Issue #5
In this issue: Intent - How much do we believe? | Community in action | Ad break | Attribution confusion | Don’t be scared of funny
So, no recession apparently, it’s all going to be fine - that de-escalated quickly.
Seriously, anyone else starting to think that the news media is doing more to “make” news than to report it nowadays?
Preamble now over.
Intent - How much do we believe?
In our last edition we spoke about creating demand - engaging with target organisations through creative and relevant content/outreach. I still struggle with the usefulness of “intent” data. It seems to this writer that most intent is post-rationalised by our clients to prove the model, rather than having any real truth in the moment.
We often find that our ABM work engages with a target account, we see opens, clicks, re-clicks and shared content - and then we get a report from our clients’ 6sense platform saying that this account is “In Market”, that they are displaying “Intent”. We can all see the problem here - this isn’t intent, neither is it a prospect about to issue an RFP.
Chatting to some of our enterprise seller friends, we are always told “I want to see that account as many times and in the right environments as I can - during the whole sales cycle”. Every client I know lies about intent, budget, authority - so how about sometimes we stop over-promising what martech can do and get back to the basics of a brilliant value proposition.
Community in action
I chatted today with a Head of trading and his oppo, an Engineering tech lead. As a team they loved spending time with vendors and other customers, bitching about stuff, influencing the roadmap and generally learning.
But - nobody does it - well, very few of you guys do it (Saas vendors that is)..
Remember all that press about “community”? How important it is? Well, it’s true… community referrals are 50% more likely to close, and happy SaaS customers are likely to refer new clients at a rate of about 5% - so with 100 customers you get 5 referrals a year… worth doing? We think so.
Anyone understanding marketing today will tell you that building a community is vital - and a user group is just that. Don’t thank me, it's fine 😂.
Ad break
A short break in opinion for some MACH housekeeping. Our team are helping the Alliance run MACH TWO - and specifically we need customer speakers. There’s a theme, and agenda and all sorts of good info available, so please do visit this page and read our acceptance criteria - then get involved :)
Attribution confusion
How do we fix this? I stood at a drinks reception last month with two customers, one of whom had previously said “We generated no pipeline from your events last year”, and the other who said (unprompted) “Commerce Futures was worth about £3m to me in 2021/22”.
The challenge is that these guys are joined at the hip - when one wins so does the other… so why is it that leads/opps/deals are not tracked at touchpoints along the sales journey? So much money is spent on services like ours, paid search, trade shows and content - and so little on measuring through a 9 month sales cycle.
We’re going to arrange a breakfast later this spring just for SaaS vendors about attribution - if you want to come along and share/learn please just DM me. We’ll even write a top tips blog for you all 🙂
Don’t be scared of funny
By now you’ll see us at Buyingtime/Commerce Futures doing some actual marketing. We like our tone of voice, the team are feeling liberated in running the program, and because we’re a services business we like to talk about our people, we want you (our clients and prospects) to like them, to feel you know them. Yes - it’s a tactic - sorry.
By now though - you’ll likely have seen me in a horrible green jacket on LinkedIn aping a Drake image. Embarrassing perhaps? Funny for sure… The stats?
12,000 impressions
12 DM's
69 likes
26 comments
2 leads (Yes - inbound)
Now - the leads weren’t about the image, the blog was well written and relevant, but people like funny… it’s fine, life’s hard without funny right?
Word of the week:
Moodhoover (you’ll know if it’s you).