DR: According to research from Global WebIndex, the average social media user clocks a daily usage time of around 2 hours and 25 minutes. So, with that in mind, why haven’t B2B organisations been making the most of these platforms to date?
NH: Well, that’s because, up until now, most B2B marketers have been advertising to their target account audiences by guessing where they hang out. Up until now, most B2B advertising has been publisher-based or keyword-based, leading to a lot of ad wastage. But only recently has it become possible to target your key accounts regardless of what publications they’re reading and regardless of what platforms they’re hanging out on, including social. It’s kind of counterintuitive for B2B marketers to think that they can reach their target account audiences on B2C social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok. However, with breakthroughs in new marketing technology, such as IP-based targeting, which is what we offer at Jabmo, you can now create a company-based audience on any platform and reach them wherever they hang out. So, if your target account audience spends 2 hours a day on Facebook or Instagram, rather than on trade publications, that’s great – you can still reach and engage them with IP-based advertising.
It’s a huge opportunity for B2B marketers to expand their reach with their key accounts. Right now, B2B marketers are thinking ‘OK, to reach my target accounts… I’ll go to LinkedIn because I can build target account audiences.’ But LinkedIn is becoming expensive, and the average LinkedIn user only spends 10 minutes per day on that platform. By taking that same type of company-based targeting approach to the B2C social networks, you can get deeper reach and engagement with key accounts, and that’s very complementary to what you’re doing in email, programmatic display advertising and LinkedIn.
DR: And how can B2B organisations utilise these platforms to, ultimately, drive growth for their organisations? Is there anything that needs a different approach compared to B2C organisations using social media?
NH: The big difference between B2B and B2C is that, in B2B, you’re dealing with a large buying group and long buying cycles. 10 years ago, that buying group might have been two or three people, but today it can be up to 30 people. Such a large group now involved in a buying decision is too much for a salesperson to handle, so it’s really down to marketing today to do the job that used to be sales’, and that’s building consensus amongst the buying group around your solution. And, with longer buying cycles compared to B2C, you can’t just hit them with promotions to get them to engage and buy from you overnight. You need to start they buying cycle by leading with the problem, and helping the target account buying team understand a problem that they didn’t even know they had. Then, you can start talking about how other similar companies have solved that problem, and finally lead them towards solutions that only your company can address.
DR: So, that’s the context, but we’re here to talk about Jabmo’s latest announcement that your ABM platform has integrated with Facebook and Instagram. Can you explain what your platform does, and what this integration means for your customers?
NH: At Jabmo, we started by providing just an account-based marketing analytics platform. In other words, we were providing the equivalent of Google Analytics, but on an account basis. Google Analytics is great for telling you what users are engaging with, but they don’t tell you what’s happening at an account level, so we built this account-based analytics platform using IP-based technology. And then we added account-based advertising five years ago through DSPs, like Xandr, for example, with the ability to reach out to target account audiences even before they start their buying journey with a Google search.
Our vision from day one was to become an omnichannel ABM solutions provider, but we’ve been building channel by channel. We started with display ABM, and then we added LinkedIn ABM, then Google ABM, and finally we added Facebook and Instagram. Now, we provide the opportunity to reach target accounts wherever they may be across 80% of the world’s advertising inventory and platforms.
DR: And what sort of results can this deliver for your customers in terms of making their ABM campaigns a success?
NH: Well, the ultimate business outcomes are as follows:
- Shorter sales cycles. Again, we’re talking sales cycles that can be 12–18 months. If you can get a 20% improvement on that sales cycle, you’re increasing the return on investment on your marketing spend considerably.
- Higher win rates. Why? Because companies that are using account-based marketing are able to get out there to their target accounts before their competition even starts searching on Google for alternative solutions.
- Bigger deal sizes. Less discounting and commoditisation, thanks to account-based marketing doing what salespeople used to be doing 10–15 years ago, which is building consensus among the entire buying group.
DR: Are you finding that there’s any difference in how marketers target people on Facebook, compared to on Instagram?
NH: Well Instagram is more of a visual platform, but we recommend ultimately building special creatives for each platform. Getting there should be the aim, but start with a one-size-fits all approach.
DR: And finally, what’s next for Jabmo?
NH: We’re looking into helping our marketers turn more of this data deluge into insights that they can use to decide on next best actions. So, as B2B marketers think more like salespeople, and as salespeople think more like marketers, we’re working with AWS to build algorithms that help marketers and salespeople decide what the next best action should be, whether it be account selection, or moving a certain target account from one type of messaging to another type of messaging. So, we’re looking for more ways to help automate what B2B sales and marketing teams are doing today manually.
