Vikash: Before we, dive a little too deep I, I'd like to start with a fun question. What's a hot marketing take that you have that you probably haven't shared it with the world yet?

Mason: The challenge is I'm so open and so public that I've probably shared most of my hot marketing takes. I don't know that I have any. any new ones for this morning? But honestly, like, it's the hot take is what I built my company around, which is like, you don't need this $200,000 tech stack that you can get started with account based marketing with what you have today.

You should likely actually build your account based marketing program by not starting with ABM, but by starting with like repeatable sales plays that marketing works with sales on. Like those are, those are the hot takes I think at least. And then people that align with those, they buy from me. If they don't, that's okay.

I've like my hot takes are also qualification criteria of if we're going to do good work together.

Vikash: I'd like to get one thing out of the way though. When it comes to ABM like this, like a bunch of, definitions, so to speak, right? Like you have the one to one, the one to many. A bunch of stuff, right? Like when you say ABM how do you define it?

Mason: Yeah. I've got really three layers of a definition that I think most people will run through as they understand their as they're going through their own ABM journey. So again, if you Google account based marketing. What you're likely going to think it is, it's just account based advertising. So we use an ABM platform to run targeted display ads and targeted LinkedIn ads to a list of people.

And that's ABM. And in the reality, like, that is not ABM. That is like, that is an account based marketing tactic. Like, that it's a one channel, that it's one approach, as opposed to what ABM truly is. Which is uh, and I, I stole this from a former employer that I, Really learned a lot from, but account based marketing is a B2B growth strategy that aligns marketing and sales around a set of shared target accounts.

So again, a B to B growth strategy, we've got marketing and sales aligned and a set of shared target accounts. The challenge with that is that when you throw that out there, what most people then immediately jump to is, oh, cool, I have to go buy the technology because, and there's nothing in that definition that says anything about technology, but that's just where people's minds run to because of the ABM, generally speaking, are.

Account based marketing technologies, which makes sense. That's how they make their living and then ABM service providers. But most of those service providers are partners with the platforms. And that's not a problem. I want to be very clear. Like, I'm not anti tech. It's just we all talk about this concept of the crawl, walk, run approach and nobody really like.

Helps people actually crawl. We all want to help them walk and run. So I take the same definition, but I just try to like, help people recognize, again, the definition has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with your strategy. So how, with what you have today. Can you effectively build a program in which you engage your target accounts?

It might be through communities like there's a ton of super niche communities. So do you have target accounts that hang out in the same communities that you could go be an active member of it might be? Building a podcast that costs $32 a month between a $25 stream yard license where you can live stream the content and a 7 speaker account that is able to host a hundred hour Like it might be You literally just get really, really great at email marketing and email segmentation using your existing data and database to create highly personalized email journeys that convert people into customers. Like it has nothing to do with let me go buy the $200,000 tech stack. It has everything to do with the ways in which you use the tools that you have in front of you.

I think you put it really well, right? Like, because it's, it's not, it's not the tech. Right. But it's all the other things around that, that you probably have to, focus on and get that right before the, before you can say, okay, hey, let me bring on this tech tool

Vikash: and then that'll help me probably, go from say, one to a hundred or maybe even just one to 10. Right.

Mason: All I was going to say is everybody's so focused on getting to a hundred that nobody like really, and again, nobody thinks about getting from zero to one. Like, and I just wish that more people actually had the recognition of before we can get to a hundred, like we have to, we have to get to one. And I understand that marketing inevitably becomes exponential, but it has to start by getting started.

Vikash: Because you brought up the zero to one, right. In, in ABM, it's hard to pull off, right. Because there's a lot of moving parts. You'll have to bring in sales and marketing, together, get the alignment, right. There's a lot of processes that will have to put into it, put in place.

So where does the scrappy part come over here?

Mason: Yeah. So specifically, as I'm talking with clients or people that are just interested in the concept, it is truly like take inventory of what you have today from a channel perspective, take inventory of what's currently working today. And like, instead of looking outside and saying, how do we pull in something new to make this effective?

It's truly just saying, like, we know we have a great email automation platform. We've got a good CRM, and we have the ability to do outbound sequencing. Why don't we just start there? And like, that's the scrappy part is then you know, as you do that, you may identify some specific gaps. So, for example, if you don't have any level of contact enrichment, so this is gonna get like really detailed and really nuanced for a moment, but.

