ARRtist 2023: More Revenue instead of Leads – From Lead Gen to Demand Gen
From Lead Chaos to Pipeline & Revenue Confidence: the way how B2B Buyers Shop Products in 2023 is a completly different than in 2018. Hardly anyone wants to provide contact information for an "eBook" or "whitepaper" just to be subsequently bombarded with emails and sales calls. B2B marketing needs to be reimagined to align with the way B2B buyers shop. Tim Rath, Founder & CEO of YOYABA, shares insights from 40+ B2B SaaS accounts and demonstrates the right approach. As the leading German agency for B2B SaaS companies, they also manage the largest media budget across the entire DACH region on LinkedIn.
In 2023, wir sehen ein Fundamental-Shift in der Welt, B2B-Beyes, B1B2.
Yet, many companies are still focused on collecting leads,
rather than really creating demand in the market.
And this is leading to massively unprofitable marketing.
But the good news is, there's a better way.
In this session, we're joined by Tim Hord.
But the founder and CEO of Jörg Jabbah, who will share insights of 47 SaaS
companies,
und der Schift von Leachen, Leachen, Demannchen,
ist der Realtime- und Realtrevenue.
So, please give a warm welcome to Tim Ratt.
Guten Morgen, Artists.
Hope you've already enjoyed your first coffee,
or your first two.
Not sure how fast you're scaling today.
But before I start, I want to better understand this audience a little bit.
So, by show of hands, who's currently running white paper campaigns to collect
leads?
Come on, I know you are.
And who thinks that this marketing approach is the very best way
to actually drive pipeline and revenue?
Almost no one.
Cool, we're already aligned here.
I like that.
So, I would have had a cool video to show you, but I'm not sure it works.
Let me check.
Okay, it doesn't work.
So, I will send you this video afterwards so you can have a look at it.
It basically shows what companies are doing wrong today
when they develop their go-to-marketing strategies,
and especially when it comes to marketing and sales alignment.
And the thing is that what companies don't understand
is how B2B buyers want to buy today.
So, that's why I want to welcome you to today's topic,
which is called from Leachen to Demannchen,
and how you can actually start being responsible for pipeline and revenue
instead of leads with your marketing teams.
And to understand this weather, why this shift is so important
is that we need to understand that the way how B2B buyers want to buy today
has fundamentally changed.
It's completely different than how it was like 10 years ago,
5 years ago, even 2 years ago.
Today, we're living in a completely different world.
And I've got three very interesting statistics
that I brought with me today from Gardner that support this.
So, what you can see here is the marketing technology tool
and its landscape growth from 2011 to 2022.
And you can see that in 2011, we only had 150 tools.
While in 2022, we had almost 10,000 tools.
So, that means B2B buyers have a lot of choice today.
It's a growth of over 6,500 percent in just 10 years, roughly 10 years.
Another interesting fact is that 77% of B2B buyers find their buying journey
difficult
and complex.
And when we think about how we buy as consumers on Amazon, for example,
we wouldn't say it's difficult.
It's actually almost too easy, which is why we buy so much stuff.
But not in software.
In software, somehow companies make it so difficult to buy stuff.
Because they don't understand how B2B buyers also want to buy.
And this is the most interesting fact, I believe.
And Gardner states that only 17% of buyers actually talk to sales before they
make a buying decision.
So, that means they do their own research.
They make their own decision internally and only then go to sales
to kind of place and order, but not to be convinced.
And for all the people who are taking pictures, you're getting all the slides
at the end.
So, you don't need to take pictures.
You can actively listen.
So, that means that we're living in a new era today.
Up until 2010, we were living in an analog buying era.
From 2010 to 2021, we were living in a sales led digital era.
We all know the rise of sales force.
That's how they grew super quickly by leveraging outbound sales.
And it worked back then.
But since 2021, we're living in a buy-all-ed economy.
B2B buyers, they want to be in control today.
They want to make their own decisions.
They want to decide what to do, where to do things, and also when to do it.
And what we must understand are five very essential things
in a sales experience and also in the buyer's journey.
What they're expecting today.
First, they're expecting educational content.
So, when they spend so much time before they talk to your sales team,
they want to spend that time with content from you that's very educational.
So, they want all their questions answered in a valuable way.
And they do not want to be pushed into a sales funnel
so that you can talk to them with your sales team.
