Account-Based Marketing Masterclass with Richard Robert - 85

In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Gen-Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso engages in a captivating conversation with Richard Robert, a seasoned #marketing expert with over a decade of diverse industry experience. Rich unravels the intricate world of #fieldmarketing, stressing the paramount importance of collaboration with sales and customer success. Together, they explore effective ways to quantify return on investment (#ROI) and unveil a spectrum of event marketing strategies, ranging from intimate gatherings to grand conferences. The episode also casts a spotlight on Rich's forthcoming Art Basel event in Miami and delves into the dynamics of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). With Rich's invaluable insights, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of field marketing strategies tailored to businesses of all sizes and industries.

Timestamps:
🎙️ Introduction and Background of Richard Robert (00:00:02)
📊 Explaining Field Marketing (00:01:27)
💡 Quantifying ROI in Field Marketing (00:02:30)
🤝 Collaboration with Sales and Customer Success (00:03:57)
🎉 Event Marketing Preferences (00:05:00)
🌟 Exciting Upcoming Event: Art Basel (00:09:13)
🎯 Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Explanation (00:11:30)
📋 Event Planning and Checklists (00:12:47)
📈 Lead Generation and Account Mapping (00:14:29)
🔌 Technology's Role in Field Marketing (00:15:45)
🏢 Preferences for Small vs. Large Companies (00:18:11)
🚀 Advantages of Working with Established Brands (00:19:27)
🤖 Humanizing Field Marketing Approaches (00:23:59)
💎 Providing Value to Event Attendees (00:25:47)
⏰ Consider Timing and Logistics (00:26:09)
🚗 Traffic and Transportation Challenges (00:26:38)
🌟 Enhancing Attendee Experience (00:27:29)
🤝 Closing remarks (00:29:59)

Richard Robert
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Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Brandon Amaroso and this is the D2Z podcast Building and growing your business from a Gen Z perspective. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amaroso, founder and president of Retention as a Service Agency. A lecture. Today. I'm talking with Rich, who oversees field marketing at JustWorks, a platform empowering SMBs to assemble self-service capabilities for payroll tax, hr and all the really exciting things that go into running a business behind the scenes. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2: 0:41

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:43

So before we jump into things, can we just give everybody a quick rundown on yourself, your background?

Speaker 2: 0:50

Absolutely Rich. Born and raised in Orange County, california, lived and worked in San Francisco, la, and now here in Miami. Got about 13 years of marketing behind my belt and a brief tech sales background as well. I would say marketing DNA really falls under B2B, account-based marketing, partnerships, field marketing, go-to-market, all those wonderful things. A large part of my time has been spent within fashion, footwear, entertainment, sports, restaurant hospitality, ad tech, e-commerce and global fintech.

Speaker 1: 1:27

That's a mouthful right there. So can you just explain or sort of lay out what field marketing is and what that exactly entails?

Speaker 2: 1:39

Yeah, so field marketing in a sense really kind of encompasses a few different channels of marketing. I would say partnership, sponsorship, thought leadership, content and events. So the main thing to look at is to consider all the things that you would need to do to build awareness but also drive lead acquisition revenue in a new or growing or key market that you're interested in penetrating.

Speaker 1: 2:11

And how do you quantify or turn on set events or activations? Because that's something for me that's very black and white, with, like e-commerce and e-commerce, but in field marketing there's a lot of different moving parts and attribution, I'm guessing, is a little bit of a nightmare to deal with. So how do you go about quantifying the ROI from what you're working on and then also assessing the potential ROI of, like, new events or activations that you're thinking about doing?

Speaker 2: 2:41

Yeah, really, when you're looking at field marketing and quantifying the ROI, I think it really starts with what are the objectives internally? Sometimes it could be as simple as we need brand awareness and that's relatively easy to quantify. It's like how many people are engaged, how many potential accounts or prospects attend. But when you kind of get a little bit more granular and you really want to focus on ROI, it's really more about collecting content. It's about distributing that content once you have it, making sure that you're building trust and credibility within your key accounts that you're targeting. It's also about how many sourced MQLs or SQLs did we have engaged, whether RSEP, to the event and then ultimately hopefully attended that event. And I think overall it's like can we say that this field marketing tactic or activation had some sort of influence on that lead to progress down the funnel and ultimately turn into a demo or booked meeting, uncovering various different decision makers within that sellable account.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And how do you actually work with sales, generally speaking? Because, there's overlap in that too.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Absolutely, and with sales there's plenty of overlap and I think in order to really have a successful chance, you've got to work with not only sales but also customer success or account management. Oftentimes it's hey guys, this is what we have in event and field marketing roadmap. Let's uncover what your target accounts are. Let's uncover what existing accounts that you're already working with, both warm and cold. Let's work with customer success and really invite some of those existing happy clients I could be evangelists or advocates for us and really ultimately sell the product more than we would want sales or employees to really sell. So there's just a lot of collaboration, sales and customer success, but generally it's a lot of hand holding. It's really putting the ownership on sales to drive attendance and do the outreach and generally that's a good idea or a good overall kind of viewpoint on what it's like working with sales and field marketing.

