Using Workspaces and Lead Partitions in Marketo

July 12, 2017 By Josh Hill

Using Workspaces and Lead Partitions in Marketo

We continue to see more and more questions about Workspaces and Lead Partitions in Marketo and want to provide a framework for helping you decide if the overhead of managing these is worth it. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Workspaces are a special feature that must be enabled and paid for. Even Enterprise instances will require a separate payment or request to activate (usually).

What is a Workspace?

Think of a Workspace as a desk or play area for marketers. Workspaces mostly cordon off assets and Leads from other marketers. The most basic way to think of it is a Master Folder area. Remember how good naming and organization can help keep a Marketo instance clean? A Workspace is the next level up in the Tree. In fact, everyone has a Default Workspace at the top of the list. Most of us have just one Workspace that’s effectively invisible.

Workspaces can “see” Lead Partitions. Again, most of us have one Workspace with one Lead Partition. But some of us need to have some marketers use a separate play space as well as see different kinds of Leads.

Remember that a Workspace is more akin to a “space to do marketing activities,” while a Lead Partition (LP) is a division of your database that requires a deliberate action for a Lead to move across barriers to a different LP. Lead Partitions do not live inside a Workspace, even if that is effectively what happens in many cases. Here are some diagrams to help.

Rules for Workspaces

Please be sure to read the official docs for more details. Workspaces (WS) are as powerful as they can be frustrating when the rules aren’t followed. Here are a few of the key rules to understand.

Assets can be shared between WS. This is a great way to share Templates, but it has limitations.
Default WS usually has access to all LPs and this is recommended so you can set up a central system to manage global leads. (There are some cases where you may not want to).
WS can see more than one LP if desired.
WS users and assets and campaigns can only see the Leads for the LPs it has access to. (This is critical! A lead will not trigger a campaign in a Workspace that has no access to it).
Segmentations can be shared, but only 20 can exist in the entire instance.
Filling out a Form in a WS means the Lead can only be in that WS/LP combination (see rules).

Best Practices with Workspaces

Center of Excellence: share master Program Templates in a Center of Excellence WS with an empty LP. Give access to all marketers to clone over Programs from this space.
Design Studio: share master assets in a Shared Template folder in the COE.
Default WS: ensure that Default has access to all LPs and has a central LP routing system in addition to the Admin Lead Partition Router.

Workspace Features and Functions

Workspace Assets can only act on Leads which they can see

This means if you have a smart campaign, form, smart list, etc., it will only react to Leads in the Lead Partitions accessible to that Workspace. Global triggers should live in the Default or Global Workspace that has access to all Lead Partitions. For example, if you have an EMEA lifecycle system, and a Lead lives in the Americas, the EMEA lifecycle won’t process that Americas Lead, unless the EMEA workspace can see the Americas Lead Partition.

Sharing Assets Across Workspaces

It is best practice to manage Asset sharing with a Center of Excellence WS where you can place Globally used Program Templates, Smart Lists, and other Assets like Email or Page Templates. Other users will come in and clone or reference these. One of the big pain points here is if the Sharing rules aren’t quite perfect (like forgetting to share the folder to all the Workspaces. For Etumos, our COE WS is labeled “Framework,” as shown above.

People also get caught up when they use a shared Segmentation or Smart List. The rules may be global, but the data returned will only be for the Leads visible to that Workspace. If your Workspace can only see one LP, then it will only return leads from that LP.

Sharing Segmentations Across Workspaces

A neat way to manage data is Segmentations. You can have 20 across the instance, and it is usually ideal to build Segmentations in the Default Workspace, then to share them across all Workspaces. Share Master Segmentations across all WS, however, save at least 10 for local WS use. It is helpful to name Segmentations with the WS name in which they originate, so most will look like:

Default - Language 
Europe - Country

What is a Lead Partition?

A Lead Partition is a section of the Marketo database. A simple, but inaccurate way, is to think of a Lead Partition as one database table, separate from other Lead Partitions. If you have more than one Lead Partition (LP), you effectively have several databases that are mutually exclusive. In reality, the LP isn’t a separate database, but the system treats it almost that way.

Rules for Lead Partitions:

A lead can exist in only one LP at a time.
Cannot have email address dupes across the system (Marketo throws an error)
Can move a Lead between LPs.
An LP can be seen by more than one Workspace.

When creating the WS/LP for the first time, you should create the Lead Partitions first, then the Workspaces.

Lead Partition Routing System

When you first setup WS and LPs, you should also setup the central Admin Lead routing tool. This works a little bit as a backup, however, please do not rely on it. It works ok if you are routing leads based on Country or a specific field that will be available on the initial Form or creation. Thus, it becomes a two step process to ensure leads get to the right Partitions.

Option 1: leave everyone in the Default LP for routing by a smart campaign.

Option 2: route by the same rules in Admin and Smart Campaign

Either should work, although a smart campaign can be more effective. In a thread with Marketo Champ Dan Stevens, we discuss some of the ways to consider a central routing for Leads as well as caveats with WS Asset and LP access.

List Import and Data Processing Considerations

Leads are deduped in Marketo by email address. A lead can exist in one LP at a time. On a List Import, Marketo will throw an error if it sees that a lead has a dupe in another LP that this Workspace does not have access to. It will NOT attempt to move the Lead or update it. You can see the errors on the little post-import error box by downloading the error list.

Typical Use Cases

When should you consider a Workspace+Lead Partition as a solution to a problem? There are several primary use-cases as well as a few needs that may prompt this conversation.

