Account-Based Marketing Fundamentals with Hat Media

Short and sweet episode on the fundamentals of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). The fastest way to waste a B2B SaaS budget is to market to the wrong accounts, then call it “pipeline”. Joana sits down with Nigel Houghton, co-founder of Hat Media, to unpack what actually changed in B2B sales and marketing over the last 20 years and why those changes make account-based marketing a must for enterprise SaaS.

If you’re choosing between demand generation and account-based marketing, building an enterprise pipeline, or trying to break into a small set of high-value accounts in Australia and beyond, this conversation will give you a clearer path. Subscribe for more, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the one ABM question you want answered next.

Transcript

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Welcome And Big ABM Question

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome everyone to another episode of Sash Stories. Today is the first of the podcast. I am filming live here with my founder at Hat Media, Mr. Nigel Halton. Welcome tonight.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello, Joanna. Pleased to be here. Very excited to be here. I am a bit disappointed. I don't know any of the questions, so I'm not prepped. So this will be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Absolutely. Now, you don't need to be prepped because you've had more than two decades of experience in the world of sales and marketing and strategy when it comes to selling B2B SaaS.

From Direct Mail To Analytics

SPEAKER_01 0:39

My question for you today is really what are the fundamentals that have changed over these two decades? What has now shifted in the B2B buyer to make something like account-based marketing not a nice to have, but an absolute necessary to have?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Well, a lot. I think there's a few things I'd like to pull out. The first thing I'd suggest is that, you know, back in the day, uh there was no internet. There was, I know, there was no internet. Everything was we would call traditional. There would be uh traditional direct marketing pieces, there would be traditional direct mail. Uh there wasn't the technology available that we have now. Um companies would basically just sort of pump out product specs and they would go and meet with their clients and show them the product specs. So it it really was a different world, and it was a lot sort of simpler world in that sense. Obviously, roll forward a couple of decades, and we now have everything is everything is online, everything is trackable, everything is traceable. I mean, I imagine I remember trying to get sort of analysis and analytics into any campaign that we were running was literally, you know, tapping into the call center and saying, How many calls did you get on this telephone number for this particular product line or this campaign? So we were forever trying to work out everything manually. Uh now it's all online. We've got more analytics that we know what to do with, which is both a blessing and the curve. You just got to prioritize what's important and what's not. Um so, in a sense, everything's changed, but in another sense, nothing has changed. It's still all about companies selling products to their target audiences, it's just got a lot more complicated, a lot more complex. But it's just we're just selling stuff to each other, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I think you took us back a little bit too

Why ABM Beats Demand Gen

SPEAKER_01 2:47

far there. So even just in the past year, with all the AI tools that have come out, why would companies be considering account-based marketing versus say demand generation? Why is that one better for enterprise SaaS?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, I think with uh Enterprise SaaS, you really should know and do know exactly who is your ideal client. And it's really just a process of going, okay, these are the organizations that we want to sell to. They are of the right size, they are in the right industry, they are in the right, you know, location, they have the right need for what we are selling. So we can help solve their problems. And essentially, it's not everybody in the world. Um, if you're Coca-Cola, sure, everyone has a throat, then sell them Coca-Cola. However, if you are selling a particular SaaS solution, there's probably only you know five to ten thousand organizations or whatever. So really know your audience, and it just goes back to if you have the right list, you will have a successful campaign. If you have the wrong list, you're just spraying it out there, which is sort of a bit more where demand gen plays. Demand gen is great if you are selling to you know a bit more of a less of a solution, a lower price product to more people. But if it's nuanced and you know your audience, it's got to be account-based marketing. And it's it's it's more of a mindset than it is a tactic.

The Biggest ABM Misconception

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Now, we've spoken to a lot of companies that say we're doing ABM, in your experience, what's the biggest misconception about them thinking that they're doing it right?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

There's a number of misconceptions. I think the first one is that just because you're sending an email to someone that doesn't make it account-based marketing, that just makes it an email to someone. I mean, really, um account-based marketing, there's different types of account-based marketing, but essentially you really do drill down into every account and you work out exactly what you need to say to each member of the buyer's group. So what you're gonna say to your potential champion is going to be different than what you say to the the CFO, the CIO, the CTO, etc. Uh so um I think people who just send out emails they some and they have a CRM, they go, Oh, we're doing account-based marketing. So I would suggest that quite often that's not true.