A lot of clients, they will be able to generate specific contacts from their target accounts through their existing marketing programs. But the benefit to account based marketing is the ability to what we've called this, like, surround sound approach in which we're engaging numerous decision makers within the buying committee within our target accounts.

But if you don't have any form of data enrichment and contact enrichment. It's difficult to actually get that surround sound approach. So there's a couple ways you can solve for that. You can go get a free tool like Apollo that will give you some level of contact enrichment. Again, because it's free, it's probably not going to have the full functionality that you would want down the road.

It may not have the integrations into the tech stack. There are components in which, because you're proving out the model, It's going to be scrappy. So it's just a series of trade offs. So, again, I, my preference, because especially especially as I'm currently and I've primarily worked in bootstrapped businesses cost and like commitment is always a factor.

And a lot of these larger technologies require, like, 1 to 2 year agreements. So, by starting scrappy, yes, it may be a little bit more manual on the front end, but again, it costs no money from a technology perspective, and there's no ongoing commitment. So again, looking at where are those gaps? The other thing is like, do you build out a process with your SDRs as a part of their research approach in which they are then actually helping to kind of follow the thread?

And like, there are pretty easy ways to do that. If you go look on LinkedIn on the side of a decision makers profile, it says. People also looked at and it shows you a bunch of other profiles of people they also looked at, typically speaking, unless you're again, people like me that are super active on linked in, it's actually just other people at their company that, like, might be their boss or, like, might be their co workers.

So, like, you could just look at that thread and say, like, oh, so this, like, this is probably how this works. so again, like, that's the scrappy approach is we know the goal is we want to engage multiple decision makers within a buying committee. We have some level of information. How do we fill in the gaps with what we have today?

How do we build maybe a slightly more manual process to fill in those gaps? Or how do we get some kind of a free or very inexpensive tool to prove out our model for what we're trying to accomplish before we invest in the one, two year long annual commitment, the six month rev ops project. And like the a hundred K to buy the technology.

So that's the scrappy approach.

Vikash: So one of the things that, I usually hear is like, if your ACV isn't say greater than 10K or 20K, you shouldn't even think about ABM, right? And a lot of the times the reasoning behind that is, Hey, the tooling is going to itself is going to cost so much. Like. It really doesn't make sense for you to spend that much money, right?

Based on what you just shared, right? Like, if you're going, taking that scrappy route maybe you can make the ABM work for, even if you are at, say, 5, 6K ACV?

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you

Mason: actually gonna, I'm going to push back the, the opposite direction. because you know, I would actually argue that you shouldn't consider ABM unless your ACV is like 30 K and like where you're, where you're, where you will find the most success is 50 K plus, because I want to be very, very clear, everything I just walked through.

Is like labor intensive, so again, that's the trade off is like, you're not buying a technology you can't get out of, instead, you're building a process that to get it started is actually not, it's kind of a manual process and like, again, I have had some people come back and say like, scrappy, like, that just sounds really hard.

It's like, yeah, it is like, it's not, none of what we're doing is easy. If it were, then everybody would be doing it. But what we're doing is we're like building a model that helps you scale up abm down the road that can have exponentially greater results. So, from a time investment perspective, like, if you can't.

Get a deal that's at least 30 to 50. Like that's kind of the, for me, that's the gray area. And I'll explain like why it's a gray area and where for me, like the delineation is, but 50 plus, typically speaking, you can get a return on that time investment. So again, like I'd actually say the opposite direction, like, because like people are also expensive, so I'm not like.

I recognize that, like, time is, is costly but the reason I index on time and people and processes is because that's the foundation that you need to make ABM successful in any capacity. And when you look at the reasons that ABM fails, it's typically like the people in the process, not the technology.

So again. This, if you do not have the ACV to support it long term, this is not a worthwhile endeavor. And I would not recommend this because you're going to end up investing a bunch of time into something that will not inevitably work. The gray area and the nuance is because we do have, so I'll give you a quick example, like my company, Scrappy ABM, I'm actually at the moment, industry agnostic.