You want to prevent campaigns of Type A touching Leads of Type B.
Put up walls between Teams, Countries, Divisions, or Groups.

We urge you to think through it carefully because Workspaces cost money and cost a lot of time to build out and manage. It absolutely can be worth it when done well.

Multi-Country Regional Division

Let’s say your firm is in 30 countries and divides up work by Americas, EMEA, and Asia. But you have Marketing and Sales Teams divided by Region, not individual countries. In this case, you may just want Region or Country Workspaces depending on the size, rules, or importance of the Country. Ideally, this mapping is Regional Marketing Team: Regional Divisions to keep the system well-governed. The challenge if you wanted to have a single Country, single Team matrix with more than 20 or 30 countries. Marketo can do this, but it becomes unwieldy eventually. If there are that many countries, it may be best to use Regional Marketo instances divided by Country Workspaces.

Multiple, but separately run Business Units or Divisions

Another common option is to use one Marketo instance across the firm, but each Business Unit (BU) gets a separate WS and LP. This setup is usually okay as long as the data systems run well and there’s little cross-sell to worry about.

Multi-Brand Cross Sell: Most of the Nation threads on Workspaces is when people divide up BUs with Workspaces, and then want to cross-sell but retain a single Lead record and have the different brands communicate to that person. In this situation, you may want to use a single LP with multiple Workspaces. You may also just want to keep one WS+LP and not trouble yourself with the extra work. As long as you can identify records effectively and work with counterparts at other brands, cross-sell can be managed without overwhelming the Lead.

Restrict Access to Data: Country

With all the different privacy rules around the world, some firms may need to restrict data access to marketers only in that Country. Of course, the data itself may reside in the US, EU, or another data center, so Lead Partitions do not resolve the physical location question, only the access levels. If your legal team truly needs physical location separation, you should discuss this with your Marketo Account Manager and SalesOps. You could buy separate instances instead, but there are likely issues with that, too.

Restrict Access to Data: Prospects vs. Customers vs. Partners vs. Employees

It is possible to compartmentalize data by Record Type (Lifecycle Type) and Marketer Role. You could even add Employee information as part of your Internal Comms strategy (although we don’t recommend it).

When separating out records by Lifecycle Stage or Type, it helps to be able to clearly identify the record. You can use fields or Account fields to help identify Prospects vs. Customers. Firms that also have Partners or Channels should setup clear rules not just with Account Type=Partner, but Record Type ID (in SFDC) as well as properly managed child relationships. That way, as soon as a person is identified as belonging to a Partner, they can be shifted to the correct Lead Partition and away from those aggressive acquisition marketers. 😉

Some firms also want to keep marketers in each group out of each other’s hair as much as they want to separate those communication types. A solid WS+LP setup is one way to prevent toe stepping or missends. We’ve all had those moments where that smart list filter didn’t save as NOT IN “Customer List” and we send a 20% discount to every client (oops). With a WS for Customers, it becomes nearly impossible for Demand Gen to send an email to a Customer because they simply don’t have access. It’s only as foolproof as your data governance, of course.

To properly compartmentalize access and data, you would then provide only Acquisition Marketers in Japan with access to the JP-Prospects Workspace. Their activities would not be able to access Customers or non-Japan data. This is easily done in Admin > Users. As you can see, the major pitfall here is we have 15 Workspaces and we’ve only covered a few company locations. What happens when we add APAC or Middle East & Africa?

A variation on this use-case is to divide records by Record Type or Persona. For example, a healthcare firm might use separate WS/LPs for Patients, Doctors, and Distributors. Think through your scenarios very carefully before implementing because it is very hard to course correct once data is flowing.

RCM and Multi-Workspace Systems

Depending on your Use Case, you may have one or more Revenue Cycle Models per Workspace. When you have multiple RCMs, you have multiple campaigns running and managing the Lead Lifecycle. This can add overhead to your instance’s ability to process data. It’s not always a big deal, but the only way to watch this is from the Default WS that can see all of the campaigns running. You may also need to spend more time turning off old things to keep the instance humming.

Fortunately, the WS can only see the Leads in the LPs you have access to, so it becomes very much a separate Lifecycle, which you can tailor to each Country or Use case. In RCE, you will be able to divide the data by WS or Partition, or just by the individual Model very easily. There are a few tips:

Lead Lifecycle/RCM – do your best to use the same or similar setup for each WS. It’s ok to have different MQL thresholds, but the process your marketers follow should be similar enough to compare Regional performance.
Add Fields: add a Lead Partition and Model Name field to your database and sync it to SFDC. This can help track back issues later as well as divide up data more easily.
Add WS Tag to your Programs – will help you divide data later in RCE.

Caveats and Pitfalls

Dealing with the Cross Partition Dupes and possible solution with a Custom Duplicate Rule. As a rule, it is difficult to deal with Dupes in this situation. If you are going to use WS/LPs, then be fairly certain the Leads won’t come in from multiple forms in different Workspaces. You can get around this with Purposeful Dupes and the Custom Rule.

Workspaces and LPs do not allow multiple SFDC Instances. Marketo is a 1-1 relationship with SFDC. You can use SFDC’s Partition rules such that the Workspace in Marketo aligns to the Partition in SFDC. A good example is Workspaces by Region or Country where SFDC doesn’t allow individual users to see or work with other Regions’ records. Marketo itself isn’t really impacted as long as the Marketo User can still see everything. Only your LP rules will route the leads to the matching Partitions in Marketo.

