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Franco Caporale:
Welcome to the new episodes of the DemandGen Club Podcast. I'm your host, Franco Caporale . Today on the show we have Zach Diamond, the demand generation manager at Social Solutions. Social Solution is the powerful and easy to use platform that helps nonprofit organization track data, manage cases, and measure outcomes. Zach has a background in neuroscience, so he has a very scientific approach to demand generation which is also reflecting the way he executes on the marketing programs. At Social Solutions, he is in charge of planning and executing multichannel campaigns, nurturing leads down the funnel, and tracking KPIs and metrics. So I'm very pleased to welcome today Zach Diamond, demand generation manager at Social Solutions. Zach, it's great to have you on the show today. Thank you for joining us.
Zach Diamond:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Franco Caporale:
So can you tell us a little more about your background and where do you work and what does your company do?
Zach Diamond:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm currently a Demand Generation Manager at Social Solutions. We have a software solution for nonprofits and public sector agencies to track the participants that they're serving and measure the impact that they're making within the communities.
Franco Caporale:
Awesome. And what are your responsibilities there?
Zach Diamond:
So I run all of our demand gen campaigns. That goes from email, nurture programs, all the way through display advertising, managing the relationship with our agency that runs our social advertising and paid media, and then also being a liaison with both our content team making sure that we're aligned in our messaging with our audiences and also with sales teams. Making sure that our sales leaders are super tight with who we're going after so that we can maximize both audience reach and penetration in the market.
Franco Caporale:
You have been at Social Solution for about two years, right?
Zach Diamond:
Correct.
Franco Caporale:
And how did you get started with demand generation B2B marketing?
Zach Diamond:
So I have somewhat of unconventional background. I actually studied neuroscience in college. I had this crazy idea leading up to studying where I read a couple of books. One was Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely which is a behavioral economics book, the other was The Moral Molecule by Paul Zak which took this somewhat new wave neuromarketing approach to neurochemicals.
Zach Diamond:
So I studied neuroscience all while working at digital marketing roles. I had an internship at a digital marketing agency. I created the foundation for a marketing program at a startup. I'd probably be lying if I said that I was really using my neuroscience background on a day-to-day basis in my marketing career, but I do think they go hand in hand in behavioral studies. It's about taking a scientific mindset to why people or prospects are behaving the way that they are. Looking at AB tests, not just as correlations, but trying to figure out what the actual cause is and using KPIs as leading indicators, but not relying on them overly to where we're proving hypotheses that aren't necessarily true, avoiding biases and also just the orchestration of marketing tactics. I think it really aligns with some of those scientific methods of trying to set up an experiment or try to figure out a real result.
Zach Diamond:
So I found my way into demand generation after working in a few other marketing roles and moving to Austin, Texas, where I started working at Social Solutions. I got to say I really think demand generation is my niche.
Franco Caporale:
That's definitely an interesting background from neuroscience to demand generation. How big is your team today? Both your marketing team, and how big is the company?
Zach Diamond:
There's right around 200 employees at Social Solutions and our marketing team has eight employees currently. So other roles, we have a Chief Growth Officer, VP of Marketing, Product Marketer, Graphic Designer, a Content Writer, and a Revenue Operations. And then also we have our BDR team, our Business Development Representatives that sit somewhere between marketing and sales, but I like to consider them a part of the marketing team as well.
Franco Caporale:
Interesting. Yeah. That part I'm going to definitely ask you more question later in the interview because I'm always interested in learning about the SDR process and where they report to. But before, I'd like to ask some questions about your tech stack because our listener always want to understand what technologies you use and what's your preference, what's your stack. So can you tell us more what platform are you guys are using?
Zach Diamond:
Absolutely. So we're on Marketo for marketing automation and Salesforce for CRM. We use 6sense as our intent data display advertising and ABM tool, and a PathFactory for content experience.
Franco Caporale:
Interesting. So how do you use the PathFactory exactly in your process?
Zach Diamond:
So we, up until fairly recently, over gated all of our content. So if you wanted to get on our website and binge everything that we had to offer, you have to fill out dozens of forms. And the pro to that, the benefit was lead scoring was made super simple. So we had all of our lead scoring tied to forms and we had different forms based off of what page you were on that made lead scoring super cut and dry. But the problem was it didn't ... if we already had someone's contact information, it didn't let them easily access our content. So it hindered our ability to drive value through our creative assets. And the adjustment, I got to say, was not easy mostly because of lead scoring and some operations back ends, but now we use it.
