Mastering the Full-Funnel Strategy With Natasha Tibbetts of Swell Media

Natasha Tibbetts: So we look at some data from Sixth Sense and it’s saying on average, you’ve got a buying committee of at least 10 people. Of those 10 people, each of them need about an average of 16 touch points. And to boot on top of that, you’re competing against about three other vendors that are in the consideration set because there’s an average of four.

So if we’re looking at all of that in the equation, right? That’s 640 different touch points throughout that buying journey. So one, it’s no wonder that the B2B sales cycle is so long. It’s about 11 plus months, depending on the complexity of your business, it’s even longer.

Intro: Welcome to Demand Bites, the podcast where B2B demand generation leaders find the strategies they need to grow. I’m Ross Howard, Director of Product Marketing at Inbox Insight.

And in just 15 minutes, my guests and I will uncover what’s broken in the B2B buyer journey and provide real world strategies you can put to work right away. So whether you’re looking for innovative demand gen techniques or expert advice on accelerating sales, this podcast gives you the tools you need to succeed.

Ready to identify, educate, and convert your ideal customer profile. Or at least learn how other people are doing it. Let’s dive in. Natasha Tibbetts, VP of Media from S

Hello everybody, and join me in welcoming Natasha, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Natasha Tibbetts: Thanks for having me, Ross. I’m really happy to be here.

Ross Howard: I’m really excited for this one. We had a really good briefing call beforehand. I’m really looking forward to this discussion. Let’s jump in. Why B2B marketing?

Natasha Tibbetts: Got into advertising, went to school for it. And started at an internship at an ad agency. And they were actually primarily focused on a lot of B2B clients in the Boston market, you’ve got high tech, higher ed, healthcare and finance that are really hot verticals.

And, just organically, you end up falling into that, that B2B sector. I spent about four years of my career there. And learned a whole lot. I took a really, I would say like a mini pivot and went over to a really fast growing tech company at the time. They were really positioned as an extension to agency arms, right?

So almost as if we were a part of the agency. So I was a strategist and a planner there. And then after about three years or so, I decided. My home got some perspective. My home is really that like a small to midsize ad agency. And so landed at. At the time, Swell Media, and I’ve been here for nearly a decade.

Ross Howard: Awesome. What a rundown.

Jumping a little bit back to the clients that you help, what do you think when you’re working with customers at the moment, we are seeing a shift where people are talking about brand versus demand and pushing us for lower funnel. Programs in order to hit revenue goals. How do you work with clients and what challenges are they facing when they are just focusing on that lower part of the funnel?

Natasha Tibbetts: I would say there’s a whole lot of data that helps us really get some footing. And so I can walk you through some of what’s out there, right? And I’m sure you’re very privy to it. But for those that are listening we ninety-five / five rule, right? And so the idea is that 95 percent of your buyers are not in the market.

And 5 percent potentially are. And so when you’re solely focused on reaching that 5%, of course, you’re, at some point, going to dry the well, right? You’re going to have limits because you’re going after your ICP or your ICP segments. You might be layering in a target account list or multiple TALs.

You are ultimately getting more precise and targeted with who you’re going after. But again, very naturally, you’re just going to have that limit. And so if we can take a step back and say there’s 95%, so the majority of your audience is not in the market right now, right? We take a step back and it’s really multifaceted, I would say.

So one aspect of it is that. You want to open it up to a fuller funnel because you want to meet your audience based on where they’re at in their journey, right? And so as on the ad agency team, as we’re partnering with our marketing teams, it’s really understanding. Hey, we need to make sure that when we’re talking, we’re opening up our lens and we’re trying to start at the upper funnel, right?

We’re building our pool, which is incredibly critical. We want to make sure that we’re meeting them with what we’re saying, how we’re saying, and when we’re saying the message. When you think about the upper funnel you’re going to want to really cater your message to be more informational, more educational.

