Jason Jue is CMO and Co-Founder of Triblio, which offers personalization software for account-based marketing.
With a background in marketing at relatively large companies (Dell and Rackspace), as well as at relatively smaller ones (Vocus and, now, Triblio), I was curious to find out what he’s learned along the way about a CMO’s proper priorities, what a CMO can do to drive growth, and what “fatal mistakes” he has seen CMOs make.
I also wanted to hear his thoughts on the rise (or re-emergence?) of account-based marketing.
Here’s what he told me!
Over your career, you’ve served in marketing roles at large companies and small ones. What would you see as the biggest pros and cons of doing marketing in those different environments?
To be honest, I don’t really think about it in terms pros and cons.
That being said, I personally had the most fun being a marketer at Dell because I worked in entrepreneurial divisions, like Dell China, that acted like small companies within a larger one.
Still, I’ve experienced a few differences that tend to correlate with company size and that impacted my success in marketing:
1. Culture: Leader- vs. Organization-Driven
Culture sets the tone for relationships between various groups in any organization – such as the relationship between sales and marketing – as well as setting the tone for planning, goals, responsibilities, and budgets.
At large companies, there is a preexisting set of cultural norms that even the C-Suite leaders have to conform to, whereas at small companies, these leaders can have a big impact on the culture. For example, Vocus had a sales-oriented growth culture, but after the acquisition by Cision, the new leadership was able to change the culture to focus on profitability and less on “sales at any cost.”
2. Decision-Making: Relying on Present Conditions vs. Past Experience
At large companies, I primarily learned from the past but at small companies I’ve learned from the present.
At Triblio, I determined through trial and error – along with feedback from customers, prospects, and partners – that “account-based marketing for the web” was the best messaging for us.
At Dell and Rackspace, I learned about the best messaging approach from experienced leaders as well as by studying large data sets of customer behavior gathered through primary research and online message testing.
3. Day-to-day Responsibilities: Specialization vs. Multi-Tasking
At large companies, I worked in specialized areas of marketing. For example, even when I led teams of 40-50 people, it was in a specific area like CRM or ecommerce focused on a specific customer size.
At Triblio, even as CMO, I’ve spent <50% of my time marketing and >50% of my time on sales and customer success.
What did you learn at Dell/Rackspace that you have been able to apply at Vocus and Triblio?
At Dell and Rackspace, I learned that marketing could best impact revenue by successfully developing and executing a strategy oriented to fundamental questions like: How big and fast is the market growing? What do specific customer segments value? How do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors? And so on.
When I first joined Dell, because my job wasn’t very clear for the first few weeks, I had the freedom to ask these basic questions. During that time, I determined that SMBs with an IT staff had very different needs than those without any IT staff.
SMBs with an IT shop were ~2% of the market measured by company size, but >50% of the marketing measured by by profit dollars. After focusing on SMBs with an IT shop, our revenue growth rate accelerated from 50% to 60% (more or less) in the course of a quarter.
In a startup like Triblio, I’ve focused on these fundamental questions and thinking through them has led to our current focus on account-based marketing for the web. Demand-gen marketers, for example, want to focus on accounts that will have the biggest impact on revenue. For this reason, they want to group web visitors by target accounts and serve them relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) and messaging.
We allow them to do that.
“Account-based marketing” seems to be an emerging space. Why do you think that is? Was this niche underserved, or has it just come into existence?
Account-based marketing (ABM) has been around for as long as I can remember.
At Dell, our account-based marketing used a RAD (Retention, Acquisition, Development) model to target accounts. RAD segmented accounts by both Dell’s share of an account’s IT budget and by the account’s total IT spend. Dell focused on development (D) accounts with large IT budgets where Dell had a low share of the IT budget and thus the potential to expand.
We relied on a combination of inbound and outbound campaign tactics to reach specific contacts within these target accounts with relevant messaging and CTAs.
However, in the past decade, two factors caused account-based marketing to take a back seat to other approaches.
First, the buyer’s journey became more digitized, and vendors developed technology (search, web, email) to reach individuals and measure their activity as unique leads, rather than accounts. For example, website traffic was generally measured by individual visits, not by account visits.
Second, a lead, or an individual, is much simpler to track throughout the funnel than an account. There are real challenges associated with integrating sophisticated data warehousing capabilities, technologies, and data vendors that link leads to accounts fast enough for marketers to execute campaigns within a given quarter.
What’s more, each company defines “account” differently. At each company I’ve worked at, for instance, we’ve defined the parent/subsidiary relationship of “General Electric” quite differently.
Now, ABM is reemerging. Data that connects contacts to specific accounts is becoming ubiquitous. It’s in your CRM, your form auto-completes, your marketing automation, and it’s also widely available through data-as-a-service offerings.
Increasingly, this data resides in campaign tools, rather than in a data warehouse controlled by IT. As a result, marketers can plan and execute campaigns with individuals belonging to a group of specific accounts. They can also more easily advance an account through a purchase journey by delivering the right content, messaging, and CTAs to to those individuals.
In other words, It’s never been easier to personalize campaigns based on accounts!
What should a CMO focus on in order to drive growth? What can get in the way of a CMOs ability to do so?
The fastest way to drive growth, in my experience, is to increase revenue per current customer by defining your market and developing positioning/messaging that clearly communicates a differentiated value prop.
I’ve led 4 separate organizations where we shifted focus from acquiring new customers to increasing revenue per current customer and each time Y/Y growth accelerated 400 basis points (4 percentage points) or more within a year.
Although we found that sales was usually focused on retaining “A” accounts, we developed a list of “D” accounts where we had a small footprint, and executed integrated sales and marketing campaigns to expand our share of spend at the expense of our competitors. As it turned out, existing customers had the highest response rates to marketing efforts, the lowest marketing costs, and the shortest sales cycle times relative to new customers.
No matter what the account profile is, though, it’s essential to collaborate with sales:
- Build a consensus-based list of target account segments where you can most likely beat competitors.
- Help sales expand awareness and consideration especially as they are just developing relationships.
- Suggest integrated campaigns where both sales and marketing work together, campaigns that focus on the next best product or division to sell to.
- Most importantly, track and measure progress, providing detail by rep and team for these target accounts.
What do you consider a “fatal mistake” that you have seen CMOs or other marketing leaders make?
A CMO absolutely must lead an organization with the right strategy.
When I’ve successfully convinced and aligned the organization, we beat our growth and profitability targets. When I haven’t, I’ve failed.
CMOs have to create that alignment themselves. I don’t know any technology that can do that for a you!
