Your Events Are Expensive Because You Skip This Step | Ep. 273

Welcome to Scrappy ABM. This is your podcast with practical playbooks that don't break the bank. In this podcast, we dig into the exact playbooks that ABM practitioners are using today to get their first ABM program off the ground. We'll dig into how they're using their current tech stack in order to create scrappy programs that rely more on creativity than new technologies. So if you're looking for how to get ABM off the ground in your organization in the next 90 days, let's dive into this episode. Hey, it's Vincent over at Scrappy ABM. Thanks so much for tuning in for this episode. We've actually gone back to some of our old workshops, which we do ABM in a Day. We do actually every 4 to 6 weeks. If you want to come just check it out, scrappyabm.com/workshop. That said, we went to our Q&A sections, pulled some of the best questions that we've ever gotten for you to enjoy. So hopefully you have a great time listening to this. Hopefully it's super helpful for you. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out or just go to our next workshop at scrappyabm.com/workshop. See you there. I'm gonna bring Jim up real quick so that Jim can help field questions and then we can go from there. Hello. Howdy. All right, so Meredith asked, how are we defining account progression model stages? So the, the long and short on the account progression model is you want to have clearly identified playbooks for every stage of your program that then align to the core purpose of that stage. So again, awareness is do they know we exist? Initial engagement is are they exploring things around their problems? Meaningful engagement would be are they exploring viable solutions? MQAs, do they uniquely understand our solutions? SQA is they've booked a meeting and we're qualifying based primarily on timing and budget. And then you have an opportunity, which is like whatever your organization deems an opportunity. And then last but certainly not least would be re-engagement. So typically when somebody gets beyond a meaningful engagement stage, You want to add them back into a re-engagement program after they've gone through that overall stage. So we first have to define what the intent of each stage is for your program. And then once you've actually defined what those intents are, you then identify what the tracking capabilities are for each playbook, which would be the direction component. And then based on the direction component, when an account has hit that tracking capability or that signal., that then triggers a workflow to update their content or the account property that you would build in your CRM so that you can actually progress accounts from one stage to the next. And then in your dashboard, you just build specific, uh, dashboards that showcase target account plus contact or account property. That's this custom property. And when you do that, it then populates the number of how many accounts are in that stage. So I know that was like kind of in the weeds, but hopefully that helped. Cool. All right. What other questions do we have? Only one. The only other one I have is, um, Dejan asking, what are your favorite campaigns? My favorite program to this day is still Fix Your Site because it saved my job and like helped me understand how to think about core structures and program structures overall. And my favorite kinds of programs are essentially some kind of a program in which we get unique data and information on the account that we can then use to personalize follow-up in a one-to-one manner in such a high-touch way that's impossible to ignore. So like, that's why I like, you know, when we can get it survey information or for like our clients, like from a prospect. So surveys, webinars, like anything where we can get really highly customized information that then leads into a follow-up is my favorite. And then at the awareness stage, You know, I've just realized there's a bunch of stuff that's going to generate awareness. We have got to figure out how to consolidate all of that awareness level programming into a core next step. So when I think about it from that lens, that's why I like kind of these always-on, some form of opt-in type program that's not like a lead magnet, but it's like a webinar, a workshop, a thing that people can attend that is live engagement because I I think one, at least I hope, uh, from a content perspective, people feel they always get the value for the time that they invest. Um, and then two, uh, I don't know, I actually, I, I personally find these more enjoyable than like if I were to make a video series and then people could just watch the video series. Like I actually really enjoy the live engagement and interaction and like getting to build some form of relationship. So those are my favorites are where again, essentially proprietary first-party data on our target account that they opt, like willingly give to us so that we can personalize and our follow-ups and make sure that at the awareness stages, we've got a clear central conversion mechanism that we drive all of our accounts to, knowing that not all will go through it, but those that do typically will move faster. What else? All right. Daniel's asking in the chat, when running engagement, re-engagement playbooks, is a typical duration you recommend? Is there one such as short focus sequences versus longer cycles? What touch frequency tends to perform the best and how do you decide when to stop it? Versus I'll let an account go quiet before re-engaging again? Yeah, this is a great question. So when I look at a re-engagement playbook, this is essentially, it typically actually pretty closely mirrors your initial engagement playbook with the core difference being that there is some form of contextual sales activation as well. So what I mean by that is like initial engagement ad programming is typically some kind of a retargeting program to get people into a high engagement or high value thing. So if you think about it through that lens, that's gonna be your re-engagement program. But the core difference here is they've already come far enough through the account progression model that they also then should be activated by sales. And I typically look at sales activation on a quarterly basis. So like we want to have on the re-engagement stage 4 core touches to try to get people into the, into our