A New Hope for B2B Marketing | Forrester x Influ2

Hello everyone uh and thank you for uh joining our theatrically themed uh webinar a new hope for B2B the rise of contact level orchestration. Uh seems fitting given that we're at the beginning of uh summer and this is summer uh blockbuster season. Uh my name is Doug Mie. I'm the director of communications at Influ 2 and um obviously this is a Star Wars themed webinar and I thought um to make sure everyone's awake, everyone's with us here, uh I'd ask a Star Wars themed question that we have in the chat. There we go. I'm seeing seeing Baby Yoda, which is great. Um who knows the date of the the first Star Wars episode 4? When did that premiere? And try not to do Google, please. I mean, Google knows what it is or your your AI of choice. Uh 74 is the year. How about a month and a day? I mean, 77. 77 is the year. We'll let that um play

out a little bit. Good to see everyone's May 4th. May 4th. There it is. Hold on. Citron. Citrash. You got it. May 25th, 1977. uh the premiere of A New Hope um episode 4. So, all right, let's um continue on here. A little bit of housekeeping at the top. We've got uh 60 minutes scheduled for today. We might end a little short, but um just consider that uh if you're staying with us here. Uh this session is of course being recorded as all webinars are. So, if you do have to jump early, uh you'll be able to see the uh full recording afterwards. However, you might want to stay and I'll make a point of that uh in a second here because uh those who stay uh get a chance to win something cool. Um quick note, we do have a chat uh and a Q&A um tab here on

the webinar. So, the chat, like I just said, you can throw in there uh like we were doing the date of Star Wars. The Q&A is open though. If you have a question throughout this webinar at all, we have a team of people that will be answering questions uh live as they come. But use the Q&A tab, not the chat tab. And then finally, um as a incentive for those who are hanging with us throughout the entirety of this uh showing here, stick with the movie theme. We're going to do a raffle uh towards the end. So about 10 minutes uh towards the end of the webinar, if you are still on, we are going to take all the names of folks that are still uh watching. We're going to randomize those names and we're going to give away uh a Millennium Falcon Lego set to one of the lucky attendees. So thanks again uh for joining us. Um today obviously we are talking about contact level

orchestration and um to continue to kick things off I'm going to throw a poll up here. I'm going to open the poll now. The question is what's the biggest dark side the dark side of your current gotomarket orchestration? I'm just going to share it up there for a second as people start to get into this. Let me if I stop sharing I believe the poll will still run and we'll just get me back to my slides here. So with that let's take a moment to introduce the presenters today guys. >> Um I'm Dimmitriki. I'm ser in great to see everyone. >> And I'm Kelvin G. I am principal analyst at Forester Research and I cover marketing programs ABM and I evaluate marketing technologies such as Influ. >> Okay. Well guys, thanks so much. Uh

Kelvin, I believe it's over to you. >> Yeah, thanks Doug. Uh hi everyone. Uh when we started planning this webcast, I was asked what my favorite movie was so we could theme this webcast to it. And for me, it was Star Wars. And part of the reason uh Star Wars has always stayed with me is that I still remember what it felt like when it first came out. In this photo, you can see the long lines outside the Coronet Theater in San Francisco back in 1977, where I waited for hours to see it. Now, this just wasn't another movie opening. For me, it felt like a cultural event, a cultural phenomenon, and there was a reason for that. Star Wars was full of breakthroughs. It changed what audiences expected for movies. It pushed visual effects forward with motion control camera work. It had dynamic miniature

photography and had these epic space battles that felt fast, cinematic, and real. And it also elevated lightsabers and blasters and TIE fighters and of course Darth Vader's breathing and more importantly it helped create the modern movie franchise model where a movie could become a whole universe of things like sequels and stories and merchandise and fandom but for me as much as Star Wars was a technical breakthrough that's not the it today We remember it because of the fabulous characters, right? These are the household names that we all know and love. There is Luke, right? The young hero who made the impossible shot. We had Han Solo, the skeptic who became a true believer of the force in the rebellion

movement. We had Obi-Wan Kenobi, the old wise sage who shaped the journey before the final battle even happened. And then there's Princess Leia, right? The re the leader of the rebellion. She she carried the whole mission and she influenced the strategy and she kept the movement alive. And of course, there's Darth Vader who's the blocker, the hidden influence, the person who really changed everything. And so it's really Star Wars was about the individual people changing the outcome of the entire galaxy. And just like Star Wars, how it's ultimately about these characters, B2B marketing is shifting from targeting accounts to understanding the people, the characters who actually shape a deal. And that's the transformation that we're here to talk about. And just like how Star Wars has an opening crawl, we have our own opening

