Sudhir Krishnaswamy also clarifies that he won't be representing cases related to India, but willl look at content moderation questions from around the world.

Jordan Henderson praised FC Barcelona star Lionel Messi for his pace and said that the sublime free kick the Argentine scored in the Champions League against Liverpool left him speechless.

Mishal Aboulais's video showing off his skills has gone viral.

A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sanjeev Narula issued notices to the Centre, the Delhi government, the municipal corporations and 10 private unaided schools here seeking their stand on the plea by an NGO, Justice for All, by June 10 -- the next date of hearing.

Nearly a month's supply of pulses has already been dispatched to several states and union territories, but they have managed to distribute only 53,617 tonnes to ration card holders under the Public Distribution System (PDS), he said.

The high court bench issued notice to the Centre and Haryana government on a petition challenging the order of Sonipat authorities on restriction activities.

The government on Thursday froze inflation-linked allowance for its 1.1 crore employees and pensioners, a move states are likely to replicate, helping save a combined Rs 1.2 lakh crore that could be used to combat the coronavirus crisis.

Chowdhury said that a large portion of the migrant labourers are from the minority community and urged that the government feed these people during the month of Ramadan owing to their hapless condition.

DMK President M K Stalin slammed the fiscal management of the ruling AIADMK while AMMK leader TTV Dhinakaran said it was not "acceptable" that the government has burdened its employees with such a measure.

In an interview to News18, HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank said government is trying to use both digital and non-digital mechanism to transact the curriculum even as he appealed to companies and recruiters not to withdraw any job offers already extended to the students.

The line of people stretched for more than 1 km (half a mile) outside an ice rink where volunteers were handing out around 1,500 parcels to people who started queuing as early as 5 am.

20 players across the world including Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, Cannes and others have joined hands for virtual film festival 'We Are One'.

The lockdown has turned Pulkit Samrat into a chef, and he is trying new recipes everyday to make his foodie girlfriend Kriti Kharbanda happy.

नई द‍िल्‍ली: कोरोना संक्रमण के बढ़ते प्रभाव को देखते हुए भारत में लॉकडाउन को 17 मई तक बढ़ा दिया गया है। भारत सरकार की नई गाइडलाइन के मुताबिक, ग्रीन और ऑरेंज जोन में 4 मई यानि कल से गैर-जरूरी सामान की बिक्री ई-कॉमर्स साइट

Private telecom players like Airtel and Vodafone-Idea have joined hands with OTT players to offer free content to their users. For example, Airtel and Vodafone-Idea are offering Amazon Prime subscription and access to ZEE5. Similarly, the state-run telecom operator

Airtel has recently partnered with Amazon, where it is offering free membership for Amazon Prime with its postpaid plans. The telco used to offer a free subscription of Netflix, but now, the telco is offering only Amazon Prime, ZEE5, and Airtel

Reliance Jio has recently joined hands with Star India to provide free premium membership of Hotstar through JioTV. This means Jio users will get access to watch all Star TV shows along with Disney cartoons and Movies. Jio TV

As we all know that processor and RAM are the most important hardware components that we can find in a computer. But we can't deny the fact that even hard drives are an important part. Be it an i5 or i7

Netgear has announced that the company is offering a free one-year Insight subscription to all the users purchasing anything from the selected list of Insight Managed switches, wireless Access Point and Routers as well. The company is offering this service to

Are you a shutterbug who isn’t able to polish their outdoor photography skills due to COVID-19 lockdown? Then, this is the right time to learn or brush-up your photography skills, as Nikon India has introduced a free online photography class.  

Huawei used the IFA 2019 stage to unveil the company's 3rd gen. wireless earbuds. The FreeBuds 3.0 are engineered to take on the Apple's Airpods, Galaxy Buds and other truly wireless earbuds from leading audio brands such as Sony, Sennheiser, Jabra,

Highly leveraged companies may find the going tough in the next few months, as rapid rise in covid-19 infections, make business prospects highly unpredictable. Even if infections abate in the next three months or so, companies that have high levels

Maharashtra's Health Minister Rajesh Tope announced that all citizens of the state will be given a free health insurance scheme and will also become the first state in India to provide free cashless insurance to all its citizens. The announcement was

