Mastering B2B Customer Marketing: Strategies for Retention and Growth

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello Hello Hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Anastasia pavlova. Anastasia is not your average cmo she is a Go to Market Strategist with a robust foundation in business. Backed by an MBA from the prestigious Haas School of Business and enriched by nearly 20 years of full funnel marketing experience across b2b SaaS, cybersecurity, e commerce and b2c technology. Anastasia has global experience driving full funnel marketing with a laser focus on revenue, demand generation ABM, customer Retention and Expansion aren't just buzzwords for her. They are her bread and butter. Welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Anastasia Pavlova  01:30

Thank you, Brandi. This is an awesome introduction. I'm so happy to be here with you and to talk to your listeners.

Brandi Starr  01:38

Awesome. I am excited excited to have you. And before we jump into our topic, I like to kick things off with a little oops ha moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what overused word or phrase would you like to get rid of forever?

Anastasia Pavlova  01:59

Oh, boy, I have so many. But the challenge is to pick one. So what makes me really cringe these days is when companies or CEOs or other folks talk about doing more or doing more with less? I mean, this is something that I think it's just has the wrong focus, right. So when I talk to my clients, I really and teams, I really encourage everyone to, to think about impact, right? So it's not about doing more doing more with less it is about doing the right things, right. And it's focusing on the outcomes that you're trying to drive and really focusing on what will make the biggest impact. So it is not about quantity of things that we do we really need to focus on quality and on doing the right things that right, drive the right outcomes for customers. And for the for the shareholders.

Brandi Starr  03:06

Yeah, I agree completely. And just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a client around doing less with more focus, because we've got less resources, in many cases. And so it's not about you know, trying to do more with less resources. So I agree completely. So we will definitely not be talking about doing more with less during this conversation. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me what brings you to revenue rehab.

Anastasia Pavlova  03:40

Yes, well, first of all, thank you, thank you for having me. It's always exciting to talk to other like minded business people and marketers and leaders. And the topic of today's discussion, I think is going to be about customer marketing. So we are in at at this time where companies focus on efficient growth, right and one of the ways to drive efficient growth is to focus yes on focusing on new logo acquisition, but it's getting really hard this days because the b2b Buying environment is changing lots of trends affecting that. So customers need to focus on the more integrated way of looking at their entire business and really mobilizing older go to market teams on acquisition and on driving customer retention and growth. So I think today we're gonna focus more on the customer side of things and how to drive Retention and Expansion with the with the go to market teams.

Brandi Starr  04:49

Awesome. Yeah, I'm always excited to talk about customer marketing a large part of my career has been spent focusing on different aspects of customer customer marketing. So it is something that I'm very passionate about. And so as we go into our discussion, I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most importantly, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So what's your best hopes? What would you like people to really take away from our conversation?

Anastasia Pavlova  05:22

Well, I think the important point is, an important takeaway for everyone is to really start thinking about how you can break organizational silos and move towards an integrated and targeted go to market approach across marketing, SDR sales, customer success and product that focus not just on that new logo acquisition, but on customer retention and expansion.

Brandi Starr  05:52

Okay, perfect. So you hit on something earlier, in that so many companies when they are looking to grow, the focus is really on acquisition and net new. And I know, we've all, you know, seen the statistics that it costs x amount more to drive net new versus to grow an existing customer, yet, the focus is consistently, you know, across the board, if you ask most companies, it's rare anyone's gonna say, Oh, we, you know, really double down or that our focus is on the customer base. And so I'd like to start with why do you think that is, like, when we know, it's so effective to, like, you know, focus on retention and getting more revenue out of our current customers? Why is there this constant quest for new logos?

