In this episode of Cybersecurity (Marketing) Unplugged, Kevin also discusses:
- The difference between third-party and first-party intent data;
- Strategies and examples of how to use various intent data platforms;
- The current state of B2B lead and demand generation and how account based marketing (ABM) fits into the equation;
- When B2B solution providers should engage with a marketing agency;
- And much more.
Kevin Flint’s mission is to help B2B agencies, clients and solutions providers identify, form and grow prosperous relationships. As a B2B Agency Executive and Digital Media expert, he’s spent the past two decades working with many of the most innovative B2B brands and marketers to evolve their marketing strategy and deliver superior ROI.
Kevin is joined by our host, Mike D’Agostino, General Manager of Information Security Media Group (ISMG) & CyberTheory
Kevin kicks part 2 off with his insight on best practices that he recommends when it comes to in-house resources for lead follow-ups:
There’s nothing worse than having an actual hot lead come in and then an SDR hops on the phone and starts to ask them bad questions. “What’s your budget? What’s your authority?”
Full Transcript
This episode has been automatically transcribed by AI, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
Mike D’Agostino:
Yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think the term prioritization – the main takeaway is that it can give you some more insight. You may have defined thousand accounts as your target account list, and then use a platform that identifies and out of those thousands, here are the 300 that are surging in intent right now. And I’ve heard some interesting use cases – you touched on a bunch of them. I came across one a few weeks ago, where somebody was saying that they’re using one of the ABM intent providers where they’re putting in their competitors’ brand names. And they’re looking to see who’s surging in intent around researching those competitors. And that gives them a supplemental list of accounts to target or to your point, if they happen to be in market or they’re already in the pipeline, put more of an emphasis on those account, so I think the term prioritization comes to mind. I think moving forward, access to that first-party intent data, whether it be on your own sites, or the fourth-party intent data, if it’s one of your vendor sites, just being able to drill down to that contact level intent data. That to me is the next big thing.
Kevin Flint:
And we know with the shift in cookies and what Google’s now delayed, and what Apple has done that it’s going to be harder to gather third-party anonymized data, especially based on cookies, and so that evolution is happening. But the goal is to figure out how to get somebody to voluntarily give you first-party data, because once they do that, you’re going to have contact information, you’re going to have the right to use that and still be compliant with different data privacy rules and all that. But I’ll tell you, it’s particularly challenging for security marketers. I’ve dealt with this with many security clients over the years. They have to be even more careful than the general population in terms of how they market to their audience because if you’re doing things that seem questionable in your data practices, in your advertising and marketing, that can offend your audience and cause things in the question. So I think it’s doubly important for security companies that are targeting security and IT, for example, to be even more focused on getting actual interest from an audience and voluntary sharing information, means your content has to be that much better. It means your offers have to be that much more compelling, because the shortcuts are that much more dangerous to use. Even if they’re still legal, you will be scrutinized for every bit of code you’re advertising, for everything, every tracking device on your website. And so it’s a unique challenge that you face in this market. And so, I think it’s more important than ever to be looking at using data properly, but getting actual interest and a real demand from an audience. So that once you’re engaging, they feel like it’s been done on proper terms.
Mike D’Agostino:
Reputation, definitely key with security companies. Next one, I know this is a loaded concept or topic here. But we’re talking more about best practices. I’m talking about lead management and follow up once contacts are acquired. And I know every organization is going to be unique in terms of their resources, their maturity, the interplay between marketing and sales. So no one strategy is going to be a fit for everyone out there. But if a company has the wherewithal, some resources in house, and you’re a little bit more of a mature entity, what do you recommend as best practice?
