Interview with 

hi this is Bob Samuels founder tech
connector tech connector is a
marketplace and campaign management
platform of Best of Breed account-based
marketing lead generation solutions we
help marketers deliver highly targeted
quality leads for their sales teams
we’ve partnered with the b2b marketing
exchange to bring you wisdom from
leading account based marketing thought
leaders to that end I’m happy to
introduce you to Mark osofsky CEO and
Jesse cone head of marketing for
Aberdeen with the recent acquisition of
big willow Aberdeen is able to deliver
intent qualified lead generation
programs for their b2b clients mark and
Jesse it’s nice to speak with you how
are you today doing great Bob we’re good
outstanding
so I appreciate your joining me this is
a great series of of IBM leaders and
they’re happy to include you it’s a
terrific terrific opportunity for me
could you give our audience a little bit
of a background about your background
and what you know about a B and a why
they should listen to you
sure Bob so I’m mark osofsky I’m CEO
here at Aberdeen I’ve been a three-time
CML so I’ve been living in the trenches
of this world you know long a lot of our
listeners and then my background is is
very data-driven so I spent time at MIT
and McKinsey really figuring out how to
how to take data and drive you know
business performance results and so
we’re in that transition in the b2b
world so it sort of all comes together
for me in my own you know personal
journey in the ABM space Jesse and I’m
Jesse Cohen I’m our VP of Marketing here
at Aberdeen so my been in Aberdeen for
about five years I was brought in when
we were formerly an analyst firm to help
make that transition away from being an
analyst firms and really disrupt the
analyst space a little bit with content
different content types and my
background I’ll be it I’ve done
marketing and agencies I’ve run internal
marketing teams and all kinds of stuff
over the years but it
seizing content and storytelling and
being able to analytically you know drag
leads for sales or build stories for
clients and just execute on just
flawless marketing programs so you know
I’m looking forward to chatting with you
today Bob beautiful I love your
background I’m a data person myself mark
and and I’ve always have an appreciation
for content folk and and you need both
to be successful in this this avium
targeted world
you guys have have a concept called
intent driven marketing could you
explain a little bit how that works
sure so you know intent is still a
relatively new concept right how do you
how do you have data and identify
companies that are in market looking to
buy what you sell but it’s been largely
trapped as an attribute you know within
platforms as just another score what it
really needs to be is a whole concept
for how you go to market and how you do
your marketing so if you think about the
full funnel how to identify companies
entering market so I don’t just think
about a static list that I developed
based on you know firma graphic or
techno graphic data but I’m actually
always listening in the market for
companies that are in markets that fit
my target market definition so that’s a
very different starting point than a VM
today most people start with static
lists so it should be much more of a
dynamic process so that’s the top of the
funnel and then how do I drive awareness
and consideration so I can’t just target
specific companies or specific people I
have to be continually open to
identifying companies with intent and
making sure they’re aware of me how do i
do intent targeted advertising how do I
have my ads reach those people and drive
them to our to our website to increase
our consideration and then as you move
down the funnel right how do I engage
with content how do I use the insights I
gain from what people are reading out in
across the Internet
I see what topics are of interest I see
specifically what content companies are
consuming so I can target content to
engage with them in a much better way
and then how do I Drive all of that into
opportunities and pipeline and make it
operational in with sales not just with
marketing so ABM has been trapped for
the most part within marketing and
within marketing systems and when you
talk to sales most of them are a bit
frustrated with you know the volume of
opportunities that marketing is
delivering to them
so how do you make intent operational
within their CRM systems and enable them
to create opportunities and increase
pipeline so that was a there’s a lot of
concepts there I went through pretty
quickly but essentially it’s intensive
and marketing improves the full funnel
right it expands it at each stage and in
the file beautiful and that just brings
to mind to your recent acquisition of
the big willow how how has that impacted
what you’re able to offer your your
clients well tremendously I mean as we
as I said earlier intense largely been
stuck as an attribute within marketing
platforms and we’re very much at the
beginning of intent driven marketing and
so what’s needed is really combining all
of the elements that are necessary to
help people actually generate
opportunities in pipeline and so for too
long here people have had to try to
cobble things together themselves and
they’re not succeeding that well with it
so we did a whole evaluation in the
market looked at the peer play in 10
providers out there and did about a
six-month analysis of all the data and
found the big willow to be superior on
nearly every dimension the most
important one being accuracy of the
intent signal secondly the breadth of
the signal across segments and
geographies and then the strength of the
team in working with their clients and
delivering
results and then by bringing it with in
Aberdeen we’re able to really apply it
across the full funnel as I talked about
so it’s impacting advertising and
content and opportunity creation so it’s
really been a huge impact for our
clients so before before fit will you
I assume you had intense information
first party if you will on on your sites
or what people when people are reading