Speaker 1: 5:13

And when it comes to driving attendees to the event, are you typically? Do you prefer to piggyback off of others' events and then come in and support, or do you prefer to lead your own? Because, at least for us at Electric, we don't really have that massive outbound force to drive a bunch of interest or be the person leading the charge there. So I would prefer for us to piggyback off of events and be a value add in other ways. But what does that look like for you? Are you trying to lead your own events and then have others fill in the spots, or vice versa?

Speaker 2: 5:49

There's a couple ways to answer this. I think when you're the big fish or the key player in the space that you're working in, you obviously want to have that company and that field marketing manager or partnerships manager be the driving force of credibility and trust amongst the community and amongst the targets of interest. I personally tend to like to lean more into leading these kind of creative ideating options to building a field marketing plan and campaign. But again like back to who's got more of the credibility and trust in the space. So if you're working, if we're talking e-commerce and we're talking Shopify, if I'm looking to do a co-marketing event and campaign, I probably want them to lead it and I kind of take a seat back. Sometimes it's also determined by what's your budget, who's got? The big budget is really the one that kind of leads and then when you're doing co-marketing campaigns and field activations, you'll lean heavily on the one that has more of the creative juice and probably more resource and ability to execute Got it.

Speaker 1: 7:07

And one thing that I've noticed when you go to events, especially events in and around conferences or solo events, I'll show up and you can almost tell very quickly whether or not it's a good event or not. But it's hard for me to actually put a finger on what makes a good event versus what doesn't. But you just sort of know. And what are some of the things that you're looking for to have in an event, or to have them like a sponsorship opportunity, because there's obviously an endless amount of opportunities, especially in a city like Miami where there's never ending things going on. I myself get thousands of emails about, you know, tech, this tech, that happy hour, this happy hour, that. So what sort of events do you prefer and why?

Speaker 2: 8:03

So yeah, I mean I don't tend to enjoy the very standard conference pre or post conference event. I understand why that exists because you obviously want to piggy back off of something that is already in market, that's already has buzz and attraction, and you're just there to try and have your own sort of pre or post event to kind of drive attendees. I tend to like something that's going to be a little bit more intimate, a little bit more personalized, a little bit more intentful, especially having set event at a various various locations. That is already desirable by your target audience and attendees. So for me, I really can make anything happen. I just prefer, like a more intimate, something that supports, you know, conversation and thought leadership, something that's going to really evoke some emotion and leave the attendees with a strong takeaway and understanding of who the sponsors, hosts, presenters were. That, to me, is really what I like to produce or be a part of.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Got it Okay. Yeah, for me like you know where I can get the forced interactions is the best events, like forced networking, almost forced learning with other people. Because a lot of times when I go to these happy hours or things where it's just sort of a free for all, you want to gravitating towards the people that you already know and you're already hanging out with outside of those events to begin with. So I love those people like what, why? Why am I doing this, why we could just skip the happy hour, and how we do anyways. So I like the events where you have to change seats or you're assigned and I don't think that's done, that's done enough. Because when I have had that happen, you know I've met some really cool people. And then, especially if you do it like the beginning of an event or if you're at like a conference and they sort of front load that then you know a bunch of more people for the rest of the conference and it's just easier, a lot easier that way.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Absolutely, I agree.

Speaker 1: 10:07

What's a? You know what's an event that you have coming up that you're super excited about, and why yeah?

Speaker 2: 10:12

so oh, sorry good.

Speaker 1: 10:14

No, and why Like? Why are you excited about it?

Speaker 2: 10:17

Yeah, so in a couple weeks we have Art Basel in Miami and, to kind of give some sort of context, it's a for profit, artist curated galleries and you know Miami likes to do the Miami thing to a lot of events and things happening in the community where it becomes a very like mass commercial, commercialized experience and you've got celebrity and money and music and fashion and all the things under the sun which is all considered art.