Kevin Flint:
Sure, I’ll mention a few things. One is I’ve always been a believer that you want to have a lead management platform that is sitting between the paid media or outbound activities you’re doing. And your own marketing automation CRM. I believe that having a platform for getting clean data into your systems is important. So do your research if you don’t have one and find the right partner for you. But I think it’s imperative not to have either manual ingestion of this data happening at different bulk times, or having dirty data come in. Once the leads or the contact info from wherever channel are in your system, the first thing is to make sure you have a segmented approach to what happens next. Not all these leads are equal, some of them are going to have criteria or have levels of activity and engagement. That means they should go on a special path. And they should be handled or expedited to the best sales team, for example. Others usually need a lot of nurture. And so the first thing I would say is there needs to be a criteria by which you determine which of those paths are going to go on. It should not all be the same. There’s nothing worse than having an actual hot lead come in and then an SDR hops on the phone and starts to ask them bad questions. “What’s your budget? What’s your authority?” Like, “I’m a CEO and I got a deal pending here.” I’ve seen deals actually fall through because the company that followed up was tone deaf to the actual engagement that’s already happened. So have a plan and it’s not a one size fits all but have an understanding of path A path B path C. Make sure it’s happening quickly. Make sure there’s actual quantitative and qualitative feedback in those steps determines what happens next. Yes, things can be automated, but there needs to be a bit of a human element as well going, “I see that they’re only scoring 70 points out of 100, but because they’re on this account, for example, that puts them into the next thing.” And that’s part of what marketing operations needs to be doing and sales ops needs to be doing. I’d also say invest in tailored content, that is going to be personalized content. I’m a little bit leery of the actual personalized content, I think it’s a bit creepy sometimes. But make sure there’s a content experience that feels appropriate for that account or for that market. So it feels like once they’re in your pool, you understand me, you get me, you’re listening to me, you’re helping me make a decision. Listen to the customer, the feedback they give. You should help them self-select their own journey. And to me, that’s the most important thing. Sales should be a guide. It shouldn’t be a showstopper, where the user has gotten a good experience, they like your website, they’ve been finding stuff, it’s been great, then the sales rep gets on the phone and starts basically doing, “What’s going to get you in this car today?” and it just blows up. And that is particularly true now with younger buyers. I’m like the oldest Millennial there is apparently, but younger Millennials and Gen Z are completely turned off by that. They want a frictionless buying experience, they want a digital first, swipe left, swipe right, I’ll-tell-you-when-I’m-ready experience. And so if you’re too blunt in your old school sales outreach, you will turn them off completely. So it’s important to be feeding them to when they do raise their hand and say, “I’m ready to have a conversation.” And it takes patience, organizationally. But I think it’s an important area of retraining for a lot of companies too, which is, you cannot sell your way through this process. You have to let the user, essentially the customer, potentially – different words – but they have to basically be nurtured and fed and through this process until they raise their hand. If you try to cut the line and just grab the reins and go, “Forget the rest of this journey, the rest of the content. Let me take over this conversation.” If you’re too blunt with that, you will lose them. So I guess to summarize, it’s segmentation. It’s prioritization, it’s customization. Those are all the things and just making sure that the data coming in is clean. And if you do that, you’re already a mile ahead of many competitors you might have because there’s still a lot of broken processes I see out there.
Mike D’Agostino:
Yeah. And it sounds like there’s no choice. But content marketing has to be a thing, digital asset management, digital content marketing, and having content that’s appropriate to feed leads as they come into your system as you continue to nurture them. That’s how you move them through the process and the funnel, not through a forced conversation with a sales rep. It reminds me of one of these meetings I’ve seen where it’s like B2B marketers. And they’re saying all the right things: “We believe in the buyers’ journey, we believe in the efficacy of content marketing, and you need to have 42 different assets and a top-of-funnel asset and a buy-phase asset,” but then also B2B marketers are running over to sales with a list of white paper leads, asking them to follow up on them. And we know there’s that interplay between marketing and sales and it’s an ongoing thing. But when it comes down to it, especially in these times, when there’s such an emphasis on revenue generation and closing deals, I have a feeling that many marketers take a bit of a shortcut, and try to get closer to sales sooner through that nurturing process.
