Episode Summary
Account-based podcasting is not a full blown ABM strategy. And if you’re looking to use your podcast as a way to create leads, you’re doing it all wrong.
In this episode of Recorded Content, Justin Brown chats with Declan Mulkeen, the CMO of strategicabm. Declan’s company helps companies win, grow and retain their most valuable accounts through true account-based marketing strategies. Declan also hosts the Let’s Talk ABM podcast and uncovers how other marketers are using ABM to generate revenue.
During the conversation, Justin and Declan talk about why ABM is a marathon and not a sprint. The two discuss the different layers involved with an effective ABM strategy and uncover how a podcast can fit into a company’s plan.
According to Declan, podcasting consists of three main parts — the guest, the topics, and the audience. Unfortunately, Declan explains, podcast hosts focus on guests and topics…and neglect the audience. And when you forget about the audience’s needs/wants, your company’s podcast is on track for failure.
Declan and Justin also discuss the importance of repurposing content. According to Declan, not everyone will sign up to listen to an entire podcast episode. People either don’t have time or interest to watch or listen to hour-long content. So, if you want to attract as many listeners or views as possible, you need to adjust your content to a format they like to consume.
Guest Profile
- Name: Declan Mulkeen
- What he does: Declan is a leader in ABM and serves as the CMO of strategicabm
- Company: strategicabm
- Noteworthy: Declan has built a career as a CMO in the SaaS, Professional Services, and EdTech sectors. Today, he helps B2B tech brands win, grow, and retain the most valuable accounts. He is also the author of the Let's Talk ABM podcast.
Key Insights
- ABM is a marathon, not a sprint. Declan's job is to help companies grow by implementing the ABM strategy. However, companies must be aware that ABM is not a good fit for every type of business. In fact, as our guest explains, ABM is ideal for companies that target mid-market to enterprise organizations. It is because AMB requires a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of resources. ''ABM is a much more of a holistic account-centric approach to either winning, growing, and, or retaining your most important accounts, and that's the position that we take when we talk to the market.''
- Is there an overlap in where account-based podcasting can fit into an account-based strategy? One of the newest phrases among podcast creators, especially in the B2B space, is account-based podcasting. Although not entirely defined, the phrase came from ABM (account-based marketing). If an account-based strategy can be used in podcasting, here's how it should look like. ''It all comes down to content. When you're engaging with the accounts that you're looking to win or influence or accounts that you're looking to grow, you have to be able to put a value proposition. When you think about podcasting, you've got the guests, the subject matter that you choose to interview them about, and you've got the audience that you want to consume that content. Once you start building up a number of followers, you have to be a bit careful. If you're solely thinking about the guests and you're not thinking about the audience, you might end up committing the cardinal sin of eating your baby, so to speak.''
- Not everyone wants to sign up to listen to each full episode. Declan and Justin agree that repurposing your content is the key to success. Being creative and promoting your work on as many channels as possible is the proven recipe. ''So many golden nuggets come out of these interviews, and sometimes they're lost within that 30 minutes. So the key thing for the audience that you're looking to reach through this account-based strategy is how you can pull out those nuggets and make them available in a fashion and a mode that they want to consume? Because not everyone wants to listen to or watch a webinar. [...] Most people spend 80% of their time producing content and 20% of their time promoting it. My advice to everyone is to flip that and to spend 80% of your time promoting content and probably do less content, but do it better.''
“ABM is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s not just setting up a few Google PPC campaigns.”
Declan Mulkeen
CMO
strategicabm
Episode Highlights
The Foundation of Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
”It goes back about 20 years, and Bev Burgess, who coined the term ‘account-based marketing,’ even she admits today that perhaps the ‘M’ for marketing isn’t the best term because it’s a lot more organizational-wide. It impacts sales; it impacts customer success; it impacts the whole organization. So if you take account-based as the roots, then that’s all about working out which clients, accounts do you want to have more of, how can you find them, and how can you win them? So that is primarily the premise of account-based marketing.”
What Is Required for a Company to Do ABM Effectively?
”The first thing we say to companies when we engage with them to have a conversation about whether ABM is a good fit for them is, are they targeting mid-market to enterprise organizations? Because if you’re targeting SME, SMB, ABM is not going to be a good fit.
What is the average order value of the service or the product that you sell? If it’s not at least 30, 40, $50,000 per annum, ABM is not going to be a good fit for you because ABM requires a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of resources.
ABM is a much more holistic, account-centric approach to either winning, growing, and, or retaining your most important accounts, and that’s the position that we take when we talk to the market.”
The First Rule of Content Marketing: Create Great Content
”If you create great content, the audience will naturally navigate to that great content and will want to read it. So the upside comes with the SEO, with the engagement that comes downstream; the upside comes with potential contact form fills, downloads, whatever metric you have in place to measure the impact of your content strategy.”
The Consumption of the Long-Form Videos Is Lower Than the Consumption of the Short-Form
”Content that you publish through platforms such as LinkedIn, but even LinkedIn doesn’t want you to leave their platform. So they are giving priority to content that stays, that keeps you staying in the channel. So publishing a little snippet, publishing a short sixty-second video, you’re going to get a lot more reaction there than people come into your website. So the key thing is to mix it up and get a little bit creative with your content.”
A Piece of Advice for Future Podcast Creators
”Start close to home. Start with that network of individuals and companies that are very close to your company. And after that, draw up a list of people you respect in your space, people you believe have got something worth sharing.
If you’re in a fortunate position where you can call on people that have got that level of expertise and reach, that’s brilliant. If not, start with your customers, start with people close to you and start building out. Ultimately podcasting has a domino effect. Once you start knocking down the dominoes, it gets easier and easier and easier.”