According to the new research conducted by Mozilla, internet users in India tend to go for quality net content online instead to freebies. The research reveals that users are downloading the promoted apps and referring friends purely to earn monetary

India is loaded with many shopping portals. It has made living so simple and easy that one can find everything on the site's catalog. But what happens when your favorite item is not available on an Indian sites? Well, you look

The Hollywood Film Joker, which helped Joaquin Phoenix win the Academy Award for the Best Actor this year, has fallen prey to piracy. The American psychological thriller has been leaked by the infamous piracy website, Tamilrockers. Well, the movie which was

The Coronavirus pandemic has affected film festivals all around the world. Sundance and Cannes have been postponed indefinitely while others are trying to survive with digital events. However, the streaming platform YouTube has stepped in to launch a 10-day digital film festival,

The NHA, which implements the national health insurance scheme, said this will strengthen the country#39;s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

To support customers during this time where their car/bike will not be in use, Acko General Insurance, a new age online insurance provider, has decided to not charge insurance for one month

Andhra Pradesh has rolled out free online coaching for GATE exam. AP's Ministry of Education in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh State Council for Higher Education (APSCHE) has decided to offer free online classes for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to introduce the free online teacher training programme through its Centre of Excellence (CoE). The Board's teacher training programme will include structured courses for free of cost. The Board has decided

When people think of account-based marketing (ABM), they tend to think of it as a smaller-scale practice. Since ABM is fundamentally built around focus in the aligned pursuit of high-value accounts, it’s often associated with a significant reduction in target market scope (i.e., “Let’s narrow down to our 20-30 most promising accounts).

This itself is a constraint from which B2B marketers need to break free, which is why Gary Gerber stood out as a fitting guest for the first interview in our second season of Break Free B2B. At B2B Marketing Exchange in February, he sat with TopRank Marketing President Susan Misukanis to unpack what’s needed to bring ABM to the next level.

Gary and his team at Folloze helped Cisco develop a sophisticated and highly effective ABM program that targeted 20,000 customers through one-on-one, personalized content and messaging.

How can other B2B marketers achieve this level of scalability in their ABM efforts, overcoming one of the biggest remaining hurdles holding back this fast-growing approach? In large part it’s about rethinking our tools, Gary suggests, while leaning on a rather literal metaphor.

“You have to focus away from blunt instrument tools,” he says. “I’m not bashing blunt instruments, by the way, because a hammer is one of the most useful tools in your toolkit, but you wouldn’t use it to repair a watch. So you need to migrate to tools that let you [achieve] that kind of precision, because that’s the only way you’re going to build trust with your customers.”

[bctt tweet="“A hammer is one of the most useful tools in your toolkit, but you wouldn’t use it to repair a watch.” @Gary_Gerber of @Folloze on the need for more precision in #ABM. #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

Solutions like Folloze’s platform, which enables the delivery of personalized experiences at scale, are helping pave the way. But it’s not just about technology. Reaching a state of advanced ABM also requires shifts in organizational mindset, philosophy, and operation.

Gary and Susan cover the gamut in their 18-minute conversation. You can watch, listen, or find key excerpts and takeaways below.

Break Free B2B Interview with Gary Gerber

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 1:30 - Recognizing that change is inevitable
• 2:30 - Where is ABM in terms of market maturity?
• 4:45 - Helping clients recognize shortcomings and make incremental progress
• 6:30 - Approaching the marketing funnel from an ABM standpoint
• 9:30 - Re-centering on the fundamentals of ABM targeting
• 11:15 - Where are you seeing successes in ABM?
• 13:15 - Optimizing for the future by taking the right steps right now
• 16:00 - Gary's personal hobbies and philosophies
• 17:15 - How can modern digital marketers break free?

Susan: What's your consulting approach? As marketers, we can't just tell our clients, "You're wrong, do it my way." How do you inch them toward making incremental progress?

Gary: It's an interesting question because when we talk to people, the tools that people are using are the same ones that worked well 10 or 15 years ago. People built their careers on tools like marketing automation and things like that. So it is challenging to tell them, "Those tools are blunt instruments by today's standards."