It’s very possible that the people that you’re going after, you want to assume that they’ve heard of your brand and they know what your solutions are, but sometimes they don’t. And so just making sure that they have a really good foundation and those messages, might have call to actions that are like, learn more, come find out why.

Sometimes no CTAs at all. And then you build this natural progression. And you might get into the mid funnel, and you start to provide a little bit more value by sharing some content or assets that might be valuable to that end user, and those might be infographics, checklists, all sorts of things.

And then you get to the lower funnel and really want to make sure that you’re tailoring those messages to be more actionable call to actions. All that to say is that, that’s a piece of it. The other piece is that in that 95 percent you’ve got a growing buying committee just in general, right?

So we look at some data from Sixth Sense and it’s saying, On average, you’ve got a buying committee of at least 10 people. Of those 10 people, each of them need about an average of 16 touchpoints. And to boot, on top of that, you’re competing against about three other vendors that are in the consideration set because there’s an average of four.

So if we’re looking at all of that in the equation that’s 640 different touch points throughout that buying journey. So one, it’s no wonder that the B2B sales cycle is so long. It’s about 11 plus months. Depending on the complexity of your business, it’s even longer. And so to get back to your original question, it’s like we can hinge on that data, right?

And say, here’s what we see. Here’s how we’re being informed. The proof is in the pudding of this data. I think the important sentiment there is going to be if you can really inspire your prospects. So you’re 95 percent of folks who believe and trust in your brand today, they’re going to be that much more ready for your brand when they become that 5 percent and, and they’re ready to buy.

Ross Howard: That is a fantastic answer. Really detailed. What’s the best practice look like then? Say you’ve got a client they’re willing to experiment and have that test and learn mindset. They want to be doing the right things. What’s the best practice for implementing a full funnel approach?

Natasha Tibbetts: So maybe your path of least resistance is starting with a B2B tech company like an Inbox Insight, right?

And being able to take advantage of not only your typical content syndication program whatever flavor that is, right? But then layering in more of a full funnel and saying, okay, we know that we have access to this contact level targeting. So we can say. We’ve engaged them with intent, with all the criteria that we’ve layered into how to output qualified leads, and we’re now adding nurture emails so that we’re continuing to get in front of them, it feels more of a one to one connection, we’re connecting with them with, meaningful information and valuable assets, and then in addition to that, we’re layering in right, Lower funnel display retargeting again at that contact level.

So you could achieve that through a solution like that. In addition, I would highly recommend having some sort of programmatic element. And so whether that’s making a case and through my own trials and tribulations, here’s a, what I would explain is that. Make some space for a pilot program to again, test and learn, fail fast, make a case to say, here’s how this is influencing our definition of success.

And then make a business case to expand because the ideal would be having some sort of always on evergreen programmatic approach that allows us to build in different tactics, right? That meet again, that contact at different points in their journey. And whether you’re layering in video, audio, standard and native display, you’ve got targeted emails layered in there, there’s all, unique rich media units.

There’s all sorts of ways that obviously you can integrate. Test and learn at the end of the day, each contact is also unique. And so they might take to different content formats differently. And so just making sure that you have a good balance of that in the mix is going to be incredibly important. But I would say having some sort of a semblance of if they’re on the hook again for some sort of lead goal, which they likely are, you want to make sure that you’re digging your roots into.

Meeting those goals by having some guaranteed lead aspect or you’re taking historical data to, again, really double down on your tried and true what’s driving your quantity of quality, what’s serving your ROAS right and then making space for that pilot in order to get you to making a business case for better footing in the future.

Ross Howard: What are some ways that you can demonstrate ROI for customers? We’ve been talking about full funnel tactics and being more integrated, but when it comes to, they’re asking you, where’s the money? How are you showing that at the moment when you’re in B2B with these long sales cycles?

Natasha Tibbetts: So that’s a great question.

I think the best way to describe that would be. Talking about a video, for example, right? So we have a video that’s typically an upper funnel tactic. We know that folks really engage with the video format. And while again, it’s still somewhere where it might be informational, educational at that part in the process.