about with your assets and now you
you’ve got third party and the world is
your oyster as far as the intense
signals correct yeah we see we see 55
million
you know device IDs a day across 17
million companies consuming content
across 18 billion web pages and four
hundred eighty thousand keywords so
tremendous scope and the amount of
intent signals that we’re saying
beautiful and just Jessie you’re I like
your background on content could you
could you explain a little bit about the
content syndication and the buyers
journey and and you know the the art of
putting the right offers in front of the
right people at the right time and that
sort of thing sure so it’s um it’s a
changing space these days with our
ability to create successful programs
both content content wise and also
demand gen wise and the idea you know
what are the challenges that we face and
we here are customer customer space and
one of the reasons to tap into a you
know the intent data and what Mark was
saying a minute ago is the idea of
intent qualified demand is where we’re
headed so content syndication provides a
number of challenges with list and
buying lists and having opt-ins with GDP
are any privacy is just becoming a
little bit of a headache and a mess for
marketers to be able to execute execute
period they got to get creative so you
know buying a list is is a hard option
these days so with this in 10
data and the intech signals and device
IDs and whatnot were able to provide an
interesting alternative to our clients
through this we call it intent qualified
demand depending on how they engage with
a four to six step process that’s pretty
unique so we’ll look at their target
account list and evaluate you know help
them understand from an ABM perspective
to tap into another thing mark set up a
minute ago you know static versus
dynamic you know the static list can be
a hard thing to market into because you
could be marketing to the same ABM list
over and over again how do you know if
it’s correct how do you know if it’s the
right audience you know people aren’t
responding so thinking about that a more
of a rolling basis and that’s where the
intense signals come into play the
ability to make sure that you have the
right list and your marketing to the
right list so with our intent
capabilities that’s the first step in
our intent qualify demand process from
there you know we validate we clean we
make sure that the list makes sense in
the accounts are lined up and then we
put contacts in touch with a an
assessment tool or self assessment tool
so it’s based off of our Aberdeen
research and the ability for our you
know the clients prospects to look at
themselves against their peers you know
similar to some of our research
histories if you were taking a survey
and our research of course that would
come out but it’s in an immediate you
know on demand right there in front of
you basis so the lead would take the
assessment figure out where they rank
and then it provides some qualification
information back to the client is the
person evaluates themselves so that was
a lot of information in a short period
of time but the idea is using in text
and signals to build a dynamic list so
you’re looking at the accounts on a
rolling basis so you’re not just
dropping in the same accounts regularly
at the beginning of the process engaging
with these with these accounts in these
leads as they’re intense signals so
having the prospect you know qualify
themselves making sure that they’re that
they’re ranked
greatly and that the sales team when
they get the leads of the other end are
following up and they know how to get in
contact that makes sense
any questions on they’re both beautiful
so so as opposed to a static list that’s
you know the starting lift may be a
suggestion but it really gets appended
and with I guess look like since and and
people who are actually having signals
out there that they really are
interested in and the solution that
being offered as opposed to yeah hoping
that people are yeah with this type of
program one of the neat things and I’ll
just share there’s a thousand different
ways to use the data that comes out of
this and the leads and looking at the
accounts based off the intent data but
the one that I think you know resonates
quite nicely when i chat with people
about this is the idea that you’re doing
a you know demands on content
syndication program you’re looking at
the intent signals based off your
account list you know you could be
marketing to them but you don’t actually
think about where they sit physically
the location of folks so if you you know
back to the dynamic account list if
you’re seeing that you know blue widget
company bubbles up they have a pretty
high intense score and you know that
your service sells into a marketing
organization for example let’s say that
marketing organization sits in Texas but
their headquarters is based in New York
City you know that the leads in the
prospects that you should be contacting
actually are located in their Texas
office so you’re going to go look and
Linkedin you’re going to look at you
know when you’re looking for contacts to
engage with and helps you target and get
really clear and who you should be
contacting rather than blindly emailing
everybody on the list or violently
contacting everybody and their new
york-based
based office this is a quick example
vehicle so you can you can you can
target more specifically to decides the
company that the right location and I
can’t wait the right people within
location right you’re not just blindly
emailing and hoping somebody’s going to
click in a lot of cases or call okay so
I suspect that both of you have seen
some or been involved with some very
very successful ABM campaign you have
anything you’re able to share and now
you have some that you’re in the works
of publishing
yeah so we’ve got a couple we’re working
on some case studies right now that will
will tease you in your listeners with so
we have one with we’ll be working on one
with CommVault and one with focus vision
and potentially a couple more so those
will be upcoming at the moment so we’ll