Subscription Centers – usually you should do this Globally because if someone unsubscribes, they unsubscribe across the entire instance. Dan Stevens wrote a little about this. You can put the Subscription Center in the Default WS, which uses Dynamic Content to display the Form in several languages based on the Language Segmentation. It’s critical that this Form lives in the Default-Global Workspace that can see all data. If not, it will be unable to properly update records. Even if you decide to keep a Subscription Center locally, you should still offer a Global version on your Global website or as a backup.

Problems with Cloning and Sharing Assets: whether you use the COE or not, this can be a frustrating area to handle because if an Asset tries to reference an Asset it can’t see in another Workspace, you’ll get an error. Make sure your folder sharing rules are correct and be ready to just paste a Template back in somewhere.

User Access: Once Workspaces are live, you must go into Admin > Users to adjust each person’s access. Most users should have access to a single Workspace. Some may have several Workspaces or even different access levels to different Workspaces. Only Admins or Local Admins should be granted high-level or multiple Workspace access. You may even want Read Only access.

Adding WS naming to your organization – makes a big difference. I always recommend adding a Workspace code to all Programs and Assets. This will be useful when using RCE that sees all Workspaces as well as ensuring naming references are consistent to avoid confusion. Marketo still requires every asset to have a unique name across the Instance.

WS-REGION-TYPE-DATE-NAME

Too many WS and LPs. As a global admin, it may become difficult to manage by yourself. Have strong local admins who understand how to manage their WS without you.

Removing Workspaces and Partitions – during setup, really plan this out. To remove a WS/LP is a big pain because you have to remove all of the Leads from the Partition as well as all of the Assets. It takes a lot of time. If your instance is old, it may be worth just deprecating that WS/LP by changing its name.

A lot of people ask about WS/LPs too early in their understanding of Marketo or their firm’s journey into marketing automation. The feature solves a particular, large-scale problem and is not for everyone. Here are some examples of when not to use it:

Less than 1MM records.
Small marketing team or a few international marketers. Foldering should be enough.
The data concerns can be solved with Folders or New Fields to clearly demarcate records. For example, people often ask about multi-brand instances. Many situations can be resolved with Product Interest field or Brand Owner field along with some rules of engagement for communications.

Resources

Free Health Audit

If you have workspaces and partitions and would like one of our experts to review your setup, we can deliver a free health audit.

Discussing the SiriusDecisions Funnel 2017

June 14, 2017 By Josh Hill

Enthusiasm without thought.

That sums up the reactions to SiriusDecisions’ unveiling of their 2017 waterfall. The reality is nothing has changed regarding the funnel. Whether you track progress of people, leads, accounts, or buying centers, the funnel is still an arbitrary tool to measure impact of effort in revenue development. It’s helpful. Misleading? Somewhat…since purchase sequences aren’t linear…but that sort of tracking isn’t quite here yet.

I like the people at SiriusDecisions and they take time to carefully consider issues in B2B marketing. The latest version of their Funnel Framework seems like a step backward in helping marketers understand their results. And I am surprised more people aren’t calling them out.

The Demand Unit=Department=Buying Center=Buying Group

The Demand Unit (DU) is just another name for Team, Department, Buying Center, Buying Group, etc… There are a lot of sales books on buying groups and how to build them. This is a well known concept (especially in Sales). The Challenger Customer is one of the more recent incarnations of this concept, providing rigor and methodology for understanding the personalities within a Buying Group I wrote about operationalizing this methodology a few months ago. And MartechToday also linked the Demand Unit back to CEB’s work.

The Buying Center concept is useful and closer to reality than Account Based Marketing. Thus, SiriusDecisions is working toward bringing Marketing into the daily reality of Salespeople, who seek to build Buying Groups. Of course, marketing operations and Marketers must further understand how to operationalize such a concept beyond the Buyer Persona.

Implications of the Buying Center for Marketing Operations

Now in marketing ops, buying centers haven’t been discussed as much because it creates a lot of work to build out this level of organizational detail. It’s nice to see that the conversation is already moving toward a Buying Center Custom Object that may expand the utility of the Account Object. Normally, I would tend to build various Accounts on Location, HQ, Region, Business Unit. Sales may or may not consider these Buying Groups. The recommendation is to consider building out a hierarchy:

Ultimate Parent
- Account Location
  - Account Business Unit
    - Buying Center
      - People [Marketo already shifting to this]

Doing so is not easy at all and I doubt most firms even need to go this far. The Demand Unit/Buying Center, demands such a structure to enable tracking as well as improved delivery of data to Sales.

Now it’s possible one person could be part of multiple Buying Centers or Accounts in this model, so spend a bit of time on how the new data structure will work. I know of a few firms already down this path, but fully operationalizing Buying Center as a distinct unit will be more challenging. I question if this is worth it for all but the Largest sellers. Sales people are clever folk and will figure out the buying center because that’s their job. I almost fear this talk will put further pressure on Marketing Ops to deliver vacuum packed, accurate Buying Centers on a silver platter, when we all know Sales still has to build relationships to get the lay of the land.

Remember, the Map is not the Territory – our fancy marketing data doesn’t reflect the internal dynamic or reality of a Buying Center or Account. Salespeople still need to build relationships and understand their client’s internal dynamics. Marketing cannot, and should not, replace this with automation.

Selling Cake and Cookies to the Right Teams

SiriusDecisions also discussed how the Demand Unit works within the matrix of Solutions Offered against each Buying Unit. The grid explains how to match Solutions against Buying Centers is helpful to new marketers. I would be surprised if a Marketer or Salesperson isn’t familiar with their firm’s grid already. None of this is new.