Zach Diamond:
So let's say you're a prospect of mine, I could have all my information that I need to know that you're a qualified lead. So instead of using forms to gain more information, I can email you a link to a PathFactory track. For those of you don't know or aren't familiar with PathFactory, it's essentially a content trajectories. Instead of having a PDF that you download, it tells you ... it gives you an option to go next. So sort of YouTube. Where you're watching a YouTube video and it says, "Coming up next." That's what it does for your content assets.
Zach Diamond:
So we've been using it as a content flow where I could present to you a very top of funnel easily digestible infographic. You can check out the infographic. Maybe it only takes half a minute to digest. And then up next is a more in depth article on the subject. And then up next is a testimonial from TrustRadius, one of our clients on what they say, and then finally, maybe it's an in depth webinar that talks about our product. So we can take our prospects through a flow that actually makes sense. So we introduced the topic at a very top of funnel level, but if they binge the content all the way through, one, they become an AQL to hit lead score because that's how we have it set up, and two, they actually understand the full message that we're trying to send.
Franco Caporale:
And you designed these experiences based on segments and stage of the funnel? You can create all these separate flows?
Zach Diamond:
Yeah. It's interesting. We can get really, really granular with it. So there's a type of public sector agency, a type of government agency where there's probably about 50 per state and we can target them with a PathFactory track that is specific to that exact agency. So it's somewhat of an ABM play that we're going with there, but we can make the content specific and personalized. We can show testimonials or reviews from a similar client. And finally, even if we wanted to have an offer or a one sheet that's particular to that type of prospect, then we can put that in the track as well. So we can get really granular with it like that or we can keep it top of funnel and say, "This is just an informational piece that we blast out." Instead of it becoming a dead end where they download the PDF and we have no idea. Maybe they downloaded it and put it in their recycling bin right away, we actually have engagement to say, "Well, they spent a minute on this asset, but only 10 seconds on this one."
Franco Caporale:
And how did you solve your scoring issues since you're not getting every content anymore?
Zach Diamond:
So we're still optimizing on our scoring. Off the bat, we found a huge depression in our top of funnel indicators. Our inquiries, for example, went down a whole lot because, well, people weren't filling out forms quite obviously. So what we do now is we count the visit to the track as an inquiry. We can say, "Okay. This person engaged. They got there." And then we have it tied to PathFactory for the longer they spend on an asset, it incrementally increases their lead score. So maybe they count as a program responses and inquiry as soon as they visit the track and then after 10 seconds, it adds three points to their lead score. After 30 seconds, so that's a little bit more and so on and so on. So if they binge a content piece or a content track more than one content piece, then they'll hit a threshold of engagement. So it's by a time where it'll say to Marketo, "Make this person an AQL."
Franco Caporale:
Got it. Perfect. Kind of moving on to a couple of other platforms, you mentioned 6sense. So what's your ABM approach and how does 6sense fit into that picture?
Zach Diamond:
Yeah. So 6sense has honestly revolutionized my approach to marketing in a lot of ways. In two ways, one is intent data, which is becoming, if it's not already, hugely ubiquitous throughout the demand gen space. So I can segment my marketing programs based off of levels of intent. So I can say awareness stage prospects. This is how many I have. They're probably either not that familiar with my product or they're just not in a buying cycle. So I know maybe I want to slow down the cadence of my emails to them, or maybe they're not a good fit for digital advertising because I'm not going to see a direct ROI on that. Now, if I know that my client is in a decision stage of intent, [inaudible 00:12:44] clients I prospect is decision stage. I can say, "Let's speed this up a little bit. Let's get them to a representative or someone to actually talk to so we don't waste too much time nurturing them. And we can actually see if they're ready to buy."
Zach Diamond:
So the problem we're solving, one, is velocity, two, is the ROI component both on just money, but also just resources and time. And the other side that 6sense has really helped us solve is account fit. So this would be separate from intent to where they measure the likelihood that an account would become closed one based on firmographic data that closed won accounts have. And what we found is that strong fit accounts have such a higher conversion rate, both to opportunity and to closed won that we should be excluding weak fit accounts from a lot of our marketing. If my conversion rates aren't optimal, I can say, "Well, maybe that's because I'm including too many weak fit accounts in this program." So simply by removing them I'm, one, dedicating more time and more resources to prospects who have a better chance of converting, and two, I'm increasing my conversion rates so my metrics look better as well.
Franco Caporale:
From an intent perspective, do you mean first body intent? So they intended to show on your content, your websites, your assets, or is more on the third party? So what they search on other websites or other criteria.