crawl. A long time ago, in a funnel far, far away, B2B marketers believe that accounts were enough. But across the galaxy, buying groups were forming in secret. And so that's the premise of our conversation today. the premise that the buyer has changed and we're seeing a shift from accounts to people, the contact level shift within the context of buying groups. You see, for years, we've always thought our buyer is this the lowly MQL, right? the single individual, the single lead that we thought were making the decisions and our systems and processes have been built for this. But we all know that the lead ccentric demand process doesn't work anymore

because the systems show buyers as this what you see on the left individual people individual leads and we know from our research that it hasn't worked less than 1% of MQLs convert into active pipeline and we also know that typically there's only one or in our case less than one like half a person according to our research uh is the number of people associated to opportunities. In reality what you see is happening on the right hand side of the slide which is that buyers are really like buying groups and they've been buying like this for a long time. We just finally have the tools and the data to support uh uh and target buying groups. Our research shows that up to 92% of B2B buying decisions have at least two buying group

members and they serve a number of roles. Some of them are champions, some of them are decision makers, some of them are influencers, some of them are end users and some of them are ratifiers. And so we need to move beyond leads and accounts and m make the shift towards buying groups. What you see on the left hand side is the rise of marketing automation platforms when they came on the scene they were focused and oriented around leads. And we all know that that's the wrong orientation. It's too narrow of a view. We know that no single individual person has made an enterprise decision by him or herself. And then over on the right hand side you have accounts. With the rise of ABM platforms, they were oriented around accounts. But that also is the wrong orientation. That's too broad of a view. We can sell more than one thing into an

account. his different subsidiaries, divisions, geographies, business units, uh the list goes on. So, we know that the Goldilocks uh sweet spot is buying groups and buying groups evaluate opportunities within accounts and that's the transformation and shift that we want to see. So, next I want to talk about the MQL myths. There's a myth that the M the MQL is the buyer. The reality is that B2B buying decisions are made by a buying group. There's also a myth that an MQL is qualified when in fact at best an MQL is an indication of interest. And then an MQL is a strong indicator of propensity to buy which is a myth when in fact there is no correlation that exists between MQL's

MQL engagement and propensity to buy. Rather, the first MQL from an account is all that's needed when in reality buying groups provide much better insight and predictive propensity to buy. The other myth is that when MQL represents one deal when in fact we know that multiple people are part of a buying group. And finally, the myth that MQL volume and marketing source pipeline are a good basis for measurement. Well, that's a myth. In reality, we need to change the focus to buying group engagement and interactions. And so when we think about who a target audience is, right, and why this there's this focus on buying group obsession, we need to understand who our customer is. And in this diagram, I usually use the

analogy of nested Russian dolls. But in sticking with the themes, these are more like nested Russ uh nested planets or death stars where the outer layer, all right, is the market, right? This is the market in which you serve and target. Uh the next layer is the accounts, right? The accounts that are part of your total addressable market. This is where the buying entity starts, right? Where the contractual relationship exists. But then within the accounts are multiple buying groups, right? And again, buying groups are formed to evaluate opportunities. So it's a collection of personas that are involved in this process of evaluation. And then finally, there's the persona that or personas that make up a buying group. And that's the actual individual buying group member that's characterized by their job role and their role within that buying group. And that's what we

want to talk about today is the buying group and the personas that make up that buying group, not the individual leads. And so when we think about intent, intent signals have always been centered around the account. But we need to make this shift from account level to contact level in order to make intent data much more actionable. Because if you just have account centric intent data, like if you know that IBM's coming to your website, what do you do with that? Right? Whereas if you actually know that Leia, Luke, and Han are actually coming to your website, well that's actually a lot more actionable, right? And so we need to make this shift from accounts to buying groups and then ultimately to contact centric uh intent in the context of buying groups. And so when we actually look at the shift to

buying groups with our client base at Forester, we're seeing a huge movement in efficiency. Here is a slide that shows uh theoretically how a shift to buying groups can move the needle in a very significant and meaningful way for you. Our clients are seeing a transition to buying groups that results in much higher uh processing and performance because you're serving up multiple contacts per opportunity instead of a single individual. And so my analogy is you're serving up six packs of beer versus a single can of beer. And that's why you're seeing this uh huge shift in efficiency in performance. And so when we return to our friends that we all know and love from Star Wars, right, they actually can represent a binding group in themselves in the Star Wars universe where Luke,

