Jon Miller, director of marketing and product at Demandbase, is a marketing entrepreneur and thought leader. Previously, Jon was the CEO and founder of Engagio (acquired by Demandbase) and co-founded Marketo (Nasdaq: MKTO), head of marketing automation.

Jon frequently speaks at conferences such as Dreamforce, MarketingProfs B2B, Marketing Operations Executive Summit, OMS and Marketing Nation Summit. He is the author of several e-books, including the Complete and Clear Guide to Invoice Marketing and the Ultimate Guide to Automating Marketing.

MEDIA 7: What inspired you to move from marketing automation to ABM?
JON MILLER: While we were running the Market, we had a lead-based demand generation model that was actually quite efficient. But as we got closer to the first public offering, we got a declining marginal return. We have realized that we need a second engine through which we can go and target larger companies as we want to move forward in the market. So we started working on an exit strategy and we didn’t even call it account-based marketing (ABM) at the time. But that was it.

We define accounts and collect ways to manage them. It worked, which was good news. The bad news was that it was manual and I fooled my team into trying to spoil Market and Salesforce to keep track of the things I wanted to keep track of because these were not account-based systems. When I realized that the approach worked but was too difficult with existing lead-based technologies, I was inspired to create a new platform.

M7: How do you practice ABM on Demandbase? What did you learn from using your own lead generation product?
JM: Our ABM approach at Demandbase is twofold. First, we believe that we create different styles of ABM for different account levels. Therefore, we practice one-to-one marketing for a few; for a larger number of accounts from one to a few, but still very limited; In the rest of the universe of target accounts, it belongs to the one-to-many group. This combined strategy allows us to differentiate the amount of resources placed in each account based on its potential value.

Second, we drink our own champagne. We use our intent data and forecast analysis to determine when market participation or ready-to-sell states appear on any of our accounts. If there is one such sign that we call Marketing Qualified Account (MQA), we increase it by one more or more to pay more time and attention to those who are in the market accounts.

M7: What is your marketing mantra to stand out in the over-saturated MarTech space?
JM: Our main mantra is, "Think big, start small and move fast." Customers want to get up and running quickly, in less than 24 hours, and don’t have months to learn and implement a new tool. That’s why we want the product to be incredibly easy to use and get started quickly. But at the end of the day, our users are sophisticated companies that implement sophisticated strategies. ABM can be very strong and we don’t want to give people a game. So while we make common and easy things super easy, we strive to make even difficult things possible. The solution is very efficient and flexible, allowing our customers to evolve and adapt as ABM grows in sophistication.
M7: What do you think is the most important marketing challenge in the post-COVID-19 era?
JM: COVID-19 has accelerated digital for six years in six years. So shoppers who never thought of making complicated B2B shopping entirely online were incredibly used to it. To be successful after and after a pandemic, marketers must continue to rely on their digital transformation and optimize their digital strategies.

In addition, COVID-19 has raised customer expectations, so organizations need to rethink their approach to sales. Marketers shouldn’t skip “anything that moves” or track every response in a campaign. Instead, they really need to know where each buyer is headed and adjust their market entry accordingly with the appropriate measures.

Eventually, the epidemic showed that during this period, some companies, such as Zoom, prospered, while other companies struggled much harder. So another challenge after COVID is that marketers need to review their list of target accounts to really understand which industries and companies are doing well so they can double their growth.

M7: What do you read and how do you use the information to stay on top of your game?
JM: Whenever I have to talk or write about a topic, I definitely train myself on it as much as possible. Fortunately, one of the "great powers" is synthesis. I am very good at absorbing a lot of information from what I have read and seen. Just connect to the fire hose and I can bring it all in and connect the dots.

Also, since I work with my team in product development, we always develop the product based on customer needs and demands. So I keep learning by listening to customers and seeing how they work.

ABOUT DEMANDBASE
Demandbase offers the only end-to-end ABM platform to help B2B companies identify, win, and grow key accounts. Our success would not be possible without the teams operating, driven and collaborating in Demandbase. As a business, we are as committed to a growing career as creating world-class technology. We invest a lot in people, our culture and the community around us and are consistently recognized as one of the best workplaces in the Bay Area.

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