stuff. And those core touches may not even be anything related to like booking a meeting. It might just be, hey, last we spoke, I know this was a problem for you guys. We're actually hosting a webinar on this upcoming. Didn't know that was the thing that was still bugging you. And then you use that as a signal. And then that re-engagement puts them back up at the meaningful engagement stage. And as a result, they then go back through the account progression model into actually booking a meeting and then running your sales process. So again, re-engagement and initial engagement are largely similar most of the time from an ad programming and from an email newsletter perspective and like all the other stuff that you're running. The core difference is this is then something you would also then activate sales quarterly in general. And then I would let it run. I like 12 months as a default because that's 4 quarterly short sequences plus ongoing long-term always-on type programming. And then after 12 months, if they've not re-engaged or shown any signs of engagement to go back into a meaningful engagement program, like that's probably a dead account and you should cycle them out of the program and then add a new account into it. That's good. Cool. Any other questions? That is all that I see on here. Cool. No one wants to live build? If you want to live build, let's go. Because if not, no shame. Whitney, let's go! All right, all right, I'm gonna hop out and then you can help her on. Cool. All right, bye, Jim. I'm super stoked about Whitney because Whitney and I are BFFs after this whole chat. And then also to answer the question, I think we got early— quick side note, Whitney, did you get the invite to come on stage? I did. Let's go, Whitney! How you doing? Living my best life. I'm super excited. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. Uh, first of all, I should throw this out there. Somebody asked earlier for swag. Um, I think if you fill out the survey at the very end, you could actually go grab some swag. So you can fill out the survey. Now that we're going to talk about it, how to do it live, um, Whitney Let's just start by listing out what are your current programs. Okay. So for the awareness, I have LinkedIn connections. And to be frank, I'm not sure if these are listed out correctly or not. So we're just gonna— No, let's go. So, uh, awareness, I've got LinkedIn connections, SEO, videos and podcasts, trade shows, and paid ads. For awareness. Cool. All right. So I got SEO, LinkedIn connections. I'm gonna reframe trade shows to pre-event, and there's a rationale behind that. And then you said video and podcasts? Correct. Okay. Which I'm, may just fall under content. Well, yes and, I mean, podcast is certainly a distribution channel. I'm a big fan of podcasts. We have a podcast arm of our business, and I've been running podcasts for like 4 and a half years. The reason I push back in general on podcasts, potentially being an awareness level program, is of all your different distribution channels, it is objectively the worst for discoverability. Like people only discover our podcast because it's named Scrappy ABM and people type in ABM and then like they stumble on it. But podcasts truly don't have a great, it's hard to discover it. So I gotcha. I may push back as a general principle, but also you might be the 20%, which is cool. So like, help me understand a little bit more about your podcast. Um, I think the rationale behind videos, pod— because we use a lot of our podcasts for video content. So obviously YouTube is a very big search engine. So I think when people are asking questions there, the hope is that our videos or our snippets are showing in the results. Okay. So The other thing I'm going to push back on is there are things that you can do that may not be conducive to an account-based program. So for example, SEO, as I think about it, can be an account-based program because you would actually track those that come in organically and you have the visibility on those people because they're moving to a first-party tracking source. Like you own your website. You don't own YouTube, and I don't know, unless there's been new technology that's come out that I'm not aware of, there's not really a way to get account-based information out of YouTube other than to convert them out of YouTube into like your website. Am I understanding that correctly? That makes sense. Yeah. Cool. So then what I would probably do if I'm in your shoes is YouTube and podcast in our context. Can work and you should, you should have some form of conversion mechanism on those, on those places, but there's, those are going to be more destination and your tracking will actually be on the click-through to the destinations. And I would actually use that in lower program progression because you should already have these people opted in. So YouTube and podcasts for your context are going to be likely more distribution or sorry, destination in nature over like a whole program focus. Does that make sense? Yep. Cool. So awareness is SEO, LinkedIn connections, and then pre-event. I'm gonna ask everybody that's hanging out in the chat, if this is helpful, I, I wanna do this for like the next hour. So like this is kind of the main goal for the next hour is questions and then actually live building with everybody. Cool. All right. So I got one person that loves it. Cause the, the hard part is like everything I just walked through is all like structure and framework in nature. But like the nuances of like, how do you use YouTube? Really specific. So like, that's, that's why I like the live build side. So anyway, all right, we got awareness nailed down. Let's move over into initial engagement. So if you're running ads, I'm assuming you're probably running retargeting ads at some point. Yes. So, and, and this may be broad, but obviously content curation or creation is a big part of this. We do have a very specific type of content that we're doing retargeting on. But I kept it pretty vague here. Let's see, content syndication. We have case studies and those are the big three. Good. Cool. We've already got content syndication, post-event playbook, which we'll walk through, and then retargeting ads. I'm going to push back on case studies and I think those are lower progression model. I think you're right. Yeah. So then get into meaningful engagement. Where