he's the champion, right? He's the one who's wondering, well, will the solution meet our needs? Then there's Han. He's the ratifier. He's trying to understand the total cost of ownership. Can we get it cheaper? And if you recall the scene in this in the cantina where he's negotiating the rate for the Millennium Falcon, right? So, he's always trying to figure out the cost cuz he's got the price on his price tag on his head. And then there's Obi-Wan Kenobi, right? He's the influencer. He's wondering, is it stable? Is it reliant? Is it efficient? And then there's Leia who is the decision maker. She's the leader of the Rebel Alliance and she's wondering what is the business value? Is this the right decision? And then there's the end user and Chewy can be that end user if they're, for example, evaluating things like bowcasters. He's wondering, will it help me do my

job better? Right? And so if you reimagine our Star Wars friends as the buying group, they all have important roles within the movie, right, as they uh go about the whole uh plot of the movie. And so with that, I will pass it to Doug uh to take over. >> Awesome. Thanks, Kelvin. I was I was sitting there just like following along and, you know, soaking it all in. I had to remind myself I've got slides to do. So, thanks for that. So, sticking with our uh movie theme here, what I want to do is is take a few of our heroes, the the Rebel Alliance, uh and illustrate uh the dangers, if you will, uh the hazards of um orchestrating right now at the account level. So, we have Leia, we've got Luke, and we've got Han. And things start off with Leia downloading a Forester report, which is

always a good call. I'm not sure who authored that one, uh, Kelvin, but seems like a good one to download. Nice to see that happen. Then we go to Luke and he takes to LinkedIn. He's going to check in with his network. He's had a recent issue with GTM orchestration. I can't see the poll questions right now, but I'm sure some of you are probably uh sharing uh the dark side here that Luke is experiencing. I'm sure he's going to get uh a reaction from his network for this. And then we've got Han who's looking at the pricing page, which fits nicely because Kelvin, you just mentioned the cantina scene where he's negotiating a price. And eight minutes on a pricing page is pretty long. If if I if I did eight minutes of silence on this web webinar right now, it would feel like an eternity. So, um some decent decent signals here, but again, at the account level, it's all looking very very well and good, very clean. There's awareness. They've all got consideration. And now

it's it's time for the decision phase where we'd say, "Hey, send it to sales and this is a done deal." Everyone, I'm sure, is shaking their head going, "Yep, Doug makes a lot of sense here." But what we need to keep in mind is again what Kelvin was saying, it's it's it's not accounts that are doing the buying, it's the people within the accounts. So with this approach, what's actually happening? So Leia and Luke, they're both getting uh messages from an AI SDR, right? And they very different approaches, but they're getting the same uh outreach. And um Luke doesn't look happy about it. Leia doesn't look either. And then Han, boy, talk about an unhappy face. He's getting um messages about, you know, security, but he only cares about pricing. Like what what's going on, you know, like I mean Han's taking people back and keeping him safe, but it's not what he's involved in. And then there's Chewy, which I'm not going to do the Chewy uh screaming crying voice,

although I should try. We'll see. But no one's even talking to Chewy, right? He's also a part of this. And what this gets at is that orchestration when people think about it is just a workflow ran. And if the workflow is running, it's on the account level. This is what we're thinking. But it's only works when it reflects each buyer's uh context. But up until now, we feel like the technology is just hasn't been precise enough. which is why I'm excited to introduce and pass the uh proverbial ball over to uh Dimmitri who's going to walk through some of the challenges that we see uh illustrated here in the contact uh the account level approach to orchestration and how a contact level approach can solve some of those challenges. >> Yeah, thank you. Um yeah so so well I think uh when we designed our solution to contact level orchestration we try to address three

key problems uh that contact level information can can solve that account level programs would not be able to to solve. So, and the first one is is timing. And uh speaking about my journey with uh with Star Wars, um it's interesting how the timing of this uh of this u movie was very very very well timed for for my personal life journey. I watched um episodes four, five, and six as a kid. And then u that was heroic movie as as you guys know. It was like very good like great story for for for a boy. And then uh I watched watched the episodes one to three which are more dramatic kind of um I think questioning the whole nature of like good and and evil.

