Power Up Your Demand Gen Strategy with Ben Alvord of Akamai Technologies

Transcript

Ben Alvord: What I try to do and really tried to do at no name specifically was to focus all of our ad spend dollars on programs where I knew that we were in front of our ideal customer profile all the time. So we weren’t wasting money, advertising to people that there was no chance they were ever going to buy from us and also the personas, obviously making sure that the money is getting our advertising in front of the correct job titles.

Intro: Welcome to Demand Facts. The podcast where B2B demand generation leaders find the strategies they need to grow. I’m your host, 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. 

Ross Howard: I’m joined by Ben Alvord from Akamai Technologies. Thanks so much for doing this. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, your journey, and what drew you to marketing? 

Ben Alvord: Yeah, sure. So the first part of my career started in the agency world. Actually, I grew up in New Hampshire. First professional job was for an agency in New Hampshire.

Originally actually started building websites and leading a team that, that built the front end of websites. We also, my team handled SEO then. And so it was at that job for a good stretch. And then I moved to Boston, got a new agency job, and that’s where I started to really get more broadly into digital marketing, handling, paid search, paid social media, the very early versions of it, web analytics and things like that.

So that was about a 10 year stretch in the agency world. And then I. Got kind of burnt out from agency work as people do, decided to move over to the client side. And I got lucky in my first job in B2B tech, which was Boston based as well, was a company called Mendix. When I was hired, they were about a 50 person company.

I was the third marketing hire and they were focused on enterprise, low cone. Platform. They were an enterprise local platform. They still are actually, they’re the, really the leading the leader in that space, but I ended up being there for eight years, which was a real journey for me where I built up really a lot of the skills that I rely on now in my career.

So again, when I joined, I was the digital marketing, jack of all trades handling the website and everything else, digital hands on by the time I left eight years later, the company was about a thousand people. And I was leading a team then of about seven people handling all the same stuff I handled at the beginning.

It just was all much larger in scope. So the website and everything digital since then, after I left, I’ve had a couple more jobs at smaller B2B tech companies, both of which have been acquired as well. So most recently I had a job at No Name Security, which is the leader, was the leader, I should say, in the API security technology category.

I worked there for about a year and a half leading a team that handled, again, everything digital, but also content marketing, design, and marketing operations. 

And then we were acquired by Akamai Technologies about four months ago now. So since that’s happened, I’m back in an IC role for Akamai. Leading growth marketing for the API security product within their very large portfolio.

Ross Howard: Awesome. That’s a hell of a journey. Two journeys, really, from startup to scale up to, to exit into a larger org.

What would you say is the more efficient demand generation strategies or demand gen tactics that you’re using at the moment? And how do you measure that when you’re running programs? 

Ben Alvord: It is efficiency in general is I think almost like the most important metric to look at not one metric, but the most sort of important category of metric to look at, especially in the startup world, because even in my jobs, at least, even when we’ve had been the most budget we’ve had, it’s never a massive budget.

And then in all the startups as I’ve had, there’ve been times when maybe the business wasn’t. Doing as well as I wanted to, or the board wanted to just cut expenses because they’re trying to position to be acquired or to go public. And so the budgets will shrink. And so the thing that I’ve found in really in any job, but in the startup, especially if you can hit the numbers that you’re trying to hit to build pipeline and to build opportunities.

There’s going to be a lot less focus from the board and from the founders on like specifically what you’re doing. So to talk more specifically to your question of what have I found being most efficient? I think what I try to do and really tried to do at No Name specifically was to focus all of our ad spend dollars on programs where I knew that we were.

In front of our ideal customer profile all the time. So we weren’t wasting money, advertising to people that there was no chance they were ever going to buy from us. And also the personas obviously making sure that the money is getting our advertising in front of the correct job titles.

So that’s. Easier said than done sometimes, the key tactics. That we focused on at no name that I’m still focused on at Akamai as well, are doing LinkedIn advertising is a big focus and then programs that run through basically like advertising networks. And so companies like that, that build their own audiences, and then you can pay them to run your materials through their networks and they’ll actually guarantee you that you’re going to get leads there that fit your ICP and your personas. So I definitely shy away now from programs where leads are going to come through that don’t hit the ICP because paid search being a really big example there where there’s obviously a lot of value in paid search, but it’s basically impossible to stop yourself from getting clicks and actual leads from students and a lot of people that are trying to educate themselves and about technology, but are never going to buy from you.

