Mucker Growth Series: Buyer Journey Frameworks – The Secret To B2B Go-To-Market Success

you may recognize this guy if you have

been to any of our mucker growth

sessions but today our guest expert is

Tony Yang the head of growth here at

mucker and he is going to be digging in

to the buyer journey and so without

further Ado Tony I'm just gonna go ahead

and it and hand it over to you all right

I guess this is how it feels when you

know like a late night talk show host uh

gets on one of their guests to to be the

host

um hopefully I won't disappoint you guys

that are here um but I will say this

topic of buyer Journey Frameworks is

something that I've been speaking to

many of our poros and I actually see

some of these attendees um some familiar

faces and I know I've talked to uh some

of you guys about this before this is

one of these topics and presentations

I've done on a number of occasions

through other uh channels or mediums

other conferences and uh this is the

first time I I'm actually doing it for a

mucker webinar even though I've talked

to some of you individually about this

so this is going to be great we're going

to be putting this on our blog as well

as on our founder portal and I truly

believe that this topic is U extremely

important uh for many of our portfolio

companies as they're thinking about how

to get Beyond just doing you know the

same outbound messages that you see here

so as a

transition these this slide is

representative of very common scenarios

that I have seen experienced myself on

the receiving end as well as have also

made the mistake of doing myself

throughout my career and so the one on

the left I think you know again I I

don't want to you know disparage the

efforts of our Founders you know we're a

lot of our Founders are just getting the

outbound motion started and setting up

but as we talk about this buer journey

framework I'll explain why you know

we're only getting two 3 4%

best-in-class reports reports of

best-in-class companies doing outbound

are seeing maybe 6 to 8% in terms of

response rates but you know that just

basically means 90 over 90% of people

that you're reaching out to are not

responding to you so why right so let's

just go into these scenarios really

quickly many of you guys have again are

probably very familiar with it first one

on left is an SDR or you know in many of

our port code cases our ERS are sending

out very similar outbound messages that

says something like hi so and so I work

at this company or I have founded this

company we do this maybe name drop any

big name companies that you have as your

existing customers if you happening at

all usually it's not especially if we're

early stage and then uh hit him with a

call Action of I'd love to show you a

demo what your your schedule look like

this week we've all done this before

again U we have to start somewhere for a

lot of our Founders and that's great but

we have to graduate Beyond this and also

if you put yourself on the receiving end

I get 10 of these a day on LinkedIn and

as well as email I don't respond to any

of those the ones I do are because I'm

actually interested in potentially in

Market which we'll talk about in a

second right so that's the first

scenario scenario number two and if also

fairly common even with our portfolio

companies where you know let's say e th

an AE or a Founder was able to schedule

a meeting a demo and and the prospect

showed up went through an hourlong demo

covering everything and ask answered all

the questions we thought we knocked it

out of park and then the prospect says

hey why don't you uh reach out to me uh

in six or nine months from now because

I've got you know other pressing things

on my plate and I'm just too busy right

we get you know that on occasion if not

a lot and so why and what do we do about

it and then the last scenario is again a

mistake that I made early on my career

as a demand gen marketer growth marketer

basically just throwing mqls over the

wall of sales in in the context of a

Founder right you could kind of take

this as well where perhaps you're

running an ad on LinkedIn offering an

ebook or a report that you put together

some sort of lead magnet right doesn't

have to be on LinkedIn but the the whole

point is you know you got a key person

at a Target account to convert on some

sort of content related Calla action

great they're a great fit but why did

not that not convert to the next stage

or why did not did that not become a

deal all right so these are all you know

different common scenarios and the the

main thread amongst all these is we have

not fully understood the buyer Journey

where the prospects are so this is

something I I tell a lot of the founders

I work with directly a lot which is

we've got our sales and marketing funnel

great we should be tracking things it's

you know how we measure certain kpis

it's also a way for us to establish

certain workflows from you know

understanding how to work a prospect at

a certain stage and if we have other

goto Market team members like an SDR and

AE how do they work together right that

the point that I'm I want to make here

is the funnel is not the same thing as

the buyer Journey okay ideally they

would be aligned but in reality they're

not always in line but the the fact is

they're different okay again the funnel

is company Focus it's how we measure and

track internally and and established

workflows the buyer journey and let's be

specific the buyer journey in terms of

the decision framework or

decision-making process um is buyer

Centric okay it's about how the

prospects go about their decision making

Pro process to even consider and

purchase uh Solutions such as yours so

again these are two different things

ideally they would be

aligned so what do I mean about buyer

Journey decision Frameworks here are a

couple of examples I'd say the most

common one especially if uh some of you