um when I was a teenager and um I think uh this kind of and this this like as you guys know this kind of it went in in opposite direction in terms of timing of the story but but fit very well for my life journey. So I think timing is very critical and I think this is the first problem we we we try to address contact level uh orchestration approach. Um uh and then like I think the question is why why you like when you ran traditional IBM programs what happened? Why you couldn't just reach out to Chewy from the day one when we detected intent is like let's do it uh it it should work it should be that would be the best experience the best decision to be made. uh the problem is that uh when you run account level uh program you don't know it was chewy right so you and ultimately the playbook that traditional BM vendors came up and I think that was a good solution of the

technology that was available um the idea that okay you want to wait until intent score goes up and engagement score goes up for the account before you try to reach out to anyone simply because you don't know who to reach out to right so you want to know exactly who is engaging and if you don't know then you know like you just wait until there's enough volume of signals coming from this account and then you know the chances you'll be able to hit the right person but as you know it's too late by that moment uh you know chewy you know like uh has made his decision and was kind of late so I think for contact level and this is very important uh when when when you execute contact level accounting program. Don't fall into this trap and don't don't try for account score to go up before you know you act on the signals because like when when the signal is detected we have very limited time frame very

limited moment when this person has strong interest they're doing their research or they're interested in specific topic now is the time to act on this and try to connect to this person to their needs right now and this is very critical context And like um the second uh the second problem that uh we we we we want to address is personalization which is also very important. And uh you know normally when when you get account level signals you don't know what is relevant for this or that buyer in the buying group. And um you know with contact level information they because we have signals that tell who is engaging or has intent and what kind of intent they have and where it's coming from that provides very critical context for for for for any attempt to connect for any sales outreach. So

instead of just you know like as as I think everyone experienced these days is like you receive uh a lot of you know um emails from from cold emails from from people who are trying to prospect you and they all defaulted to to personalization to the level of knowing who you are right so it's like I got a couple of emails over the last week simply with simple message hey I know you are you to say oh let's let's talk and obviously it does not connect to any of my problems. Uh if if if we detected intent about a person was interested in in some specific topic by reading some content or they were searching for specific keywords in Google or they clicked an ad. This is a very important signal that you can use to connect and instead of saying hey I know you're co of this company you can say okay

you are like let's talk about this specific topic you're interested in and that that that's a real personalization people actually expecting and looking forward to uh and then uh like I think the big shift that uh we expect uh you know EBM practitioners to make is it it is not only for sales development people it's not only for iss to to make their outreach you know relevant and you know like being it cold calling or you know emails or LinkedIn messages um actually a lot can be done on the marketing side as well right so all the signals can be used to the marketing side and I think the most obvious use of of those signals is to provide personalized u advertising uh targeting buyers interest right and and in this case uh um the fact we know the person is looking for contact level intent

provides a very good context and and good orchestration opportunity to to provide ads about you know contact level intent right so I think you know intense signals are not only for sales development or sales people it's also a very strong way to improve the personalization on the marketing program. And finally, the third component is uh measurement. Uh and I think uh we see a lot of customers uh who who became our customers simply because they were not able to prove value of of the ABM program they they ran. And I think the the reason is very simple is um you know the fact you have a lot of intent signals or you engage an account is not strong enough to prove you have actual influence over the successful deal happening or like it also kind of

provides very very strong you know push back from from leadership team sales team in terms of like what's your contribution you don't even know who who is engaging and what is going on with this account, it's it's all cells job uh done successfully. Uh so yeah in in I think for when it comes to contact level execution of ABM programs you you know much more you have much more data and uh this conversation becomes much more friendly from both sides and it's much better aligned and and uh because you know who is engaging you know who has intent and you know who who who you engage with your advertising you can trace this buyer journey just like uh we we traced we all traced look uh from being like a a boy to becoming a Jedi. Um and this heroic journey you you can trace for every buyer uh you you track intent with and you engage with advertising and then it also it is also

connected to sales process. So you know how cold cold prospect becomes warm prospect and then how this warm prospect becomes uh raise their interest and you know it allows self-development people to to connect to them book meeting and then how it ultimately progresses to a successful deal. So more data, more precise data provides a lot of value in terms of understanding of what marketing contribution was to to the to to the success of of of the deal. And obviously you want to see this on the bank group level. So as in this example uh of screenshot you can see multiple buyers and you know exactly you know uh you have information about engagement intent from both uh marketing and sales people. So uh uh what marketing sales teams did and obviously it provides much better understanding of of marketing contribution to successful

Thank you, Dimma. Uh, I'm going to talk next about adaptive orchestration based on what you just talked about. What I'm sharing now is the Forester adaptive program execution framework. And this framework was designed to help you think through how to take these signals that Dimma just talked about, these contact intent level signals, and activate them to personalize a much better uh targeted experience for your buyers. This framework has three components as you can see. There's define, there's deliver, and then there's optimize. Now, there are these um uh strips that you'll see. It's the circle around all three phases. And these are labeled signals. And there are many signals out there. Intent is one of