You have to focus the other way, on what's not working, on the pain. Because there is pain there, especially if they're under the gun for an account-based program, and for pushing things through the funnel, right? We like to talk about the three symptoms that marketers today are subject to: funnel starvation, pipeline constipation, and sales frustration. They can't get stuff into the top of the funnel anymore, whatever they get in the funnel doesn't come out, and they're under the gun there because sales and the entire organization is looking to them to move opportunities and it's not happening. So if you can put it in terms along those lines most marketers will eventually have to concede. 'Cause everyone's feeling that pain in B2B.

[bctt tweet="“We like to talk about the three symptoms that marketers today are subject to: funnel starvation, pipeline constipation, and sales frustration.” @Gary_Gerber @Folloze #BreakFreeB2B #ABM" username="toprank"]

Susan: Do you counsel equal focus on the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel to try to get things moving? Or is the first thing, you gotta fix the top of the funnel? What's your methodology?

Gary: Well, if you think about what ABM is, especially if you're doing it right, it's almost not a funnel mentality at all anymore, right? We refer to it as full cycle personalization, or some people are saying bow tie. If you're approaching it with that funnel mentality, you've almost doomed yourself to failure right from the start in 2020.

[bctt tweet="“If you're approaching #ABM with that funnel mentality, you've almost doomed yourself to failure right from the start in 2020.” @Gary_Gerber @Folloze #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

There’s an analogy others are using and I agree with it: it’s like a football team or a soccer team running down the field together. So the focus isn't on top of funnel or middle of funnel, it's on -- by definition -- the accounts themselves. And as sales and marketing are running down the field, they're bringing the account and the individuals together along with them. It's a journey.

And so how do you do that? You can't do that by sending them mass emails because everybody's getting that. Ultimately what it's about, and I've said this to other people, it's about building that relationship with them. More importantly, it's about building a relationship that's built on trust, not on hype. Because if you've built that trust and you're adding that value to them that they trust you're interested in their success, and you're providing information and content and messaging and whatever it is, that will help them be successful. They'll happily march down the field with you because you're adding to their success.

Susan: So let's talk about what's working in ABM these days. Where are smart modern marketers really experiencing some great progress from your perspective?

Gary: Most people think of ABM, as you mentioned before, as, "Well, I'm going to pick my top 20 accounts and I'm going to focus everything I got on them, and the rest of the 88,000 or whatever, oh well too bad, them we'll just spray and pray with a nurture campaign or something like that." And it's interesting because when you stop and think about it logically, limiting it to your 20 or 25 or whatever, that's a technical limitation, right? It's because I can't do what I want to do -- create a deeply personalized, individualized, valuable, trust building experience -- with more than those 20 people because there's me and this person, that's all that we can do.

But there is no procedural reason for that. If you could do [personalization] for everybody, then you would, but you can't. And so, Cisco is a really awesome example. What they've been able to do is actually automate a lot of what's manual to create these very individualized experiences where they’re getting content, and imagery, and messaging, and information, and everything that is very salient to them, that they used to have to build by hand, so it took hours for each … it’s automated, so they kind of wind it up once and this goes out. So Cisco is actually doing one of the largest ABM programs in the country.

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Series: Jon Miller on How ABM Can Help Marketers Keep Their ‘Ship’ Together
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Marketers are in the business of attracting attention. All of our tactics, our strategies, our goals boil down to: Did we get someone’s attention and inspire them to take action?

The key to modern marketing is that we have to earn that attention. There will always be someone on who is louder, funnier, more talented, or just less shameless than your brand is willing to be. The only way to truly capture and sustain someone’s focus is to earn the right to their time. 

How do you earn attention? By providing remarkable experiences. By showing you care about your audience, you know who they are, and that your brand is here to help and to entertain them. 

For our latest Break Free video, we talked to a marketer who is helping marketers offer more memorable experiences. Sruthi Kumar is the Senior Marketing Manager at Sendoso, a platform that coordinates direct mail and gifting campaigns for personalization at scale.

Sruthi and I sat down to talk about experiential marketing in all its forms: Event marketing, direct mail, content and beyond. We also dig deeper into the philosophy of marketing. Should marketers specialize in a certain aspect of marketing, or should we be taking a more holistic approach? Can left-brained content folks and right-brained strategy folks get along… and really, is it that simple of a divide? Sruthi has some inspiring thoughts on all of the above.