And this content they want to consume, ungated and frictionless.
We all know when scrolling through LinkedIn,
we get hundreds of white paper lead ads
that we only get to access once we fill out 25 form fields.
Who also does not like these kind of ads.
Everybody, cool, I'm not alone.
Yeah, so what we want today is we want content in an ungated way
because the deal of getting an asset in return of giving away all our content
information
is not fair anymore.
While we live in a world where almost everything is ungated on YouTube
and other social media platforms.
So, third, we do be buyers today.
They want to talk to sales when they decide to
and not when your sales rep decides to talk to them.
So many sales rep are chasing buyers all the time
while they have no intent of talking to you at all.
So they want to make this decision now is the right time that I talk to sales.
And fourth, they want to ask information how and when they want to.
We all know pricing pages on B2B SaaS websites
and we almost know already that we go on there.
All we get is a talk to sales button but not a price.
And this also already establishes a disalignment between me and the product
because I want to know the price now and not only in a week
when your sales team has actually time to give me the price.
And I'm already gone on the next product.
And fifth, and this is the most important one,
B2B buyers today, they do not want to talk to sales in order to be convinced
because they want to make their own research and only talk to sales
to place in order to get led through the sales process.
Compliance topics, legal topics and all that stuff.
After they've already made a decision.
So we are living in a new economy now and we have a new buyer identity.
It's the self-empowered buyer identity.
And if we look at the old world, how companies were treating stuff back then,
we had a lot of legion forms, right?
Gated content, white paper campaigns.
Marketing sales metrics were not a lie.
They were going into completely different directions.
And the content was mostly focused at collecting leads at scale
and not focused at really educating your ICPs.
And these companies thought and still think today, mostly,
that sellers have the power.
But there's also other companies who've already understood the shift
in the market and how B2B buyers want to buy today.
And they are using ungated content.
They're doing education on platform where buyers actually spend time.
So me, for example, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
And I also watch 10-minute videos on LinkedIn.
But I don't like to click on some shady link to get on a shady landing page
to do a shady opt-in.
So these companies, they understand that education must happen on platform
where the buyers actually spend time.
And this is supported by a line revenue metrics.
So marketing and sales have actually the same metrics ultimately.
It's not like marketing is optimizing for MQLs
while sales is optimizing for new revenue.
Modern organizations now, modern revenue teams,
they both optimize for pipeline and revenue,
even in the marketing teams.
And the content is actually focused on education at scale
and not on lead collection at scale, which is a very different thing.
It's easy to consume, easy to learn.
And at the end of the day, it's also easy to buy for buyers.
And these companies have understood that buyers have the power today
and not the sellers.
And I've talked a lot about how B2B buyers want to buy today.
If you want to dive a little more deeper into that,
we've launched our podcast actually just last week.
So if you want to have a more deep dive session about this,
feel free to check out our podcast.
But now you might be asking yourself, well, Tim, this sounds all great
and you've obviously done your research.
But how do we change now?
Like what's the transition?
Well, how does it look like to move from lead gen to demand gen
to serve the modern buyer?
And this change actually requires the three M's.
And I call them mindset, metrics and mechanics.
Let's start with mindset.
The mindset shift that needs to happen in your organization
is the most essential.
It's the basis for everything.
Because if you don't have the mindset,
then you cannot have new metrics and new mechanics.
So this is really about aligning on beliefs.
It's about getting sea level buy-in.
And there's three essential things that need to happen
in your organization.
First, you must understand that you need to develop
a very deep customer understanding again.
It's kind of like going back to the fundamentals.
But what's happened is that marketing teams have gotten
so comfortable with the 27 marketing tech tools
that they forgot to actually pick up the phone
and talk to customers.
But this is what needs to happen.
We need to develop a very deep understanding
and ask why five times to get to the ground of their pain points.
Second, we must move away from how many leads
did we collect this month versus last month.
And we must move towards how many potential buyers
did we educate this month versus last month.
And how much pipeline did we generate from this education?
So the focus must be on long-term ICP education
and revenue and not about short-term lead chasing.
And 30 organizations and sea level must understand
how buyers want to buy today.
And also must understand that the buying journey is not linear
and attribution is completely flawed today.
And attribution is also flawed and the buy journey is not linear
because the most relevant touch points
because between your buyers and your brand and your product
they happen at places that you cannot track at all.