Kevin Flint:
And there’s times when you have to try it, and, like I’m one of the rare demand gen consultants that tells you the first step to demand gen is brand. There is no shortcut, ultimately, because you have to build trust. And I’m a big believer that all of this is about building trust from the first time you even introduce yourself to a company to the point where you ask them for the order, and then to keep that trust moving forward. And everything you do need to be focused on that, I think, and anytime you go too far down the road of trying to cut the line on that, it tends to have a diminishing return rather quickly. So it takes patience, it’s hard sometimes, especially when numbers are down and revenue is tight, but if you’re not building trust, ultimately you’re not going to sell anyway. So I think the companies that are most oriented toward, “What does my buyer need to make this decision?” They tend to end up with a better outcomes versus those are just like, “I don’t care what they need. I need them to see this Gartner report right now. I don’t care that they want that or not. This is what I need to be pushing on them.” Not so good. Better to give them a chance to tell you what they want. And if you think about it, that’s how we all buy things in our personal lives. We want a frictionless experience as well, of cars and other things where that experience is, “I’m in the driver’s seat, I’m in control. And I don’t want to talk to sales until I’m far down the road.” And it’s about details and negotiation, as opposed to, “Tell me who you are.” Already know who you are, by the time I talk to you. And that’s just the way it is now. And I think some sales teams have a hard time adjusting to that, because it’s not the old school way.
Mike D’Agostino:
Well said. Two more talking points here before we wrap up. So the first is, you have a ton of experience with B2B marketing agencies. When do you advise the solution providers to engage with an agency? Is it when they don’t have the internal resources to take on certain tactics? Or should agencies be reserved for more mature entities with the personnel to handle the relationship? Or is it better for startups that don’t have the staff to check all the marketing boxes? What have you experienced?
Kevin Flint:
So this is definitely a passion point for me, and especially now, what would I do with Tenx4, or our job is essentially to help companies find the right agency fit for them. It’s a core focus. My answer is that you should bring in an agency when you need one. Now the question is, “But what type of agency, for what use case?” And the reality is that there are agencies for every type of company I’ve ever seen. There’s agencies that specialize in startups. And there’s agencies that specialize in the Fortune 50, that specializes in healthcare and pharma and security and automotive, whatever it might be. So the question is what is the right fit for you based on what you need, And, by the way, that answer might change between today and two years from now. You may evolve and change what your need is. So the first thing I always advise companies to do certainly is to figure out what are the outside skills and resources and talents and perspectives and different things you need that you don’t have in house. And sometimes that can even be a cost-effective thing like, “This is actually more beneficial to us to do it outside because we can’t afford to hire somebody in house.” And maybe it’s helpful to get an outside-the-bubble perspective, or agencies have tools and platforms that the client side may not have directly. So, to me, it’s about understanding your needs and finding the type of agency that’s right for you. And for the agencies, it’s what is the right type of client that fits them. And it’s about budget even. Some agencies are not built for a $1.5 million annual budget. And the same one is built for a $50 million annual budget, sometimes you’re more in the middle. And so, it’s more about fit than about whether you need an agency or not. Because the type of things you need – most companies use an agency for something, and it’s just about what type and when, and how usually. And so, what I do every day with Tenx4 is to answer those questions first, and then seek out the right partners for what they have. And then, their needs might change in three years, and they call us back and we go through it again. And that’s the life cycle of things. But there’s tons of options out there. And there’s some great options out there. It’s just a matter of going through the process of figuring out what is the right type of agency, and when do I need one, and for what, and it’s never one size fits all. You might need three of these eight things, you might need six of these eight things, whether it might be, but I’m definitely a big proponent of agencies. I’m also a big proponent of know when and where to use that tool. And make sure it’s the right fit for your organization.
Mike D’Agostino:
Having some experience in it myself, and your comments are spot on. I think another big aspect is you have to be ready to work with an agency in terms of viewing them as a true partner, and not like a transactional means to an end. And what I mean is that I think some companies, when they engage with agencies, they’re treating them more as like, “Take my orders and do what I say, and if you don’t, then there’s going to be an attitude involved” as opposed to, “Wait a second. I’m hiring you because you may know more than me. I’m hiring you to advise me on what to do.” And I think if you’re not in that mindset and open to it, it can lead to not great results.
