Guide to Growth Marketing

The B2B CMO’s Guide to Growth Marketing Get actionable, easy-to-follow steps for implementing an effective growth marketing system.

Table of Contents 3 The Challenge: Transitioning from Cost Center to Revenue-Driver 4 Step 1: Align Use Lifecycle Visibility to Unify Customer-Facing Departments Around Revenue 7 Step 2: Measure Identify Success Metrics and Implement a Measurement Plan 10 Step 3: Experiment Stick to a Regular Cycle of Tactical A/B Testing, Analysis, and Iteration 13 Step 4: Iterate Record Learnings, Adjust Course, and Reprioritize Backlog 15 The Result Featuring the insights of: Etai Beck — CEO, Folloze Marc Johnson — GM & CMO, Bombora Tracy Eiler — CMO, Alation Nate Johnson — CRO, Veterans United Meagen Eisenberg — CMO, TripActions Chandar Pattabhiram — CMO, Coupa Software Michael Freeman — VP of Marketing, Skilljar 2

The Challenge Through data analysis and experimentation, a fully realized revenue-driven growth marketing system allows CMOs to deliver value by answering three fundamental questions: Transitioning From 1. Destination: What is our marketing pipeline Cost Center to plan for achieving our revenue goals? Revenue-Driver 2. Progress: How are we tracking against that plan? 3. Direction: Which targets, programs, and Marketing is in the midst of a activities will get us there? dramatic paradigm shift. What was once a discipline rooted in instinct has There’s no shortage of technical solutions available, but become a sophisticated blend of art and science, no matter what your stack looks like, modern CMOs capable of drawing clear lines between tactics and must first embrace a truly growth-driven approach to profits. In fact, 83% of CEOs now expect their CMOs their jobs if they’re going to remain relevant. to be key revenue contributors. But that’s easier This ebook provides a list of actionable, easy-to-follow said than done, especially in the nuanced world of steps for implementing a growth marketing system B2B marketing. capable of affecting positive organizational change, Where consumer-oriented businesses deal with along with relevant, real-world insights from leading short funnels, large volumes, and clear conversion CMOs shaping the world of B2B growth marketing. points, B2B marketers must measure and optimize complicated buyers’ journeys that can last a year or Action Items more ... and involve multiple stakeholders and dozens of touch points. • Read this ebook and note the sections Many CMOs are finding that legacy strategies aren’t that are most beneficial to your up to the task and are consequently suffering ever- department’s unique needs. shortening tenures. • Convert action items like these The Solution: Revenue-Driven into team tasks within your project Growth Marketing management system. • Get in touch with the revenue Growth marketing is a scientific discipline that intelligence experts at 6sense to combines comprehensive measurement with an learn how we empower CMOs to iterative approach to tactical execution — and it’s predictably achieve their growth most effective when it’s driven by revenue. marketing goals. 3

Step 1: Align If that’s not possible, have a well-established workflow in place for ensuring that records are kept up-to-date between systems whenever major changes are made. Use Lifecycle Visibility Collaborate on Record Design to Unify Customer- Contact and account records tell the story of a prospect’s experience with your business, but Facing Departments different departments have different needs when it comes to what data gets included. Around Revenue Make the development of CRM records a collaborative experience to accommodate everyone’s needs. Build in enough data to be actionable, but not so much that Growth marketing is a team sport. pages become noisy or hard to navigate. While marketers might be the ones with their hands Use Shared Dashboards on the levers, success requires that all customer- Data visualizations are an invaluable tool when facing departments have the information they need it comes to understanding high-level business to effectively manage the entire customer lifecycle performance, but they can easily perpetuate and positively impact top-line growth. The first step departmental silos when designed exclusively in achieving this kind of alignment is providing the for a single team’s goals. visibility necessary for productive collaboration. While implementation specifics will vary by Instead, build dashboards that demonstrate the solution, this sort of high-level visibility typically relationships between departmental initiatives. Set takes place in a CRM like Salesforce, Microsoft periodic review times where all departments can Dynamics, or HubSpot across shared reports, come together to analyze performance. dashboards, and records. The more visibility you By rallying marketing, sales, and customer success have into touch points and metrics, the more around shared stewardship of the customer lifecycle informed you’ll be to steer a prospect towards and resulting revenue, CMOs can move into valuable revenue-generating behaviors. leadership postures and help guide stakeholders Here are some best practices for pursuing towards measurable success. interdepartmental lifecycle visibility: Work From a Single CRM If possible, get all customer-facing departments working off a single CRM. This eliminates the overhead necessary to maintain syncs between databases, minimizes interdepartmental friction, and ensures cohesive handoffs. 4