Anastasia Pavlova  06:45

Yeah, well, I think that it really depends on on the size of the company and the stage that they're in. Because at the early stage, when startups are just trying to grow, that's where the focus is, they need to have to build that that initial customer base, and they only have one product, right? So so they have a limited number of customers, they would like to, to expand in in me perhaps other other regions or, but they have nothing to, to sell the initial initial product, so it depends on the business model. And so as companies move from sort of first building, building the product and building the initial customer base, and then they start expanding to to become a platform, and then they start launching new products. So there's more opportunities to cross sell additional products into their existing customer base. And companies just have more more levers, perhaps they grow through acquisitions, right. So they acquire new customers, or they acquire new tools. So there is additional opportunities for them to cross sell into the existing base. So I think it's all about the stage of the company. And I find that customers that are sort of reach that 100 million milestone, whether their IPO or not, that doesn't really matter. But But at that point in time, the Focus starts sort of shifting into a more balanced approach between between acquisition and customer expansion.

Brandi Starr  08:27

Okay, so that that is insightful thinking about, you know, that 100 million level as, like the place where that balance sort of shifts, because I do agree, like when you're, you know, when you're a startup, you got to focus on new customers, like, there's only so many customers to grow at that point. So thinking about those larger entities. So those folks that have hit, you know, the 100 million level and above, you talk about the integrated go to market strategy, where you do have this heavy cross sell upsell retention strategy, what is good look like? So, from your perspective, you know, companies who are really getting it right, in having an end to end from acquisition to growth, like, what does that look like?

Anastasia Pavlova  09:16

Yeah, so I think a lot of that has to do with with business strategy and alignment between all these different go to market functions, right? When the CEO has a really good mandate for everyone and demands that all the teams are focused on achieving the right outcomes together and committed to breaking the silos, then this strategy could work right. So whether you're focused on a key set of initiatives throughout the organization, and this could be yes, where we're trying to reach this percent of revenue through acquisition, but this percent of revenue needs to come from customer expansion and customer retention, when everyone is on the same page with regard to goals. And when functional leaders can start talking together about specific strategies and tactics, how they're going to go about accomplishing those, those goals, then it's, it's going to work, right. And so what I advise companies is really think through this targeted go to market integrated approach. And it starts with, you know, setting the goals for for each team and in sharing those goals, goals, and picking the accounts that that you're going to focus on throughout this journey. So whether these are accounts that you're going to drive acquisition, from, on that new site, picking accounts to focus on retention issue, or whether it's renewals, or whether it's expansion, this needs to be done as a joint exercise, and all teams need to be aware of what those accounts are, and what the strategies are going to be like. Another area where I think a lot of companies struggle is the operational side of things, because in order to enable these processes, you need to have your data in order you need to have your processes on the revenue operation side in order. And your your strategy is going to be only as good as as as the processes and data that kind of underlie as a foundation. So companies need to really invest in, in revenue operations early on, to be able to, to run as best in class companies.

Brandi Starr  12:06

Yeah, I would definitely agree there. And it is you hit on some really key points around breaking down the silos having revenue operations in place, like those are the things that do enable that integrated strategy. And so I want to back up a little bit again, you talked about how the buying environment has changed, and how you know, there is a need to really be looking like customers are really looking at their business as a whole. And so I'd love to hear your perspective, you know, on what's changed, how are buyers buying different? And how does that specifically relate to thoughts around you know, growing revenue from customers?