who are listening to me today have a

background in some sort of sales sorry

some sort of marketing you know

background and work experience maybe

you've heard of this concept of ADA

awareness interest desire action

personally I'm not a big fan of that

kind of framewor because the way it gets

executed is often poor and and incorrect

where if we talk talk about awareness a

lot of companies just think oh let's

just get our brand out there let's just

buy a bunch of display ads let's sponsor

every conference and get our logo up on

the Marquee or whatever right and and

that's not the point of the buyer

Journey decision understand the buyer

Journey the one down here is one I come

across

it's better but I think the the one that

I at least the one that I've adopted

throughout my career and the one that

I've introduced to many of our poros is

one by introduced by a company called

seirus decisions if you haven't heard of

seirus decisions they were probably

close to 12 13 14 years ago they were

the company that actually Define or

establish the concept of the funnel you

know mqls sqls they actually were the

ones that kind of spearheaded that whole

concept they were an analyst firm and

they actually had another product

marketing practice which I was fortunate

enough to be a client of so I learned a

lot of this from them early on my career

they eventually got merged or acquired

by Forester I think yeah Forester not

garer they required by Forester so

they're part of Forester now but anyway

this framework is the one that I adopt

and I'll and I'll go a little bit more

into the details again this is not

something I made up all right this is

something that has been used and proven

and tested by many Forward Thinking at

least you know back then go to market

teams all right so here's how we think

about uh buyer Journey decision

Frameworks many of our Portos and I know

several of you on the on the call right

now on the zoom meeting Zoom webinar I

see your names we do a pretty good job

at identifying our product use cases

if we've done a little bit have done a

little bit of homework maybe we've

identified benefits that our product

features can deliver or and or value

props to specific users or user types

what I've been working a lot with many

of our Port codes are to clearly

identify our ICP our deal customer

profile as well as buyer personas and

just to set the Baseline in a B2B

context when I talk about ICP we're

talking about types of companies type of

organizations the personas are the types

of people because you could have

multiple personas you should be engaging

with at a certain type of company right

so very important to uh distinguish

between those two U type of um entities

um but you the point being you we really

have to understand and clearly Define

ICP and personas and uh we have for

those of you in our portfolio we have

templates and worksheets and guides on

how do that okay now the the real trick

is how do you connect those two because

a lot in in my past experience and when

I before I even joined mucker I've

consulted and work with many companies

and a lot of times when people do this

and Define their ICP and persones and

you know create a a fantastic document

with all these details and they got it

all down they either just have it

publish or it creates some sort of

cutout or poster on a wall or it it sits

in a a Google drive somewhere and it it

it dies there like it nothing happens

now none of the ICP definitions or po

personas um actually get used and

so in my opinion the buyer Journey

framework is a great way to align to

bridge the gap between what you're

providing uh in terms of features

benefits value U what jobs to be done

that's what jtbd stands for in this case

to your specific ideal customer profile

and and buyer personas all right and and

so the buyer decision framework helps

align the messaging for your audience

and your

offering okay so here's a breakdown of

the this framework of the buyer journey

by serious decisions and again I didn't

make this up I won't go into the

specifics of each of these but I'll just

give you a high Lev overview okay so

stage one uh is loosening his status quo

the the main goal for stage one is to

make sure that your persona at a ICP or

Prospect understands the need it doesn't

have to be a pain point because a need

can be you know uh a need to if you're a

fan of uh Andy Raskin if you know who

Andy Raskin is he's a messaging expert

who talked about you know the greatest

sales deck uh he's ever seen he's

talking about Zora this was a viral post

he did maybe a decade ago if you guys

haven't read it or or seen it Go and

Google greatest sales deck ever by Andy

Raskin okay so he talks about Old World

versus New World right so that's all

about the why loosening status quo is

all about informing the prospect about

the why right because they won't care

about the how or the what until the why

is established if you guys listen to or

have read Simon synic he wrote a book

about the why when I was running teams

in the house every year I would make my

team rewatch uh a YouTube clip of Simon

syx Ted Talk regardless of what you guys

think about him that was a fantastic Ted

talk about the golden circles start with

the why great companies talk about the

why and then you know the next circle is

about the the how and then the the

biggest circle about the what we always

for whatever reason early stage

companies and those that are very uh

what's the word I'm looking for when

they in the outbound context right a lot

of companies who don't think about the

Journey or don't think about you know

the prospect they always lead with the

what we are this and we do this slightly

better companies do say an outbound

messages I'm just picking on outbound as

an example we do this and we do it

differently than these companies or you

know we're utilizing you know AI or