send them as agents are ready that’s
great we’ll definitely get the
information out there once it’s
available so that’s that’s terrific and
and what are what is your you know again
a account based marketing is a new term
but it’s it’s the old target accounts
and named accounts and so forth what do
you see how do you see this thing this
concept of evolving over the next year
next five years or so what do you see
happening with this account based
marketing strategy Turk yeah well
there’s certainly a lot going on with it
I think the biggest dynamic we’re seeing
right now is the is attention between
sales and marketing you know I think
marketing is largely embraced ABM sales
hasn’t sales you know still needs to hit
their numbers they got to hit their
pipeline numbers and ultimately they’re
still evaluating marketing on on the
impact they’re having on pipeline so
unfortunately the marketing contribution
of pipeline through ABM tends to be less
than what sales is looking for we have
some clients that have shifted their
field marketing efforts from 80 percent
ABM to to 20 percent they’ve gone to
more you know traditional methods to
generate opportunities for sales so I
think we’re in that transition period
where where sales has to to really
engage and see the value from ABM and
it’s it’s going to have to change a bit
I think for for sales to really do that
one of the ways we’ve started talking
about is and I think others have started
talking about it as well but the the
target account list has to become
dynamic it can’t be static and small
it’s got to be a broader set of
companies within a target profile or
talking market definition and using tent
data to determine who to focus on the
behavior and companies are coming in the
market looking to buy other ones aren’t
going to buy for a year or two to build
a list without that knowledge you know
it’s kind of crazy when you think about
it so I think that that dynamic list is
is one thing that’s happening here
within the within a year I think the
second thing is really driving ABM
information directly into CRM systems in
a predominantly Salesforce so how does
how does an inside sales team get the
the power of intent data and see which
of those accounts are in market what
they’re reading and how to engage with
them you know they need the tools to be
able to to leverage themselves so that’s
another thing that’s that’s happening
you know within this year beyond that I
think you know looking longer-term right
now we’re looking at account level
signals to looking at intent at an
account level or a location within an
account I could see a world where we’re
heading towards intent at the individual
level the analogy would be like a credit
score we all have our own credit score
based on our you know financial behavior
you could imagine a world where there’s
an intent score you know for each of us
on on various solutions based on our our
online research so it would just be a
score you know nothing nothing else
shared simply a score that you know
would help people prioritize so that’s
that’s longer longer-term but I could
see things moving in that direction and
save one more side by that I think one
that anyway yeah we didn’t just to chime
in we didn’t talk about it that much we
briefly
touched on it but the idea of
advertising so with the you know display
ads and I know a lot of the chatter over
here is around your Facebook or all the
ads that follow you around retargeting I
think you’re going to see a big shift
with AVM in particular that things are
going to get a lot smarter a lot more
targeted and advertisers are going to
have to be able to think about what how
they how they sell ads differently so
one of the things that we’ve noticed and
it’s been successful with with intent
using intent data to do ads and you know
it’s one of the things that we’ve done
with our customers pretty successfully
so being able to dive into some of those
niche you know communities where people
are talking about specific key terms and
putting the ad right where folks are
chatting even if it’s not like a but you
know the analogy that I use is you know
you were located in Boston so I use
Boston comm or CNN if you’re buying ads
on those sites you’re competing with a
lot of folks and you’re not always
guaranteed the right side of eyeballs
but if there’s a community and reddit
that’s talking about PLM and you make
PLM software or drawing software or some
sort of other lifecycle management
product why not get your ads sitting
right there in front of those people who
are talking about it so you’re going to
my gut says you’re probably going to see
a shift in in the way that marketers
especially in b2b are thinking about the
way they approach ads in SEO to be a lot
more cost effective
makes sense so super highly targeted so
which is great because to me it’s it’s I
call it a double mitzvah the double
could be your your your helping out the
the client finding the right people and
then have the people that are looking
for solutions you’re getting giving them
something that they’re looking for so I
think it’s a great concept and I
appreciate it and then and as far as
sales by in you know the best way to get
sales by and I guess is to get gets
results out of the program so in theory
it’s a great idea because these are the
these are the target accounts that that
should be the right one to target and if
there’s a win everybody wins
so especial sales so I’m optimistic that
that this that the coordination ‘el will
continue to grow so I think FF actually
it has been a good conversation is there
anything else that I forgot to ask where
you’d like to include because I think I
finish this been good information so far
don’t think so no it’s great but
beautiful all right well it’s a pleasure
we will we will we will publish the this
interview will follow up with with links
to the case study so you can learn more
about some of the cool things that are
happening with everything and some of
their clients and mark and Jesse I
appreciate your time it’s been terrific
thanks Bob being a conversation
take care