I don't care what industry I work with. I am very problem specific. So the problem is if you can't implement ABM, I help you do that. And I've like my, my positioning and my niche is like the, the very early stage ABM program. What's interesting in that is I have clients that are coming in that are like very early stage startups that are mid market and have just churned on their ABM tech stack because they've tried it in the past and it didn't work or are very late stage companies.

And like, we've always been doing the same things and we need to modernize. So like I have, I actually serve the full spectrum from enterprise, mid market to early stage startups, but the reasons are different. The problem is actually the core same though, the difference to that. And this is where the gray area is.

There's a lot of companies that are technology that only serve a very specific industry in a very specific niche. Like I was talking with a client. Yesterday that said, our total addressable market forever is a thousand accounts like there may, it may fluctuate like up and down a little bit, but we can only ever, ever go after a hundred, not a hundred, sorry, a thousand potential customers.

So, in that context, it doesn't matter what the ACD is, you might as well run an account based play because, you know, based on like outside factors, they're in a highly regulated industry that is has high, high, high barriers to entry. They know these thousand accounts, they're probably a really safe bet for us to go after for like the next 20 years.

And yes, there may be some fluctuation in that, but like, I know that these are my thousand. So it doesn't matter what their ACV is. They know that they have to run an account based play because the, the total addressable market is so clear. So that's the nuance. again, if you're in a. What I would call a problem specific business, which you solve a very specific problem for a variety of industries.

I would focus on like the 50 K plus as an ACV. And then to, to validate that ABM should be a worthwhile investment. And then if you are 30 to 50 K, that gray area, if you're like serving a very specific industry that serves a very specific problem and like, you know, your total addressable market, and it's not likely to change in a big way, then you should be running ABM.

If it's not that that's okay. You should probably do something else like inbound so that you can actually get an exponential greater scale.

Vikash: Pretty sure everyone's thinking about year planning and all this stuff. If ABM is in the mix and they haven't done it before, I think this sort of gives them a good, good thing to think about and decide if it really makes sense for them.

Through the course of this conversation, you repeated about people and process a bunch of times, right? How do you go about bringing that alignment? Because I think that's probably the hardest part in the entire ABM program, right?

Mason: Yeah. So. I'm going to give you two answers. So one for me personally, as like I'm working with potential clients, I bring sales into the conversation before we've closed the deal, because personally, like my account based programs, my activation plays, none of that's going to work. If there's not at least a couple of others that we can partner up with.

So actually I, I involve sales in the decision to move forward with an ABM agency, so that creates pretty clear alignment because on the onset before. Like marketing assigned to deal sales is in the now I do that intentionally because a lot of times what will happen is marketing will get this concept of we should go build an ABM program and then they'll go build it and it will, they'll do it for three or four months to like build out this incredibly massive campaign.

And then they'll come to sales and say like, Hey, we've got this target accounts. We're launching this thing. Like you should just go like, go after these people. And like, what? No, I already have a full time job. What is this? And then they don't do it. And then marketing gets ticked and everybody's just unhappy. So you can take the principle of what I do from a consultative perspective and do that with your sales team. And again, if marketing leadership, and I want to actually really clear on this, like for ABM to work, you have to have executive sponsorship. So what typically happens is that like ABM gets passed to a marketing manager.

It's like, Hey, do ABM and like, awesome. That's completely set up to fail because ABM is actually organizational change in which you're shifting from like marketing, just passing leads over to sales in which they're actually collaboratively working together. So like it can't just be passed to a marketing manager.

There has to be executive sponsorship and there needs to be the executive alignment between marketing and sales. To actually execute a beam effectively at that point, you create what is referred to sometimes. It's like the ABM task force in which you have your marketing person. That's truly owning account based marketing.

And somebody has to have clear ownership where the buck stops. And you've got some sellers that are working collaboratively with that marketer to then execute the programs. So you have executive sponsorship, you have executive alignment, they're involved, they understand what's happening. You have someone that is a builder of the strategy and the program.

And then you have sellers that are kind of supporting in the actual. Refinement of tactics. So give you a prime example. A lot of account based marketers are creating outbound sequence templates. That's great, but I'll be really blunt. Most ABM. Errs have some level of sales background, but they haven't been sellers in the in the recent in their recent experience.

So to provide marketing like the right messaging, the right narrative. In the right direction, and then sales actually come in from a refinement perspective and say, like, oh, we're using specific tools like lavender, or we just know better best practices that can help us refine these outbound sequencing.