does, where are we looking at from a meaningful engagement perspective? Form fills, so engagement on our landing pages, and then those case studies come into play. And then hopefully, and this may fall under the form fill, because I think it depends on what type of form they're filling out. So I'm assuming they're downloading a piece of content or a lead magnet and then filling out a form on the contact page, ideally. Okay. So what I'm hearing is it sounds like you guys have a decent number of like white papers and like, uh, lead gen assets. Um, what else are you doing? Cause I, it depends on the context here. Cause like that, that actually kind of falls more in line in my mind as it's, it's essentially content syndication just on a first party. So content syndication actually may be an awareness level program. And then what you just outlined might be more initial engagement. Is what we've— what I— yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Well, we're also doing event follow-ups. Okay. So once we meet someone at the event, plugging them into a follow-up email campaign. Okay. And then of course, and this, this may be re-engagement, but we have newsletters that we're putting together as well. That's probably gonna be re-engagement for our context, but that's great. Anything else that we're doing here? Not that I can think of. Cool. All right. So when I, when I think through this, and again, I wanna be super clear for everyone hearing, Whitney was not a plant. So like I'm, I'm learning Whitney's program along with everybody. What I'm hearing is that SEO is gonna be the main way in which we're actually driving traffic to the website. And this is only an account-based play because we're gonna piggyback off of the existing program running. And out of that, we then move into LinkedIn connections. Which is how we're gonna then open up these distribution channels. And then we're gonna have a pre-event playbook. And then I actually had post-event as initial engagement. I think what I'm actually gonna change up here is that post-event, I'm gonna make a meaningful engagement play. And then we're gonna have actually a dedicated playbook during event. And then when I look at it through this lens, I do feel fairly confident that content syndication Cause like, how are you doing content syndication targeting? Well, I did. I lied before. I, we're doing paid ads as well. Okay. I'm sorry. That doesn't, I don't know if that has to do with content syndication. That is a strategy that's currently in the works, but ideally what we'd like to do is start posting to relevant sources that our target is going to. So for context, we are targeting like school superintendents. So we want to go to all of the forums that they're exploring and throw our content up there, or even act as a thought leader and start sharing ideas. Okay. So as I hear all of this, SEO, LinkedIn, paid, pre-event paid ads, I think in this context, what I would do in your shoes is based on engagement, you could then use content syndication if you find the right kind of different vendors. You could actually provide them a target account list and then the personas you're trying to engage. And I would use content syndication as a way of doing audience expansion of those that have already started to show signs of engagement. And if that doesn't end up working, you actually move content syndication up into an awareness stage. The content syndication can actually be kind of expensive at times. So I want to, I want to use that tool for already engaged audiences that know our brand exists for the sole purpose of getting more contacts. Within the decision committee bought in more quickly. And then you can use retargeting ads and then your during event playbook. During event playbook ideal scenario would be dry. So sorry, we're going to go deep on events now for just a second because some people already referenced events a couple of times. Um, there are 4 core audiences for your pre-event program. So pre-event would be if you've been to the event previously, you've got a list from last year's event. If you segment by people that are tagging the event or hashtags or whatever, You can look at social to identify who's going to this event this year. So you've got last year's event list, you've got upcoming people posting on social. Both of those are free, by the way. Like if you already have done the work to identify who went last year. The third one that's also free is segmenting your target accounts by geos to look at where are people physically located and are we going to have target accounts that are in the same city as our events? And they just follow up with them and you go a day before or stay a day after the event and have meetings in person. And the last audience, which is the most hit or miss, not because it's, it's actually the best quality data. It's just hit or miss if the event provider will give it to you. Some events have an event app where people actually register in advance and then they have communication channels in the event app. So those 4 data sources would be the core data sources to look for, for a pre-event program. And then what you're going to do is ads, follow-up through outbound with the main goal either being from a destination perspective. You have 3 core destinations for events. It's either going to be the booth, it's going to be a speaking session, or it's going to be a happy hour side event that you're doing. And then there's also the, the 4th kind of, which is just like, hey, do you want to sit down and have coffee and meet? And then you're tracking if they say yes to whatever your destination is. Your during event is then if you had a speaking session, you want to do great follow-ups post-speaking session to get more folks opted in to actually meeting with you on site. And then the goal out of the event is to then drive folks into a meeting so that you leave the event with meetings set up for the following week. My experience is if you don't get the meeting set while you're in person, the likelihood you get the meeting set later goes down exponentially. So I don't like that for my own intents and purposes. So that's going to be your pre and during event playbook. And again, your distribution quite literally is like, or the data source would be they attended the session and depending on the event app, it'll tell you who was in the session. Or, you