Anastasia Pavlova  12:50

Yes. Thank you for for giving me an opportunity to speak about that. And I think you and I on on on this small coffee community every Friday so there's a lot of discussions around that and and I love that community by the way, I find that the speakers they bring on a really good and it's it's a really vibrant forum for like minded people and folks, specifically in the b2b SaaS world, but speaking about some of the trends that are happening. So the, the old lead gen marketing playbook just doesn't work anymore, right. So, and there are multiple people who kind of talked about that. The reality is that when companies kind of operate in silos and focus on lead gen and marketing is responsible for for for driving in MQL, sending them over to SDRs. And then trying to set up meetings and bombarding all the prospects with mass email, personalized emails and putting gates in front of prospects. And then doing SDR cold calls. This just doesn't work. Right. So So what it translates into lots of inefficiencies for companies and frustrated buyers and longer sales cycles. And so so it's becoming harder for for marketers to be effective and and the way buyers buy these days is that they go to to the communities and to their peers, and they don't want to engage with with salespeople any longer. So I think Pavillion published some data last week on how sales is broken, because, you know, huge turnover on the website, I think, deals deal cycles are becoming so much longer and when rates have plummeted so low also wishes there. So, so companies are struggling on the sales side, right and then so, marketers have been really focused, as we discussed too much on, on on acquisition, and so not enough on on Retention and Expansion. So knowing that, you know, there is a clear need for for customers to start thinking about their go to market strategies differently. And for for companies that are in working in this outbound sales go to market motion, they really need to think about a more integrated and targeted way to go to market. And that involves, as we said, all this cross functional teams working together and working together on on a targeted way of fixing this problem. So picking the right accounts, really operational operationalizing this process through through their systems, it involves building content, to solve the right problems, for different stages of the buying journey. And then running integrated campaigns or go to market place, trying to address specific issues that the company is facing in order to increase conversion rates and hit the the revenue targets, right. So specifically, when we talk about the the customer side of things, it's it's also interesting how the the customer marketing function is changing, and customer success function is changing. And so there, again, very few companies that are really thinking about strategically and integrating this, this functions, or building an entirely customer focused function that isn't dependent on sales and marketing, or sales or marketer. So there are different different models around that. But I think if we, if we talk about the changing role, or evolving role of customer marketing, customer marketing really needs to be more strategic and be more aligned to, to customer success and to, to sales organization, so that that drive the same, the same outcomes, whether it's new revenue retention, or whether it's its growth. So it's a lot I gave you. Also, I'm happy to, to double click on any of those points, because like you, I'm, I'm really passionate about, about this topic.

Brandi Starr  17:43

Yeah, as I say, I'm over here fervently taking some notes on some things that I want to come back to. So I want to dig in a little bit on how the customer marketing role has changed. Because I have seen it, you know, organized differently in different companies where in some cases, I have seen the marketing teams more aligned by product or vertical. And the same people that are, you know, looking to drive net new are also the people that are doing, you know, customer marketing, I've seen where customer marketing is its own team, and, you know, a bit separate from those that are trying to, you know, drive net new demand. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I know, it's nuanced that, you know, every company's going to, you know, have its own nuances of why it needs to be different. But, you know, thinking about more holistically, how do you think, you know, if you're in control of how to organize the marketing resources, you know, within and I'm talking about these larger companies that have hit at least 100 million, so we're not the, you know, one lone marketer, but what's your perspective on what is, you know, kind of the standardized approach?

Anastasia Pavlova  19:01

Right, so, again, I don't know if there is a one size fits all approach as you as you mentioned, so it's very nuanced. It all starts with a strategy. So a marketing leader cmo needs to sit down with the CRO and Head of Customer Success, or wherever that function is that is responsible for customer enablement, customer onboarding, customer retention and customer expansion revenue. And they need to figure out okay, what problems we're trying to solve together. Right? And so if the problem is, okay, we have to get our churn on the control. So let's figure out how we can align our downstream team so that they can focus on on solving that problem. If the focus is customer retention, then but let's focus there, what I would say is that, when customers, companies think about solving customer retention, very often, what they miss is proper diagnosing of the problem. And that is really, really important because when when churn occurs, it occurs for a reason, right. And there could be multiple reasons, there could be a reason, because, you know, the onboarding was really poorly executed, or because you don't have power users, or resources to enable power users at the companies that do customer companies to properly run, more complicated solution that you sold them, or that the expectations were not set up correctly during during the sales process. Well, it could be something else, and they're just not adopting or using the product as frequently as, as needed in order to realize the value. So diagnosing the problem is, is is the first step. I remember when when I was at at Marketo. And my my first initiative was there was to, to build the customer demand generation strategy, which are very much focused on on the revenue side of things, how to drive cross sell revenue, how to drive and support, education and services organization in order to turn them more from cost centers to kind of revenue drivers. Right. And so that conversation started with, okay, let's align on the goals, what are you trying to accomplish? And how can marketing team support you on that, and so, and so I build that strategy. And then we started operationalizing, that strategy through through developing the right content in the right programs around that, but Marketo was at at that time, probably somewhere around 200 million in revenue. And another problem that we were trying to solve was a lot of churn on the SMB customer side. Right. And, and that was a result of, again, multiple, multiple reasons. One of the reasons was that, again, expectations during the sales process were not set up correctly. And the fact that also Marketo sort of created so much demand for for its prop platform, that Marketo admins, the demand gen. Managers who were basically running the platform were in such demand that they were impossible to hire. So so so that that was one of one of the bigger issues. And so, to solve those issues really need had to double down on creating training courses. Operationalizing first building educational content, that would enable other market users to read around the platform at the right level, and partnering with a whole range of outside service providers in order to help our customers there. So, diagnosing the problem is, is the first step in, in in, in this process, and companies need to, to start there and and kind of then align align on the on the right goals and the right outcomes.