Integrate’s David Crane wrote about the new funnel, providing a helpful graphic, which I borrow here.

Buying Centers, Needs, and Productions — via Integrate’s Blog

Grant Grigorian of PathToScale described this matrix as you can sell Cake to Team 1 and then branch out into Cookies, which are desired by Team 1 and Team 2. Both teams may have the same executive sponsor, or not. I know some firms like to have separate funnels for each Solution area, which makes sense when the Business Units or products tend to be mutually exclusive. Yet, many solutions overlap as do Buying Centers, so I personally avoid separate funnel tracking, instead relying on data slicing at the end to look at product interest.

SiriusDecisions seems to be suggesting that Marketing Ops isn’t doing enough to segment the database along the Buying Center-Solution mapping matrix. It’s possible, as many firms aren’t always able to collect enough targeting data. If this is a call to action for MOPS to do better segmentation, great, let’s do it. On the other hand, SiriusDecisions seems to be stating the obvious.

Will there be Better Marketing-Sales Alignment?

The idea some people are floating that Marketing and Sales will be amazingly aligned because of the new funnel stages is entirely wrong. Matt Heinz of HeinzMarketing wrote that he loves “the current nomenclature specifically and intentionally does not call out where sales is involved vs marketing involved.” While the new model does avoid those assignments, I do not see this language changing B2B organizations at all. There will always be relationship builders and mass communicators.

The only time Marketing and Sales are merged in this way is at a startup. The “marketers” and “sales” people are always together, in the same rooms, calls, and discussions. They craft the messaging together until it’s scalable. The reality is the skills required to build personal relationships versus mass scale interest are different and should be separate. Should the efforts be aligned? Yes.

Alignment comes from a lot of work to build trust and to operationalize and fine tune the agreements made. It’s irrelevant what the Stage names are as long as the ICP and process are well defined and there is continuous communication and data-based discussions on the results. Any time I’ve seen the two teams misaligned is when communication has stopped. The Stages here do nothing to improve communication.

New Stages or Old Stages?

The new SiriusDecisions stage names are confusing. Since most firms already built out the earlier SiriusDecisions model and customized it according to their situation, then how do these new, vaguer stages add value to analysis?

I am not convinced the stages do anything other than to conflate earlier Stages and reduce visibility of what’s happening, whether you look at People, Leads, Accounts, or Buying Centers. In my earlier discussions on ABM, I had suggestions on how to think about Stage names and Prioritization once the coverage on the Account (or buying center) reached the threshold.

A new emphasis on TOFU? Not really.

Quite a few industry commenters said that the new funnel framework re-emphasized top of the funnel (TOFU) efforts. I don’t see this at all. What I do see at many organizations is the Target Account selection was often muddled with Buying Persona. Thus, the idea of Target Demand is helpful because it is outside of the Marketing Automation database constraint, allowing Marketing to more clearly show the ratio between the Target Market/Estimated Demand and the actual data available.

Here’s my take on the New Stages vs. The Old Stages

New 2017 Stage	Older Stages	Thoughts
Target Demand	[not used]	Target Account List Buying Center List (more at territory level though). How would I estimate the number of Buying Centers? Is that appropriate for my firm at this point in time?
Active Demand	Anonymous on site Anonymous off-site Known	Requires more Anonymous tracking and third party data.
Engaged Demand	Known Engaged Pre-MQL	New version is less nuanced. All open to arbitrary decision.
Prioritized Demand	MQL/MQA/MQDU TAL	At it’s core, we want to flag higher potential people and firms to Sales at the right moment. Predictive tools and lead scoring do all of this already.
Qualified Demand	Opportunity or SQL TQL	Same. Older names may be more nuanced.
Pipeline	Opportunity	Same. There are always gradations of Opportunities and Pipeline definitions must be the same in Sales and Marketing.
Close	Closed-Won	Same

How Should You Operationalize the Buying Center Concept?

As I mentioned, the big contribution of the new Model is to push forward the MOPS work on construction of new objects to capture more of the data relationships. Only you can decide if your organization is ready to move down this path.

The Missing Objects for Reporting Success

Integrating ABM and the Buying Center into the martech stack requires new objects. While I’ve written a bit about the Touch object in the past with Channel-Offer Attribution, there are 4 objects that are often missing from the MOPS toolkit, especially at the SMB level.

These objects can be custom built or, sometimes, created from add-on tools to your CRM.

Company Object
- Ties together related accounts to an Ultimate Parent
- Identify whitespace faster.
- DUNS linkages between Accounts
- May improve compliance with Finance.
- [Product Opportunity – roll out entire Account Hierarchies before entering data]
Demand Unit/Buying Center Object
- Departmental or Buying Center
- Associate multiple people to a Team or Sub Account
- Is it necessary if we use SFDC Account Hierarchies effectively?
- Requires some additional thought regarding Thresholds and Coverage.
- May reduce some burden on Sales which traditionally has taken People and associated them to Accounts/Teams according to reality. It also may make their lives confusing if mis-match rate is high and they have to manage the data relationships as much.
Funnel Object
- Tracking people, Accounts, Buying Center through the Stages. PathToScale and Full Circle Insights do this well.
Touch Object
- Using the Channel Offer Method. Can be a custom system if you keep it simple. Or you can just call Bizible.
- Can be merged with Funnel Object, but this may cause issues with FT/LT at each Stage, which doesn’t really help you.

New objects are a lot of work!

