Developing a funnel focused marketing strategy
Maria Edlefsen started with an education in business communications and graduated from a university in Denmark. Then she went for her first job in economics as a content marketing executive and climbed up the ladder to manager in marketing as the team grew. Then, she worked with a procurement tool where she was among the two women in a 23-member team. Now, Maria Edlefsen works with Ivalua as the Global ABM Program Manager
Top Highlights:
- Understanding the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Journey from prospecting to SQL
- Expectations from a website
Working with Ivalua
It is a hybrid between France and USA operations. It has a can-do attitude. They provide a single source code, so it is effortless to adapt for marketers. Ivalua effectively manages all your spending and suppliers on a single platform to generate value across the Source-to-Pay cycle. They are focusing on brand awareness and recognition.
Understanding the Ideal Customer Profile
Maria: We set a common foundation across the marketing teams working on the product to have the same understanding of the ICP. Either with first-party or third-party data, we use behavior scoring, follow accounts to understand which of those accounts are relevant to us and to what extent they would find the product relevant.
We are also planning in regions to target shorter lists and prioritizing accounts instead of going after long lists. To help them get a 360-degree view of their data, we also help them do software mapping.
How do you research your accounts to cope with their buy-in cycles?
Maria: Research is different from region to region. We use some software tools, and we work with agencies as partner relationships. We follow thought leadership and use a framework for a lot of things.
How do you prospect and draw their attention?
Maria: We use a combination of things such as personalized URLs, social media, native advertising, IP programmatic. We tie it all up into a specific journey depending on the funnel. We also do a lot of channels to put the awareness out there.
What is the extent of personalization that you implement?
Maria: We don’t want to be scary. When you are personalizing you have to be really smart and polite about it. It is all about finding relevant points about the customer. We need to match and support the customer’s needs.
How do you prospect and draw their attention?
Maria: We use a combination of things such as personalized URLs, social media, native advertising, IP programmatic. We tie it all up into a specific journey depending on the funnel. We also do a lot of channels to put the awareness out there.
Journey from prospecting to SQL
Maria: When you start planning ABM, start with data. Work with sales teams, business development teams to get as enriched data about accounts as possible. We need to find out what we know about the customers and sit with the sales team to know their challenges and create a framework.
There needs to be a framework that can be used between sales and marketing. Get familiar with the available technology tools. Spend some time getting to know the tools to understand how to draw data, use that data, and pivot with it.
Expectations from a website
Maria: It is important to keep the website simple and not provide too many options for the visitors to be distracted. You have to steer them to the customer journey and map it with what you want them to do. You could work with a single most-effective landing page where your resources are all in social media and third-party pages.
If you have to handle negative comments on any external media, it is best to be polite and flawsome. It is best to accept at times rather than defending. Having FAQs can help you, and important to know who the stakeholders will be addressing a certain type of questions.
Data points that matter
Maria: In a marketing strategy, just like a company, I make a mission statement. Depending on the funnel stage, I look at different data points. They would all tie back to the hotspots that would help me understand if it is an awareness campaign.
Any suggestion for fellow marketers
- Do the mapping with the funnel
- Share your success on LinkedIn
Contact Maria
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marialoude/