So, again, marketing provides the direction, the message, the narrative sales, refines the specific. Tactics that actually drive opens and meetings at that point. We're all aligned. Everybody's excited. Everybody's happy. As opposed to marketing, passing it over and saying, Hey, do this. Cause sales can be like, no.

So that's, that's how what I also just outlined is not easy again. None of this is easy. So if you're hoping for a silver bullet, I'm sorry. That's not the podcast for you today, but if you can get that internal alignment on the front end, the rest of it becomes easier. It takes more work on the front end.

Cause instead of getting into the fun and exciting, like let's build out a strategy. Let's dream a little bit. You're like, how do I get these people aligned? And like, that's, I will also share this final thought. It is the balance of those two things, because if you just go to sales and say, Hey, let's, let's go build ABM.

They're, they're either going to say, no, they're going to say, okay, maybe, but like, what is that? Or probably worst of all, they're actually going to say. Yes, and then go Google it and then have unrealistic expectations based on what they find on the first few search results. And I don't mean that to be negative, but like most things on line are very unrealistic about what you'll expect from ABM because they're trying to sell you.

Like unrealistic expectations, so that's the delicate balance is you want to get by on on the front end, but you need to get buy in on something. So you will need to do some foundational upfront strategy work and program work to give the direction to provide. This is what we're looking to build. Don't get so far down the path.

That you've already written out the exact sequence they're going to send and then say it to them for the first time. So again, that's the nuance.

Vikash: Instead of having everything written down probably all the way to the task and then going to the sales is probably never going to work.

Right. So probably have. Some sort of a framework in mind saying that hey, this is what we're thinking. This is why we think ABM will work and this is how we think, this is how we think we should approach it and here's a bunch of areas where we will need your help, your inputs from and this is how we think we can probably win these accounts. Does that sort like sum up?

of

Mason: I wouldn't even say like, this is where we need your input. Like, cause I mean, there's again, that's, that's where it gets really, really nuanced. So like, if you know, you have a trusting sales team that is super busy and you don't want to just like present the entire plan to them because, you know, they wouldn't be receptive, but not because of a lack of like Um, Wanting to be involved, but like, if they're already busy, they're already busy.

So like coming to them and saying like, Hey, we've got a larger program, but like, these are the specific areas in which I need your support and help. And like, I'd love your thoughts here. That might be one thing you may also have sellers that are. Really wanting to be involved and that really want to understand the full scope for two reasons.

One, they may just be interested, like a lot of like, I'm personally interested in how sellers are doing selling. A lot of sellers are interested in how marketers are doing marketing. Like, it may just be a genuine curiosity, but then the other side is like. They may want to understand what the buyers have seen and experienced before they've actually scheduled that call so they can come into those conversations specifically more informed.

So that's just a nuance of, like, understanding your sales team and what's actually going to get their buy in the other thought. And I should have said this earlier. So forgive me for backtracking for a moment. we're talking about like, once you've actually proven some level of success and gotten some level of like sales buy into work with marketing in the first place to very simply summarize, I think before you actually build out the ABM program, you just need to do what I call an activation play.

So it's like, what's a trigger? What's an outbound sequence? And like, how do we operationalize that in a way that sales can do that on a repeatable basis? And like, you're just focused right there as opposed to like building out this grandiose ABM program on like basic alignment basis, basic like marketing, providing messaging that fails actually uses and nailing the sales marketing handoff, because those are the three areas in which ABM typically fails.

So if you can start with like a small project, you can get knocked out. Generally speaking, like 30 to 45 days, you can then prove the value there and build into a larger ABM program. So like. Everything I'm saying still true, but I'd actually start with an activation playing. That's like, and I can give a quick example of that's pretty generally universal. So think about, like, what are the actions somebody would take before they would buy. In most cases, they're going to view a bunch of product pages. They're going to view the pricing page. and they may actually like hit the schedule a demo page, but not yet book. How do we then like identify those people?

And then outbound sequence to them to get them to re engage and actually book a meeting. so that's like a universal one. But also just think about your existing data. And like if they're very clear and tangible actions. And I don't mean like hitting a specific MQL score. They're like engaged in a bunch of blog content.

