Why Mid-Market Companies Are Betting Big on ABM in 2025

0:00One thing is, um, account-based marketing is very big. So just those that don't know, account-based marketing is you are basically targeting like a whole company and a bunch of people that work there. So like Coca-Cola, for example. Explain account-based marketing, but first explain why companies actually do account-based marketing versus just general marketing in general. So account-based marketing, it's more targeted. Why? Why would a company do that for everyone listening? So you don't want to just broad strokes target like random people that are interested in like SEO, for example. Let's say you have SEO software, right?

0:30Right. Account-based marketing, when you target those, the accounts are typically the LTVs a lot higher, right? That's one piece of it. LTVs a lot higher. And then also your messaging is a lot clearer too. You're personalizing a lot of your messages, right? That's what a lot of these account-based marketing tools do. You're personalizing, which means the response rates are a lot higher and it'll take you longer to win the deal. But often the deals are a lot bigger too. And a lot, especially in B2B, a lot of these, why they like account-based marketing is because of that reason, right? It's more efficient, it's more personalized, and you win bigger deals.

1:02Yeah, Eric hit it on the head. It's mainly used in B2B. There's probably some B2C use cases. I haven't seen them yet, but if someone's selling something for like$70 million, like a jet, you can do account-based marketing there as well. But yeah, the reason Eric's saying you want to go after specifically people at Coca-Cola, specific job titles, specific departments, because if you're selling something for 20, 50, a hundred million bucks or a hundred thousand or a million dollars, like high ticket price, right? When we're talking about 10, 20, we're not talking about dollars, we're talking about thousands of dollars.

1:34And when you get into the millions, you can't actually target everyone because you're going to waste your marketing dollars due to the fact that most people can't afford what you're selling. Yep. So going into this a little bit, I'll share some stories here. So I saw a post from Adam Robinson from RB2B. So he's known for building in public. He's grown retention.com and then his B2B version of it very quickly. I think they're doing like 24 million ARR right now, which is pretty damn good, right? But the issue is his churn is through the roof. Now, the problem with building in public, you and I have called this out before.

2:08This is why we don't like sharing revenue. We don't like sharing all these things, right? It's because it isn't really favorable at all. Sure, you're really inspiring a lot of people. And sure, you're getting reach, but you're not getting the right reach. So in this case, when we look at the people that are requesting demos, there's a couple of competitors in there that are in the account-based marketing space. And we saw one come in. It was a CTO and co-founder of one of the companies that had raised a lot of money, actually. And we're like, oh, yeah, he's looking for a conversation. Everyone else was like an account-based marketing person or like a CMO or like a director of marketing.

2:41This person was a CTO. Like, what does a CTO want to get on the call, right? Maybe to buy the company. Yeah, maybe. But I clearly mentioned it's like an early stage thing, right? So I think more than anything, it's kind of discovery. And here's the thing, Jason Lemkin mentioned this. Jason Lemkin founded Adobe Echo. Sastr, right? No, he founded Sastr, but before that he founded EchoSign, which is now Adobe Sign. So he sold it for like$100 million, which he regrets to this day because he thinks he could have sold it for a lot more. But the point is, Jason's like, look, today in SaaS, and we've talked about this on the podcast, that the cost of developing software is coming down a lot.

3:14And the problem with RB2B, with Adam, just to finish the thought on that one, is because you talk about RB2B so much this year, like 37 competitors popped up. And the latest one was who? Zoom Info, right? They just copied it straight up. And so it's not really favorable. Guys, we're reinforcing this. This is a perfect example. I love Adam. I think it's great. But that actually put his company at a disadvantage, I believe, right? And they took too long to execute. He called out the mistakes that he made there. Now, Jason, going back to Jason Lemkin, he's like, look, for products now, you can't just have like one product line.

3:46You're going to have to have multiple things and you're going to have to ship very quickly. You're basically screwed if you don't have a strong CTO. And in this case right now, like I was talking to my CTO about, it's like, if they want to copy, they can copy. It's going to take them a while to do it, but they can sure as I'll copy. And the cost of developing software is a lot lower now. So I'm like, yeah, we should just shut up a little more. So that's all it is. We're not going to reveal traction metrics or revenue metrics or anything like that. I can tell you we're getting demos. I can tell you what we're learning from these calls.