whatever to better accomplish this

process that's slightly better than what

right but if we talk about and focus on

the why

first I think that's where we're going

to get much more ATT traction and

attention of our prospects because we

got to connect them to the business

issue so luening status quo is all about

informing about the why not about your

product not about your solution it's

about the why in terms of why they need

to address a problem a need a paino or

why they need to change hence losing the

status quo very important to to

understand that committing to change

again I won't go into all the specific

details uh to summarize it's about the

why now

the urgency again this is I talk a lot

about this with our portfolio companies

which is hey if they understand the the

pain point they got to also understand

why they got to work on it or address

that pain point now otherwise you will

get that response in scenario number two

where you did a demo right maybe they

understood exactly what your what your

product can can do and saw for but

they're not committed to the urgency if

they were they would not have said hey

follow up with me 6 to 9 months from now

if it's an urgent pain point that they

need to get fixed or addressed right

away they're gonna say hey what when can

we talk about how do we roll this out to

the rest of our team or our organization

they're committed to change at that

point they've been convinced of the

urgency so stage one and stage two is

about the Y and the Y now again still

not talking about your product just yet

all right stage three and four for the

in the interest of time it's about all

right now that I'm convinced of the why

and the why now what are some ways or

solutions that I can consider to address

this need or this paino or this you know

right this the need to change and and

the need to do it now this is where they

start to think about all right how do I

go about searching for possible

solutions and then committing to a

solution is all right I found a solution

or two or three that will meet my

specific needs and therefore I'm going

to be considering them okay and then

five and six is about making the

prospect feel good uh about making a

decision to work with you or to become

your customer okay um so that's a high

level overview of this buyer Journey

decision framework in terms of the

stages uh the key uh one key takeaway I

want to leave with you and I'll give you

an example in a second is when and I'll

show you a template that our mucker

portfolio companies have access to it's

not yet published in our found portal

reach out to me or Britain if you are

interested in getting that template but

to use this decision bu Journey decision

framework you have to write it from the

perspective or the point of view from

your prospect don't write it in terms of

hey we're company AB andc we help solve

this problem that's not the point the

point of this exercise is to really

understand your personas and your ICP

and to develop what are the key thoughts

and statements they need to understand

at each stage again I'll show you an

example okay let me kind of change gear

slightly and mention these two concepts

that if you are in growth or in demand

gen or sales you may have heard of which

are demand creation and the demand

capture okay demand let's start with

theand capture theand capture is when

you're getting the prospect to realize

that your solution can solve for pain or

challenge that's already top of mind

you're you're capturing the demand

that's already been there they've

already been condense the why and why

now okay that's the man capture if you

think about it a lot of the the messages

that is common uh commonly sent whether

it's outbound emails or you know

marketing campaigns that are offering

things like you know running a LinkedIn

ad for you know to schedule a demo or to

join a webinar that's going to be a live

walkthrough of your product that's

really theand capture in nature in terms

of the the Focus right the reason again

why many companies aren't responding to

those kind of messages just yet is

because demand has not yet been created

so demand creation is about getting the

prospect to realize that there is an

urgent pain need or challenge or you

know Old World New World scenario that

they need to address or solve for today

that's what demand creation really is

okay and so important to understand the

distinction between those two because

again when we play out our go to market

strategies and actually execute on

certain T tactics like outbound or

advertising or organic social a lot of

times I see companies just default to

this and they're expecting to get a

bunch of T again funnel and bu Journeys

are different they're trying to think

about how do I get more Topo to funnel

Topo to funnel leads but they're talking

about content or calls to action that

are more geared towards this and the

buyers are not yet there okay all right

so earlier I mentioned the buyer journey

and the funnel are two different

concepts ideally they would be well

aligned in reality they're not when

they're not aligned the uh symptom or

the outcome uh is low conversion rates

okay so this is a typical funnel okay um

every company uh in B2B would probably

have their own definitions of what their

funnel looks like some companies may not

have you know Sal sales accepted lead

some companies Define SQL sales

qualified lead as a stage one uh in

their HubSpot deal um stage or you know

whatever CRM they use pipe Drive Zoho

whatever and some companies have

different stages that I've seen that's

fine that's that's how each company as I

mentioned measure our own internal kpis

and how we track product ress with

prospects okay again the buyer Journey

decision framework in terms of how

prospects make decision is a different

concept but if we can align them uh well