Previously, marketers were hyper-focused on new customer acquisition, and only that. There’s been a major shift to our thinking and energy. Now we’ve got to be immersed in the customer journey post-sale, and put energy into deepening customer relationships and expanding our revenue opportunity. Today’s marketing motion must look at every part of the journey, from stranger, to prospect, to opportunity, customer, and beyond. Tracy Eiler CMO, Alation and Co-Author of Aligned to Achieve: How to Unite Your Sales and Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth A lack of departmental alignment is more than just a missed opportunity: It’s a fundamental flaw that can have a dramatically negative impact on a company’s growth potential. As marketing leaders, it’s our responsibility to foster positive, productive relationships with our partners in sales and customer success. Set targets together, build systems together, and stay in constant communication. The better we can understand each other’s goals and challenges, the more effective the funnel will be. Meagen Eisenberg CMO, TripActions and Curriculum Architect at TripActions Academy 5

Action Items • Conduct a Systems Consolidation Audit The more time growth-oriented departments spend using the same toolsets, the easier it is to develop a shared vocabulary for success. Audit your marketing stack for feature redundancies and aim to consolidate tools wherever possible. Connect candidly with your vendors to see how they can help and you’ll likely be able to cut some overhead costs in the process. • Host a Record/Dashboard Design Workshop Gather stakeholders of all seniority levels from marketing, sales, and customer success and col- laborate on the development of shared customer and account activity records and dashboards. This will ensure that every team gets what they need to succeed and gives executors a glimpse into what their peers value most, allowing them to cooperate more effectively. • Schedule Regular Interdepartmental Lifecycle & Revenue Reviews Monthly check-ins with stakeholders from sales, marketing, and customer success are an effective way to ensure insights from one department are leveraged across the entire journey. Schedule a regular lifecycle and revenue review with all customer-facing departments to confirm everyone’s staying aligned. 6

Step 2: Measure Awareness & Lead Generation Digital Marketing Funnel Conversion: How effectively are your digital marketing properties Identify Success converting raw traffic into qualified opportunities and, eventually, paying customers? Key conversion points Metrics and Implement typically include the transitions between qualification stages, all the way to becoming a sales opportunity. Measurement Plans New Qualified Accounts: Strictly measuring success through lead volume ignores whether or not marketing efforts are actually leading to growth Growth marketing’s power comes from for the business. By measuring qualified accounts, marketers can better prioritize their investments and its objectivity. positively impact downstream metrics like Close Rate. Tactics either produce the desired results or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): How many qualified require iteration. Knowing the difference requires a opportunities are your paid promotional campaigns comprehensive approach to campaign measurement generating? If campaigns are underperforming, dig spanning both short- and long-term results, typically in further to understand whether the issue lies in organized into some permutation of the AARRR targeting, creative, or offer/call to action. framework that includes growth rate, market share, Consideration & Sales Enablement profit margin, and other key revenue metrics. Whatever your approach, metrics should be Lead and Account Scores: The more effective organized in ways that can be easily surfaced to marketing can be in helping salespeople prioritize stakeholders and serve as objective success criteria. their time, the better. Setting a BANT-based lead As mentioned earlier, the most heavily weighted scoring threshold and targeting buyer persona-centric of these should be revenue, but the road to B2B account engagement allows sales/marketing teams bookings can be long. to better understand their respective goals while improving overall performance. The best methods of measuring upstream performance will differ from business to business, Close Rate: Knowing the percentage of opportunities and marketers should take a pragmatic approach that convert into bookings is an essential high-level to their measurement plans. Shorter pipelines allow metric that can be used to align sales and marketing for faster iteration over a smaller number of metrics, teams of any region. Be sure to measure by market whereas longer ones will often require a greater segment and overall aggregated performance. number of more technically nuanced stages. Post-Conversion In both cases, marketers must track leading indicators capable of providing the tightest possible Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Few metrics are feedback loop. more useful in justifying a marketing plan than a Here are several pipeline metrics that deserve a definitive understanding of just how valuable new place in any organization’s measurement plan: customers are to a business. 7

Knowing regional and aggregated customer lifetime Net Promoter Score (NPS): Customer satisfaction is values helps sales and marketing teams set expectations key to a healthy referral channel, and NPS is a market- within the business and demonstrate the value of validated method of measuring just how likely customers their efforts. are to help you build brand equity. Net Revenue Retention (NRR): Knowing what Combined with the full-funnel visibility outlined in Step percentage of your revenue is being sourced from existing 1: Align, a comprehensive measurement plan provides customers is an excellent way to gauge just how valuable marketers with the information they need to set hard you are to your customers, and how effective your upsell targets and illustrate how their efforts will ultimately marketing efforts are in contributing to top-line growth. benefit revenue growth at large. There’s this idea that if you collect the data, all your results are magically going to skyrocket. It doesn’t work that way; making use of marketing data is a process and the metrics are crucial. If your metrics are questionable, the data won’t help much. All data has to be tested and iterated on. Measuring the right things has an immense impact on how your organization will iterate and evolve. Marc Johnson GM & CMO, Bombora “Measure what’s meaningful’ is the core mantra for data-driven marketers. But just because something can be measured doesn’t make it meaningful to a larger audience. Marketers must shift from the tendency to continuously showcase marketing ‘engine room’ metrics — clicks, conversions, CPL, MQLS, etc. — to focusing on the stronger ‘alignment room’ with sales. To drive the best sales- marketing alignment, we marketers must drive sales conversations only with revenue alignment metrics like opportunities generated, pipeline, win-rates, ASP, etc. that sales cares about. Chandar Pattabhiram CMO, Coupa Software 8

