How to Implement Effective Account-Based Marketing Strategies with Auseh Britt

In this episode, we’ve got Auseh Britt, a seasoned B2B marketer with 20 years of marketing experience across a wide range of industries and companies spanning global hospitality to startups, who currently serves as the VP of Growth Marketing at Terminus. Join us for a great conversation about what account-based marketing is and what it means when it’s done well.

If you missed episode #203, check it out here: Putting People at the Center of Sales Conversations with Andy Paul

What You’ll Learn

  • The keys to being a successful growth marketer
  • How a well-defined ICP makes account-based marketing easier
  • How MQLs are being replaced by qualified pipelines
  • Why sales and marketing alignment leads to better pipeline generation

Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast

Show Agenda and Timestamps

  1. About Auseh Britt [4:15]
  2. Keys to successful growth marketing [11:35]
  3. Defining account-based marketing [13:25]
  4. Comparing ABM and legacy B2B marketing campaigns [17:23]
  5. Marketing and sales alignment [22:28]
  6. Paying it forward [26:01]
  7. Sam’s Corner [30:42]

About Auseh Britt [4:15]

Sam Jacobs: You’re listening to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Today we’ve got Auseh Britt, the VP of Growth Marketing at Terminus. She’s going to talk to us all about account based marketing, what it sounds like, and what it means when you do it well.

Before that, we want to hear from our sponsors.

This episode of The Sales Hacker Podcast is brought to you by Outreach. Outreach is the first and only engagement, and intelligence platform built by revenue innovators for revenue innovators. Outreach allows you to commit to accurate sales forecasting, replace manual process with real time guidance, and unlock actionable customer intelligence that guides you and your team to win more often. Traditional tools don’t work in a hybrid sales world. Find out why Outreach is the right solution at click.outreach.io/30NPC.

We’re also brought to you by Freshworks. Have you ever been in a digital sales room? Well, if you haven’t, your sales team should be in one soon. With Freshsales, you can develop digital customer journey maps and integrate advanced digital commerce capabilities. See how thousands of businesses use Freshsales to shorten sales cycle, and improve sales conversions faster at Freshworks.com/Freshsales.

The last is Pavilion. Pavilion’s the key to getting more out of your career. Take advantage of the Pavilion for Teams corporate membership at join.pavilion.com.

Auseh, we like to start every show with a baseball card. Tell us, what does Terminus do?

Auseh Britt: Terminus is a multi-channel engagement platform to do account based marketing. So we have B2B marketers execute their account based marketing program so they can create, accelerate and close more pipeline.

Sam Jacobs: Your title’s VP of Growth Marketing. Walk through your mandate.

Auseh Britt: I lead the demand gen function that includes marketing operations as well as field marketing. Then we have an account based marketing team, as you would imagine, being a MarTech company that is focused on ABM.

Sam Jacobs: How did you find your way into this role?

Auseh Britt: I have a very non-traditional background when it comes to marketing. My undergrad degree is in civil engineering. I went to work for the Florida Department of Transportation. What do I want to do for the rest of my life? What’s going to give me the most options? So I decided to go to business school. One of my specializations was in marketing. I went to a digital publication media company called Questex that led me to Logi Analytics, my first foray into account based marketing. That led me to Terminus, because we ended up bringing Terminus on to help us execute on those programs. So I was a customer of Terminus before I decided to join the company to lead the growth marketing team.

Keys to successful growth marketing [11:35]

Sam Jacobs: What do you think are the keys to being a successful growth marketer?

Auseh Britt: You need to be metrics-driven and analytical, but you also have the opportunity to be very creative. It’s all about generating qualified opportunities and pipeline. It’s not about generating leads so much as in MQLs, it’s making sure that those are turning into pipeline. That needs to be the focus for anybody who’s doing demand gen or growth marketing.

In growth marketing, you need to have that mindset that you are responsible for driving that pipeline, having that metrics driven approach of how you’re going to get there. I find that function within the department is also the largest spender. So you have the biggest budget, you have the most opportunities to be creative and try new things. But along with that comes the responsibility of meeting those numbers.

Defining account-based marketing [13:25]

Sam Jacobs: Let’s talk a little bit about ABM. How do you define it? What are the keys to driving successful ABM campaigns?