4:12But I've always felt the nagging thought, it's like, yeah, we don't want to share too much. The only time I've seen sharing being really beneficial is if it helps you attract an audience and you can monetize the audience. And I'll give you a great example of this is Pat Flynn, where he would have smart passive income and he would share his income reports. John Lee Dumas did the same thing. It helps you build a really big audience fast and you can sell to those people on replicating your formula and generate affiliate revenue. You're not relying on SEO traffic or anything like that for that affiliate income.

4:46You're just gaining a large following because everyone wants to follow your journey from making zero to call it hundreds and thousands a month or millions a year. And they were like, oh, cool. You're breaking down each step of the way each and every single week or each month so that way people can replicate it. And it's a great way to generate income faster. Yeah, it's great. The problem is the reason Pat Flynn stopped doing it is because at a certain point when your revenue gets big, you're not relatable anymore. dude, I remember I used to do the marketing for Timothy Sykes. I think you used to as well, right?

5:17Single grain, yeah. It's back when I first joined single grain. And I remember with Timothy Sykes, he would talk about how I took my bar mitzvah money of like X thousand dollars and turned it into like X million. And those millions just kept growing to like five, ten, whatever. And it started becoming out of reach where people were like, well, I'm not going to make 10 million or 20 million or whatever you ended up making. So what Tim started doing was, and he's generated more signups and more revenue from this. He's like, check out how I made X dollars from starting with like 10 grand or five grand.

5:50It was something really tiny. And maybe he even started with a thousand dollars of just such a tiny amount. And then what he did is he showcased how he was making like three, four or 5 ,000,$10 ,000 a month. Much more relatable, generated more signups and revenue by using smaller numbers than larger numbers. It's gotta be relatable and it's gotta be a realistic. So I'll give you a couple of interesting facts from these calls. One thing is, when you're talking to these mid-market to enterprise companies, they're all ready to go in January. We had a lot of these calls in December to like, yeah, no, we definitely want this and we're ready to start in January.

6:26And also the other thing from these calls too that I've learned is that if you have a product that's very understandable and they just get it immediately, these demo calls are taking 15 minutes. Sometimes it's like seven minutes or so, right? They're just like, okay, what are next steps here? They're ready to go. And I think what I've also realized from the ABM space is most of the products suck. And I'm just like, how is it that there's some of these products that are doing multiple nine figures a year, but all the people on these calls are complaining about it. I'm like, how much are you paying for this thing?

6:52It's like$120 ,000. I'm like,$120 ,000, that's the base cost. Plus there's ad fees too on top of that. I'm like, how does it? And they're like, oh yeah, we're going to churn next year. And everyone's saying this one product, they're like, oh yeah, we're going to churn next year. and then I'm like okay the other thing I've learned too is we need to move very quickly on this we can't just sit on it especially because I'm talking about it right now the faster we move the better right because everyone's like this is a duh thing and then the second thing is okay all the ABM stuff sucks out there so if I were running an ABM software company why wouldn't I just look at this and just like try to integrate it in right so you know we the other thing I would say is both my CTO and I are on a lot of these calls.

7:35So we're doing a lot of customer development on these discovery calls as well. So we double the calls up. It's not just a sales discovery call. It's also just, it's a customer discovery call to figure out what are they using right now and what is it that they need? What are they struggling with? Cause everyone is like, Oh, we're not really doing account-based marketing right now, but we want to spend a lot next year on account-based marketing. I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Right. Um, the other, the final thing I'll give you here is agencies are freaking cheap. Okay. So with the ABM, companies, like the mid-market enterprise companies, how much would you pay for this a month?