Kevin Flint:
Generally speaking, yes. There are companies out there that treat their agency as a vendor, as an order taker. And there’s agencies out there that are built for that, and they don’t mind it, and that’s okay. As long as they’re on the same page with that, that’s cool. I used to call it, “taking burger orders.” “You want the number seven on fries, great, we’ll get back to you on Thursday,” you can do that. There are other agencies that only thrive when they’re strategic, when they are challenging the client, when they’re sharing new ideas. And the clients they have that worked best with them are the ones that are looking for that, that are willing to try new things and want a partner more than a vendor. But again, it comes down to the fit of not just what they want to do, but also culture. So I think it’s more interesting to be in a more strategic partnership-type mode with an agency and a client. But there’s companies out there that literally are just like, “I couldn’t afford to hire somebody, I’m going to bring in an agency, just do what I say.” And there are some agencies that can play in that game to a certain point. To me, the first step is the company has to also look in the mirror and go, “What do we need in a partner? Do we need somebody to give us good ideas and challenge our thinking or need somebody just to get the job done?” and then be transparent with agencies when you’re going out to find one. Or if you work with people like me to help find one, to know this is what we need. We were already set with the what, we just need the how of execution or all things in between. What you don’t want to do is misrepresent what you want, and who you are. So open communication is a first step to a healthy relationship. I think it starts there, like what do we want, and when you have open communication and a clear understanding of that scope, and what you’re expecting, better results tend to have.
Mike D’Agostino:
That’s the last one here. A bit of a fun one, just because it’s so top of mind right now. Any thoughts on how AI will play into the marketers toolkit moving forward? I mean, minimally, ChatGPT has injected a lot of fodder on my LinkedIn feed. But do you see a place for these technologies in the marketing stack of the future?
Kevin Flint:
Absolutely. It’d be ignorant to say it’s not going to play a role, because we know it’s going to. I think it’s probably going to play a role in just about everything. There’ll be probably some element of AI in every application we use, which is interesting. We just don’t know exactly how. I saw a video last night actually on TikTok or Instagram, whatever it was, where they were promoting an AI tool where you could do online demo videos with an AI-generated host. And you would type in your text, and they would basically host. It’s an AI tool, and I’m like, “Okay, some actress just lost her job in the demos in the future, the welcome videos.” I can imagine going to a trade show and seeing 40 booths with AI-generated videos in the background. So, we know it’s going to be a big part of things. We don’t know exactly how in every way, and one of my bigger fears is that this could cause a slowdown or a freezing and tech adoption for a while because everybody’s waiting for – once the AI thing is going to come out, maybe I won’t buy this generation, I’ll wait until the next one. That could cause a bit of an economic pinch here for a while. Because like my kids like video games, instead of why, it’s like, “Do we buy now or wait for the next console to come out?” And when you’re in that waiting time, it can be a bit of freezing effect. But generally speaking, we all need to be ready for the fact that AI is going to be an element of all the things that we do. And it’s going to replace some of the human manual stuff that happens now. I think we just have to keep an open mind to how do we use it? And how do we, as people, apply our own still unique value to how this all gets deployed? And don’t be afraid of it. But also, we can’t get so excited that we stop doing normal things because we’re just going to think, “I’ll plug in an AI solution to this.” Because it’s going to be table stakes. If everybody’s using AI, then you using AI is not an advantage. To me, it’s much more about what is the smart way to deploy this that’ll help us be more effective or efficient, and serve our customers better. In terms of how marketers think about it right now, just pay attention. Think about test cases, whether it’s ChatGPT, or the new one that Google is coming out with or Microsoft’s coming out with, maybe there’s a use case for testing those platforms as upcoming projects, learn about it. But don’t wait until it’s completely pervasive and go, “What is our strategy around these AI tools?” Keep an eye out, perhaps have a taskforce of a few key people across functions that are keeping an eye on it and think about what is the test case because down the road, you may find a solution for a big bottleneck in your content development, for example, or, “Our sales follow up would be so much more effective if we use this AI bot to to do an initial outreach with some site visitors.” There’s all sorts of vendors out there now that have embedded some kind of AI to their tools. And so I think it’s very exciting. I don’t treat it as though the sky is falling. I think it could have