Auseh Britt: It’s evolving. Account based marketing is becoming B2B marketing. It’s just smart marketing. It’s a more cost efficient go-to market approach than a more expensive one. That’s because you’re funneling your resources, both your headcount and your program spend, to those accounts that are a good fit for your organization, for your product and service. It’s a smarter approach than the traditional demand gen that you’re doing, where you’re casting a wider net.

If you can really hone in on your ideal customer profile, you have to understand that first for it to work. I work for a MarTech company, it’s not about technology. To get started, think about what the strategy is and what you’re trying to achieve and understand who your ideal customer profile is. Once you do that, then you have the fit. So you know which accounts are the best fit, but they may not all be in the market at the time. The next step is finding out which ones are showing those interest signals. Then you can get even more focused on who you should be going after at that specific time. That way you can rally your SDR team, your AEs around the folks that you need to be talking to right now.

In that respect, ABM is just smarter marketing. It’s a better use of your program dollars in the long run, because you know they’re fitting and surrounding those accounts where you’re going to have the most success to convert.

Comparing ABM and legacy B2B marketing campaigns [17:23]

Sam Jacobs: Are there different tactics or elements of an ABM campaign that are different from a more traditional or a legacy B2B marketing campaign?

Auseh Britt: Multi-channel is the approach to take. Some people are heavier users of social media than other folks. Some people tend to go to conferences and trade shows more than others. Having that surround-sound multi channel approach is the best way to do it. That’s a mix of online and offline.

Events disappeared overnight with COVID. People are slowly getting more comfortable in coming back out with in-person events. It’s hard to substitute in-person events, a trade show, a conference, but also field events that are more intimate like invite-only lunch and learns or road shows.

The ABM concept is hyper focusing on those best fit accounts that are showing intent and surrounding them with multiple tactics, because I think we’ve all learned to know how many touches it takes to make an impression. How do you get involved in communities that are the watering holes of where your target personas are?

Marketing and sales alignment [22:28]

Sam Jacobs: If we went fully ABM, one of the keys would be making sure that sales and marketing are tightly aligned. How do you think about the best ways to drive alignment?

Auseh Britt: That alignment is key. When you’re doing an account based marketing strategy, if it’s just marketing that is putting out all these ads and holding these events and stuff like that, if sales is not working in lockstep in reaching out to those accounts and engaging them at the same time, it’s just you’re not going to be as successful as you can be.

That does come from shared goals. Marketing needs to feel like they’re taking partial responsibility of that pipeline building. Then having that regular cadence of meetings and communication so that sales is just well informed of all the different touchpoints and engagement metrics too. We need to make sure that we’re giving sales also that visibility so they can craft their messaging, their follow ups, they’re just better informed of what that particular buyer is looking for.

Paying it forward [26:01]

Sam Jacobs: We’re almost at the end of our time together. One of the things that we like to do is pay it forward.

Auseh Britt: I’ve started listening a lot to How I Built This with Guy Raz. If you read any of the Malcolm Gladwell stuff, one of his books was about talent but some luck that’s in there too of being at the right place in the right time

Sam Jacobs: If folks want to reach out to you, what’s the best way?

Auseh Britt: My LinkedIn profile. Happy to connect, happy to chat about all things marketing.

Sam’s Corner [30:42]

Sam Jacobs: Hey, folks. Sam’s corner. I love that conversation with Auseh Britt. I think a couple things emerged for me. To be a great demand generation/growth marketer, you need to be analytical, you need to be comfortable looking at numbers, evaluating numbers, and really tying all of your efforts back to KPIs that you measure. Beyond that, what’s really interesting is the temperament. She mentioned you get a big budget, you have to be willing to deploy that budget and stand by your investments.

Sometimes it feels like account based marketing is just more expensive marketing, and she said, it’s actually cheaper. It’s cheaper when you really tightly define your ICP. It’s not just about knowing who your people are, it’s knowing that they’re looking for your solution.

Don’t miss episode 205!

Now, before we go, we want to thank our sponsors.

  • Pavilion, the key to getting more out of your career
  • Outreach, find out why Outreach is the right solution
  • Freshworks, developing digital customer journey maps with Freshscales

Give us five stars on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the Sales Hacker community. Get any question answered and join 20,000 people answering questions and offering support and help.

Reach me at sam@joinpavilion.com and I’ll talk to you next time.

Join Us Today

Insider access to the GTM network and the best minds in tech.

Join Us Today

Insider access to the GTM network and the best minds in tech.

Trending Now

You may also like...