then we will Pro we will most likely see

higher conversion RS across each of your

funnel stages all right so again as I

mentioned the first two stages that the

buyer Journey framework that I adopt is

focus on the why exploring possible

solutions is really the what and and

then the last three is more focused on

the how in order for a prospect to say

yes to evaluating Your solution and then

expect them to convert down through all

the stages to a closed one they

definitely must be convinced of the why

and the the teams that are working on

this when I say teams for our founder

early stage companies is the founder

right it's you guys uh doing foundered

sales foundered uh marketing you really

have to do a great job at creating that

Demand by focusing in on the why and the

why now by convincing the prospect of

the Y and Y now and I don't know if you

guys could see this on my screen um but

there is you know it it demand creation

activity should not stop here it should

actually continue throughout the the

entirety of the the funnel as well as

the buyer Journey decision process

because it's always a good thing to

reinforce the Y and the Y now um and

let's be honest because uh for

Enterprise type of sales you're going to

be talking to multiple types of personas

you may be bringing someone in at a you

know later stage let's say the economic

buyer of you know the buying committee

at a certain company you're targeting

maybe they're brought in that stage deal

stage two but you know what this your

first interaction with that person and

that person has not been convinced of

why it's in your best interest to move

to deal4 to convince that person of the

line why now you can't just simply go

into you know selling mode mode and and

and social proof mode just yet because

they're not there yet okay so demand

creation and demand capture all right so

the content or the topic of today's

presentation is about using buyer

Journey Frameworks to power your goto

Market strategy or it's it's a secret to

go to market strategy success here are

several ways that buyer Journey

Frameworks can be utilized all right so

number one and I'll walk through the

examples of how to do this in subsequent

subsequent sections but number one um it

helps with uh creating a message map uh

across your ICP and personas through

this uh concept of value statements I'll

give you an an example shortly okay uh

but it's around message mapping uh which

is simply put putting uh the right

message in front of the right person at

the right time right we we probably have

heard that statement before but how do

we actually do it well let's look at

value statements and how to map that

across each of your icps and personas

okay secondly it helps to buer Journey

Frameworks helps to Baseline your

content marketing strategy and I'll

explain a little bit about what that

looks like in a second um third it kind

of related to point number two you know

we'll just call it out separately it

helps you create an outline for a

nurture program okay A lot of times I

see companies think about nurture again

as just simply hinting people over the

head with stuff about their company

people don't care okay it's about how do

you convince them of each stage of the

buyer Journey so you're bringing them

along you're actually nurturing them uh

a joke that I we we talk a lot about in

the growth and in marketing world is are

you if you heard of the word the term

drip campaigns right we're trying to

nurture we're not trying to waterboard

our prospects okay so just kind of keep

that in mind because a lot of times I

see companies waterboarding their their

prospects just like forcing stuff about

their company to these prospects and

they don't care okay and then one last

point I'll talk about in today's session

is about lead scoring and mql

definitions and this is probably more

applicable to companies that are a

little bit further along where they have

you know like starting to think about

implementing some sort of lead scoring

model within their CRM or marketing

automation like HubSpot okay and I'll

show you a better way to do it and you

know I've created tons of lead scores

throughout my career and I truly believe

that using a buyer journey lead scoring

model is the way to go and how that can

Define or better Define your marketing

qualified lead criteria okay let's jump

in all right there's a lot of text on

the slide let me walk you through and

give you a high level overview I won't

go through every single one but this was

this is an example of a a company that I

worked with a while ago where just for

contacts this company was uh an RPA

solution robotics process automation so

similar to like a UI path if you're

familiar with that kind of company but

it was a startup and as I mentioned

before in terms of you know Val prop and

icps they they understood their use

cases well one of their core use cases

was they can sell to heads of people

those in our HR role for use case around

new hire on boarding okay instead that

you could you know see that their icps

are um early stage fast growing startups

you know you can kind of get an idea of

how they Define their icps and I work

with them on Def defining these the

persona for AE of people um include job

titles similar to like a director of HR

head of talent and you know part of

their objectives was onboarding new

hires right so this is a new hire

onboarding use case for a process

automation again this was way before Ai

and stuff like that that that probably

has changed that category value

statements I mentioned the term value

statements in previous slides what a

value statement really is is a key

thought that you want to impart within

your prospect at that particular stage

to convince them of the goal for that

stage as an example right loosening

status quo is was about convincing of

the need or paino the need to to change