And once that happens, you can’t, you, your numbers for cost per MQL or cost per opportunity are just never going to be good. It’s not possible. So because of that, I think paid search becomes actually more of an awareness vehicle where you want to be, so at no name, we were selling API security.

So you want to be. Ideally be present for searches in that category, just so that any buyers out there who are searching will find you, but you have to weigh that against the efficiency. So at Noni, we actually pretty much completely cut out paid search by the end because our budgets had shrunk a bit and we were just trying to focus on the efficiency.

Ross Howard: That’s awesome. Thank you. That was a really detailed answer. In terms of that, in terms of partnering with the SDRs and partnering with the sales function, if you’re a product lead on APIs, security, how do you engage the reps around your area and feed them the right generated demand? Are you given specific sales people already, or are you now now you’re in a bigger org?

How do you partner with sales to drive pipeline? 

Ben Alvord: Yeah, so I partner now with with the, we have our PDR team from Noname actually came over to Akamai and are still essentially selling that one product. I, what I do is I try to partner really closely with the BDR leader and basically work really closely with her and actually join a lot of the meetings they have, like the weekly meetings I have just to talk about the new marketing programs that we’re doing.

It’s as simple as literally, if we’re going to run a webinar, for instance, I know we’re going to drive a couple hundred leads or MQLs from that. Talking to that, to her, the leader, but also her team around. This is what the webinar is about. This is what, you can expect if you’re talking to get somebody on the phone who attended the webinar.

And we also try to provide materials for them in terms of email type outreach. So we can help them build sequences. If they want the help some BDRs, they want to write their own stuff. They have a good handle on that, but some of them can really, they really appreciate just, some sort of like seed copy for email sequences and things like that.

Ross Howard: Awesome that they can pick up and personalize, but for you it’s on message and it’s about the same topic of the content of the webinar. So like it’s like a kit ready to go. 

Ben Alvord: Yeah, there’s a give and take there because I think on the marketing side, we almost would rather write all that stuff ourselves.

But then on the sales side, they’re saying, okay, the way this is written is not, it’s not following how we want to sell necessarily. So you have to really. Collaborate on that kind of stuff. And I think what kind of comes down to for me is just building a really good relationship with that BDR manager so that they trust what Mercatic is doing, that it’s worthwhile and that they should actually pay attention to those leads.

And a lot of times, at least in the startup world or my familiarity, a lot of BDRs tend to be, really early in the career that’s very common. So they have to learn about marketing and about what we’re doing. Cause they don’t even fully understand that. So it can even be all the way down to explaining when we advertise on LinkedIn, for instance, what that means, like how we are able to target and why we know when the leads come through that they’re from the right people.

I think if they understand at a high level. What we’re doing in marketing, then it makes them more enthusiastic to actually engage with the leads that come through. 

Ross Howard: You mentioned webinars there. Are they your, vehicle of choice? Or, what’s the, what are the content programs that you put out to market as part of the demand chain mix?

Ben Alvord: Yeah, webinars are a huge part of what I’m doing now. That’s actually new for me too, because I, at Mendix, where I was for a long time, we really didn’t run many webinars. And I, those partially on me because my experience wasn’t in that area and I was controlling a lot of the budget. And so I wasn’t running webinars and I was, probably a mistake to be honest, but that’s just what it was.

And also the leadership at Mendix was not pushing that. So we just weren’t really doing it. But when I came to Noni and they were already running webinars, a woman on my team who was very good at running them had already been doing that before I got there. And I could look at the numbers and just see how effective they were.

And so we continued doing that. And now at Akamai I’m actually running them myself. Which is fun. I’ve, I’m learning new stuff, even though I’m pretty far into my career here. And so the reason why I’m so gung ho on the webinars is that first of all, the vendors we work with actually guarantee leads and they don’t just guarantee leads, but they guarantee leads that fit the ICP and fit the personas.

And it’s at a very cost effective level too. and they, they’ll give us roughly 200 MQLs for typically it depends, but somewhere around 15 K. So you’re at, less than a hundred dollars per MQL, which if you can compare to other channels, that price is really good.

