Recent Blog Posts

It’s no longer a buzzword, but rather a necessity for B2B organizations that want to get and stay ahead of the competition. Once thought of as a tactic for only large enterprises, companies of all sizes are starting to play the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) game. Spray and pray is out and a targeted, more personalized multi-pronged approach is the way forward (see Elastic’s Four-Pronged Approach to ABM Success).

Here are 10 stats that prove ABM is more than ready for the big stage:

Higher ROI – Research by ITSMA found that 87%of marketers that measure ROI say that ABM outperforms every other marketing investment.

Pipeline Impact – Marketing leaders are more tied to revenue than ever before, and because of that their main goal with any new marketing initiative is to generate revenue. In a study by Demand Gen Report and LeadData, 54% of marketers cite “influence pipeline” as their primary ABM metric.

Deal Size Increases – in a study by SiriusDecisions, 91% of companies using ABM were able to increase their average deal size, with 25% of respondents stating the increase being over 50% or larger.

ABM Maturity – According to Pardot’s State of ABM, 24% of companies reported having ABM programs that were well underway or advanced. Another 45% said they just started. Only 7% said they have no plans to start an ABM initiative

ABM Budget – According to Pardot’s State of ABM, the average percentage of the marketing budget that would be dedicated to ABM was 29%

Better ROI than Other Marketing Initiatives – 97% of marketers say ABM had a somewhat higher or much higher ROI than other marketing initiatives, according to SiriusDecisions

ABM=Revenue – Companies using ABM generate 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts

More Opportunities Created – According to Gartner, ABM programs show a 70% increase in the number of opportunities created

ABM Aligns Sales & Marketing – According to Demandbase, 83% of marketers say ABM increases engagement with target accounts, making the marketing and sales process more efficient overall

Marketers Want Better Leads; Enter ABM – ABM’s rise has largely been attributed to B2B marketers who were not satisfied with their more traditional lead-gen programs. According to Crowd Research Partners, improving the quality of leads remains the top priority for a majority (68%) of B2B marketers. Only 16% of these folks are actually happy with the effectiveness of their lead-gen programs

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

Marketers know the power of webinars. When done well, they can engage, generate better leads and drive more pipeline than any other form of content marketing. With that said, the webinar game has changed and organizations need to be aware of the different ways webinars can be used and the different formats they can leverage to truly maximize webinar ROI. They need to look at webinars through a different lens and below are some ways they can do that.

Webinars aren’t only for lead generation – it used to be that webinars were only used as a top-of-funnel lead generation tool, but that’s no longer the case. Yes, most companies mainly use them as a way to build awareness and initial interest, but savvy marketers are using webinars for every stage of the funnel. And the approach of your webinars should be different for every stage. There are webinars that can be used to further qualify existing leads; webinars that can be used to build a business case and take an opportunity to the proposal stage; and there are ways you can use webinars to be the final push to close those hard-to-win prospects. Don’t stop there, though. Today everything is about customer experience and you must earn your customer’s business every single day. Webinars are a great way to continually educate and engage your customers, ensuring they’re happy and up to speed on everything you can do for them. They’re a great way to upsell and establish a larger footprint within your current customer base.

Your webinars don’t have to be live – I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I would venture to say that 5 years ago at least 85% of the webinars being executed were 100% live. That number might even be short. Your webinars don’t have to be live anymore. Yes, a live webinar still makes sense depending on the type of webinar and the kind of audience you might have, but there are options. Here are the different formats and when you should use them:

• Live – go live when you want webinars that are collaborative and have a lot of audience interaction. For example, going 100% live is ideal for town hall-type webinars or any webinar where you want to answer questions from the audience while they’re coming in. Additionally, if you’re big on polling (if you’re not, you should be) and want to immediately publish the results for the audience, a live environment might be what you’re looking for (you can still do polling in other formats as well). If you have a sizeable database that is engaged, familiar with the type of quality content you put out, and you’re not concerned about poor live numbers, then going 100% live would be a fit for you as well.
• Simu-live – there has been a sizeable shift in simu-live webinars (pre-record the presentation and broadcast it as a ‘live’ webinar with live elements) over the past 2-3 years. More and more marketers are going this route for a number of reasons. First of all, they’re sick of getting burned by live day webinars – the technology craps out on them; the audio isn’t working; they can’t move their slides; their speakers do a crummy job; or worse yet, something comes up at the last minute and they have to postpone or cancel the webinar altogether which is a terrible look. None of these are issues when you run simu-live webinars. Second of all, going the simu-live route enables you to get the presentation exactly how you like it and ensure that it’s going to be top-notch and well received on the day of the broadcast. There are a host of other reasons that simu-live makes sense, but ultimately it provides more peach of mind which is priceless.
• On-Demand – no, I’m not talking about archiving it on-demand after the live or simu-live event. I’m talking about doing it on-demand from the get-go. Organizations large and small are taking this approach. If you’re a small company and don’t have a big enough database where a live webinar of any sort make sense, create an on-demand webinar. You can then use that on-demand webinar to build up your audience and generate leads at the same time. If you’re a company of any size and don’t want to deal with promoting a webinar, going through everything that a live/simu-live webinar entails, but you still want to create a piece of content that’s a lot more engaging than static forms of content (see whitepapers, eBooks, etc.), than an on-demand webinar is your answer.

