How should you identify and target your ideal customer profile?

Find the tools that are alternatives to you, and look at their customers – you want to start by asking what tools you can replace; these could be direct competitors (if they exist) or similar solutions. Look at the industries and segments that have been using these competitive tools, because those companies have an established need for this type of solution, and a budget allocated. 

Generate a named account list – for example, you might first filter your market by company size, then exclude some industries, and generate a named list of thousands of accounts that could be a good fit for your software. That’s who you want to market to. You certainly drive awareness among people outside of that by doing events and advertising, but if you look at where you spend the most time and resources, it should be going after that list. You can target them using tools throughout the web and on social media; in your outbound, go after people with titles that are relevant who work at those companies.

Narrow down to companies that have the right pain point – to prioritize, narrow down your focus by keying in on the companies that 100% have the pain point that you have the technology to help them solve. There is so much you can find out via web searches, talking to other people, and peer networking to find out who has these problems. Identify filters like:

• The right industry – over-index on the industries that consistently experience the pain points you solve best. 

• The right tech stack/existing tools – there are tools you can use to analyze a target company’s website to see what software they use; those insights can help you target companies who use relevant complementary or competitive tools.

• Willingness or ability to pay – look for companies that can pull money together; often leaders in their space have more cash. Ability to pay might intersect with industry, for instance, you might de-prioritize low-margin industries.

The right deal size – look at where your company has performed and gotten traction in the past. Moving up or down-market is typically harder than you think. If you have a volume and velocity product and all of a sudden the founders want you to sell into Fortune 100 companies, it’s probably going to be hard without any enterprise salespeople. Similarly, if your product and team are designed for enterprise, stick to that script.

How can you “blueprint” a target organization to win more deals?

A “blueprint” of the organization helps you find the right buyer and stakeholders – once you’ve closed a few deals, you should know what the common personas or key titles are, and how they factor into the decision-making process. For each target, you can use those common tropes to fill in what this particular buying org structure looks like.

Blueprinting steps

• Step 1: Identify the account – accounts could be flagged because they met your high-priority criteria, or they might come in opportunistically when a salesperson gets a meeting from a connection on LinkedIn. Once you decide the account is worth pursuing, you can start blueprinting that company and understanding it. 

• Step 2: Pass the account along to your blueprinting team – this could be your existing SDR team or a separate team or person that is dedicated to blueprinting. 

• Step 3: The blueprinting team conducts manual research – this step involves building out the target’s org structure using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo. It’s essential that the results of this data collection are put into a system of record–at least a spreadsheet, most often your CRM.

• Step 4: SDRs and AEs validate the blueprint – once they’ve broken into the account SDRs and AEs validate and improve upon the blueprint as they build a relationship with the company and ask questions. New findings (e.g. key decision-makers, titles, people who have left the company) should be memorialized in the CRM.

Pay attention to where you can break in – the decision marker is not always the easiest place to start. For example, there are often people who will take a call (and tell you a lot) for a $25 Starbucks gift card, while an offer of a $100 gift card to a decision-maker title won’t even get a response. Additionally, you may map multiple departments, and more consistently get into one or two. Keep track of which techniques work.

How can you strategically build content or tools that lead to interactions with target personas?

Develop a piece of content or collateral that your target audience cares deeply about – if you’re only producing 1-2 things a year, you need something that will create a reason to connect with you or your brand. It’s best if the content provides unique insights about their industry, and there’s an embedded offer to talk to you about their business specifically.

For example, the State of Candidate Experience report – a benchmarking report on how Fortune 500 companies rank when attracting, engaging, and converting candidates. The recipe for that content piece is:

• The Target: talent acquisition professionals at large companies. The Fortune 500 is a relevant set for them because they are either in that cohort, competing against those companies, or want to be in it. 

• The Content Piece – “The State of Candidate Experience” ranks candidate experience at Fortune 500 companies, based on data gathered through a partnership between an independent 3rd party (a thought leader in the space) and an internal team. The report takes 1,000+ hours to produce the report each year, including research, analysis, and design. It’s a big investment, but it can help you establish yourself as a leader.