know, Jim, whenever he and I go to events, he actually takes notes on like who was in the session and then we intentionally follow up with them over LinkedIn or in the event app. So like, you can do this. So it's not crazy hard. You just have to be intentional about it. And then— Great. Another thing I wanted to add on that with the speakers is it turns out that a lot of our targets are speakers at these events. So we'll reach out to them directly and say, hey, do you need, do you want a tag team on the next event? And I can help support whatever you're talking about. And that's actually been pretty effective. I love that. So that's all helpful. The next thing here is on the during event, you actually hit on it, but one of my other favorite plays is to actually go to sessions where people are talking about the problems that you would solve and you see who's like super engaged and leans in. And that's the way you can actually then follow up with those people uniquely. And again, if you've chosen the right events correctly, they ideally are also on your target account list. So again, that's all event stuff. When I look at all of this, like your SEO, your LinkedIn connections, I mean, I keep, so again, I keep moving stuff around, but you already have, well, I'm going to keep LinkedIn connections there. Actually, I'm not, I'm going to make LinkedIn connections. You're all seeing me live process, which is hopefully helpful. That's actually what I found a little tricky is knowing which process to put into which bucket. Where did LinkedIn, LinkedIn connections with awareness. Well, in your context, it's more channel. So, you know, it's not actually a playbook in and of itself because what you'd likely end up doing is running LinkedIn connections for your pre-event. And then, you know, as a follow-on for retargeting ads, there's a high likelihood that you would then target folks for LinkedIn connections as a part of like a retargeting campaign. But the question is like, what are you retargeting them to? So that's the high-level thought process here. Um, is we just want to make sure that we actually like know what our programs are. So to keep things moving along, the core thing that you're missing at the moment, and I haven't heard it other than like these static lead gen assets, which maybe they're incredible and like some people have that, but there doesn't seem to be a core conversion mechanism at the meaningful engagement stage unless there's something I'm not hearing. I would agree with that. It's very, very fresh. Yeah. So in this context, as you look at like the problems to solve, it's likely going to be that you're— if I had to guess, sorry for helping, I'm going to say this, I am— I imagine your— do your events do well for you? Not at all. Really? Shoot, man, I'm off the mark entirely. That's unfortunate. But I think because we don't go there with I think a real goal or a plan in mind. Oh, you're not doing the pre-event right now? Yeah. So that's something I've been figuring out. But I will say the ones that have been successful have been the ones where we participate. It's very expensive. Yes. And that's another problem is why, you know, this is costing us a lot of money and we're really trying to strategize a before, after, during plan. So the ones that have been really successful is one where we've actually been able to engage via a speaking event or planning those, like you mentioned, the dinners before and after, that's been super effective, but it's at a very small scale. It's not what we've been able to really plan out. All right. Real quick, Whitney, I think you got copious notes. I think the core challenge for you to solve would be one, you got to build a pre-event playbook like instantly, because that will immediately make all of your events far more ROI positive. Based on the recommendations I just outlined. Second, you need a conversion mechanism of some kind that's like specific to your audience that is more than like download this checklist. Like it needs to be in a way that you can actually customize it to them. And then that hyper-targeted content I spoke of, it's a playbook dedicated to the type of ICP they are. So it's, since we're a staffing industry, it's really revolved around sales solving their staffing problems. And what we do is we've created this really beefy report on staffing industry trends year by year. So right now we're focusing on the 2025 to 2026 school year. And then what we do is we'll cater the information whether they're maybe head of HR at the school or the CFO or the superintendent. So we'll tweak it based on who they are and tweak the, what we're talking about based on their specific problems. And then the goal after they download that is to hopefully set up a meeting with their rep. Okay. Whitney, I think we're going to talk later. Huh? Sounds good. I just, there's a lot here. It's a hot mess. Well, you have more structure than you think. The core challenge is you're driving lots of folks. To something that's not— it doesn't feel super customized or personalized to them, and as a result, they don't super engage. That's what I— that's the sense that I'm getting. And then there's like a lot of not pre-planned things, and as a result, you're doing the right things. You need some more structure on the front end of your events to make the back end far more impactful, and you need probably some better conversion mechanisms on your current programming. But like, it's not a channel issue. Because you're running the right channels. It's a, it's a how they all combine together to intentionally and logically progress accounts. And I think that's the core issue that's missing is, and you've got a lot of structure now, but like now how do we operationalize progression? Like that's the core challenge to solve now, which is fun. That's a good challenge. So Whitney, thank you. Thank you for coming on. I hope that was helpful. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Scrappy ABM. If you're looking for more content just like this, I highly recommend you go subscribe to our newsletter. We release weekly playbooks so that you have the actionable ways in which you can start to build an ABM program today. Just go to scrappyabm.com/newsletter to subscribe. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate if you'd leave a 5-star review and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.