8:06It's like a couple thousand dollars, right? And then as the platform fee. And I talked to agencies. How much would you pay for this a month? It's not worth more than $100 a month,$200 a month. And then by the way, there's this one asshole that showed up to the call. He tried to flip it into an acquisition call. I was like, you motherfucker. Sorry, pardon my language. What do you mean acquisition as in to try to buy the company? He was like, how does this relate to single grain? I was like, oh God, he's trying to flip it, right? And then we were showing him the software. He talked down to us. This is the only call where he talked down to us, right?

8:38And I'm like, I will never do a deal with you. And then at the end, he said, hey, are you interested in selling it? No, in the middle of the call, he was like, well, you know, he tried to reposition the calls. Like, well, you know, we're doing acquisition stuff, blah, blah. And then he's talking about the software. It's like, yeah, you know, this is honestly not that special, blah, blah. And I'm just like, this guy's a YPO guy, by the way. So, I'm like. Is it in your chapter? No, not in my chapter. Oh, that's good. Yeah, not in my chapter. We might see him at the event. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah.

9:04You can't do anything about it. But it's a good sign that people are trying to buy it. And I learned this really early on. When I had an agency back in the day, someone said to me. ACS. ACS, yeah. It no longer exists. I met up with a guy in Santa Monica. And this guy was executive for Fox. Ended up spitting off his own company. Raised a lot of money. I remember in the meeting, he's just like, yeah, you don't really like this agency business, right? I'm like, it's a headache, but it's not bad. It's a lot of work. He's like, yeah, if you're not happy with it and all this, he was trying to make me position it that I don't want the business.

9:43And he's just like, I can just take it off your hands. And I was like, I'm good. I like my money. This is ACS. This is ACS. And ACS ended up winding down anyways. It didn't end up doing well in the long run. We had client concentration. And at the time we started crazy egg a little during the ACS days and software started taking off. And we're just like, huh, reoccurring, no concentration, more predictable, great growth, no cash flow issues because you charge people. Yeah. You can get annual plans. I was like, huh, this is a better business. So eventually the ad agency ended up winding down. And my one of my biggest lessons that I learned, and this is a sidetrack is when you have something that's getting traction, because when I screwed ACS, we're generating millions of dollars in revenue.

10:37You know, looking back on it, if I never just close it down, because I didn't want to end up doing it, if I just kept focusing on that, I still could have done all the software, but just focus on having an agency hire the right people. I would have had a really large ad agency in today's world. By the way, we should talk about our strategies because our strategies are similar here. I'm really just looking at how, not even you, but other software companies have done this when they have managed services. So when you look at Neil's software, you look at Answer to Public, you look at Uber's Adjust, he has these service tabs in there, right?

11:09Services, and you can basically sign up for software or sign up for the agency, right? We look at it the same way too. In fact, the directive has been, hey guys, we do a lot of B2B work already, some e-commerce, but we're going to try to surface these leads more. If their traffic is going down or whatever or they're declining on something, we'll just surface a pop-up or something within the app. But this is a scenario where I don't see it as a distraction, whereas before in the past, I might have been doing courses and other stuff. This to me, they kind of go hand in hand. I even workshopped this with ChatGPT.

11:40I was like, hey, and then ChatGPT was like, oh, before you were super distracted. Now it's like you're actually very focused, even with the software. Wait, you're asking ChatGPT what to figure out if you're distracted? I was like, how distracted was I before on a scale of 1 to 10 compared to right now? And I listed out all the projects from before in 2020 versus now. And it's like, oh yeah, your focus is like an 8 or 9 out of 10. Before it was like a 2 or 3 out of 10. That's pretty cool. I never thought about using ChatGPT to - You can use it for anything. Anything. Anything. You can use it to diagnose your sicknesses too, whenever you're sick.

12:11Is this easier to go to the doctor or just - No, just pull this thing out and ask what's going on. Or do what I do and don't go to the doctor and don't die. Just take it. Yeah, that's what you do. All right. Let's pick another one. I have a big list for you here, Neil. Go for it. I'm giving it to you. You pick. All right.