What we can do is potentially put an overlay over a video. So no matter where a user is watching this video, whether it’s on, online video on a website where the experience might allow for that video to be clickable or more often than not, it’s going to potentially be in the streaming realm, right?

We’ll put some sort of QR code or something that, you know, If that contact is inclined to engage further or explore further, they have an opportunity to essentially click through. What I would say is that would be a trackable scenario, right? So that we would understand. Those coming from a video format are then getting to a unique landing page and we’re able to understand then, again, what are they doing on the back end to engage?

Are they compelled to do something? Are they completely bouncing and abandoning? And how do we, again, get that information and then just make proper optimizations? But I would say that’s a great way to do it. Just keeping in mind at the end of the day, whether you’re talking upper funnel or even full funnel strategy, a brand study is always a great way to do that, right?

And so if you can, you have the dollars to carve out to invest in a brand study to get those pre and post lifts and that lift information, I think that’s going to be really important. And then, depending on who you work with for the brand tool to get that study, Depending on the initiative and your goals, there’s all sorts of aspects of lift that you can measure.

I would highly recommend that if this is your first go around and you have more of an upper funnel approach, you want that pre and post data to really just see what that true lift is. But. If you’re somewhere, trying to understand what your brand affinity is, or, you’re even trying to understand consideration, there are those opportunities to ask the right questions and get those answers and again, get those results via a brand study.

So I would highly recommend being able to engage in something like that if you can.

Ross Howard: Love that.

What are some of the most frustrating challenges that you face in B2B?

Natasha Tibbetts: I would say fragmentation is probably the other just soul sucking scenario right now. It’s again, that interconnectivity of you want to have this full funnel, right? And you might want to have this full funnel cross channel strategy because at the end of the day, that’s going to be incredibly impactful.

But for us as planners and buyers and marketers, we still have to prove that out, and what we end up finding is that if we’re gonna go with a walled garden, there’s going to be, it’s gonna have its place, right? They’re in existence for a reason. But we’re just going to be really tactful about what we’re taking advantage of for what and when again, right?

And we’re probably going to have more of a micro strategy for that walled garden because we’re going to be working within the confines of what we can get from that. And then, when we’re talking about more omni channels, that’s going to be really trying to truly interconnect all of your channels and, making sure that you’re.

You have maybe like a multi touch attribution strategy, which is becoming harder and harder with the deprecation of cookies, because that’s what it’s, what it’s relied on to date. But I’m sure a lot of folks have explored media mix marketing. I would say that’s going to be a really, amazing way to again, leverage in order to give you that omni channel approach.

It’s just a really hefty investment. So if you have, you’re working with enterprise brands and you have a really good budget to a healthy budget to support that’s great. If you don’t, there’s going to be, there’s going to be some challenges that you’re going to try to overcome. As far as trying to connect the dots.

And so I think that will continue to be a frustration until again, we can solve for that appropriately.

Ross Howard: Wonderful tip. I think people should take that away. I’m sure there’ll be people googling it as they listen. Where can we find you, Natasha? If people want to learn more about you and Swell.

Natasha Tibbetts: Sure. Swell media.com, if you want to learn more about the agency and what we do, you can find me on LinkedIn, of course. I would say, just a nice little shameless plug, Swell Media about 18 months ago became part of Meet the People. They’re like a mini holding company, but we’ve got a really amazing, just talented group of complimentary agencies that now fall under Meet the People.

I would say. Check out, meet the people, see the different agencies that fall within our portfolio. We’re really full service across the board. All the way from branding, creative, experiential, media, SEO, just lots of great things that we can do, but it’s really been a true pleasure taking the time with you, Ross.

And thank you for the opportunity.

Ross Howard: This was awesome. Thank you so much.

Outro: And that wraps up today’s episode of Demand Bites. Thanks for listening. I hope the insight provided today is able to help you power up your own demand generation efforts. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, make sure to hit subscribe so you’re always up to date with the latest strategies.

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