Action Items • Conduct a Measurement Audit Break down your marketing funnel into key stages across all active channels. Prioritize and rank the top three metrics that matter most to each stage of the buyer’s journey. If possible, delegate single-point accountability for each to a dedicated team member and empower them with the authority and resources necessary to affect positive change. • Prioritize Pipeline Chokepoints Conduct benchmark comparison exercises to analyze all stages of your sales/marketing pipeline and identify drop-off points where performance is dramatically off-target. Make sure problem areas get extra attention before it’s time to plan your next batch of campaigns. • Identify Leading Indicators Work with sales to analyze a recent subset of Closed Won deals with an eye for what top-of-funnel behaviors they had in common. Pay special attention to channel, content touch points, and time spent within each pipeline stage in the interest of developing a set of reliable leading indicators that marketers can use to steer their campaigns. 9

Step 3: Experiment Growth experimentation should follow some permutation of the scientific method: Stick to a Regular Cycle 1. Pose a Research Question Challenge your team’s of Tactical A/B Testing, shared understanding of how different combinations of marketing tactics are likely to impact Analysis, and Iteration your pipeline targets. This can be as general or specific as necessary, but keep in mind that it must be Growth marketing thrives on actionable within a finite time period. experimentation. 2. Form a Hypothesis Estimate the impact your efforts will The core tenet of growth marketing is a commitment have based on group experience, to evaluating efforts by measurable outcomes in a previous tests, or trusted industry recurring, iterative cycle. The first step is to develop benchmarks. Record it for later a backlog of experiments to run, each of which reference and think critically about ways should target one or more of the key success metrics it could be reliably validated/invalidated. identified earlier. 3. Conduct an Experiment Coming up with the initial list should be a Design and launch your experiment. collaborative effort and can be facilitated through Maintain proper scientific hygiene processes like pipeline assessments, persona by setting aside control groups, evaluations, or other creative exercises. Ideas ensuring statistical significance, and should then be prioritized based on the metrics partitioning measurement systems they target, potential benefit to the business, and to ensure clean, trustworthy data. resource constraints. 4. Analyze Results & Draw Conclusions It’s also important at this stage to determine the Examine the objective results of your length of your experimentation cycle. Many growth efforts. Did they improve or damage teams find running experiments on a quarterly your target metric? Can you say with basis to be an effective balance between freedom of confidence that any change was experimentation and urgency of execution. Choose directly attributable to your efforts? a cycle that’s right for your business — and once Come together with your team and it’s been determined, hold yourself accountable for develop a shared understanding of the executing within that time frame. Don’t allow your experiment’s impact. Recognize the team to fall victim to scope creep. difference between assumptions and With a prioritized list of experiments in place, the next additional hypotheses in need of testing. step is to start running tests. 5. Repeat Reprioritize your backlog of experiments and move on to the next one. 10

By rallying marketing, sales, and customer success Some examples of tools that allow for speed: around shared stewardship of the customer lifecycle WYSIWYG content management systems and resulting revenue, CMOs can move into valuable leadership postures and help guide stakeholders Email templates towards measurable success. Web page templates Note that running effective growth experiments depends on speed, agility, and relative autonomy. Stock/branded image libraries Secure buy-in from as many cooperating teams as Messaging frameworks necessary. Wherever possible, invest in tools that allow marketing to operate independently, without Visual brand guides the need for support from resource-constrained Video templates departments that may have competing priorities. Social media templates Today’s pipeline growth will be driven by frontline marketers who are able to rapidly design and deliver personalized buyer experiences. We now live in the Experience Era! What started in B2C is becoming front and center in B2B as well, fueling the digital transformation all B2B vendors must go through. Marketing teams are the ones to architect the buyer experience across all stages and own more of the lead-to-revenue cycle. To succeed, marketing leaders must embrace a new operating model that eliminates organizational friction and empowers their teams to create personalized and relevant buyer experiences with speed, agility, and precision. They must be able to experiment, measure, and iterate at a rapid pace, leveraging a new generation of tools built for this new mode of operation. Etai Beck CEO and Co-founder, Folloze 11