12:32Accenture hits a$1.2 billion milestone. I'm curious what that is because I have no idea. They just added more generative AI revenue. So it's solid for them. Click on that link. So they generated$1.2 billion in AI revenue. Yeah. For a quarter. So yeah, we had another milestone quarter in Gen AI with 1.2 billion in new bookings and approximately 500 million in revenue. I feel like this might be helpful for me to just talk about that sales guy that I paid 500 bucks to again. I paid an Accenture guy. He does sales. He does AI sales there. I paid him 500 bucks. And he's like, all we do, all they're really selling right now is staff augmentation.

13:09I was like, oh, so you guys aren't like building products or things like that for people. It's like, not really. So they're selling ours, but they're selling a lot of hours and it's working for them. I'm like, okay, so if you're a CEO, what would you do with the company right now? He's like, I would train everyone on how to actually use this AI stuff. I was like, oh, okay. But the fact that they're hitting these numbers and the fact that a guy like that is saying that means that there's so much opportunity here. So much opportunity. Although I do believe we're going to not necessarily have like a AI bubble, like the dot-com boom, but I do believe there's going to be a day of reckoning for AI in which there's all these companies like the Jasper.io that are just going to crush or Jasper.ai that are just going to get crushed and eventually disappear.

13:53I don't know if they're dead. That's the thing. I think they're still around. Yeah, they raised a lot of money. Of course, they're still around, but why do you need Jasper when you can just use ChatGPT or Gemini? I really wonder about some of these. There's one called Copy AI, and then they're like, oh, can you be an advisor back in the day? Um, you know, I said, no, but like they seem like they're the one guy that's posting there, their CMOs is like, he gets a lot of reach on his posts. And then there's a, there's a couple of other ones out there, but you don't really hear that much about them anymore.

14:23Dude, I'm on the Jasper.ai homepage. The AI you're marketing deserves. Elevate your team, your brand and your impact with AI that's built for marketing. Get a demo. You and I know this. When Jasper first came out, we'd see their ads all over Instagram and Facebook. I'm like, Hey, create content in seconds. and what they're doing is they're adding tons of users. They raised money at a billion dollar valuation, but their users were churning like it was nobody's business. It's hard. I think the problem is if you raise too much and then you have a sea change and then ChatGPT just basically releases your features, you're basically stuck.

14:59And they're relying on ChatGPT. So it's just like, oh, cool. ChatGPT is just giving it away for free. Why do I need to pay? So because we're talking about Jasper, There's this AI bombshell that dropped. So Vercel mentioned that AI crawlers that inform ChatGP and Claude do not render JavaScript yet. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

15:36The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into a... With Shopify on your side.

16:06Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school. Shopify.com slash marketing school. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in and it totally changes the game. Framer is the design first no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours. Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code.

16:42It was easy to use and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together. No issues with versions or miscommunication. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter.

17:12Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS. Framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. Ah, I did not know that. So Google is the only LLM that does this. So Gemini is the only LLM that's crawling your JavaScript right now. So basically, you need server-side rendering, you need all this other stuff. ISR, SSG, I don't know what that means. Do you know what that means? But server-side rendering, that makes sense. But the highlight over here is that the data indicates that while ChatGP and CloudCrawlers do fetch JavaScript files, they don't execute them.

17:53They can't read client-side rendered content. So that's something for people to pay attention to. This is like the old days of starting SEO. Like Google couldn't render JavaScript before. No, yes. Like stuff like Ajax before, but like that's like stuff like from 13 years ago. So people forget Google's been doing this for a long time. All these other AI platforms are going to need quite a bit of time to catch up. And I think I read somewhere that Google is using some of the other LLMs out there to train their own. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And Google is also smart too. You see the thing in your YouTube where it says, oh, there's an option to block third-party AI, to stop third-party LLMs from training off of your videos.

18:34And it's, so it warns you there, right? But when you go look at it, YouTube's already turned it on because Google doesn't want everyone training off YouTube. Yeah, they're like Gemini can train off of it. Other people, no, you can't. Because that video data is so valuable. It's very valuable. So that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. and don't forget to check out marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to grow your agency faster and we'll see you tomorrow.