what they're currently doing today and

committing the change is about why they

should do it now not nine months from

now now okay so if they're trying to

reach ahead of people Persona at an ICP

that looks like this a value statement

that they want to put into this person's

you know psyche into their understanding

is this current onboarding processes

takes too long and this affects our new

hir time to productivity new employee

experience our company culture How We Do

recruiting etc etc okay so if I'm a head

of person at a 200 person you know

company and we just raised a large

series a or series B round the why is

this because I'm in charge of new

boarding new hire on boarding the why

now is this we are planning for 80 new

head count this quarter okay if we don't

improve our onboarding process new hires

will feel in the dark unvalued not ready

to contribute this will lead to higher

turnover okay just for uh simple math

sake let's just say I we I work at a 160

person startup okay we raise a massive

round we're going to be aggressive in

hiring for this next quarter 80 new

people so we're increasing our company

size by 50% within three months okay

that is a major why and why now for

someone who is in charge of you know

making sure we're recruiting the right

people not only that but they're set up

for Success that their time to

productivity is shortened and they can

hit the ground running and that there's

no high turnover you know another loosen

status qu and Community change could be

hey every you know new employee that

turns over or you know leaves the

company within three months is actually

detrimental to company uh by this amount

uh of I don't know how much how much

money that's worth or Capital that's

wasted or time or or whatever right so

these are two examples of value

statements for this Persona at each of

these stages notice one again is written

from the perspective of the Prospect and

two these two stages so far this these

two value statements have nothing to do

with robotics process automation let

alone let alone this company's features

benefits tools Etc not yet okay so

that's the first two why and why now and

then again I won't read through all of

these but if I'm a head of people at

this kind of company if I am convinced

of these two then I need to have uh an

understanding that hey there are

solutions out there that could improve

our new p on boarding process there are

automation solutions that could uh take

care of a lot of the manual and menial

tasks that our team my team today is you

know burdened with doing right things

like signing these papers and you know

walking people through you know how to

set up their you know their HR benefits

and all that stuff right and so is there

a better way to to do that where it

could be sped up great okay I'm

convinced that there is there's a you

know a better tool or a set of tools for

that well now I heard of this particular

company AC I'm just you know again this

a fictitious name but this company is

actual a real company I work with and so

they're at this stage this is where the

value proposition will land okay our

companies or this company again the

prospect should be realizing this this

company that I just heard about can

uniquely meet our needs by automating

certain backend processes they connect

to these systems that we are actually

using the the way that our workflow and

process looks like this and it could be

transferred into this particular use

case okay or uh particular product and

this is how you set up their flow uh to

support this okay so here's a a path

forward justifying and making the

selection help me make help me make me

feel like I'm making the right choice

which is all right if I decide to go

with this particular solution maybe I

shortlisted three uh other Solutions out

there well with Acme I could tell and I

have Pro points that we can reduce our

new employee on boarding from nine days

to three minutes for this section of the

onboarding process that's a huge benef

or huge win for us right and it allows

our existing team my team hiring

managers to focus on other things

building relationships you know other

stuff like that that you know provides a

lot of value and hey I also learned that

they work with another similar company

Like Us in terms of stage makeup

infrastructure blah blah blah okay I

feel pretty good about saying yes to

this company all right so this is an

example of uh establishing value

statements to convince buyers of each

stage what the the goals of each stages

are okay so this is a message map this

is what I mean by a message map if you

can identify the right value statements

to the right prospects at the right

stage that's how you're going to guide

them down your funnel to get them to say

yes now the tricky part is then how do

we implement this which we'll talk about

in a second one last comment on this

slide you could have multiple value

statements for each stage and so you

know like yeah you you can have multiple

ones I'll show this is an example again

um the text is too small to read that's

the point isn't to actually show you uh

what this says but um this is an example

of a document uh that you would want to

put together uh to identify the value

statements and you would do it for each

I Persona at each ICP this is for

another company uh that I worked with it

was related to uh sales contact data so

a competitor to let's say a zoom info

okay by the way as I mentioned before if

you're a mu portfolio company you will

have access to a template within our

founder portal I don't think it's there

yet but we'll put it there soon if you

want it email me or Britain we'll get

you access to it but this was a document

that I worked on with this other company

again there were later stage there were

800 employees Global there were scale

stage raised you know large round we I