Zach Diamond:
It's a mix of both. So we can give them branded and generic keywords to search. So we have our products that we offer, but also our competitors as branded keywords. So I can look at a prospect who is showing high intent and see what keywords are contributing to that intent. And maybe it's one of my competitors and they haven't been engaging with my emails or they haven't come to my website at all. So I can make the assumption that they're probably in a buying cycle with the competitor which can influence the marketing that I'm going to give them. Or I can just go to the sales owner and say, "Hey, listen, this is a high value account. They're strong fit, they're high intent, but they're not engaging with us and they are searching this term for a competitor. So maybe we should do some outreach. Maybe we should personalize our messaging a little bit more to see if we can steal them away."
Franco Caporale:
And so now that you have the very well segmented and filtered list of accounts that are showing intent and have a good fit, what kind of campaigns do you run to engage with them?
Zach Diamond:
So I created an intent-based email nurture. Also, it's helped our paid media as well. So we're doing target lists on LinkedIn, target lists via Display. Anything that's digital and using a list, I make sure to filter out for only strong fit accounts. And then if we're promoting a top of funnel piece, then maybe we only look at awareness stage accounts. More often if we have an offer or a free trial, for example, something that's more bottom of funnel and they also don't want too much noise in those conversions, then we'll filter for a just decision and purchase stage accounts. So it's affected our digital nurture in that way.
Zach Diamond:
For email and sales outreach, I created an engagement nurture within Marketo that triggers when a contact reaches a certain level of intent. I have it set up for consideration. When they enter into consideration buying stage, they're removed from our general nurture in any awareness pieces, and they're put into somewhat of an accelerator. So they're receiving more bottom funnel content pieces, actually PathFactory tracks. So we're trying to get them to binge our content, they're getting more personalized messaging. And as soon as they engage, it sends an alert to my BDR team who can reach out to them. And we have very concise messaging. So we're not trying to give them too much [inaudible 00:17:11]. We're just trying to say, "Hey, I've seen you being engaged ..." We don't say this literally, but I know that you're showing intent. Let's see how the solution could work out for you.
Franco Caporale:
And so how do you track the performance of your campaigns today? And how do you measure the effectiveness from an account-based perspective?
Zach Diamond:
So from an account-based perspective, it's really all about the alignment between sales and marketing. So it's just getting an account list together and then measuring the effectiveness against that account list, taking it a step up from a wider point of view. I'm really trying to optimize my conversion rates. So for example, when we first implemented PathFactory, we saw a drop off in the conversion rate from inquiry to AQL. By the way, AQL is the point ... I know it's different for some companies, but AQL is the point that we turn them over to our BDR team for our BDR to qualify. And then once the BDR qualifies them, they become an MQL and are given over to our sales team. So a lot of what I'm trying to measure my performance on is the MQL because that's when the pipeline is created. And I can say that I'm generating leads that are actually becoming sales opportunities.
Zach Diamond:
So when we first implemented PathFactory, our conversion rate from inquiry to AQL dropped a whole lot and AQL to MQL went up. And part of that is just the volume and the mathematics of that, but the other part of it is that we weren't increasing our lead score enough because of the switch from forms to engagement to PathFactory. And we were seeing AQLs are only coming from people who were requesting to be contacted. So good news because those who convert to MQL have a higher rate except that we weren't getting the volume that we want. So now I'm really trying to measure how to optimize the volume with the conversion rates. So I've changed the lead scoring like we talked about with PathFactory, and now my conversion rate from inquiry to AQL is really high, but my conversion rate from AQL to MQL has dropped. And where I see account-based marketing coming in is supplementing that conversion rate.
Zach Diamond:
So if I can say I'm generating this many AQLs through engaged account, and I am doing a good job engaging them, but I'm not getting the volume of sales opportunities that I want, I can use ABM to set up target lists with my sales team to ... instead of looking at conversion rates, we're just producing MQLs because we're going after them together. And there's not as much email involved. It's less around engagement and more strict appointment setting. So I can create enough MQLs to supplement my conversion rates so that my funnel is looking healthy.
Franco Caporale:
And going back to the campaigns a little bit, what are your top lead source? From a top of the funnel perspective today, what are your leads coming from?
Zach Diamond:
You'll call me a liar, but we're actually using Facebook to get most of our leads which I know is ... I think a lot of it is just our target audience. I think a lot of nonprofits are active on Facebook because that's where both volunteers and participants might visit a page to get information or stay up to date with events and things like that. So we get inquiries so cheap from Facebook. Now, they're not always the best quality, but when we test dropping our investment in Facebook, we see it directly correlated to our pipeline sufficiency.