Oh, and along the way, Sruthi shares how she built a marketing department from the ground up, taking Sendoso from a small start-up to competing with the big brands.

 [bctt tweet="I think what we’re really trying to do is bridge that online and offline experience. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Highlights:

1:00: Direct mail plus digital marketing for unforgettable experiences

5:45: Marketing to delight your audience

7:40: Building a marketing department from the ground up

11:05: Tactics for earning attention at marketing events

18:15: Marketing requires creative and analytical thinking 

Josh:

So tell me a little bit about Sendoso. What is it? What do you do?

Sruthi:

We're a sending platform, so we really help our customers reach their customers and prospects in a meaningful way by sending company swag, direct mail, sweets and treats, handwritten notes, the whole nine yards, in order to make really human connections with their prospects and customers.

Josh: 

Do you feel like this going back to a more simpler form of marketing compared to digital marketing? Do you feel like that’s more effective as our world gets more digital?

Sruthi:

So I actually think they go hand in hand. What we're trying to do is really bridge that online and offline experience. So not to say that digital marketing does not work. I'm a marketer. I run our field marketing team, we use digital heavily, but it's just about bringing all the channels together to create that seamless experience for the end user, and that person that you want to book a meeting with or have a signed contract with or whatever else you need from them.

[bctt tweet="It’s about bringing all the channels together to create that seamless experience for the end user, that person who you want to book a meeting with or have a signed contract with. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

We are moving to an ABM approach when we are doing our events, because sometimes you get to large audiences and it's hard to really get in contact with anyone. The beautiful thing about our product is that anyone can use it in any vertical. It's direct mail: If you're selling, you can use it. If you're trying to reach an audience, you can use it. 

We do the double funnel approach at Sendoso. We do have demand gen tactics while we also have ABM tactics as well. 

I had an interview that was my first internship as a marketer. The CMO asked me, ‘Are you analytical? Or are you creative?’ And I was like, ‘I don't know, I feel like I'm a little bit of both.’ 

And she said, ‘You can't be both.’ And I just want to call her now, because you have to be both. I may not be the most analytical person on my team. But I get to work with this marketing ops manager. We built our team together, and she's very analytical. I get to learn from her and understand how would my MOPS person do this. And that's the cool stuff that you get to take with you. 

As a marketer, you should be well rounded — you're a content marketer, but you could put a demand gen campaign together.

Josh:

 We just love this binary of left brain versus right brain. But then you get this idea that oh, well, the creative types are just sitting up there in their beanbag chairs with the lava lamps going, ‘Oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?’ And then on the other hand is a bunch of robots who are crunching numbers. For some people, those things are going to overlap into a circle and some are somewhere on the continuum, but you can’t be just one or the other. 

[bctt tweet="People ask, 'Are you analytical or are you creative?' But you have to be both... As a marketer, you should be well rounded: You're a #contentmarketer, but you could put a demand gen campaign together. You're not just writing. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Sruthi:

With all those marketing activities that we're supposed to do, some people are just doing the check-boxes. That's totally fine, but I think you should bring your personality into it. I think so many of us are so scared. Like having our corporate voice, but I think our personal voice should be in there too. 

I think the only reason why Sendoso did stand out in the early days is because we got to incorporate so many of our early founders’ and members’ own personalities into the brand. And even the way we pitch our product today is by the voices of our sales team and our marketing team, our co-founders and c-suite. So I think it's just about being okay with being yourself and incorporating that into your whole corporate brand.

[bctt tweet="I think the reason Sendoso did stand out in the early days is we got to incorporate so many of our early founders’ own personalities. It's about being okay with being yourself and incorporating that into your corporate brand. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel and podcast for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Sruthi Kumar on Creating Memorable Experiences appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Everyone in B2B is talking about account-based marketing. And almost everyone is practicing it in some form — around 93% of organizations, according to SiriusDecisions.

“Not many are killing it though,” says Kelvin Gee. “That's the problem. They start pilots ... then they re-launch and learn from the mistakes. That's just a natural maturation.”