Brandi Starr  24:10

Okay, and you talked about a customer demand gen strategy and one of the things that I have seen in looking, you know, a lot of clients we've worked with, or just others I've talked to, is that a lot of times customer marketing seems to be almost like put in a box with only three tactics, they have email, they have their content development, which is you know, not necessarily a tactic but then they also have events like customer events and road shows and things like that. And it seems like you know, thinking about the overall go to market strategy and you know, all the tools in the toolbox so to speak, that a lot of people don't think about you know, you know, you've got background and ABM, like ABM tactics for cross sell. upsell, or even running, you know, paid media or like all of the tactics that we leverage on the acquisition side, it seems like so many of them could have a role on the customer side. But it's almost like just nobody really thinks about them. It's like you got events, you know, you got email, and then we're gonna develop a ton of like the kinds of content that you said, when you're working with clients, because I know you do a lot of advising around go to market strategy. What are your thoughts around how people are thinking about that? Like, do you have experience with pulling in lots of different tactics that have been successful? Do you see it really as like, this is kind of the box that customer marketing should be in just really, you know, curious of how we get people thinking a little bit differently about how they approach their strategy for customer marketing?

Anastasia Pavlova  25:57

Yes, definitely. So again, it depends on what the goals are. And what we're what we're trying to accomplish if we're trying to drive costs customer, customer revenue, let's let's pick an example that we're building a cross sell cross sell campaign. I think one of the misconceptions about customer marketing is, is that you don't need to spend money, because you already have you already acquired this customer, so it shouldn't cost you so much. So you don't need to do to deploy paid media, for example, right? And to a large degree that that's true, right? But, but you need to think about where the tactics that are going to be most effective are those that will find your customers where they already hang out, right? So so understanding what are the best and preferable touch points for for each customer, and trying to reach them in as many places is going to bring you the best of the best results. Right. So I typically don't advise customers to start from the tactics, but really think through the strategy holistically, right. And if we're thinking about cross sell, so what it starts with is really having a very detailed sort of operational map where all your customer accounts are really broken down by, you know, which products are being owned by which customer so that you can understand sort of the whitespace, right and see what cross sell products makes sense to them. And having building a map like that in your CRM system, would enable your, your marketers and your your sales team to, to really up sort of pull the right strings and run campaigns much more smoothly. And that's where a lot of companies struggle, but then going back to the tactics, again, yes, I think the targeted approach works really, really well. And you first need to really understand what what content would work for for all your customers. And by content. I mean, it doesn't have to be text based content, having a lot of video tutorials or video tips, webinars, snippets from from various events that you can slice and dice into so many other content types work really great. And then the question is, okay, how do you deliver all this information to a customer, given your understanding on of their stage of the buying journey, because the same journey, whether it's awareness, consideration or decision, works on the customer side if we're talking about cross sell products, right? So you need to build awareness, the same way you do that in the acquisition journey, right? So if your customers hang out on LinkedIn, you need to leverage LinkedIn it's could be very easy to to reach your customers inside your product contextually right when they're using something to expose a lot of features. They're using tools like Pendo for example is is great, but Google good old webinars so demo days work wonders, right? And so you can run them virtually or in a live fashion. So I think really, marketers need to think holistically and and pick the tactics that work for their situation, their customers. Okay.