And then on top of that, you can see how much the people engaged with the webinar. So obviously if somebody watches it for three minutes. That’s not great, but if you get people that really watched like a whole half an hour webinar and they fit your ICP and they fit your personas, you just know, that’s going to be if sales gets somebody like that on the phone, where it’s going to be a good person to talk to.

And so that, that’s a big one for me and that end LinkedIn as well. I think. Although I think everybody who works with LinkedIn’s advertising tools wishes they would spend a little more money updating their UI and whatnot, the actual, the ability to target on there to target, your target account list directly is just super effective.

And. The leads that come through tend to be good. But at the same time, those are tend to be more content marketing focus. So eBooks and white papers, pretty standard stuff, but they are good leads. I just, I like the webinar leads better. And yeah, so those are like the two.

There’s a lot of other places that money is being spent, but if I could only pick two, that would probably be the two that I would pick.

Ross Howard: Let’s switch gears entirely now. What’s the one piece of advice you would give to marketers who are looking to drive really profitable demand gen at the moment? 

Ben Alvord: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean it comes back to something we’ve already talked about the tactics like But I will say people talk a lot about experimentation, which I think is important, like tactically, but also trying new channels, I think it’s also, it’s fun on one hand, because you get to try something new.

So for me right now, I really want to get into trying to do podcast advertising, actually, which I have not done at all. So something like that, which is a completely new thing, it both can invigorate your career, but also. You learn something new and also it might work. So like the webinars that I’ve talked a lot about, as I said it’s just in the last couple of years that I’ve really dug into that.

And now it’s really my top strategy. So I think it’s important to try new stuff and especially in digital marketing, cause there’s always new stuff to try. So you can’t get too pigeonholed into what has worked in the past, especially as somebody myself now I’m. I don’t even know how many years into my career I am.

I don’t want to, I don’t want to do the math, but it’s, you get to a certain point, you’re like, I know LinkedIn works. I know sponsored webinars work. If I went to a new job, somebody might be doing something else that works and I haven’t done it before. You need to be open to the possibility that something new could work and it’s worthwhile to do.

Ross Howard: Yeah, keep learning, keep stay curious in that vein. Is there any, what other resources do you use? Like books, podcasts, or people you follow? 

Ben Alvord: To answer that question, I, if I was on a job interview right now, I would come up with some actual answers to that. But in reality, where I learn is actually at my job.

I learned by first of all, just hands on doing stuff. And I think. I’ve bounced back and forth between being a leader and being an individual contributor. And I think that’s been really important in my career because doing stuff, hands on, you just are going to stay closer to the technology and digital as things change.

And if you don’t do that over a period of say say five years, you’re not hands on at all. I think you’re going to get way behind. And so that, that’s been a big thing for me. And then also learning from who I really learned from is people that I work with. So that could be a, Whoever I report to, but it also can be people that report to me if they’re younger, but they’ve taken on learning about some, something new.

So like the webinars I keep coming back to. I learned a ton about that from my team member who I managed, but she was the one running that. Yeah. So that’s how I learned really. It’s by actually doing stuff and by being open to learning from colleagues that I’m working with.

Ross Howard: I think that’s awesome. And that’s a really awesome answer. Cause sometimes I think people can go looking for the grass is greener solution or the, following the Messiah that you’ve seen on your LinkedIn feed. When actually like everybody’s audience is different as well, like the channels remain consistent, but the behavior of the people that we want to reach and talk to is different, right?

They have different motivators, they have different preferences. So I think it’s really important to get hands on in the platforms and the tools and the, make the partnerships you need to make. But also learn from the people that are interacting with that audience to. See how they prefer to consume.

And that’s going to be, you’ve got to get it in the weeds and try it right. To learn how your customer behaves. Wow. Where can we find you, Ben? 

Ben Alvord: LinkedIn is all I got. I’m not I’m not super public, so you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me in Massachusetts where I’m about to move to. 

Ross Howard: Start your 15 minutes of fame. Watch out your LinkedIn feed. 

Ben Alvord: I know I’ll go from 200 followers to. 400 followers. It’s gonna be crazy. 

Ross Howard: 100 percent growth. I’ll take it Yeah, for sure. Awesome. I mean i’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for your time 

Ben Alvord: Yeah, no, it’s been great. It’s been a great chat with you. I appreciate you, reaching out in the first place 

Outro: And that wraps up today’s episode of demand bites.

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