And I'm talking about Slack communities that are really relevant.
Some of you might be in the artist's Slack community
where you get a lot of recommendations about tools
but no one can ever track what's happening there.
I'm talking about one-on-one coffee chats, Zoom talks,
even podcasts, no one can track what happens on podcasts
and who listens to it.
So we must understand this.
And once we've understood this new mindset
that needs to be adopted,
only then we can go into the metrics.
And for the metrics you want to start measuring revenue again
instead of leads.
But since most B2B companies have a rather long sales cycle,
we need to also look at short-term positive signals.
So that's ICP engagement.
If you put a lot of valuable content out,
interesting content that's relevant for your ICP,
they will engage with it.
They will like it, comment, and share.
And it's the best sign that the content is actually relevant.
And one important thing to note here is
it must be ICP engagement
because you could also put out cat videos
and get a lot of engagement, which is not relevant.
So that's important to watch for.
And when you get more engagement with your content,
more people will automatically search for your brand
and your product on Google.
So then you will see an increase in brand lift.
Very relevant metric.
And when you have more people googling your brand and product,
what happens then?
Of course, you will see more inbound website requests.
And with more website requests inbound,
we call them handraisers, people that actually want to talk to you.
You will see increase in pipeline and revenue.
And for pipeline, I highly suggest not having a fixed stage,
but rather a fixed win rate.
So if your marketing team is required to generate pipeline
that wins at least 25%, the stage doesn't really matter.
Because win rates can always differ, because marketers are smart.
They know a lot of things how to kind of get SQLs, for example,
with Amazon gift cards.
I've seen a lot of things.
So have a specific win rate that must be generated
for marketing teams.
And now the question becomes, since the buyer's journey is so complex,
and not linear, and also dark social is such a real thing,
how can you actually know what's driving pipeline and revenue?
And just two weeks ago, I think a friend was calling me,
he was like, Tim, you don't know what just happened.
So I just-- I wanted to find out where our deals are coming from.
So I went into my CRM.
And I looked at where they were coming from the deals.
And I saw that 80% come from Google.
But I did not trust it.
So I went very deep into our CRM.
I went into every single deal and looked at what they themselves
said, how they knew about us.
And what 60% replied was not Google, but LinkedIn.
And this shows very clearly the big flaw
that we have in attribution today,
because software attribution can only
measure where demand was captured, which
is almost always on Google, while self-reported attribution
measures where demand was created, which is almost never on Google.
Because you can't create a lot of demand on Google.
And just because companies rely almost fully on software
attribution is why so much budget always
gets burned almost on Google ads, for example.
And why most companies do not invest in demand creation
channels like LinkedIn.
But in order to have the full picture,
to get the full picture, you must also
implement self-report attribution so that you
have a hybrid attribution system.
And this is really essential.
So now that we've understood what new minds that we need,
what new metrics we can create.
Only then we can obviously adopt a new mechanics, a new execution.
Because if we have different metrics to meet,
we will be doing different things.
Because marketers do different things
when they optimize on lead collection
like MQL targets versus education at scale.
So let's look at how this is done through the manager generation.
Most of you probably know that only 5% of your target audience
are ready to buy today.
The other 95% are ready to buy tomorrow.
Ironically, most companies spend almost
the entire marketing budget on the 5% that are ready to buy today.
And they only do demand capturing.
But the biggest piece of the pie is one
by investing in demand creation.
Because that's when you can actually influence
the minds of your customers so that they get faster ready to buy.
And then also that your brand is then top of mind
once they're ready to buy.
So let's walk through the different stages.
The first stage is unaware people.
They don't know that they have a problem yet.
So that question becomes-- or the question you need to answer for them
is why do I need to change something?
And let's use an example.
For example, a content management system, CMS.
Companies that are using WordPress mostly
don't know that WordPress has its limits and has its flaws.
So if you're, for example, a headless CMS provider,
you need to answer them the question why WordPress is not good enough anymore,
for example.
So why do they need to change away from WordPress?
Once they've understood this, the next question becomes, well,
why do I need to change now?
Because just because I know I have a problem,
it doesn't mean it's urgent, especially in corporates.
So you need to make them understand, well,
if you're not switching in the next two years,
you will have major problems, for example.
So you need to create that sense of urgency.
Once you've answered why change and why now,
the next question becomes, OK, well, now I know
WordPress is not the best for me,
and I need to change something now.