those. It's a very important signal. And that's what Demo was talking about. And so you want to leverage uh these signals in all three phases. The first phase is define. That's the target phase. how you define your audience and you can do it at the account level uh like many of you guys are from uh an accountbased perspective but you can also do it at a buying group level which is the next phase down and that's the transformation and where the shift is headed and then within that buying group you can do it on the contact individual level based on the role within the buying group. So that's the level of transformation we're talking about. The next phase is the deliver which is what we're actually going to double click on uh in the context of this presentation. The the deliver is how you deliver a a

consistent and integrated and personalized experience across delivery mechanisms, the asset type and the themes. And then finally, there's the optimize phase, which is how you measure your programs. And then how you evaluate them based on how the programs are performing, how you determine the next best offer, and how you optimize through AB testing or multivariate testing. But like I said, we're only going to focus on this middle phase, which is the deliver phase, because that's how you're going to leverage the intent data. and deliver a much personalized experience. So if we to doubleclick to that second phase, you can deliver a better personalized experience across three dimensions. One is the message understanding that the content needs to change based on the knowledge requirements of your different

personas and buying group members. Uh like Dimma said earlier, different people um care about different topics and so you need to adjust your content uh based on their their needs and address the value statements based on the buyer needs. You also might need to adjust uh your tone and style uh based on how you speak to these people. uh maybe it needs to be more buttoned up when you're talking to a CFO versus an enduser. Maybe you need to be a little more personalized uh when you're talking to a developer who might be um more averse to marketing. And that's just an example. Uh you also need to adjust your preferences, adjust the timing, the cadence of your communication. Uh sometimes if someone's click happy and highly engaged, you want to contract the amount of marketing

engagement you do because the last thing you want to do is slow down a sales process, right? If they're highly engaged. So slow uh contracting the the amount of time uh between marketing messages is appropriate. But sometimes if they're not engaging, hitting them up too often is probably not the right move. So you want to extend out uh the timing and communication. So adjust the pacing to match the response uh accordingly to their content consumption. And again that's based on the signals that you'll be reacting to. And then there's the tactics. Understanding that there are preferences for asset types. Uh the offers, the call to actions uh can be based on individual needs. Again, different people care about different topics. And so, Han uh might be uh a voracious reader. Uh Chewy may not uh not be so much of a voracious reader. Maybe he prefers videos, right?

So, we need to understand the asset preferences. Uh the delivery mechanism, which is the channel, might also uh need to be personalized. So, um, maybe Han's more on LinkedIn and Chewy's more on Reddit. So, understanding the preferences for the different personas that you're targeting also matters. Fish where the fish are swimming. So, uh, cross messages, preferences, and tactics. Those are three levers you can start to dial and adjust to cater your um, your marketing communications to be much more personalized. So to wrap up uh the key takeaways is may the right message find the right person. Three things to take away with you. One, find the people behind the account score. Understand that there's another level, another layer beyond just the account level intent. Identify which contacts

are engaging, what they care about, and what role they may play in the buying group, whether it's champion, end user, ratifier, uh, what have you. Number two, adaptively orchestrate based on buyer context, not program assumptions. Use contact level signals to personalize that next best message, next best channel and sales action. And then number three, measure influence at the individual level. Prove which touch points reach the right stakeholders and help move the opportunity forward. start to measure things that actually matter like buying group engagement and buying group coverage and not the lowly MQL. And with that, I'll turn it back to Doug. >> Yeah, thanks Kelvin. The the fun part and I and I can see in the the chat here

uh Bash, yes, uh you'll be able to get the recording and the slides will probably be available uh as well. So, we'll make sure to get that over for you. Um, thank you everyone for joining. Uh, hopefully, uh, this was well worth your time. Um, we appreciate, uh, you spending it with us and hopefully we had some fun, too. So, uh, let's continue to have the fun. Um, if you've made it this far, we gathered all your names and we randomized it. Trust me, it won't be William Mie, my brother, getting this. We would we'd be thrown out of this webinar right away. Um, but the team is sending me uh the name now and it is Lisa. Um, Lisa. Oh, there it is. It's up on the screen. Amazing work. Um, Lisa, thank you for joining. Everyone else, thank you for joining as well. But, uh, congratulations. Uh, Lisa, hopefully this keeps you busy. I don't know, maybe you've got a a child

and you want to keep them busy for the entirety of summer because putting together the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy uh Lego by Lego should take some time. That's super cool. But um congrats Lisa. Thanks everyone for joining. One uh final slide here and a and a thank you to our presenters uh Dimma and uh Kelvin uh G from Forester. If you uh have your camera out and you want to use that QR code, we have a report that we did with Forester which was published uh right at the end of uh last year looking at the state of contact level uh ABM. It's uh definitely worth the download, definitely worth a read. Um with that, we're all done. Thank you so much. May the force be with you all.