When ABM Makes Commercial Sense

SPEAKER_01 5:25

We've worked with startups, scale-ups, enterprises. At what stage in a company's journey do you think ABM should be introduced?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

I think ABM should be introduced more based on what target accounts are you going for, what is your particular product or solution, what is the price point of your solution, rather than necessarily being chosen by your stage as an organization, startup or scale up. If you are wanting to sell into, just as an example, the top four banks in Australia, it doesn't really matter if you're a startup or scale-up or an enterprise organization. Essentially, if those four banks are your target audience, the only way you're gonna get uh get deals and get them across the line is through an account-based marketing and an account-based engagement type framework. Just sort of firing off a few emails is or just phoning them up and hoping to land them is probably not gonna happen. So if you're aiming for that sort of you know, that rarefied air of a corporate suite, if your product is fairly unique and it has a big sticker price. I mean, if you're selling something that costs a dollar fifty, then there's probably not much point doing account-based marketing. If you're selling a product with a SaaS software solution that's in the thousands of dollars, I mean we have clients, we had one client who was selling a particular product that cost a few million dollars, um, which was we were running a campaign out in Africa for that one. Um remote battery, la la la. But um hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh, we have other clients who you know they have software licenses for $300,000. I mean, the bigger the ticket item, the more you can actually invest in getting uh getting your account-based marketing really humming along. So less so to do with the life stage, more to do with who you're selling to, what are you selling, how unique is it.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

And how niche your product is as well.

Selling New Categories Takes Education

SPEAKER_00 7:31

How niche your product is, absolutely. I mean, if you're selling a Me Too product, then that's going to be a little bit more tricky. But if you're in a nice tight niche where maybe you know there's three to five others in, you know, one of the things we see a lot is with especially with SaaS is that they are coming to market with a new solution and they're solving a problem that was not solvable before or it was done traditionally. So quite often they'll say things like, Oh, should we do SEO or Google Ads? And we're like, Well, no one's actually going to search for you because no one actually has ever heard of this particular SaaS type solution you've come up with. This is unique, you're creating this niche. So, for where you're actually bringing something brand new to the marketplace, again, if you're in that tight niche with no one else or just a few others, brilliant do account-based marketing because you really do have a story to tell, but you need to build that value. And to go sideways for a second, um, you know, the amount of touch points that you actually need with your organization and the buying group as a large, it's got more and more complicated. Every time I lead a LinkedIn, the latest state of the nation from LinkedIn or Forester or Gardner or whoever, they're all sort of saying the typical B2B journey is now 45 touch points before they're even considering you. It just gets more and more every year, just because you know people get less and less time, the world's getting faster and faster.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So, yeah, yeah. I think in the world of SaaS as well, you know, a lot of these companies they're bringing completely new products to the market, whereas before their customers were using something like spreadsheets. So I guess this product is not something that the world knows exists. They don't know that they can solve their problem easier, they are not aware of it. So you can't really do Google Ads or SEO. Um, you kind of have to educate the market that this exists.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

I mean, with account-based marketing, I mean there is that sort of process that you need to go through, and the first step is really just raising awareness to your target audience, to these accounts that you know should want to buy your solution, that you exist and that you are there. I mean, you can't just take out a billboard on the freeway and say, look at me, we exist. I mean, there's only a handful of people that that you know really in the in the whole world want to buy your product. So just getting people aware to it, that's the first step of account-based marketing. Tick that box, then you can move on to the next step. But yeah, it's a journey.

Aligning Sales Marketing And Product

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Coming back to what you said earlier about sales and marketing alignment, I always love to say marketing's from Venus, sales is from Mars. You know very well we we've gone to the organizations and we've seen marketing over here in this department, and sales over there in this department, and they're not talking. But organizations struggling with that misalignment, which does impact campaigns quite heavily. What are some of the frameworks or the tips that you recommend to get these teams aligned?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Get everyone in the same room, get them talking. I mean, the larger the organization, the more the people go into their vertical silos, and that's that's true for sales, marketing, ops, etc. I think it's a challenge and a lot of organisations struggle with it, but ultimately it is all about communication. I mean, again, we've had examples of clients who who after listening to us talking about sales and marketing alignment, sales and marketing alignment, they turn around and sort of say, Oh, we don't want to tell the salespeople anything. It's like, you know, and then the salespeople are like, Oh, yeah, sales and marketing, oh, but marketing, what do they know? So there are some quite solid preconceptions in both of those camps, as it were. Um, and then you've got the kind of the just the structural siloing. Um, the smaller the company, the the more likely the horizontal nature of teamwork, etc. But it's really just get everyone in the same room, and that normally just starts with the kickoff sort of workshop. So when we're building out the the strategic piece, really, really important to get the key stakeholders in the room, get everyone across those product silos, those vertical silos. So, yes, of course, marketing, also sales, obviously, also product, also customer success. Everyone has a viewpoint of the prospective client and then the client and the product, and it's really just bringing together all of those viewpoints and putting them into the pot, and that really is how account based marketing is really going to work. Where everyone's working as one team, it will be very successful.