This is a fundamental process in digital marketing, of course: test, assess, optimize. But in the Break Free B2B series, our goal is to help you fast-forward it by learning from the mistakes, successes, and revelations of your innovating peers in the field. And as the Senior Director of Modern Marketing Business Transformation at Oracle*, Kelvin draws from a deep well of experience at one of the powerhouse brands in enterprise technology.

Walking the walk is different from talking to talk, but it’s easy to see why companies across the spectrum are seeking to do both.

“Companies do need to be more customer-centric, deliver a better customer experience, personalize the content, align with sales, and measure themselves differently,” he observes. “I call account-based a strategic glue that pulls all that stuff together.”

In his conversation with TopRank Marketing’s Josh Nite, filmed in Arizona during B2B Marketing Exchange in February, Kelvin shares his perspectives on what it takes to actually make ABM work, and how Oracle empowers its people to thrive within this framework.

It comes down to a fairly simple and repeatable model: standardize, evangelize, train, enable.

[bctt tweet="“Standardize, Evangelize, Train, Enable,” @kgee’s model for implementing #ABM at scale in large organizations like @oracle. #BreakFreeB2B. — Kelvin Gee" username="toprank"]

During an expansive 25-minute interview, Kelvin unpacks the inner workings of enterprise ABM, from getting buy-in to rethinking attribution to developing meaningful metrics and beyond.

Break Free B2B Interview with Kelvin Gee

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 1:00 - Kelvin's definition of modern marketing
• 1:45 - Scaling account-based marketing
• 2:15 - Strategic adaptations in the evolution of ABM
• 3:30 - How does an organization adopt a new marketing philosophy?
• 5:00 - Who should lead the charge for transformation?
• 7:15 - Metrics Oracle looks at to measure ABM success
• 8:45 - Overcoming traditional friction between sales and marketing
• 10:30 - Is there a need to redefine success and "credit" in order to achieve alignment?
• 12:15 - Operational structure: should sales and marketing converge?
• 13:30 - Challenges and opportunities in the industry
• 15:45 - Oracle's tech stack
• 17:45 - How to filter out data that matters and makes a difference
• 18:45 - What will marketing look like in five years?
• 21:15 - Humans versus robots, and their roles in marketing going forward
• 23:00 - What can marketers do to break free?

Josh: What kind of metrics does Oracle look at when measuring ABM?

Kelvin: We actually look at account engagement as an early indicator on whether your program is performing or not, because if you're not seeing an increase in engagement from a snapshot that you might have taken before the campaign started, that probably means it's not working. Either the personalization isn't there, the tactics aren't working, you're not at the right watering holes, or the orchestration might not be right.

[bctt tweet="“If you're not seeing an increase in engagement from a snapshot of before the campaign started, that probably means it's not working.” — @kgee of @oracle on measuring #ABM success. #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

So that's the early indicator whether it's working or not. Once you're past engagement, what truly matters to sales, of course, is conversations. They want conversations with these target accounts, so that's what we really looked at and that's really measured by a target account pipeline, or "TAP," as we call it. But when you look at growth in that pipeline, regardless of crediting who sources that pipeline, whether it's marketing or sales, we don't care because it's a team sport. And you can see that growth. Again, you compare this with a snapshot you've taken of those target accounts before the campaign begins, you will see success, and that's how you measure some of those programs.

Josh: I know that Oracle is a data corporation, and you live and die by data. Can you give me a little peek into what your tech stack looks like?

Kelvin: Yeah, I'll give you some broad strokes but obviously we drink our own champagne, right? So Eloqua is our marketing automation platform and our analytics engine is all on Oracle analytics, but the important thing to understand is: We believe that data is the future of B2B marketing. Because we're not gonna have less data, we'll probably have more data in the future, so if you believe that and you also believe that most organizations — especially enterprise organizations — have data silos, and if the goal is to deliver a better customer experience, you’ve got to break down those data silos.