Identifying Active Demand

Whether you do this with Third Party data or First Party and by Person or Account, is up to your team. It still comes down to what John Hurley of Radius suggested as a starting point:

Fit: How much we like you?
Intent: Are you in an active buying cycle?
Behavior: How much you like us?

Which underlines my point – the SiriusDecisions model doesn’t change much or suggest a new, radical path for the B2B Marketing or Sales teams. Whether you look at Fit, Intent, and Behavior at the Person, Buying Unit, or Account levels, you still have to look at it and decide what thresholds matter to get a human involved.

To further Operationalize the Buying Center, we must look at the three levels:

Person
Buying Center
Account

And go back the basics that TOPO and Engagio suggest for ABM reporting:

Engagement in Minutes by Person and Account
Fit – Target Account, ICP
Coverage – % of buying team we know about and % of Account Team we know about. Can we find more data to fill in the gaps?
Intent – can we find more about the people we know or don’t know.

Then your team needs to decide how to best handle the flagging of people and teams who are ready to speak with a Salesperson. And yes, this can, and should, involve humans at predetermined times. For example:

Record Type	Possible Threshold	MOPS Action	Sales Action
Person	Match ICP and Intent+Behavior = X Match Decision Maker ICP only	MQL to SDR	Build relationship; set meeting
Buying Center	50% of target ICPs if Decision Maker missing Intent =>X on 50% of team	MQBC to SDR	Develop understanding of Account; obtain more coverage.
Account	50% of target ICPs Decision Maker as MQL	MQA to SDR or AE	Develop understanding of Account; obtain more coverage. Set meeting

What the Detractors Say

I came across only a few marketing operations leaders willing to say SiriusDecisions fell short of the mark with the new Demand Unit.

Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of VisumCX said “there is a lot lacking in this 3.0 version of the Waterfall.” Pointing out that the definition of Active Demand might mean the “buyer is well down their purchase path, meaning late to the game.” And Mr. Hidalgo points out the key question when using Buying Centers – “not all members of a buying group…will equally participate in the buying process.” This is critical to deciding how to operationalize a Buying Center and ABM approach – do you send MQLs over or do you send MQAs? When is a Buying Group complete enough to have an SDR or AE involved? I personally would setup a system where certain Buyer Personas are sent to MQL based on Predictive Scoring, regardless of Completeness of Account (or Coverage). But if a Buying Group had 3 out of 5 personas and the 2 top personas were absent, then I’d flag the entire Buying Group to the SDR to get things started.

Jeff Pedowitz, founder of The Pedowitz Group seems to agree with me that the Stage names do “not work for every company…rather, they customize it to their unique needs…Second, the names chose for the new Demand Unit waterfall are very confusing.” Mr. Pedowitz also believes “the concept of the funnel should be retired anyway” in favor of an “infinity loop.”

Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD said “This outdated graphic is a symbol of yore.” Mr. Gray also wrote later, in a blog post, that “funnels drastically oversimplify the buying process into a linear progression, that, in reality, doesn’t behave as the buyer does.” Instead of solving the fundamental issue with funnels, SiriusDecisions compounds it.

Conclusions

My recommendation is to study the reactions across the industry as well as the roadmap SiriusDecisions put out. If you are the midst of a Lifecycle Build or Rebuild, it is a good idea to consider the use of Buying Centers or Account records and not just Leads/People as the unit of measure. You can still use Leads as well as Accounts. If you are happy with your existing systems, then I would consider a plan to better use Lead-to-Account matching going forward, as well as possible expansion of data into Buying Centers, preferably identifying Buying Groups in The Challenger Customer way.

What I do not suggest is the use of the Sirius Decisions Stage names or the new framework.

Have you built a system based on Account or Buying Centers? Tell us about it below.

[Updated: June 20, 2017 with link to Grant Grigorian and podcast]

Careers in B2B Marketing – a Primer

May 9, 2017 By Josh Hill

A Primer on Careers in B2B Marketing

Let’s talk about B2B as a whole. Once you enter the B2B world of marketing, you will be seen differently as a marketer. Companies that sell services to other businesses do act differently than a B2C firm like Proctor & Gamble, selling mass consumer products. Or even large tech firms like Google or Apple that are mostly B2C organizations. The roles and thinking at such organizations are surprisingly different than B2B firms of most sizes. For this post, I’m assuming you made a choice at are a B2B marketer.

In my experience, and in speaking with my colleagues over 17 years, most B2B marketers learn on the job. It’s rare for business school courses at any level to address real B2B issues in direct marketing, email marketing, writing brochures, organizational buying psychology, etc. I’m not saying such courses aren’t out there, but they aren’t common to entry level students. Surprisingly, much of what you need to know is out there for free!

B2B Demand Generation Roles

This is my personal summary of the many roles available in marketing. The tasks vary by company and I suspect some readers will view the roles somewhat differently depending on their experiences. Be sure to do research elsewhere and ask great questions when interviewing to really know what you will do or learn.

I’ve found many demand generation roles combine channel, content, and more into one role. I find those roles the best opportunity to learn about the company and to decide where to specialize for a couple of years. This is by no means a complete list of options. There are many differences between small and larger firms in terms of responsibilities and skills required.