Brandi Starr  29:52

And my last question is, I know that you have some insights around go to market framework and what This can look like. And so, you know, we talked about big picture strategy, we talked a little bit about, you know, the, in the weeds of the tactics. So I'd love to hear more insight around your framework and what you would recommend, you know, in terms of having that integrated, go to Marketing, go to market framework.

Anastasia Pavlova  30:22

Yes, the framework is very simple. It's, it's five steps, right. And it starts with, you know, setting a goal, setting the goals, right or, or really getting everyone on the page with regard to the goals. Step two, is, is selecting the accounts that you're going to focus on, right and building account insights. And again, this is something that needs to happen together between marketing and sales, and customer success teams and all customer facing teams. And what happens is very often, because of the silos, there are pockets of information that that kind of exists within within those groups internally. But because this information is not is not shared, a lot of opportunities are are lost. The next step is developing content that would help you drive whether it's retention or cross sell, and upsell, like thinking really through about personas that you're going to target, whether they're executives or or practitioners, where different content requirements for for each of those profiles, if you're targeting different, different different vertical segments, again, there are nuances that you need to keep in mind. Step number four is running campaigns. And that's what we just touched upon which tactic tactics are available to you, where do you find your, your customers, and testing different things and see what works. And then the last step is measuring and optimizing. So you start small, you run a pilot, see what works, and then you try to expand and you you measure the right things, you know, and at the end of the day, it's all should map to your net revenue, retention and customer satisfaction and revenue at the end of the day. Awesome.

Brandi Starr  32:26

So we're gonna set our goals, we're gonna select our accounts, develop content, run campaigns, measure and optimize. Yeah, I love when a framework is like really straightforward, because that makes it so much easier to follow and to figure out, you know, where to start and where to go from here. And so I'd say talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head, and ask you to give us some homework. And so I always like to make sure that everyone listening, walks away with, you know, a key action item. And so if those listening recognize that they, you know, really are not tapping in and driving revenue through customer marketing, and you know, they're trying to figure out what to do. So besides following the framework, what would be your one thing, what would be your your first action item that they should take? Coming out of listening to this episode?

Anastasia Pavlova  33:34

Yeah, so if you are in customer marketing, make sure that you go and talk to your sales and customer success leaders and align with them on the goal. So understand the goals in their priorities and and start thinking about how you can partner with them together and drive the same, the same outcomes and what what things you need to do to change your current processes in order to to help them achieve the same goals.

Brandi Starr  34:12

I love that. And then also, you know, just looking back at some of our past revenue rehab episodes, once you finish listening to this episode, scroll on back to Episode 72, where we talked about deciphering customer desires. And Stacia talked at the beginning about, you know, customer needs and the buying process has changed. And that was one of those episodes, that was a great opportunity to you know, dig into some of those insights as well. And so, Anastasia, I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussion. But that's our time for today. But before we go, tell us how people can connect with you. And also give us this shameless plug for bold GTM and tell us what you all do.

Anastasia Pavlova  34:59

Thank you, Brandy. Thank you for having me. I really really enjoyed our our discussion. The listeners can find me on LinkedIn, Anastasia pavlova, and I have my own company called GTM. It's a go to market and revenue marketing consulting. So I help b2b SOS, mid market companies to drive efficient growth through acquisition, retention and cross sell.

Brandi Starr  35:29

Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to both both DTM and your LinkedIn. So check the show notes wherever you are listening or watching this podcast. Well, Anastasia, I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. And thanks, everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time.

Outro VO  35:57

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue rehab dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.