spent probably two or three months with

them on this just putting together this

document working with various members of

their go to market team or CR head of

customer success talking to their SDR

managers and teams this document ended

up being 40 pages for them because

they've got like five different personas

across different icps so it it made

sense to work on that for that period of

time again like we worked on one part of

it we took it and then we start to

implement it across uh various parts of

our organization but again this is I'm

not telling our portfolio companies that

you have to create a 40 page document

but I I will say that you want to get

very specific for each Persona and each

ICP okay that's that's the takeaway

here okay earlier I mentioned that doing

this exercise exercise can also help

with identifying the Baseline for your

content marketing strategy and so this

is how it can uh be utilized so once

we've clearly identified the value

statements aligned to a particular buyer

Journey stage and align to certain IC

piece and personas what I would

typically recommend for our companies is

let's take an inventory of your existing

content that you have available that's

public facing it could be blog posts it

could be you know ebooks and white

papers it could be case studies it could

be webinar recordings and other video

content doesn't matter it could even be

specific pages on your website uh put it

into a spreadsheet and again for mck

Port codes we have a templated uh

spreadsheet that you can use a Google

sheet um but you essentially uh do an

audit of all your content and then what

you want to do is you would want to

align each content to a Persona and ICP

and you can the rule is you could have a

piece of content speak to multiple

personas and even multiple icps but you

only want to identify what buyer Journey

stage does it do a good job at

reinforcing the value statements for

okay for Simplicity sake this the buyer

Journey framework that I utilize has six

stages I tend to just group The first

two together the next two together and

the last two together because the first

two is about the why and why now right

the second two is about the the how uh

and the what you know like basically

product marketing related messaging the

last two five and six is more about Roi

uh proving value Pro points and even

case studies case studies will do very

well at at that part of the buyer

Journey so I generally bucket by turning

stages one two 3 four and five six

together so when you're doing this

content audit you're U putting into a

sheet all your content assets who it

could potentially speak to at what type

of icps and then make a you know

identify what buyer Journey bucket does

to do a good job at reinforcing and then

I I like to apply some sort of again

this is very subjective an effectivess

rating of how well it reinforces the

value statements at that particular

stage how you would do this is whoever

is the has the best understanding of

persona and ICP go skim through the

content and and ask yourself all right

does this do a good job at supporting

this value statement and or these set of

value statements in buyer Journey one

two or 3 four I just do it on a scale of

1 to 10 so when you do this okay you

have a full spreadsheet that's

cataloging and mapping each of your

content to a buyer Journey stage for

certain personas and icps you then run a

pivot table and if you don't know how to

run a pivot table there's probably Tut

tutorials out there those of you you who

are Port POS that I work with just ask

me I'll show you it's not hard um when

you run a pivot table you're basically

um able to identify for each Persona and

even each ICP um how many pieces of

content do you have lined up for each

buyer Journey stage bucket for that

particular Persona IP this does two

things okay one it identifies content

gaps as you can see here for this

example they only have four pieces of

content speaking to the revenue

operations leader persona for buyer

Journey stages one and two they don't

have any for buyer Journey five and six

stages okay so if you're engaging with a

REV Ops leader at a late stage deal and

you could see or you could tell that

this person should be already convinced

the why and why now they need to be

convinced of you know make me feel good

about going with your solution you need

to develop content for that particular

Persona uh to put in front of that

person because they're at that stage

okay so one it identifies gaps in

content where you could then go to your

content marketing or content person or

you know if you're early stage founder

like many of the company Founders I talk

to go and find your contractor to write

content or you yourself talk about that

particular piece of content or topic

record yourself we have playbooks around

how to scale your your content record

yourself transcribe it turn into a blog

post or you know whatever format right

the point is you you want to address

certain gaps you're in content that's

number one number two we talked about

nurture program this basically outlines

your nurture strategy okay so if you

have let's say a HubSpot as a marketing

automation tool you in this case you

have 19 pieces of content that does a

pretty good job and again you can even

filter it by Effectiveness rating uh

that do a great job vincing to why and

why now you should use this content to

create a nurture program not a water

boarding program a nurture program using

a HubSpot where you're essentially

nurturing or dripping these content

start with your best content that does a

good job at loosening status quo and

committing change week one week two week

three right like this is how you

structure a nurture program in in let's

say a HubSpot once they've been

consuming content in this uh buyer

Journey bucket you could transfer them

to your mid buyer Journey nurture

