Account Based Operations | Renaud Bizet, Director of Global Marketing Operations, Marketo

By William Wickey| November 3rd, 2016
Renaud Bizet, Director of Global Marketing Operations at Marketo has a simple definition of Account Based Marketing:

“ABM is about matching marketing investment and strategy to a specific set of accounts. It’s about matching your efforts with your strategic objectives.”
Marketo is not only an inbound marketing leader, they are also one of the leading technology products in the Account Based Marketing space. Renaud will be the first to tell you that a highvelocity- inbound strategy does not have to exist in a vacuum. Effective account based operations should scale around strategic marketing objectives.

LeadGenius recently sat down to chat with Renaud at #OpsStars, to discuss scaling an operations team, transitioning from an inbound-heavy marketing model to a strategy that builds stability with Account Based Marketing, and the future of Marketo.

Wistia video thumbnail - Account Based Operations | Renaud Bizet, Director of Marketing Ops, Marketo
As it often does, effectively supporting sales comes down to having quality data.

A custom data point that helps Marketo determine fit is technology use. For example, what pixels does a business have on their website?

“Probably the stronger piece [of our scoring model] is really around the technologies that somebody uses,” says Bizet. “That’s a really good leading indicator of fit — looking at the website and seeing what technologies are being used.”

As a B2B SaaS platform, it’s no surprise that technology use is heavily weighted in Marketo’s predictive model.

“It’s really all about having the right fit,” says Bizet. “Having a direct dial number that is accurate so [SDRs] don’t have to waste time looking for those. Having really good, accurate titles and job descriptions so they know they’re talking to the right people.”

ABM is about matching marketing investment & strategy to a specific set of accounts. @marketo
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With the right lead data in hand, Marketo uses LeanData to scale their account based operations. For example, Marketo uses LeanData to facilitate round-robins, auto-conversions, and account based matching.

Even though Marketo is transitioning away from lead-based matching, Renaud is quick to point out that he’s not going to stop the big inbound lead machine.

A high lead velocity, high lead volume inbound strategy has been successful for Marketo’s SMB market tier. For the enterprise market segment, the thought leadership inbound approach doesn’t work quite as well. This a common trend in B2B marketing.

“The two approaches co-exist. It’s just a very different play for very different market segments,” says Bizet.

The lesson here is balance. Running inbound and outbound doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition. Adopting an account based strategy does not mean you have to abandon funnel based tactics that are working.

All marketing efforts should map to strategic objectives.