Everyone in B2B is talking about account-based marketing. And almost everyone is practicing it in some form — around 93% of organizations, according to SiriusDecisions.
“Not many are killing it though,” says Kelvin Gee. “That’s the problem. They start pilots … then they re-launch and learn from the mistakes. That’s just a natural maturation.”
This is a fundamental process in digital marketing, of course: test, assess, optimize. But in the Break Free B2B series, our goal is to help you fast-forward it by learning from the mistakes, successes, and revelations of your innovating peers in the field. And as the Senior Director of Modern Marketing Business Transformation at Oracle*, Kelvin draws from a deep well of experience at one of the powerhouse brands in enterprise technology.
Walking the walk is different from talking to talk, 工作职能邮件数据库 but it’s easy to see why companies across the spectrum are seeking to do both.
“Companies do need to be more customer-centric, deliver a better customer experience, personalize the content, align with sales, and measure themselves differently,” he observes. “I call account-based a strategic glue that pulls all that stuff together.”
In his conversation with TopRank Marketing’s Josh Nite, filmed in Arizona during B2B Marketing Exchange in February, Kelvin shares his perspectives on what it takes to actually make ABM work, and how Oracle empowers its people to thrive within this framework.
It comes down to a fairly simple and repeatable model: standardize, evangelize, train, enable.
“Standardize, Evangelize, Train, Enable,” @kgee’s model for implementing scale in large organizations like @oracle. — Kelvin GeeCLICK TO TWEET
During an expansive 25-minute interview, Kelvin unpacks the inner workings of enterprise ABM, from getting buy-in to rethinking attribution to developing meaningful metrics and beyond.
Break Free B2B Interview with Kelvin Gee
If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.
1:00 – Kelvin’s definition of modern marketing
1:45 – Scaling account-based marketing
2:15 – Strategic adaptations in the evolution of ABM
3:30 – How does an organization adopt a new marketing philosophy?
5:00 – Who should lead the charge for transformation?
7:15 – Metrics Oracle looks at to measure ABM success
8:45 – Overcoming traditional friction between sales and marketing
10:30 – Is there a need to redefine success and “credit” in order to achieve alignment?
12:15 – Operational structure: should sales and marketing converge?
13:30 – Challenges and opportunities in the industry
15:45 – Oracle’s tech stack
17:45 – How to filter out data that matters and makes a difference
18:45 – What will marketing look like in five years?
21:15 – Humans versus robots, and their roles in marketing going forward
23:00 – What can marketers do to break free?
Josh: What kind of metrics does Oracle look at when measuring ABM?
Kelvin: We actually look at account engagement as an early indicator on whether your program is performing or not, because if you’re not seeing an increase in engagement from a snapshot that you might have taken before the campaign started, that probably means it’s not working. Either the personalization isn’t there, the tactics aren’t working, you’re not at the right watering holes, or the orchestration might not be right.
So that’s the early indicator whether it’s working or not. Once you’re past engagement, what truly matters to sales, of course, is conversations. They want conversations with these target accounts, so that’s what we really looked at and that’s really measured by a target account pipeline, or “TAP,” as we call it. But when you look at growth in that pipeline, regardless of crediting who sources that pipeline, whether it’s marketing or sales, we don’t care because it’s a team sport. And you can see that growth. Again, you compare this with a snapshot you’ve taken of those target accounts before the campaign begins, you will see success, and that’s how you measure some of those programs.
Josh: I know that Oracle is a data corporation, and you live and die by data. Can you give me a little peek into what your tech stack looks like?
Kelvin: Yeah, I’ll give you some broad strokes but obviously we drink our own champagne, right? So Eloqua is our marketing automation platform and our analytics engine is all on Oracle analytics, but the important thing to understand is: We believe that data is the future of B2B marketing. Because we’re not gonna have less data, we’ll probably have more data in the future, so if you believe that and you also believe that most organizations — especially enterprise organizations — have data