I mean, like, very tangible, like, what are the things that people do before they buy? Like, right before they buy, because I can guarantee you have more people that are doing those things that are not booking the call. And then how do you activate those

Vikash: I think this, this is sort of the, the zero to one kind of approach to it, right? If I have to think about it from a product perspective, this is sort of your MVP and you go out there, test it out. Once you've proven that it's working, right? Okay. Now let's see how we can scale this up.

Probably not to one to a hundred, maybe just one to ten

Even the zero to one version, because it takes a lot of time most marketers would want to see, Hey, are there some leading indicators that are we heading in the right direction?

Right? How do you think about that? Any leading indicators that you, that you usually look for metrics, that sort of

stuff.

Mason: Yeah. It's a great question. And I mean, if we're thinking about the activation play side of things, so like, again, that's the zero to one, your leading indicator, actually pretty simple, because in this context, it's like a contact hit a very specific. Trigger within your existing first party data, and you're sending them some level of an outbound sequence.

So you're leading indicators are like open rates, click through rates. and then obviously, like, the lagging indicator in that context would be like meeting booked. But I actually don't think that's like a super long time horizon. Because again, we're looking at the existing first part of data. We're looking at the existing customer activities.

To be clear, this is not ABM. This is like just good sales marketing alignment. So again, those are the, those are the indicators like. and the interesting component there is like. I'm thinking about it from a process perspective again, if I've gotten somebody that's got a clear trigger that we can then repeatedly go after and like, let's say, our open rate on our email is like 35 percent which would be solid open rate.

from there, if the click through, it's like 2%. Okay. Clearly, the optimization part is like the actual email copy. Great. Let's fix the email copy. If we can improve the conversion and the email on a click through perspective, but people still aren't booking a meeting. Okay, how do we improve that specific landing page?

It might be in this context. Oh, we need to create a dedicated Landing page, as opposed to seeing them to like the schedule a call page, like let's create a dedicated landing page that speaks to them on why we're reaching out specifically. That's like a unique experience for this trigger point. So again, like, those are things that you can think through as early indicators to then optimize the existing process and like, realistically, you could run it for 30 days.

Look at the data. Optimize it for the next 30 days, look at the data, optimize it for 30 days and like really build out a workhorse meeting booking program based on this alone. So like that's, that's that thought. And then, you know, what I really love to do with clients is convert their activation play into the account based marketing program.

That's our pilot program because we've already got the sales and marketing handoff lined up. So then the question becomes from a target account perspective, Are we getting enough target accounts that actually hit the trigger in the first place? It's like, what are your leading indicators? Do we, and again, a lot of my triggers will be website based in this context.

It's like, do we get target accounts to the website at all? Period, end of story. Like, that's a good leading indicator. Because we can't trigger them based on our sales handoff if they're not on the website. Are they hitting some or all of the pages that we have addressed would be a trigger point or are they doing any of the specific actions like it might be they watch a full video that provides a high level context on specifically why they would benefit from purchasing our service or our product or our software like there's a lot of trigger points that you can do and one of my favorite is the Like the ungated demo experience that, like, they get to the end of the demo experience.

They don't book. That's a clear trigger point, because at that point there, they should be fairly well informed. So again, are they doing those trigger actions? Yes or no? And then open click through meetings booked.

Vikash: The way you put it sort of gives everyone a step by step framework on like, okay, Hey, sort of the, if I have to use your own terminology, here's the activation player that I'm going to run. Sort of gives me quick campaign that I can run uh, for 30 days.

There are a bunch of metrics that I should look for. And if that's working, here's the next step. If not, here are a bunch of things that I'm going to try and optimize I'm sure we can go on for about half an hour, 45 minutes more on the, on the subject of ABM, but I think we covered it pretty extensively.

Anything that you'd like to add before we sort of jump off.

Mason: No, I just I think again if you are trying to start abm. And there's not like the foundational alignment with sales. And I know everybody talks about it, but like, instead of looking at how do I start ABM, I would first go actually look at how, why does ABM fail and like understanding all the, it's well researched and it's well documented all the reasons that ABM does not work.

And it's not that ABM as a strategy doesn't work. It's that the foundation wasn't there. So instead of starting with how do I build ABM, I would start by addressing, how do I make sure that ABM doesn't fail and put in place the appropriate people and processes that overcome those things. Like again, top three reasons, lack of sales and marketing alignment.