[bctt tweet="“We believe that data is the future of B2B marketing. If the goal is to deliver a better customer experience, you’ve got to break down those data silos.” — @kgee of @oracle on #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

So I always used the Marie Kondo analogy, right? Where she goes into your house and then she tells you to, you know, pile all your clothes from all your different closets onto your bed. And she tells you that for a reason, because only when you see all the piles of clothes on your bed does the light bulb go off and you say, "Oh my God I’ve got a lot of clothes." It's the same thing with your data. Once you consolidate all your data silos onto one bed, so to speak, in this case a customer intelligence platform or customer data platform or whatever you want to use, once you combine all that data, that's when you start to see all the insights of your customers. And for us, we think the future of B2B resides in a data lake of some sort. And that data lake is your single source of truth and when an account surges or rises, it'll rise simultaneously in your marketing automation platform and/or your CRM, and so that's really the important construct that we think is going to be more representative of a better customer experience in the future.

Josh: What can marketers do to break free?

Kelvin: I’ve always believed that all marketers should have empathy. I think empathy is a super important value that we all need to possess, because we all talk about customer-centricity, how we need to be more customer-centric blah, blah, blah. But what drives customer-centricity is empathy so, I always try to train all of my marketers, especially the young ones who are just coming out of college and learning that they have to develop the empathy muscle. And actually, I do this little "E" test in my workshops, and that is, I ask them to draw a capital-E on their forehead and then I watch them, and they struggle for a few seconds, because they realize there are two ways to control that "E" — they could draw it where it's facing the right way for them, but backward to the person facing them, or it's the other way, where it's backward for them but rightward-facing for the partner. And I asked how many people in the room draw one way or the other and it's usually a 50/50 mix, sometimes I'm surprised by 80/20 drawing it the right way, the right way being that it's rightward-facing for your partner. So I call this "E" test for a reason, because the E stands for 'empathy' because you've taken the time to think about the other person and make sure they see it the right way. So that's just a quick little parlor trick to show the importance of empathy in the world of marketing.

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus
• Break Free B2B Series: Jon Miller on How ABM Can Help Marketers Keep Their ‘Ship’ Together
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

* Disclosure: Oracle is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Oracle’s Kelvin Gee on Winning with Enterprise ABM appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

What do we mean when we talk about a transformation in marketing?

Let me put it this way. The switch from horses to cars was a transformation. It was a fundamental rethinking of the way that humans move. We went from, “Find an animal that can go further and faster than you can and ride on it,” to “Burn fuel and use the energy to turn a motor that transfers the power to wheels.”

Every improvement since then — from V8 engines to power steering — has just been an iteration on the theme. A little faster, a little more efficient, a little safer, but iteration, not transformation.

Marketers are fantastic at iteration. It’s part of the job! We’re great at A/B testing, optimization, and continuous improvement. But at the heart of it, a lot of us are still working with a souped-up version of the same old tactics we’ve always used. Yes, we’ve gone digital. Yes, we’ve automated X and Y and we’re on Z and W channels. But we’re not inventing the engine; we’re just breeding faster horses.

That’s why I get excited when I see something genuinely novel in our profession. And Lisa Sharapata and her colleagues at 6sense have the goods. 

We had the privilege of interviewing Lisa during B2BMX, and she discussed some big ideas that we’re still wrapping our heads around. The death of the MQL. The “dark funnel.” It’s nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the theory and practice of marketing, one that brings together sales and marketing and refocuses both around revenue.

[bctt tweet="“When we say, ‘we're gonna give you this amount of pipeline, we're gonna generate this amount of revenue,’ and we can actually see it coming and help deliver it in a predictable way, they are never going to want to go back to a #MQL again.” -Lisa Sharapata, @6senseinc" username="toprank"]

You can watch our full interview with Lisa below, or listen to the podcast version (and don’t forget to subscribe). Scroll down past the embeds for a few highlights from the conversation.

Break Free B2B Interview with Lisa Sharapata

Timeline and Highlights

1:00 Account engagement platforms and the dark funnel

4:30 The role of the BDR for inbound marketing

6:00 Sales and marketing: Together at last

7:15 Content strategy & SEO in dynamic marketing

10:15 Engagement is the new oil, but are we ready to drill?

15:30 The end of MQLs

Lisa: We'll create a segment based on our ICP, our ideal customer profile and keywords, depending on how we want to set it up, what they're searching for, what stage they're in. 

We have multiple different campaigns running all the time and it's dynamic, so we're seeing what these groups are searching. And they're in consideration right now, so we're gonna run this type of content and this type of display to them. 