program offering these four pieces of

content so again this is how you

actually structure a nurture program

that brings people along not just

bashing over the head with content about

your company okay so now how do you do

this let's transition really quickly and

I'm cognizant of time lead scoring mqls

okay so this is you know um funny meme

it's funny because it's true which is

you know if again thinking back in my

early days of my career when I was

running marketing Automation and and

setting lead scoring and and working

with sales team I've made this mistake

many times where you know not maybe not

necessarily in these the way it's

outlined here but the way that I Define

an mql was around stuff like hey did

this person click on an email did this

person visit you know website add Five

Points whatever right and then when they

reach a certain threshold I toss them

over to our sales team and says hey look

I just generated 20 mqls for you last

week or you know 100 mqls for you last

month and then the the sales people are

trying to follow up and and over time

they learn yeah these mqls they suck

they never turn into a deal okay again

that was an experience at larger

startups you know series a series B

companies but the same concept can be

applied to you early stage Founders

where maybe you're thinking about

running ads or you're thinking about you

know offering content and then you're

kind of expecting that lead who engage

with one content to convert to a deal

all right that's unrealistic because

they have not yet been convinced of the

why and why now all right so how do we

do that how do we convince them part of

the answer was in nurturing right um

identifying the right content to support

value statements and nurture them along

um going back to lead scoring the point

of lead scoring is not to ident identify

prospects who are sales ready that's

really not the goal the goal is to

identify prospects um that are great fit

and where they potentially are in their

buyer Journey it's hard you can't read

someone's mind obviously in terms of how

they're making the decisions but you can

look for clues in terms of content that

they're consuming right the the the

clues aren't the fact in aren't based in

the activity of a click or the activity

of hitting a particular hitting your web

page it's around the content that

they're consuming right and the content

related to the value statements that's

is supposed to be reinforcing for a

particular buyer Journey stage that's

how you want to structure your lead

scoring I won't go through all these

bullet points but the main thing I want

to talk about for the rest of today's

time is setting up a lead scoring model

in let's say your HubSpot you should

have you know scores that identify fit

but you should also base your lead score

off of behaviors not on generic

activities like I just mentioned around

hey they clicked on a blog post but on

specific blog posts not on you know

clicking on an email or attending a

webinar but on a specific webinar okay

and so this is how we play it out I

routinely would recommend our portfolio

companies if they're ready for setting

up a lead scoring model set up three

different fields okay one would be ICP

okay just so we call it a company grade

again ICP is based around type of

organization are they you know great fit

some if a company is doing a Target

account or ebm model then we would say

hey let's identify them as a tier one

again it doesn't have to be a Target

account or tier one you just have to

identify certain criteria that makes you

know a company a better fit than others

okay so I would always recommend an ICP

grade or company grade I would always

recommend a Persona grade and again

actually how it plays out is not

necessarily A Persona grade but just a

simple drop down menu that looks for

common job titles that aligns to a

particular Persona because the the point

of these two together is that you want

to find is the right person at the right

type of company okay you could have the

right person but out a wrong fit company

and vice versa you want to find the

right Fit U for both again there's

strategies if you find Right company but

the wrong persona how to address that we

could talk about that separately or

oneon-one with any of our Portos but the

grade you want to identify those two the

activity then should be based around a

set of three scores actually three

different fields for Simplicity sake I

just tell our poros bucket buy Journey

one two together 3 four together and

five six together so how it plays out is

let's say in your HubSpot you have three

activity lead scores with labeled with

these names okay then when some someone

when you set up the the criteria for

scoring you then um apply points to a

particular stage if it

reinforces that particular stage okay so

if if you have a nurture program and

people are clicking on content these 19

pieces of content you're identifying

which clicks or which web page visits to

these 19 pieces for buyer Journey stage

one to a marketing leader

okay in the buyer Journey one two score

this is very important okay you actually

call out the specific content pieces

right and so over time what you're going

to see is um a set of three scores this

is again an example okay this particular

lead has buer Journey score one two 30

points three four 20 points and 30

points round numbers because I think

they added uh this particular instance

of HubSpot they just said 10 points for

certain pieces of content how you build

it is within your again this is deep

into HubSpot again if you have someone

else helping you with HubSpot they'll

know how to do this or you could look up

you know some tutorials you're basically

creating custom fields in HubSpot or

lead score that says look for any clicks

on or page views of content that

contains in this case there's the one

way of doing it is adding uh

