram or I’m looking at what things are happening professionally in the world of LinkedIn, I want to see what’s happening in life. I want to see those updates, and I want to see those things that are interesting to me and brands can be interesting still on LinkedIn, while still keeping their brand voice. Whether you’re a little bit more professional or you are a little bit more loose or you’re just completely unhinged, like Wendy’s Twitter was back in 28 wherever you are on the sector, you can have but there’s still that way to have fun and diversify your content a little bit while still keeping it relevant and important. And there’s just such that resistance to do that. And I understand people are like, well, what if the target sees it and suddenly they’re not seeing the most important thing there is that fear. But if they see and they engage with your content, I can guarantee you the algorithm is going to show it again. Yep,
Dan Nedelko 31:13
absolutely. And there’s a lot to unpack. We could do, obviously, a whole series on just LinkedIn. But I think you know, some of the key takeaways are, try to be authentic. Try to provide your own unique angle to it. Don’t repeat over and over. Come up with a few different themes for both your organization and for you yourself. Don’t be afraid to get in and engage in content and content threads. That’s where a lot of the magic actually happens. It’s the first, most natural starting point. If you’re afraid or hesitant to actually post content, participate in other threads where that content is relevant, that’s like a great first starting point. In fact, it’s going to grow your network almost more than anything you do post right is by participating in those other conversations, exactly, which segues in a beautiful way. Because, again, we’re over time, but we’re gonna we’re getting close here. So we were right about turning this into a huge series about B to B, and ABM sales
Joseph DellaVecchia 32:16
was still the first episode.
Dan Nedelko 32:19
Yeah, this is one like, if you did one episode, it’d be 12 hours long, to be honest, at least. So naturally segueing from LinkedIn into Sales Navigator, which is becoming a very popular tool, one because of the quality of the B to B information, and people are using it as if it’s kind of a zoom info or Apollo to find contact information in your network and to identify people that would be key drivers, champions and decision makers in key accounts. Now the important thing here is that sales navigators a lot more than that in the context of what LinkedIn is, and this is a really important thing is it’s a great opportunity for you to go through that target account process. So starting with ideal customer profile, ideal company profile, casting a little bit of a wider net, creating larger lists in sales nav. What sales nav does really well is it reveals to you these threads from those people, whether they’re commenting elsewhere or whether they’re they’ve got posts available. It does both for you to go and engage with those people in a natural way, right? If they’re in a thread of conversation, potentially, then you can participate in that thread and they’ll start to see your name. It’s fairly subtle, but it happens. There’s, I guess the point of this point here is, with Sales Navigator, it’s a lot more than a B to B database, which is oftentimes how Sales Navigator is treated. It is that, but it’s a lot more. And Sales Navigator can give you lots of good connection opportunities, including second and third degree connections, where your target is commenting and posting, so you can participate in similar conversations, and it again, kind of like cold calling and cold emailing, it allows you to develop that relationship that can then turn into a commercial relationship later on, at least that person knows who you are.
Joseph DellaVecchia 34:25
Sales, navigators, it’s a useful tool overall, and there are others like it too, which we’ll talk about at a later date and time. But there’s also the ability to that it, as you’re saying, it helps you build your network and your audience as well, too. And there are other tools as well that can help you do that. It doesn’t all just have to live on LinkedIn. A really great one that a lot of people use and to build audiences is Google as well, and you’ve got your responsive display where you can also build and build your response display to your targets and your target audiences. Well, you can do the same thing on LinkedIn Sales navigators. A great tool. And like we’ve said before, everything here kind of works in tandem. It’s a stepping stone where you go logically from the next to the next to the next. And as you build that out, you work your way towards ABM.