[Updated May 14, 2017 with slideshare link that’s easier to view]

Level/Role	Specialist/Associate	Manager	Director	Vice President
Campaign or Demand Generation Marketer	Entry level, all round marketer. Size of company will determine whether this is a general role or specialized on email or cross-channel programs. Typical day may mean setup for events, email coding, simple reports, deduping, checking things with sales. May work on basic SEO, SEM, and direct response.	Individual contributor at most firms. (Associate, Manager, and Sr levels). Often a jack of all trades, but may specialize in non-event work. Needs to know how to write copy across channels, email invitations, whitepaper writing, proposals. May work on martech projects when marketing ops function is not present. Will run reports for managers and sales. Expected to know how to use CRM, Email tools, reports. Some vendor negotiation and selection.	At small firms this will be “player/coach”. Will lead a small team dedicated to finding leads for Sales. Often responsible for funnel management, reporting, and lead sourcing. Will design systems. Will work with other departments to align strategy and tactics. May be responsible for content and events. Expected to coach junior staff in techniques and brand. Measured on funnel, lead gen, and pipeline.	Only large firms have a VP of Demand Gen. Oversees field events, tradeshows, lead generation systems and tools. May oversee marketing operations. Will be measured on funnel targets and revenue.
Email Marketer Database Marketer (rare at B2B)	Analyzes email data; may need to code HTML/CSS or does. Loads emails and prepares sends.	Manages the list; analyzes data for segmented messaging and sends; often prepares email sends in the ESP.	Rare: ecommerce or B2C typically.	NA
Event Marketer	Often a jack of all trades to handle tasks from email invitations to list management and more. Manage invoices Contact venues for pricing lists. Do whatever is needed to make the event a success. May or may not go to the event for onsite support	Individual contributor. May manage tradeshows or just field roadshows, often both. Must be skilled in logistical management and project management. Must know how to create the environment to facilitate conversation Skilled at creating an experience.	Will train team, conduct ROI analyses; work with leadership to ensure the right brand presence and that the onsite experience is congruent with firm and audience goals. Likely to delegate logistical tasks to team. May work closely with outside event management agencies to create experiences.	Very large firms will dedicate teams to large scale tradeshows and possibly field events to aid local salespeople make personal connections. May be a part of Communications team
Field Marketing	Setup local events to aid sales in cities. Assist with custom proposals or brochures. Assist sales with local lead gen and reporting efforts. Smaller orgs may have this role with Campaigns and it will include email work by territory or large scale. Work will often include registration data, shipping, ordering, venue work.	Manage territory and multi-territory support for sales. Small organizations will have this role do all of the field setup; may include travel to sites. Manage schedule of events, venue selection, vendor negotiation, data collection, and reporting on success of efforts.	Usually Director of Demand Gen, but larger orgs may have an entire team to support local “field” sales efforts. Measured on budget use, pipeline, sales happiness, and lead gen efforts. Expected to train team on becoming more effective lead generators, aligning with sales, and efficiency.	Rare, but does exist. Usually combined with Demand Generation in the current market.
Content & Inbound	Research, learn about buyer personas, use that English degree to write blog posts, etc. May also fall under PR or Brand.	Manage editorial calendar, train junior staff, churn out larger papers in conjunction with Product, Product Marketing, Channels, and Sales needs. What’s missing and what’s attracting attention? Measures inbound numbers.	Editorial calendar, align teams, ensure content messaging is aligned with company values, goals, and product; ensure audience finds content and uses it. Measured on asset views and possibly pipeline influence if measured accurately.	May fall under PR, Branding, or Corporate Marketing.
Corporate Marketer	Help analyze data and brand. May work on branding decks, designs, and PR.	Analyze marketing strategy, branding, and overall efforts. May work a lot with higher level data.	Often a VP at smaller firms, but depends. May work on brand strategy with product marketing and product. Establish brand personas. May develop buyer personas. Startups often hire contractors to do this or have the CMO take on the role directly.
Public Relations/Press/Brand	Tasked with writing press releases, some content. May handle basic press relations and contact work. Learn about brand and how to use it.	Work directly with trade press and mass media. May work on inbound content. May help write or manage content production	Works with industry press; analysts; prepares communication strategies around new releases. May manage content production.	Develops relationships with key Press, publications; industry analysts; strategy for new product releases and competitive info. Sets content strategy and messaging
Search Engine Optimizer	Analyze keyword traffic to site against goals, content, branding, audience needs.	Analyze keyword traffic to site against goals, content, branding, audience needs. Manage technical SEO issues; build connections to collect data.	Set priorities. Manage projects with web team and content to maintain rankings.	Rare. Very large firms or ecommerce firms.
Search Engine Marketing/Digital Ads	Analyzes data from ad platforms; prepares ads for distribution; assists with various aspects of Channel.	Analyzes data from ad platforms; manages ad systems and spend. Level of responsibility will vary by company size. Take content and deploy it.	Oversees budgeting; analyzes data and response information. Manages spend in relation to lead and revenue targets.
Direct Response Advertising	Assist in analysis of response data; list; deployment of programs; learn analysis techniques. Assist in production with vendors.	Prepare new campaigns. Manage list and segmentation. Collect and analyze response data to manage spend/revenue ratio. May work with vendors; may run creative portion of campaigns.	Manage and analyze list and response data. Work with vendors on list targeting, spend, and ratios. Manage production of pieces and vendors. Oversee creation of pieces and campaigns.	Usually seen at print publications or direct response organizations.
Creative/Graphic Design	Wide variety of roles from graphic designer to copywriter and more. Take messaging and brand guidelines into appropriate visuals for each distribution channel.	May manage junior designers; more latitude for creativity. May work with vendors or agencies.	Provide brand direction to team. Provide brand guidance to CMO and other teams. Possibly set brand guidelines or re-create brand. Work with outside agencies if needed on all audience facing materials	Rare.

Wait, what about Product Management or Product Marketing?