Speaker 2: 10:48

But generally speaking, our Basel is a artist showcase with a lot of media coverage and a lot of, you know, international and national attention. So I've got a experiential artist gallery where four sponsors just works and myself with Adobe Commerce, future Commerce and Absolute Web here in South Florida are basically putting our dollars together and doing the outreach as a group, hopefully to be very successful, and we're supporting 12 local artists with a gallery, experiential space, two stories with evening events, grand opening parties, workshops, all the things. So that's what I have. That's coming up really, really fast and I'm excited for and it'll be my first time really from a corporate level being a part of our Basel, so exciting.

Speaker 1: 11:42

So I got a question for you on the event side before we dive into that. You've mentioned account based marketing a few times and, for those that are listening, can you define what account based marketing or ABM is and like? How does that differ versus another way that that you might approach it?

Speaker 2: 12:00

Absolutely. So. You know, abm is really highly targeted, personalized marketing channels and strategy and campaigning. That's focusing on a subset of high value accounts that your sales and marketing teams have identified and within each of those accounts they are kind of broken down by number of buying committee. Is it one person, is it multiple people? Then broken down into what does the sales cycle look like? And is this an enterprise, mid market, smb account? And then you'll decide what sort of campaign they should fall under, whether it's one to one for enterprise or, you know, one to few for mid market or one to many for SMB.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Got it. Yeah, I feel like ABM is a more you know, enterprise sales philosophy or you need to have the ability to execute that, and that's something that requires a certain type of team and things like that. But going back to the events, going to this art Basel one, do you have like a checklist of all the things that you need to get done for each event, or how does that typically work?

Speaker 2: 13:12

Yes, I have a massive checklist which is even needs to get done as we speak. I wanna say that checklist and that process really starts from budget, like what is your budget? Do you need more budget to really execute what you want and what you think will make it successful? So that's when partnership co-marketing process really begins. But for me it's like is this an owned event? Are we starting with a creative brief and then seeing that through execution without any other co-sponsors or co-marketers? And then from there, what is the desirable target account or attendee? When do we wanna do this? Where do we wanna do this? Where is the concentration of our sellable accounts? And then from there it's like date, time, creative development in terms of, like a registration, rsvp, landing page, or are we sending direct mail pieces to our desired accounts that we wanna engage with? Like there's so many layers and process that goes into this and very strict timelines and very specific objectives. But that's generally kind of like where I start, where I begin.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Got it. And when it comes to the lead generation, your sales team already has a target list that they're feeding into to drive attendees. And are you doing like account mapping with the other folks that are hosting the event with you too?

Speaker 2: 14:45

Yeah, good question. Generally speaking, you're gonna go scrub through your CRM. You're gonna look at, okay, within this geo location, how many accounts are within CRM that we wanna engage with. Then if it's a co-marketed event with another tech sales tech company and platform, then I'm gonna leverage what they have within their CRM and can they make introductions to us and vice versa. So it's a combination of creating cold account lists attendee lists rather and then warm existing to say that this activation accelerated the deals in progress. So it's a combination of a lot of different things. And again back to working with customer success or account management to also drive potential upsell or cross sell opportunities with already existing clients and customers.

Speaker 1: 15:45

And how does technology factor into that? Because I know we've chatted in the past about and especially since you've been out of a variety of different companies and different that are indifferent I would say financial positions from a big public company like Shopify with hypothetically large budgets, but it may not actually be the case. And then you have startups who could have no budget and no tech, or they could have just gotten a bunch of funding and they're spraying the money around like crazy. How do you deal with the technology stack and how that intertwines with the way that you're able to work with partners or work with your sales team on events, and is that something that you address like when you first start at a new company, or is it an evolving process? Because I know there's things like cross beam, which can start to get pretty expensive. I've seen a lot of companies with CRMs that are just you might as well just start over at this point like it's just an absolute nightmare. How does that play into your process when you got going on?

Speaker 2: 16:47

Yeah, I think that depends on when you come into a company you're kind of already assessing what they already have in their tech stack and which tech you're gonna really utilize and kind of share with your other partner managers and partner marketers. Generally speaking, it's either if you don't have the budget, you don't have the tech and you can't get the budget to get it, you're really gonna have to do a lot of this manually, but there are ways to do it. Or you're working with your partner marketer and manager that you're doing this event with and finding out what they have in their tech stack. Can you use it with them? Are you using cross beam to identify those common interest target accounts, for example, like with our Basel and the group I just mentioned that are putting this together?

