As account-based marketing continues to prove an extremely effective tactic for B2B marketers, Demand Frontier CEO Todd Davison decided to reflect on our own ABM efforts in the #DemandLab and how we can implement lessons learned when driving our clients’ own ABM campaigns forward.
Demand Frontier (DF): Tell us about the #DemandLab concept.
Todd Davison (TD): At Demand Frontier, we have what we call our “DemandLab”, which is our internal effort based on our own marketing investments to create our own marketing tactics and concepts. We do this of course for the marketing and sales benefits and to grow the business, but also to see what works, what doesn’t and learn new lessons and the operational requirements for programs before doing them for our own clients.
Most of our client base targets enterprise buyers, so we’ve shifted heavily to put our efforts into account-based marketing (ABM).
DF: How is Demand Frontier pioneering its ABM efforts in the #DemandLab?
TD: In the first rounds of our target account program, we target companies in our home markets of Austin and Houston. We look for large enterprise tech and B2B vertical companies that are using marketing automation and/or looking for demand gen solutions, and then build a content database for the right contacts at our target companies and validate those contacts for quality assurance.
We highlight our services through personalized packages with coffee sourced in Colombia from Empowered Coffee and then immediately follow up with a concierge telephone service to make an offer to be redeemed upon a meeting for hearing our capabilities. We offer options for different gift certificates for anyone who will take a qualified meeting with us.
DF: Can you describe the process of launching Demand Frontier’s ABM campaign?
TD: We break our ABM efforts into several parts:
- Ideation: This is a senior management-led effort to come up with the concept, offer and story board.
- Production: We then create and design the mailer piece and gift boxes, shoot a welcome video for our landing page, create a landing page to register folks who want to take a meeting and create a follow-up nurture program for those who have been addressed.
- Contact Research and Database Build: We use our data-mining tools to identify the companies that meet our criteria, the specific marketing leadership role titles, and the phone numbers and emails.
- Qualification: This phase consists of calling and verifying all addresses and phone numbers, so everything goes to the right people.
- Delivery and Fulfillment: We coordinate with a fulfillment house to build and ship the boxes, sending them out with a weekly cadence.
- Telesales: This is a tightly coordinated effort to call prospects within 48 hours of them receiving our package to verify that they got it and know how to redeem the offer. We also look to set up an appointment if they are interested in learning more about our capabilities.
- Sales Effort: Our senior sales team meets with prospects through conference calls and in-person meetings to showcase our capabilities.
- Analysis and Improvement: We continue to tweak and improve based off what’s working and what’s not, so we can focus on getting better results each time.
DF: Why did you decide to include a charitable element in your ABM campaign by partnering with Empowered Coffee?
TD: Empowered Coffee was started by two friends of mine, Jonathan and Kimberly Davis. They’re great people and their mission is to give people with Down Syndrome an opportunity to learn how to run a business. As an entrepreneur, it’s something I thought was really neat and near and dear to my heart – plus, we wanted to use coffee because of the tie-in to our near-shore team in Colombia. We send Empowered Coffee’s Colombian free-trade coffee to help the coffee farmers and people of Colombia.
Demand Frontier also empowers the charity promotion platform austingiving. We’re committed to social good and putting our talents to work to help worthy causes in our community. If we’re doing it for our own marketing campaigns, why not do that for other causes to believe in?
DF: What lessons has the Demand Frontier team learned from ABM campaign?
TD: The contact and data verification portion has been one of the biggest, hardest, most complex parts of the operation. Many times people think about their ABM offer and the package they’re sending – and while that part is important and takes work, the real muscle is in making sure all these efforts are going to the right person at the right time, and building and validating your database is more substantial of an undertaking than those other parts.
DF: How are you implementing these lessons when creating ABM campaigns for clients?
TD: We do a lot of ABM programs for clients, and all these elements are typically part of it in some form. Working through operation details and the coordination of moving parts has helped us gel our operational capabilities so we can offer clients these robust ABM programs without having to do it all on their own.
DF: Can you describe the results you’ve seen from your ABM campaign?
TD: We have closed multiple enterprise accounts within the first 60 days of our ABM program and we continue to see traction in our pipeline. ABM has become a major part of our growth for this year and the next, and we’re currently ramping up the campaign to target markets outside of Texas, so we’re planning on targeting the East and West coasts and other major cities that fit our target profile in the near future.
To learn more about how Demand Frontier can help your ABM efforts, contact us today!