Zach Diamond:
So we do a lot of Facebook. We're still trying to crack the nut on LinkedIn. We found that it works well for our target lists because we can be more targeted as far as job titles go than we can on Facebook, but the volume is still low for us. And maybe that's just because our target audience is ... it doesn't live on LinkedIn as much as they do on other channels, but we've made leaps and bounds on LinkedIn advertising. And then other than that, Google search gives us a good number of inquiries net-new, but also just organically too.
Franco Caporale:
Interesting. Yeah. There's no many companies that have Facebook, from a B2B perspective, as their top lead source. So I'm always curious to hear that. But earlier you mentioned about the SDR being ... you consider them as part of the marketing team. Are they actually reporting into marketing or are they reporting to sales, or you have a combination of the two?
Zach Diamond:
Funny timing. Right now, we're reassessing that. About a year ago, they were reporting to sales. We switched them over to report to marketing. And now we're considering switching back to sales, but I think even if they do switch back to sales, it won't impact the just the gravity that they have for our marketing team. The BDR team can be a huge tool ... I shouldn't call them a tool, but a channel for generating quality leads. If I have my email programs running that are capturing our net-new leads, engaging them, informing them, inviting them to webinars, things like that, then the BDR team is really the real person side of that.
Zach Diamond:
So if I host a webinar that engages a lot of high quality leads, then I can have an ... we use outreach.io by the way. That's our sequencing tool. I can create an outreach sequence that is tailored exactly to that webinar, create account list for my BDR team about people who engage strong fit, high intent, all of that and have the BDRs reach out directly really to the information gathered. So it doesn't always have to be an appointment set, but it can say, "What did you think about this? I'd love to talk more about this topic that we discussed at the webinar." So we're engaging them. It's still an extension of marketing. Once they're engaged with the BDR, then they can set an appointment and move on to the sales cycle. So in some ways the BDR team are the gatekeepers to sales, but I like to think of them more as an extension of marketing and a channel in itself.
Franco Caporale:
And do you have separate roles for those that respond to inbound leads versus those that do outbound, or it's kind of mixed?
Zach Diamond:
So something else we're playing around with, we've done both in the past where separate roles, same roles. Right now, we're running the same roles just because it varies so much week to week. If we have a really, really big webinar and we have a ton of inbound leads, then we kind of need everyone on deck. And then some weeks that might be slower, we can look at outbound. So it's really a balance of both.
Franco Caporale:
And it's funny because one of the problems that comes from there is how do you compensate that? How do you track the recorder when you have a mix of inbound and some of that are outbound? I don't know if you involved with that, but there's a question that I get along in is. Do you consider them the same when they set up an appointment with an inbound lead or is worthless from your point of view?
Zach Diamond:
That's a great question. I actually have to look back at that. I have to ask the team because I'm not sure. You worry because you're right. You would think if someone requests a demo raises their hand and they get called on right away and scheduled a meeting. That's not exactly the same as outbounding someone, making a cold call and setting an appointment that way.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah. But it's also true that you trigger some weird dynamics when you compensate the less, because now all of a sudden they start maybe ignoring inbound leads because they're not worth the same for them. And that's why kind of interesting dynamics that can be created through the incentive program or how you compensate, how you track the recorder. So yeah. I read a lot of different opinions on that. So it's always interesting.
Zach Diamond:
Something that we are looking at which I'm probably saying this a little too preemptively, but with our target audience being able to fully empathize and understand where they are is really imperative. We're looking at maybe segmenting our BDR team based off of vertical so that we can have experts for government agencies or experts for certain types of nonprofits, so that we can be more effective and more empathetic in our voice as we're reaching out to these nonprofits, so that we can better speak their language.
Franco Caporale:
Awesome. I have one more question for you. Do you have any hack or anything that you tried in the past that worked out well from a campaign perspective or something that ... like a small change that got you a lot of results that you want to share with us?
Zach Diamond:
Well, not to beat a dead horse, but I would say that intent-based nurture has really been the hack because it funnels high intent leads so quickly that we're producing a better quality and a better volume by simply shifting the target that they're in. And I have the data. I think my conversion rate for strong fit accounts is about four or five times higher than it is for average account. So I guess the hack would be honing in not just on audience segments by firmographic data, but also by how likely they are to convert so that you can make the pipeline generation more predictable and more recurring.
Franco Caporale:
Zach, it was really great having you as a guest on the episode today. I really enjoyed the conversation. So thanks again for joining us.
Zach Diamond:
Thank you. It's been great talking with you.