What's a better solution?
And even here, you're not talking about your product yet.
You're only talking about a better solution,
because there's no code platforms, there's headless CMS, et cetera.
So you're kind of selling them the headless CMS version.
And then you're answering how to change.
So what does the process look like?
Because especially on bigger projects, like implementing a new CMS,
there's so much that needs to happen in an organization.
We all know it.
So you need to answer questions like,
what stakeholders should be involved in the project?
How does a project roadmap look like?
What budgets, besides the software budget,
do I need to calculate them?
What other topics do I need to pay attention to?
How about compliance topics, legal topics?
All these things, if you help them go through the process,
you will give them a lot of courage and trust
that they can do it.
And then the last question becomes, why you?
Why is your solution the best?
And only then you start talking about your product.
And there's one thing I can guarantee you.
If you can answer every single question
from being completely problem unaware,
up until to why is your product the best solution?
And you lead them through the whole process already.
Chances are very high that they will pick your solution
as the best one.
So we'll be using these five key questions.
Why change?
Why now?
What solution?
What's the process?
And why you?
As our fundamentals in order to create demand at scale.
Who of you thinks that if you'd be answering all of your ICPs
questions from being problem unaware,
up until to why is your solution the best one?
You'd be creating more demand and drive more pipeline
and revenue.
Yeah.
Cool.
Nice.
So let's look at how this is done.
So over the past years, we've created this methodology
that goes from extract to subject to abstract.
You extract a lot of knowledge from your subject matter
experts.
You then subtract the very best parts.
And you use them to abstract your target audience.
So it's very simple.
You pick maybe a product manager.
We often use founders in C-level because they're very deep
into the product and also the pain points
in the market overall.
And we interview them for like 60 minutes.
And we ask them all the relevant questions
along these five guiding questions that I've just shown you.
Obviously backed by a lot of research beforehand
so that we know what your customers are asking.
And then we subtract the best parts from that 60-minute interview
and we create video ad creatives.
So usually we get around 10 to 15 video ad creatives
from just 60-minute investments of your founder
or subject matter expert.
And then we can create content that creates demand,
at scale, and in feet.
Because we're answering all the different questions
and we can use them on LinkedIn, obviously.
Organically, but also paid.
And when we have a lot of budget,
we can show these ads to all of your target groups.
How does this look like in practice?
I've brought you this example that we've done for HRS.
They also have a tool for the hotel industry.
Some of you might know.
And what you can see here that it's very systematically
going along this journey.
So we have content about Y-Change,
which is the very starting point, then Y now,
then what solution, what's across where you are.
And we have only one video, but several videos.
Because there's not only one question about Y-Change,
but different angles that you can always use.
And this is then also backed by more image ads
that you can see here on the bottom
to really craft this whole compelling storyline.
To use different ad formats.
Because what you want to achieve is
you want to get a very high logo frequency
in your marketing, but a low ad frequency.
So no one wants to see the same ad 10 times a day.
But if you have 10 different ads with the same logo
every day, then it's cool.
And that's what your goal should be.
So some of you might know that we work with a lot of B2B SaaS companies.
And now the question becomes,
when you create a lot of demand,
how do you capture this with very conversion optimized creatives?
And I've brought a couple of examples here.
So play play, frame scale up.
I believe that empathy is a huge thing in marketing.
So we created this ad while you're a marketing manager,
but you're not a video editor, and that's okay.
We understand you, we get you.
So here's the tool, you play play,
without editing skills, you can create videos.
Also here for fire feet, and we kind of create an ad
that looks like a LinkedIn pose because we were targeting people
that are writing LinkedIn posts.
So we understand them better than they understand themselves.
Yokoi, Swiss scale up.
Very specifically talking to their customer audience.
So we addressed as CFOs already.
Now we'll do quickly now.
One last ad, because I think I'm a huge fan
of not doing boring stuff.
Also need to be, you can create really cool appealing things.
So for a Sastry 5, we create this ad.
99 IT problems, compliance ain't one.
With a very sophisticated and professional target audience,
I have to say, but it works wonders.
And if you get to create all of this demand,
then you get to capture even more demand,
which leads to less low quality leads,
but a lot more pipeline and revenue.
And I want to finish my speech with one last question.
If people could see what you see,
know what you know, believe what you believe.
Would it be easier to sell your product?
Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Tim.