These functions tend to exist only in technology firms or firms that have a strong platform system. Occasionally, the roles are merged. Most of the time, as a tech startup grows, the functions split off, sometimes with Product retaining the Product Marketing piece, sometimes PMMs moving to Marketing. Since I have limited experience here, I’d suggest reading more about these two areas. Interested in User Experience or Design?

What happened to “Integrated Marketing”?

Integrated Marketing means different things to different people. Generally it tries to coordinate efforts across communication channels. Definitions vary a bit depending on the context. I’ve seen advertising groups use the term “integrated marketing” more as a mirror of what clients wanted to do such that the publisher offered a multi-channel content pitch. I can’t comment much more since I haven’t personally done this.

Should I specialize? Can I be a generalist marketer?

In any career, there is always a question of being a specialist vs. generalist. I would argue you may find the most success doing both over time:

Early: start in a generalist role for one to two years, find out where you want to learn for the next 2-5 years.
Mid-Early: specialize in two to three areas at your firm (ideal) or at one or three firms. Try to mentor or take on a team if possible.
Mid: specialize and or use the combination of specialized work you did to rise up in one area, but aim to lead teams and projects more in your area.
Later: use your mix of specializations to take on a team and spend more time on people and strategy. You will become more of a generalist again, but in a new way.

Always understand where you want to go in the next 2 years. The “where you want to be in five years” is too far out to discuss intelligently. While you may want to be a VP or CMO one day, the exact path isn’t always obvious in B2B. If you are great at email marketing, perhaps it’s time to learn a new channel, or use those skills to take on SEO/SEM optimization, or to lead a team that does only email channel work.

As you rise up, you will also need to consider people management as a discipline. Technical skills will get you pretty far, however, the ability to manage people to attain goals will always make a difference to go beyond Director or Sr. Manager.

Study What Other Marketers Do

Always study and learn from those who went before you. Whether it’s a guru like Seth Godin, or your CMO. It’s likely no one took the same path. There are some CMOs who rise up through demand gen, others through product marketing. If you are early in your career, it may be ideal to work across two to four marketing disciplines, then specialize in one. For example, I’ve received advice to work in product marketing as I already have sales and demand generation experience. Other specializations to consider are SEM, SEO, and advertising. No one path is perfect for everyone.

Learning Resources for the Aspiring B2B Marketer

Learning B2B marketing and its various flavors can be challenging outside of actual work. A great marketer is always learning from others, so I recommend a few starting points. Most of us learned on the job and from helpful vendor or consulting sites.

Learn Demand Generation – article from Integrate, who publishes a lot of helpful templates.
HubSpot – always helpful to the newcomer.
Marketo – their Definitive Guides taught me a lot and continue to offer solid blueprints.
Act-On – another marketing automation vendor that has written about how to do things.
Sirius Decisions – while most of the details are behind the paywall, they are highly influential on funnel dynamics.
TOPO – home of the Funnelholic (Craig Rosenberg) and focused on Sales portion of the funnel.
MECLabs – full of interesting research if you can access it.

There is plenty of content out there from vendors or practitioners. Your ability to absorb it and take the useful parts will help distinguish you from your fellow marketers.

Account Based Marketing – What it is and what it is not

May 1, 2017 By Josh Hill

Nearly everything I’ve seen is about sending direct mail/email/ads to people at a Target Account or a specific person with a funny or unique catch. To me, that’s an end point of the ABM work.

It’s interesting to see the amount of “ABM” content out there that turns out to be a unique tactic to catch someone’s attention and get them to respond. There are times to engage in such tactics, but please understand that these are tactics to catch the attention of key buyer personas at an Account where reaching that person (or finding them) is difficult.

An experienced salesperson understands that the B2B sale requires several individuals. Databases like Hoover’s, DNB, DiscoverOrg, etc…simply help salespeople identify and reach some of those personas at a Company (Account). When I was in Sales, I would go through the following process:

I’d look up Companies in my Territory, over $100MM in revenue, and look for the titles most likely to buy, based on experience.
Then I’d try to find their direct dials, or at least their main location.
Then I’d create a call down list for each major metro region.
On paper, I’d call at least 3 times to get a meeting.
I found that many would respond after the second voicemail. But if they did not, it was unlikely to ever hear back this time around.

Through this method, I was the Number 1 meeting maker at my firm for 2 years. With the advent of marketing automation, content marketing, and ABM&S, perhaps now I would be able to scale my process. Or have better conversations at the firms I really wanted to get into. Why? Because I might now be able to better identify the buying team and surround them online with my messaging. Perhaps I’d be able to discover previously anonymous people at each Account and encourage them to sign up for a newsletter.

Tip: Marketo’s Company Web and Web Activity Reports are still great tools for Territory work like this.

And I’m sure if Marketing were focused on Accounts back then, instead of leads, our efforts would have been at a higher ROI.

And if I had some of the fun tools like PFL, I could have sent unique direct mail pieces at a reasonable cost to attract attention better than just a cold call.

But that’s the tip of the spear.

The work of ABM is well before this type of targeted outreach. I’ve written about this earlier, and the real practitioners will talk about it. Anyone who has a presentation that only discusses fun campaigns for ABM isn’t doing real ABM. At a minimum, they confuse Strategy and Tactics, or they forgot the hard database work before the campaign.

Here are a few key tips for running Account Based Marketing Operations.