Extend their shelf-life and re-purpose – almost all companies that are executing webinars are eventually getting them on-demand. However, most companies do a poor job of promoting the on-demand version. They archive it somewhere on their site, maybe send an email or two to their audience, and then they let it die on the vine. It’s a waste of a great piece of engaging content. You should promote your on-demand webinars the same way you promote your live webinars. Additionally, on-demand webinars offer a treasure trove of goodies from a re-purposing perspective. They can be used to create whitepapers, eBooks, case studies and blogs. The feedback you get from them can be used to create additional webinars. One of the things we’re doing for a lot of our clients right now is creating highlight reels of their webinars. So as opposed to only having the on-demand version and making people sit through 45 minutes of presentation, a highlight reel is a condensed 4-5 minute mini-webinar that highlights the most important pieces of the webinar that will deliver the most value to the audience. It’s easier to promote through social channels, gets higher response via email than promoting the entire on-demand version, and it’s a great tool for your sales force to leverage when they want an exciting, outside-the-box piece of content to send to their prospects. This approach has really taken off for our clients.

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

With all the tools, tricks and tips available, B2B lead generation should be easy, right? Not so fast. It’s harder than ever before because there are more people vying for your prospects’ attention, your prospects have more data at their disposal and thus are more educated about what they want and why, and it has become increasingly difficult to rise about the noise. With that said, there are certain elements that are essential to consistently generate leads and drive pipeline in 2020 and beyond. Here are the 6 Must Haves for Lead Generation Success:

1. Picking the Right Targets – who’s your target audience? Sounds simple, but it consistently gets butchered. An effective lead-gen campaign is impossible without nailing this first step. You need to select the right companies and ensure that you’re dealing with contacts that can actually move the needle and make decisions. One of the main downfalls of lead generation campaigns is that they’re going after companies that don’t need their product/service and focusing on contacts that don’t have decision making authority. Don’t let this be you!
2. You Have to Actually Budget for it – a few questions to ask yourself here:
   • Are we paying for quantity or quality? MQLs (which we believe are dead and is a blog for another day) or SQLs? What about what we like to call CRLs (conversation ready leads)?
   • What tools, products, partners and services are we going to use to generate these leads? Which channels get X amount of budget and what are we expecting from each channel?
3. There Must be an End Goal – and that end goal should come down to pipeline and revenue. How much truly qualified pipeline do you need to hit/exceed your revenue goals? Unfortunately, many marketers (and even business owners) can’t answer this because they’ve been tied to MQLs as a measure of success for as long as they can remember. As stated above, we believe the MQL is dead because marketers are more tied to revenue than ever before. You need to look at how many truly qualified leads and opportunities you need to generate to hit your revenue targets. In our opinion, there’s really no other way to look at it.
4. A Multi-Pronged Approach is Necessary – you must take a multi-pronged approach to prospect engagement, leveraging different tactics at every stage of the funnel, to create competitive differentiation, generate qualified leads and close more business in today’s B2B landscape. This includes the methods (such as inbound and outbound) and the tools you use to engage your target audience (webinars, videos, blogs, literature, events, etc.).
5. ABM is Now for All…Big & Small – it was once thought that only the big boys could leverage ABM, but that’s no longer the case. If you have key-account initiatives and the bandwidth and/or partners to support that approach, ABM is for everyone. The concept has been around for a while, but better technology and access to more/better data have simply made it more effective. In a recent report, SiriusDecisions said that “92% of B2B marketers worldwide consider ABM extremely or very important to their overall marketing efforts.” That’s an incredible number. Learn more about the Elastic Solutions Four-Pronged Approach to ABM Success
6. You Need an Inside Sales Team Filled with Killers – In-House, Hybrid or Outsourced – Whether you keep it in-house, completely outsource it, or take a hybrid approach (you have your own inside team but bring on third parties to add more horsepower to your efforts), you need a team of inside sales killers. Some questions to think about when it comes to building an inside sales presence:
   • Do I have the bandwidth to effectively train and manage an inside sales team?
   • Do I have the bandwidth to hire the right inside sales team?
   • Are there partners out there that have expertise in the industries I’m focusing on, and if so, can they ramp up quickly?
   • What does my call and email cadence need to look like? How fanatical do we have to be in our outreach efforts and how will the handoff process work?
   • Taking all the above into consideration, what can I actually afford to do and what kind of impact do I expect inside sales to have on revenue?

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com