Early in my career, I learned from some very wise people that it’s much better to get the right question than it is to get the right answer. Accurately hitting the wrong target helps no one and creates a false sense of success that only serves to create more risks for your organization. The worst part about it is that you don’t even know. Michael Freeman VP of Marketing, Skilljar Action Items Conduct an Ideation Workshop Gather a cross-functional team from marketing, sales, customer success, and even product if possible. Look at your core performance metrics and develop a backlog of integrated, omnichannel tests that could be run to try and improve them. Group them by short- and long-term impact and prioritize each based on the potential benefit to the business. Run a Sample Experiment If your team is new to the growth marketing process, it can be helpful to run a smaller- scale experiment to familiarize yourself with it. This could be something as simple as testing the difference in open rates between different email subject lines, or the engagement generated by social posts using different hashtags. Once comfortable, move on to longer sprints and more sophisticated tests. Run an Agility Audit Critically analyze your entire marketing stack and look for areas where your team may lack the tools necessary to affect positive change. These could include interdepartmental dependencies for things like website management or a lack of on-site messaging tools. Invest in the tools necessary to conduct detailed tests before moving into an experimentation cycle. 12

Step 4: Iterate Record Learnings, Adjust Course, and Reprioritize Backlog Growth marketing drives positive change. With a fresh batch of hypotheses either validated or invalidated, growth teams need to dedicate time to reflect on, and internalize, their findings. By building up an internal repository of market insights and tactical benchmarks, marketers can conduct more effective experiments in the future while adding immense value to the business at large. The knowledge they glean can be used to inform major business and/or product development decisions while keeping internal discourse productive and anchored in objective reality. The ultimate goal of the iteration step should be to develop a sufficiently robust understanding of your business growth funnel that budgetary decisions can be made with confidence. Ideally, growth teams should be able to point to a body of knowledge that proves — or at least highly suggests — that they could fuel additional revenue growth for the company if provided additional budget. It’s these types of strong, data-backed arguments that can help CMOs demonstrate the value of their role and secure their place at the leadership table. 13

In order to iterate effectively, marketers need to feel like they’re allowed to challenge the status quo. It’s our responsibility as marketing leaders to cultivate that culture. It’s all about protecting the needs of the business while trying to stay humble and create safe spaces for making mistakes. Some of the best ideas we’ve ever had have come out of hackathons and ‘what if…’ brainstorming. Ultimately, if we’re not taking risks, it’s not just us as marketers who are missing out: it’s our customers, as well. Nate Johnson Chief Retention Officer, Veterans United Home Loans Action Items • Share Your Findings Record the objective outcomes of your experiments in a central location that can be reviewed by all team members. Keep findings concise and data-driven so that they can easily and confidently be referenced for future tests. Where possible, share these findings publicly, either on a company blog or with a third-party publication. Doing so can help establish your team as thought leaders and attract valuable talent. • Update Internal Benchmarks Revise your team’s shared understanding of success based on your findings. Look for areas where the delta between your goals/hypotheses were dramatic and either increase what a successful campaign looks like or dial back goals to be more realistic based on what’s proven to be achievable. • Reprioritize Your Backlog Comb through your list of tests and adjust priorities based on your most recent findings. If you recently revealed a high-impact combination of tactics that could be applied to other success metrics, bubble those experiments to the top of the list and deprioritize tests for metrics that are performing at or near benchmarks. 14

The Result Measurable Marketing-Sourced Growth Growth marketing is a skill like any other. It takes time to master, but the rewards are substantial. At every step, remember to revisit the three key questions that will keep your team moving in the right direction: 1. Destination: What is our marketing pipeline plan for achieving our revenue goals? 2. Progress: How are we tracking against that plan? 3. Direction: Which targets, programs, and activities will get us there? By focusing effort on building a team that employs sound growth marketing strategies in order to pursue a revenue-driven operational posture, CMOs can demonstrate their value to their CEOs and protect themselves from the problematic reality of being labeled a cost-center. Above all, remember that growth marketing is most powerful when it’s revenue-driven. Follow these four steps and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your company’s growth goals and earning the trust and appreciation of your fellow executives in the process. 15

About 6sense 6sense reinvents the way organizations create, manage, and convert pipeline to revenue. The 6sense B2B platform captures anonymous buying signals, predicts the right accounts to target at the ideal time, and recommends the channels and messages to boost revenue performance. Removing guesswork, friction, and wasted sales effort, 6sense empowers sales, marketing, and customer success teams to significantly improve pipeline quality, accelerate sales velocity, increase conversion rates, and grow revenue predictably. 6sense has been recognized for its market-defining technology by Forbes Cloud 100, G2, TrustRadius, Gartner, and Forrester, and for its strong culture by Glassdoor, Inc. magazine, and Comparably. Learn more at 6sense.com.