Named or Target Accounts
Ranking Accounts in some way, such as fit for product or propensity to buy
Knowing the Buying Team Personas (see Challenger Customer) and being able to identify them in a database.
Understanding the Coverage within each Account
Marketing must source those missing names
Marketing must focus effort on the Account Buying teams (people)
Marketing/Sales Ops must help attach those People to the Accounts (Lead to Account Matching)
Define MQLs vs. MQAs – when should a rep get involved with a Person or Account?
Which systems and people nurture at which Stage? [Slides]
How should offline and online efforts work? Account swarming online with Ads, emails, etc…and what messaging?
STOP SPAMMING people with “From Rep” – whether it’s from Marketo or another tool, STOP IT. SDR cold emails = Cold Calls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a good idea, most of the time it’s annoying.
Named Account Cold Calling Lists are not ABM, and not Account Based Sales. No prep work, no marketing is involved and you’re results will be poor compared to a coordinated effort.
Direct Mail’s intention in this is to get the attention differently if Email/Phone isn’t working or cannot be found. Stop using it as a bribe for a meeting. Recent examples include Bobble Heads (Engagio), and Vidyard custom video messages. Yet, this reminds me of the old fashioned gumption and hustle of salespeople. That’s cool. You should do that sometimes. Know how and when to do that.

Notice how the tactics are at the end of this list, when all of the other hard database work is done.

Happy marketing!

Marketo Summit 2017 – Sessions and Scheduling

April 5, 2017 By Josh Hill

It’s that time of year! The Marketo Nation Summit 2017 is nearing and almost everyone is set to go and have a great time.

Although I’m not speaking this year, I do plan to attend sessions and learn. I urge you to do the same because that’s the only way to move forward. Of course, attending all of the sessions isn’t possible. Rather, choose Sessions wisely for maximum impact to your projects in the next two quarters.

Here are my recommendations if you’re going to Summit.

New to Marketo or Marketing Automation

Data Integrity with Annuitas, April 25, 8:30am

Marketers who do not understand data integrity, quality, and management are more likely to fail. Know this.

At this time, I don’t see other good entry level sessions. I do see quite a few “Influencer” topics and Meetups. Definitely consider these depending on your needs. If your organization is just in the Stage 0 Transformation Stage, the Influencer topics are the best choice. If your firm is in the Stage 1 or Stage 2 phase of Martech Maturity, then you may want to go to the Marketo @ Marketo topics to hear more about what’s possible.

And, there’s always University Day (April 23) for brand new users and Marketo Customers.

Experienced and Time to Uplevel

Firefighter or Director of Marketing with Bo Bandy, April 24 at 1:15pm.

Managing your career in demand gen or marketing operations is key to your success. I’m not sure I agree with Ms. Bandy that a Director is a firefighter. Frankly, there should be zero fires if a team is managed well. Think the point is about teams.

Aligning the Stars – Global and Regional Marketo Management, April 24 at 2:15pm [Considering]

A new case study on managing a Global instance. Will be curious how Trend Micro does it. You could also consider Tim Lamb’s Globe Trotting with Marketo right afterwards.

What they Didn’t Teach You at ABM School, with Joe Chernov, April 24th at 3:30pm. [Going]

I’m going mostly because Joe Chernov (formerly of HubSpot) likely has an insight or two.

2017 Marketo Compensation Survey, April 25 at 8:30am with Jason Seeba and Inga Romanoff [Going]

My good friends Jason and Inga will share the latest salary stats you can use in your next negotiation.

Optimize Database Health, with Jeff Shearer, April 25, at 4:45p

Learn more about using Marketo effectively as a tool for database health and using data to improve operations.

Creating a Database that Loves You, Marketo, on April 26, at 9:30a

Looks like a good topic for permission marketing and those interested in subscription management.

Advanced Topics to Grow

Cybercrime with RSA’s CMO, Holly Rollo.

Since I grew up with IT, security is always on my mind. But as marketers doing marketing on Marketo, you may not be fully aware that some of what you do affects security of your products, customers, and more. Be safe. This is for marketing systems people, but good for everyone.

Using the API to Drive Nurture from Product Behavior with Alex Greger, April 24 at 2:15p

Useful if you aren’t familiar with the power the API provides and have a cool SaaS product.

Account Based Funnel with Craig Rosenberg of TOPO fame, April 25, at 8:30am. [Considering]

If you are struggling to understand how SDR and BDRs are working, this is for you.

What’s your story, How Powerful Narratives Drive Great Companies with Deb Lavoy – April 24 at 11:30a [Going]

Last year, I spoke extensively about Storytelling and Nurturing. Let’s see what more we can learn.

Marketo’s Journey to ABM, with Renaud Bizet, April 25 at 9:30am. [Considering]

I’ve seen some of this at Marketo’s offices before. What you’ll learn is mostly the results. Worth it if you aren’t sure how ABM will work at a higher level.

Your Marketing Automation Strategy Isn’t Where it Needs to be, with Jay Famico, April 25 at 9:30am [Considering]

At some point, marketing ops has to manage the stack and the overall martech strategy instead of buying tools.

Ultimate Enterprise Martech Stack with CA Technologies, April 25, 2:30p [Considering]

If you are new to managing a larger stack, there could be insights here.

Custom Objects with Amazon Web Services, April 25, 3:30pm [Considering]

Advanced users know that there are some very powerful features available in Marketo that can solve certain problems.

Manage Martech for Peak Performance, with Scott Brinker, April 25 at 4:45pm. [Going]

How does one make the Martech Stack agile and govern across teams? What are the frameworks?

I’m looking forward to this year’s event and meeting more of you in person. Stop by a meetup or just shout out @jdavidhill. See you soon!

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