• The Offer – a personalized audit of their career site, and a read-out relating the findings in the report to their specific industry and company.

• How it’s used in marketing – marketing blasts the report to the entire database, with some segmented campaigns.

• How it’s used in sales – salespeople use the report as a reason to reach out to contacts in their pipelines directly.

• How it’s used for brand and reputation – this report helps establish the company as a leader in the candidate experience space, and helps land interviews with major publications.

What should the marketing and sales collaboration look like?

When you make big investments in marketing, sales needs to buy in – sales has to understand that marketing worked hard to get that person interested in the company, and to delay in following up with that lead is not doing anyone good. At the early stages, if the whole company (including sales) isn’t excited about a marketing effort, it’s a sign to reassess.

Marketing should keep checking with sales “what happened with those leads” – when the company is small, it’s possible (and a good idea) for marketing to follow up with sales on what happened to every enterprise lead. It’s an easy collaboration back and forth and provides lead feedback.

What channels should enterprise tech companies evaluate?

What should you look for in your first demand gen hire? Who else in the company continues to be involved?

Your first hire should be an experienced doer, who:

• Can tactically execute, but can manage campaigns and budgets – this person needs to get stuff done and be scrappy in the tools, but at the same time, they need to have a general sense of budget and the ability to manage campaigns. They need to have the ability to stretch to understand the strategy that informs the day-to-day work.

• Has 3-5 years of good experience – they can’t be too experienced and expect to have a team to execute for them. This needs to be someone that can lead AND can do, not just lead. Your first hire doesn’t need to be the person who will lead marketing for the next 10 years.

Founders and sales leaders can’t abdicate responsibility – it’s everybody’s job to generate revenue for the company (not just this demand gen person). At the end of the day, if you aren’t hitting your numbers, the whole company fails.

Don’t think about “marketing sourced” revenue too early – unity is good; if everyone has a shared focus it keeps everything together. Make targeting and winning accounts a combined effort.

What are the most important pieces to get right?

Focus on targets who 100% have the pain you can solve – instead of focusing on the company that would be a great logo, but is a super hard sell. There are usually external signs that you can pick up (e.g. on the company’s website, or the tools they’re using) that indicate that they have the need.

Create content and offers your targets can’t say no to – make your content something they care deeply about and then offer to talk to them specifically about their business. For example, think about offering an SEO audit–for a marketer, it’s really hard to say no to that. If you offer valuable insights, you’ll get prospects to say “Okay, send it to me. I’ll talk to you.”

Bring in marketing ops early – it’s often overlooked, but you have to get them in early because they play such a big role in laying the groundwork for good metrics. Skipping marketing ops is a big mistake because once you decide to start, reporting lags, you don’t immediately have the metrics. Marketing ops shouldn’t be considered a separate function from the demand gen efforts; their work directly fuels demand gen.

What are the common pitfalls?

Don’t make the “big-time” hire too early – early on, you generally don’t want someone who has a huge reputation for massively growing their previous company. They may have done it, but they had a team of 10 people that were under them to actually execute. For early hires, you want the right people who are scrappy enough.

Don’t focus too much on your brand – your top priority is generating revenue, building a pipeline, winning some deals, and getting points on the scoreboard. 

Don’t try to do too much – don’t continually go after the next shiny object, instead focus on a couple of things you think will have the biggest impact. Spend 80% of your resources on things that will generate revenue and then spend 20% on experimental things.

Marketing tools will rarely be a magical fix (do it manually first) – rarely will technology on the market stack solve your problems. Generally, a manual process can get it done. Once you have success, you can look to automate your manual process with technology.

About the Expert

Jonathan Dale Vice President of Marketing at Phenom People, where he has spearheaded the company’s State of Candidate Experience report. In this guide, he lays out successful tactics for narrowing in on the right enterprise audience, mapping the target’s organization, and using valuable industry data to break in and win.