BJs

one-2 do it whatever way you want but

like in this case adding it to the URL

so it designates uh a piece of content

as buyer Journey 12 uh score okay um

another common way that I've seen people

implement it is actually have a running

list uh of actual URLs of content that

aligns to buyer Journey score one and

two and they just keep adding to it as

they continue to create more content

okay so again the point is to align the

activity

uh score against a buyer Journey uh

model in terms of what content they're

consuming not type of content but the

actual content topic itself and then the

way that I Define an mql is if company

grade and Persona checks out they're are

right the right person at the right

company and if they hit buyer Journey

stages one and two above a certain

threshold to start with a certain you

know estimate like hey if it's 10 points

for each of these pieces of content if

they hit 50 points mean meaning that

they read you know 10 sorry five of

these pieces of content for buing score

stage one and two they've been committed

they've been convinced of losing status

quo and committing a change therefore

they're ready to talk to a sales rep to

engage in a sales conversation that's

how I Define an mql okay Pro tip you

could do rollups if you're further along

and are adopting an ABM strategy you're

basically rolling up activity scores to

the deal and and company records and you

know persons known and that's it I just

went through a lot of very dense and and

Rich content in 45 minutes so

hopefully you guys got the the main idea

of buyer Journeys excellent and if if

there are any questions in the last

couple minutes here someone did re reach

out about whether these slides will be

available and they will be part of of

what we Post in the blog post along with

the full recording here so you can go

back and slow Tony down and capture all

the the rich content that he just gave

you any

questions got the Q&A open you can go

ahead and type it in the Q&A in the

meantime I want to let y'all know that

our next well first of all thank you

Tony for all of this this is

fantastic um we got uh our next growth

webinar is going to be on Wednesday

October 2nd and we've got Debbie Rosler

coming in from Berkland and she is going

to talk through um what you need to be

doing now in planning your financial

modeling for next year so all right

we've got some questions Tony has

anything changed about how you think

about content

marketing anything changed about how I

think about content

marketing see Melissa is there any oh

and best channels and touch points got

it is that related to same question hold

on this this came in four different

parts okay so has anything changed about

how you think about content marketing

and best channels and touch points in an

era of

AI oh okay so one we did a a great

session that just got published on our

Blog on

interesting use cases of gen aai tools

for growth growth hacks and stuff like

that go check it out it's really good

and we'll probably do more of this in

the future as well in terms of the

channels you know like I haven't found a

tool maybe there is one out there that

you know of that helps me identify the

right channels to utilize I think the

question is if you trying to find out

what channels to utilize to reach your

audience it really has to do with just

the you know the first principles of

understanding your ICP and personas part

of that understanding your personas is

where how do they go about learning

where do they go for information how do

they make decisions and evaluate

Solutions or even go and find Solutions

you know do they typically go to their

colleagues in a slack Community do they

follow certain people on LinkedIn do

they go to G2 you know different places

like that right so I think the answer to

that question should be really around a

solid understanding of your persona and

yeah

essentially your persona if you're

thinking if you're asking about AI tools

to help with out for certain channels

like outbound and Outreach yes there are

plenty of tools like that there are

tools that help with things like

optimizing your advertising there's

tools you know there's a lot of these AI

tools out there again that's more about

at least in my opinion how do you

utilize these tools more efficiently but

the the the identif identifying of what

channels utilize still has to be around

you know how you think about I hope that

answers the question related to that is

there is there a way to do that when

there's too much content out there you

know we're just seeing such volume

that's being generated oh yeah there is

and especially with llms out there that

produces content at scale and and you

know like on one hand we we have you

know told our Port Co to try to utilize

chat gbt or other gen to to create

content but if you there's a lazy way to

go about it and there's a much more

better way to go about it I won't go

into all specifics of AI and you know

how how llms are trained but you know I

think the there are again like certain

tools that help you get maybe 70% of the

way there but I think part of what I

just mentioned around the why and why

now should be about how you think about

the market how what makes you a thought

leader in your space and that I feel

like there's not I don't think any LM

solution can really do that because it's

your your expertise your voice llms are

trained on the the the data that's out

there it's not you know your expertise

if that makes sense right so again this

is where you really have to apply your

your understanding how you view the

world and convince people about the the

old and new world right like and and

that's that's the challenge but that's

also a way for you to differentiate and

establish yourself as a thought leader I

hope that answers that question

excellent all right thank you everyone

thanks Tony thanks