Dan Nedelko 35:10
That’s right, that’s right. And there’s a few others now, like when you get to Sales Navigator, you can build account lists. You can build your lead list, a lot like you were saying there, Joe, you can actually get those out. And you can put them into Google. You can put them into platforms like stack adapt as you build out these lists, and starting in a broad way, which is B to B, right, you can, we can load those into advertising platforms, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Google and Google responsive display example that will get you, like a run of the network across as many different touch points as possible. It’s a starting point, right? And then you can work on that ideal customer profile, the ideal company profile, and start to develop those target accounts and the one to one accounts that are important to you. But again, on this kind of spectrum of business to business, you got to do the fundamentals before you can get to the ABM, which is a little bit more advanced. Once you get to that more advanced level, you can use platforms like we prefer. One of them is called influ two, which is a pretty amazing platform, which allows you to target across multiple different touch points, mobile, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, websites, Google networks, everywhere to specific high value clients or target accounts and target, uh, contacts, right? With highly, highly personalized experiences. But again, that’s kind of like the other end of that spectrum. When you’re in ABM, you’re going to be able to make that investment, because you’ll see it’s real. So I guess, to wrap this episode up, we’re still, we’re not perfect, but we’re, we’re better than we were our time. In terms of our time, we’re at 37 minutes right now. So for us, that’s not bad, not bad. I think just to, just to wrap up and summarize for our audience, is B to B is really a subset of ABM. You have fundamental core pillars, just like if you’re playing baseball, you know you gotta know how to throw a ball, regardless of what position you play, right? You gotta know how to swing a bat. And that’s what a big part of B to B getting started in is, is, is doing the fundamentals. And don’t be afraid to start by saying, I don’t have 100% clarity on my ideal customer profile, so I can’t build my target accounts yet. So you can start wider, and you can pull in, and then you can look at your website content, your LinkedIn strategy, your sales nav strategy, your LinkedIn advertising strategy, how you advertise in general, and where that can lead you once you have the definition into an Account Based Marketing approach. So that’s a bit of the summary. Joe, I don’t know if you have anything else to add. I hope they didn’t steal any of your thunder in that.
Joseph DellaVecchia 38:15
No, no, no. I think just to build on that, yeah, like you said, it’s the first step. It’s the stepping stone. Like we said, with B to B, you’re gonna learn, understand and develop your ICPs, and once you have those ideal customer profiles, you’re then gonna be to start moving towards building your target account list and start getting into B to B, which I think Dan is a great place to pick up our next episode.
Dan Nedelko 38:39
Perfect. And what’s coming up next Joe,
Joseph DellaVecchia 38:41
next Dan. We’re gonna talk about target account list. We’re gonna review what they are, how you build one, how long they should be, and how do you integrate them into your strategy. And then how does that relate to enriching data, which could be another future episode.
Dan Nedelko 38:55
I mean, I think you’re giving away the content schedule here, which is fine. Actually, I’m teasing. I know you are. I know you are. I think one of the things that we should point out too, is when we do these, I just had this great idea is we will pair these with workshop walk through tutorials, if you’re in the nitty gritty of apollo.io, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, where I’ll be walking through using these platforms in the screen share style. So we’ll kind of do both. We’ll have the episode, and we’re going to pair that with the YouTube video where we’re going to show you how to use the platform, how to add the filters, how to actually make those things happen, and what that looks like as well. So good times, exciting times for the B to B in ABM world. All right, friends. Well, thanks so much for joining us on another episode of live at the hive, digital marketing from the trenches. I mean digital marketing from the trenches live at the hive. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. As long as you’re here listening, then we’re happy with that. So thanks.
Joseph DellaVecchia 39:58
This is your first time try. Out, like a previous episode, we’ve got so much more on ABM. We’ve got stuff on Google business profile. We read Reddit stories together about marketing and sales the other week, and that was a blast.
Dan Nedelko 40:09
And we will be doing that again, because that is a ton of fun. We’ll find more craziness from the Reddit world. Yes, we have over 250 episodes of digital marketing from the trenches and tons of tons of videos. So please subscribe, like, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Donate to your favorite charity. Hug your wife and kids your partner. Be nice to small children and puppies, and we will see you on the next episode of digital marketing from the trenches. Was that a good outrage? Rate us five stars. All right, yeah. Rate us five stars or four stars or three stars, but not two. I don’t think we’ve been that bad, but I’ll never
Joseph DellaVecchia 40:44
know. And if it is four stars, you can leave comments now on podcast. So comment, yeah,
Dan Nedelko 40:48
we like that too. That’s what you like. All right, we’re gonna end this stream for now and see on the next pod. Everybody. Bye.
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