Speaker 2: 17:40

I've used Splash for my landing registration page, where others are using Eventbrite and don't have a commercial license, and we're using a free version where right now I can't even modify the typeface all that well because I don't have the commercialized license. So then I'm leaning on the other partners. Hey, can you create my landing page and use my brand guideline deck and kind of build it for me? That happens a lot and you have to get scrappy sometimes and it is what it is, but usually that's kind of how it goes.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Got it.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Yeah, we love the scrappiness, like at Scaleless, right now going through a similar process where I know all the tech that we should be using but we don't have the means or the justification to start using it quite yet, and so almost like re-learning how to do some of these things in a way that isn't as easy, which makes it kind of painful.

Speaker 1: 18:39

There's not a place that where it would make sense, but like going into drinks, for example, sort of starting from scratch but with more budget. And so the ability to set up the hub spot in the exact way that I want it all the way from the way that we intake leads on the website through our various steel stages that we have for various products, and even the little things like having the hub spot cross beam slack integration so that we're getting notified of account overlap automatically. All that stuff can definitely make your life a lot easier if it's set up, and it's set up and documented too, because as you start to grow and you get new team members in there, it's so important to just like to take the notes, to do the things that are going to make it, so that you have one source of truth and getting everybody aligned on the same page is very important.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 19:30

And for me I see you see a lot of tools that like are made for the SMB market and then they work their way up market. You know pretty easily you have companies like Shopify where they built a product for SMBs and now they're working with some of the larger, you know, enterprise brands in the world, same of hub spot and versus sales force, and I think that's sort of the way to go. If I was building in. I guess I am building a new type product but probably the SMBs build for ease of use and then you can scale up to have like more composability, flexibility in the product and software.

Speaker 2: 20:03

Yeah, absolutely, and I could also speak to that from just works kind of their viewpoint is you know, we've built this product to help. You know, the, you know, growing, not just even tech, but it could be a restaurant, it could be a cafe, it could be a gym, a hair salon, nail salon, whatever. You know, if you have more than five employees and you know, or sub 200, like, we can work with them. But ideally we wanna be able to support them and potentially graduate from our software and service to have to go to something much larger, because now there are 350 plus employees that we can't support. But yeah, I've seen it all. I think you know. You've seen it all and experienced it. You know first hand. You know you've got a lot of smaller fish that are starting building their product, launching new products to work upstream. So you know it's a competitive but fun space.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah, there's no doubt that that space has a lot of you know various competitors, and even in like the actual space, there's a lot of various you know tech providers or I didn't really tech providers, but a lot of different businesses who talk a lot and say a lot of things but then really gotta dig in to see what it is they actually do. And then I almost need like a running spreadsheet of all these different companies and all the various claims of you know, we do this or we do that. It gets a little overwhelming at some point, especially separating you know the BS from, like you know, from what's real.

Speaker 2: 21:37

Absolutely, absolutely. I've seen it.

Speaker 1: 21:40

So being at, you know some smaller companies and also some larger ones. What's your preference? Where do you prefer to work?

Speaker 2: 21:49

That's the interesting situation where I've been in both seats and I think if I'm happy to be in, you know, a small early startup as long as the autonomy is provided and given and maintained you know it's exciting to really build and get your hands dirty and try different things and build a team and understand what you're.

Speaker 2: 22:12

You know what you need from your team to really help the startup kind of grow and grab their next round of funding and show proof of concept, et cetera. So like I like that. But I will say that when you're working with a larger company that already has well-established credibility and trust and brand awareness, it makes your job extremely easier. And you get to, you know, be a little bit more granular in your tactics and your strategies and you know you then start working more with ABM and personalization and very purposeful and temple marketing campaigns. So like if I had a preference, I think it just depends on, you know, the product of the vertical industry and the targets of interest and prospects that we're interested in kind of obtaining. I gotta say you know larger is probably more of my interest Bigger budgets, more awareness, sometimes Yadavents we love Yadavents, so yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course, miami events.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Exactly only wanna work with business. I'll say it for you Rich only wants to work with businesses that throw out parties in Miami and also invite me.

Speaker 2: 23:28

I'll help you coordinate.

Speaker 1: 23:29

I'll help you coordinate the guest list next time, don't worry. Fantastic Gotta be a value add or I can't. And also, when you're the big guy, you already have that brand name recognition too. So it's like being a Nike versus being a startup shoe company, like that type of deal. You have that sort of that swagger, that awareness, and so people look at you already as an authority versus not.

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yeah, no for sure. And I think when you kind of use that reference and analogy with sports apparel and footwear, yeah, you could be Nike and you know that just using the Nike brand and name will immediately garnish attention. But it also carries some level of expectation amongst your community and then requires more money and budget. But sometimes with the early companies say, like I don't know, on Running or Hoka, any of those like kind of up and rising footwear brands, athletic sports brands like you gotta assume that they have again the autonomy to get creative because there's not as much red tape and politics and what have you. So it's give or take, but just from that example you can easily find pros and cons.