No one owns ABM. And then I just frame it up simply as like, you have too much complexity as it is. So like you try to do too much too quickly and. As a result, it just it just completely fails. So like, how do you solve for those things? And then again, there's way more extensive list that like outline like 20 reasons why ABM fails. So look at your organization and say, like, oh, yeah, if we were to do this, that would for sure happen. Solve for that before you go in, like, truly try to build this up. Because again, how do I build an ABM program is going to give you the step by step by step guide. Not factoring in failure because it assumes that when we're starting ABM, we have the right foundation and then it's a horrible assumption,

Vikash: Before I let you go I'd like to do a quick fire round. The first one is what's a tactic or channel that you, that you're seeing work really well, but a lot of people aren't using it well enough or don't know about it.

Mason: outbound. So everybody knows that nobody's just using it. Well,

Vikash: Where do you think people aren't using it that well?

Mason: it's persona and ICP based as a trigger. So it's like, oh, you fit my, my like filtering criteria in ZoomInfo. I'm going to send you a hundred thousand emails now versus, Hey, we noticed you did these very specific things. Can we have a conversation because you did these specific things? I'm just a fan of like trigger action based outbound sequencing as opposed to like, you just match a filtering criteria and a data enrichment platform.

Vikash: who are some of your favorite marketers that you think our listeners should go follow?

Mason: so many actually. And the, what I love about having been active on LinkedIn for a few years is that they're now friends. So like my heroes are now my friends. It's just like super fun. so I'll just. Honestly, shout out like Nick Bennett, who is a chief customer officer over at TACK. Blake Williams, who's the CEO and founder of a company called Amp Factor.

Leslie Barrett, who wrote the book on account based customer marketing. this one is like near and dear to my heart, because he actually was really an early stage mentor for me, and actually taught me about the concept of ABM, first person to mention it to me. But he's not super big on LinkedIn, but he great gives great advice.

his name is TC Jennings, super huge in the performance marketing space. Ryan Gunn, that's director of demand gen over at Operate, that is a HubSpot operations agency. By the way, I'm also just reading off the list of guests that I have coming up on my podcast. Judd Borokov, who is the co founder of Red Monkey Consulting, Sangram Vajre, who is the leader of go to market partners.

she's not a marketer, but like, Laura Erdem is a sales leader, but like, does great marketing content over at DreamData and then also Stephan over at DreamData. I can keep going. Travis Lochner, who is the CEO of beast node. Like they just do some really great and slightly unhinged content.

Alex Oli, who is the CRO of reach desk co founder. He just started a podcast himself. I don't think it's public yet, but like, I know it's going to be good. Sam Keenly, who's VP of marketing over at Loxo. All right. That's like, that's my list. I gave you, I think like 15 people.

Vikash: amazing so we know who to expect in your podcast in the, in the upcoming weeks then.

Mason: Yep.

Vikash: Where can people find and connect with you?

Mason: So I just mentioned it. and you mentioned it at the beginning. I had a wonderful podcast called the marketing marketing ladder. and about, it's probably been 6 months at this point. I sunset that show with the intent of launching scrappy ABM. so scrappy ABM currently has 20 episodes. I just, like, launched.

With a bunch of content that I had repurposed from other podcast appearances for my from myself that, like, explain this concept. and I'm in the process of, like, I've got I just outlined, like, literally 15 interviews I've already got lined up that are coming up over the next few months. Plus, I've got a backlog of a few more, so.

really scrappy abm. The podcast is going to be digging deep into people's actual playbooks and the technology they use, the budget that they have, the content that they use, the results, any unexpected roadblocks with the goal that after 20 minutes of listening, you can actually, like, go and use that playbook.

So. We are going to have tons of those from guest interviews. I'm probably going to do a couple of solo episodes myself to walk through playbooks that we're implementing with clients. And then I'm, I'm also repurposing my own content from other guest appearances where I'm digging into the topic. So if you're looking for more of what we just talked about, like scrappy ABM, the podcast is the central hub.

And then if you want to work with us uh, we're pretty affordable. All things considered. you can go check out scrappyabm. com and actually book time today.

Vikash: Awesome. Thanks a lot, Mason.

Mason: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.