And then lo and behold, they're starting to engage. More and more people are engaging, more of them have come to our website, they're now familiar with us, so we're gonna change up the content. And it's all dynamic and running based on how we've set the segments up to run and what content we've set up to target those accounts. 

So it moves dynamically, as they shift what they're doing, we can do all that from our platform. And then on the flip side this all feeds into Salesforce and you see this, basically this map and timeline of everything that's happening. We have a persona map that fills out this grid and you can see in your targets who's doing what, green, yellow, red, who's engaged who's not, who do you need to engage, who clicked on what, when, what keyword did they search for, what brought them to your website, what pages did they go to. 

You can look at all this information, but then it's also aggregating that and turning it into data that you can use to say, "Here's the next best action, here's someone in that account that is probably a key decision-maker, that you should buy their contact information". So it's like this whole 360 of what you do with that account.

Susan: That's awesome. Okay so the technology is obviously extremely strong, but it can't be done without humans.

Lisa: very true, very true. Like you can see my I love BDR t-shirt, we actually declared this week BDR appreciation week. I kind of started from the marketing background because that's my background, but a salesperson comes in, they have a dashboard in the morning telling them here's the accounts that are hot, here's the ones that are engaging, here's the ones that you should go after today and here's now what you should do and it breaks it down into next best actions.

And typically that would be a BDR or SDR role, that needs to figure out "Okay, I'm gonna make a video for them and send them as email, what should I talk to them about? Okay they were searching these keywords, so they must be interested and have this problem, here's how I can offer value." 

Instead of just the shot in the dark like guessing, hoping that they're saying the right thing, or just spraying as many emails out there, phone calls as they can make in a day. We're getting really strategic and helping them and it takes all the legwork out too, like they don't have to spend thirds of their day doing research, it cuts that way down so that they have it all their fingertips and then they can just start taking action when they come in in the morning.

Susan: so then do the BDR's love marketing? 

Lisa: So, I have never in my career, been in an organization where sales and marketing work hand in hand, I mean it's truly a night and day difference, because first of all we agree on "Here's the best accounts", because you can see what they're doing in the dark funnel, you know they are in my ideal customer profile but they're also in market. They're in market, before they even come inbound, we know they're in market. So sales loves marketing and marketing loves sales, because we are working together toward the same goal now.

Susan: Okay can we get back to the MQL's? Because you have declared 2020 as the year of no MQL's, so to sales execs, senior execs that sometimes can mean no accountability. 

Lisa: Yeah, so I mean here's the thing: If you talk to most sales execs and you ask them "How valuable do you think the MQL's really are?" and "How often do they turn into an SQL?" and “When marketing says they're gonna give you this many MQL's, how meaningful is that truly to you?" Most of the time they're like "Yeah, marketing is gonna throw these scans from their event over the fence and tell us to work on them." 

And they don't really put a lot of value in them. But when we say we're gonna give you this amount of pipeline, we're gonna generate this amount of revenue, and we can start to show that predictability, in saying this is what of your accounts are in market right now, that is worth this amount of pipeline to you and we can actually see it coming and help deliver it in a predictable way.. I'll tell you what, they are never going to want to go back to a MQL again. 

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Marketing: Enterprise-Level ABM with Oracle’s Kelvin Gee
• Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus
• Break Free B2B Series: Jon Miller on How ABM Can Help Marketers Keep Their ‘Ship’ Together
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Lisa Sharapata of 6sense on the End of the MQL appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

In Washington State and Boston, two initiatives are helping prevent potatoes from being thrown out and milk from being poured down the drain. Gavino Garay has more.

In Washington State and Boston, two initiatives are helping prevent potatoes from being thrown out and milk from being poured down the drain. Gavino Garay has more.

Afghanistan's government began distributing free bread to hundreds of thousands of people across the country this week as supplies have been disrupted during the coronavirus shutdown and prices have soared, officials and experts said.

[London?] : [s.n.], [1910?]

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2019]

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

Cambridge : Open Book Publishers, [2020]

Hayden Library - PN6728.B53 C632 2017

Hayden Library - PN6728.B53 C63 2016

Hayden Library - PN6728.G83 D84 2017

Dewey Library - HB72.M33 2019