some negative side effects. At the same time, I don’t think I want to get so excited about it that I stop everything and just start playing with the AI tools. The buzz is real. And the reality is coming. And I think it’s just about figuring out how different does Microsoft Office look in three years versus now. How different does Google’s role change, if we’re not searching by typing in words into a screen, instead, we’re asking the AI tool. All of this stuff is cool. And there’s obviously implications across the board. How do we know if a video is a fake, if it’s so easy to make a fake video with AI? How do we know the imagery is real? I’ve had half a mind to use ChatGPT to write an article about the future of ChatGPT, and then, at the end, say, “I didn’t write this. The ChatGPT did.” Have given away my idea – I couldn’t log in. I was too busy. But there are some side effects, just culturally that come from all this. Schools. You can’t do a written test because maybe you had ChatGPT do it. So that’s an oral exam. There’s all this kind of stuff. So I think we could go down a rabbit hole with it. I just think, cut through the bugs and think about what is the test case. In certain cases, it makes sense for me and my business, and try it out and see what comes from it. And the reality is, I think our working lives is going to be a lot different in five years than it is now. And it could be as much change, as we saw from 2000 to 2015 or 2020. When I first heard about the iPhone, I thought that’s not a very good idea. So clearly, I don’t always know everything. And now we work off of pure – the fact that I’m working out of my home was unthinkable a couple years ago. AI is one of the things where we just can’t imagine what we do without it. I just don’t know where it is yet. Because if I did, I would invest in it. And I would earn lots of money. So my predictions are, it’s going to be exciting, keep an eye out and keep learning because that’s how this stuff all works.
Mike D’Agostino:
Well, minimally, two quick wins we’ve seen is, we’ve even experimented with it here, putting it to work for marketers, it’s nice to feed in your content. And they can produce some decent landing page, copy, at least, good starting points, and can be a nice shortcut. And we’ve had some success with the sales reps using it to create cold emails coming full circle on the whole marketing sales discussion, put in some information about a particular type of company that you’re looking to reach out to, feed it a little bit of background on what you have to offer. And we’ve seen some decent, cold emails being produced by it. So some infancy type of quick wins, but I’m quite sure going to be expanding rapidly over the next year or two.
Kevin Flint:
And I’ve seen some interesting stuff from vendors in the space that are using AI in neat ways for sales outreach, that sort of thing. I guess a last caution I’ll give because any sort of buzz term, talked about ABM being co-opted by the vendors that were selling display, everybody’s going to put the term AI on their next wave of products. And what does that mean is going to be the follow-up question. It’s like, when a few years ago, everything was AI/machine learning, but wasn’t really. Or remember the period of time when everything was powered by Watson. And it was like, you make customized mailing labels. So just watch for just being pure buzz and just claiming the label. But I think conceptually, I think right content development is the first point of starting, I believe, and definitely, in sales, if used properly, AI can be a way to rapidly take in inputs, and do a well thought out follow up. But eventually, there does need to be a human element in there. Because I don’t think people are yet prepared to truly interact with an AI solution to go through that journey once they figure out, “Wait. I’m talking to Alexa. I want to talk to a human.” They’re still saying that we’ll have to work out, but the best way to learn is to test and try.
Mike D’Agostino:
Yeah, I saw a movie on one of my flights a few years ago, “Her”, did you? That came to mind as soon as I saw ChatGPT and saw some things people were doing with it. Totally reminded me and I know that was one of those movies where it’s a sci-fi but not too far out. I forget exactly how long, 10 years, 15 years or something in the future. Seems like we’re almost there.
Kevin Flint:
We’re almost there. And hopefully we don’t go to Terminator, Skynet and everything. Technology change is going to come. I think it’s understanding how to harness it properly and Marketo is the least dangerous new use case I can think of for AI. But even then, there’s disruption of people’s jobs and what we do every day. So I think now’s the time to learn and to test and try and the answers will reveal themselves.
Mike D’Agostino:
Well, Kevin, time has just absolutely flown by here. I feel like we could talk for another six hours, but we do not have the time. Appreciate you coming on this week’s episode. Great conversation. I hope a lot of takeaways for our listeners, hopefully they came across. They’ll come away educated and informed and hope to do it again with you sometime soon.
Kevin Flint:
Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.
Mike D’Agostino:
All right, Kevin. Good luck in the future. Have a good rest of the day. We’ll talk soon.