Speaker 1: 24:51

Yeah, so going into next year. For those that are listening with startups, or if are your businesses, like what's one tip or trick that you would give them? They're thinking about dipping their toes into the world of field marketing.

Speaker 2: 25:09

I think you gotta humanize the entire process, and the way I would kind of set this up or get you to think about is whoever you're interested in engaging with, they have so many other options of things to do after work or before work, like time with friends, time with family.

Speaker 2: 25:28

You're a significant other. So if you're going to do something and you're gonna create a campaign and you're gonna utilize field marketing and perhaps ABM tactics and all the other things and Omni channel this and that, like, do it with a sense of like a human sales approach, human, like, humanize the whole thing and provide something that is gonna give value and cause and create some sort of emotion and takeaway that they could say, wow, rich and the team at Just Works and or at Drinks and Brandon. I went to this event and I didn't have much expectation but, damn, I left that feeling like it was 100% worth it Because, again, you could be doing something else and if you're a founder, entrepreneur, c-suite executive, you probably have the money to do whatever it is that you're attending, like if it's a bowling event or if it's a, you know a buyout at a Michelin restaurant and a guided chef, you know cooking class like, do something that's cool and interesting, that is thoughtful that the target attendee wouldn't either think of doing themselves or couldn't afford to do it themselves.

Speaker 1: 26:39

That's probably my biggest risk. Yeah, like I've seen a couple like somebody had like a Drake concert event and like a suite, like yeah, obviously brands are gonna come to that. That's cool, you don't just get that. So, more Drake concerts, less happy hours. I can't stand the happy hours. They're so like you know, they're so overplayed.

Speaker 2: 26:59

I agree, I agree.

Speaker 1: 27:02

It's a great happy hour.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Or a Drake event. Who did that?

Speaker 1: 27:06

I wanna say it was in Vetterate and, like you know, two or three other companies.

Speaker 1: 27:12

But that like the suite the box you get, like the close, you know, contact with the merchants.

Speaker 1: 27:17

It was like the two events we did with Recharge at the Dodger Suite, which actually I love the Dodger Suite in the games, but getting there is such a pain in the ass that like you have to factor that in too, and so they would be far more successful if it wasn't at Dodger Stadium, which I don't really know how you get around that in LA, like it's just an absolute nightmare to get anywhere. So wherever you're having the event, it doesn't really matter. But you know, think about that, the time, the date, like is it a Friday or is it a Tuesday? All that stuff you have to think about because people have families, people have other shit going on. And so I remember, you know we went to the Beyonce concert with Yoptho and a few others in Miami, but it was on a Friday night and you had to be at the location, I wanna say like 6.30 or 7. On a Friday in Hollywood, florida, and I believe it took me about 90 minutes to get from Brickle to Hollywood, which should only take like 22 minutes 20, exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:15

And my God was that horrifying. So you know you had people dropping left and right who had already RCPED, who were just like I can't make this work, so it has to. I feel like you have to take all that into context. What sort of date it falls on the city too. I can't think of a worse city to have to deal with Friday night traffic than Miami. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 28:38

But yeah, and that goes down to you know. Again, back to like thinking the entire journey through. Like you're a desired attendee, do you set up a pickup point and you send a Sprinter van or some sort of you know caravan. That makes this a little bit more engaging and fun and exciting and removes the need to drive and figure out if you use an Uber or Lyft or whatever it may be Like. That would have been something that whoever put on that event should consider. Like you know where are all the attendees coming from. You should have their location or office or something identified in the RCPE registration page. You know, figure out, like from A to Z, like every touch point possible to make it easier for the engaged target and account.

Speaker 1: 29:20

So yeah Well, thank you so much for coming on. I love getting a chat through this field. Marketing is something that I don't really do much of at all, but I guess I'm starting to dip my toes into a little bit more drinks, and actually, when this episode drops in two days, on a Wednesday, I'll be going to Sonoma, so we got a booth at a wine conference in out in California, so we got a couple dinners. So I'm gonna do my best job to be the rich of drinkscom, and we'll see if I picked up any tips and tricks from this podcast, though. But before we hop off, can you let everybody know where they can find you online and connect?

Speaker 2: 29:59

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Richard Robert, two eyes for the second Roman numeral. You can find me there or Instagram if you want. Richard Robert, again. Two eyes and yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming on For everybody listening. As always, this brand and Morosa. You can find me at brandandmorosacom or electricmarquinacom and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.