Welcome to our AMA with Richard Meyer, our Head of Growth at Tuff. 

Meet Richard, the driving force behind our Growth team. He’s all about teamwork, partnering closely with every team at Tuff and our clients to achieve tangible, long-lasting growth. With his wealth of experience, Richard has pioneered growth strategies and testing for countless startups and scaleups. Whether it’s cutting down on customer acquisition costs, fine-tuning budget allocations, devising media plans, enhancing user experiences, or predicting outcomes for marketing investments, Richard is instrumental in empowering our clients to maximize their strategy and budget.

Ready to dive in? Richard is here to address any questions you have regarding:

Achieving profitability while pursuing high-growth and scalability can be challenging. As a growth expert, how do you navigate this balance, and do you believe it’s achievable in practice? 

When it comes to making a business profitable while expanding, there are a few important things to think about. First off, every business is unique. If we’re always comparing ourselves to others and thinking the grass is greener elsewhere, we’ll never be satisfied. But, we do need to be smart about how we use our resources and stick to our commitments to our team and organization.

So, when we’re considering those resources, responsibility is key. Here’s my approach: I divide my budget into two parts. 80% goes into what I know works – the stuff that keeps the business running smoothly. This is our reliable performance channels. Then, the remaining 20% is set aside for trying new things, experimenting, and testing out fresh ideas.

This way, we have a decent chunk of our budget dedicated to testing without risking everything. It’s not so much that if it fails, we’re in trouble, but it’s enough that we can see if new ideas have potential. Now, depending on the size of your company, this split might vary. A big company might allocate funds differently than a smaller one finding its footing.

The key is to always set aside some resources for growth and testing. That way, we keep learning, growing, and avoid getting stuck in a rut.

Can you distinguish between a growth must-have and a growth nice-to-have in terms of business development strategies?

So, in the world of growth, there’s been a shift in mindset between what’s a must-have for growth and what’s just nice to have. What I mean is, we used to focus on what seemed necessary for a business to succeed, but things have changed.

Before, it was almost like you could buy your way into success if you had a big budget or a compelling story. You could attract attention and opportunities even before your product was fully ready. But now, that’s not the case. More businesses are starting from scratch, with little or no external funding, and they’ve got to prioritize making money from day one.

So, having a huge team and tons of cash isn’t as crucial as it used to be. In fact, it can sometimes lead to inefficiency and wasted resources. What really matters now is how scalable your systems and processes are. If you’ve got streamlined operations for things like marketing and creative work, you’re in a much stronger position.

A small team that’s super efficient can achieve just as much as a big team, if not more. And what sets successful businesses apart is not just their size or budget, but their mindset. They’re always looking for ways to improve and grow, no matter how well things are going already. 

That’s the real must-have for success in today’s world.

From your experience, what channels are the most efficient drivers of growth?

When it comes to finding ways to grow a business, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It really depends on what kind of business you have, where you’re at in your journey, and what resources you have available.

What’s most important is finding ways to be genuine and true to your brand in whatever channels you choose. Whether it’s creating content, reaching your target audience, or using creative strategies, it’s all about being yourself.

For B2B businesses, LinkedIn tends to have the quickest payback period for advertising. But it’s important to be smart about it because it can also be easy to waste money if you’re not careful. On the other hand, for B2C businesses, it’s more about finding the right mix of channels based on what you’re selling and who you’re trying to reach. Paid search and social media advertising are usually solid choices, with platforms like Facebook and TikTok being popular options.

Beyond paid advertising, it’s also worth investing in ways to engage your existing customers and keep them coming back for more. Things like SMS messaging can be really effective, sometimes even more so than email. And for B2B businesses, building thought leadership through content and sharing insights on platforms like LinkedIn can be key to building trust and credibility.

So, whether it’s paid advertising or engaging your current customers, there are plenty of ways to drive growth for your business. It’s just a matter of finding what works best for you and your audience.

Looking ahead, what are your predictions for the marketing industry over the next 12 months? How might trends or technologies shape the landscape?

In the next year, there are two cool things I’m eager to watch and see how they shape things. 

First up, we’ve got automation and AI. Basically, this means using tech to make stuff happen automatically, like in marketing where we want to pump out better stuff faster, whether it’s ads or content. This is gonna shake things up and help smart marketers stand out.

Then, there’s the algorithm game. Ad platforms are all about those fancy algorithms now, using data to figure out what works best. So, the more they learn, the better ads they’ll serve up.

Another biggie is that money won’t be the only thing that determines success anymore. It’s not just about throwing cash around. Even small, savvy startups can compete if they really understand their audience and deliver something great.

So, yeah, it’s an exciting time, especially for those who can make it happen without a huge budget.

Given your extensive experience and B2B focus, I’d like to delve into ABM. Your recent Tuff blog article on ABM tools caught my eye. Could you share key tactics for successful ABM campaigns, especially in targeting high-value accounts?

So, here’s the deal with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy: It’s not one-size-fits-all. Each account is like its own unique puzzle, needing a different approach to crack it. Why? Well, it depends on where you’re coming from, what your goals are, and how your customers make decisions.

When I dive into ABM, I’m all about the creative and content side of things. Creativity is key. It’s about showing how your product or service can change someone’s life for the better. You gotta paint a clear picture of how things would be different if they used your stuff. Sometimes, people don’t buy because they can’t see how it fits into their lives. But if you can show them, even before they’re ready to buy, it creates buzz and makes them want it.

So, yeah, focusing on being creative and nailing your content is super important in ABM. It’s the secret sauce to making it work!

How do you approach measuring the ROI and effectiveness of ABM initiatives, and what key metrics do you prioritize in evaluating campaign performance and success?

Alright, let’s break down account-based marketing (ABM) in plain terms. The big picture here is that everyone in the company needs to be on the same page about what we’re aiming for before we jump into ABM.

So, what’s the ultimate goal? Making more money, plain and simple. Now, that might mean different things for different companies. It could be snagging new customers, or maybe it’s about making each sale count for more. Whatever the case, it all boils down to boosting revenue.

When it comes to ABM, it’s not just about saying, “Hey, this campaign did this and that.” It’s way more complex than that. We’ve got to see the bigger picture and understand that the real win is when the whole company benefits from more cash flowing in.

Now, that doesn’t mean we skip out on measuring things. Testing is key. For example, let’s say we want to see if our approach speeds up the sales process. We could split our deals into two groups, market to one and leave the other alone, then compare the results. If we see a jump in closed deals and they’re sealing the deal faster, that’s a win.

So, while we’re focused on specific campaigns, the endgame is always about boosting the bottom line for the entire team.

Want to connect with Richard? Shoot him a message on LinkedIn. You can also see some of the cool stuff his team’s been up to on our blog or if you’re looking for a growth marketing agency like Tuff, reach out directly for a 1<>1 strategy session! 

Ellen Jantsch

Ellen is the founder at Tuff and one of the team’s core growth marketers. She is a versatile marketer with expertise in multiple channels – from ppc to seo to email to others – responsible for the experiments and testing.  She is happiest when she’s on the ski hill or outside pointing her mountain bike downhill.

The post AMA on Growth Must-haves and Growth Nice-to-haves with Richard Meyer appeared first on Tuff.

If you’re a B2B org, chances are you could benefit from adopting an account-based marketing approach. 

But hey, we get it, starting out can seem like a mountain of work.  

You may find yourself in this position and ask, what tools do I use? What the hell is RevOps, anyways? Lead generation and demand generation is the same thing, right? How do I get on the same page with my sales and go-to-market teams? If you’re looking to kickstart an ABM program or you’ve launched one but aren’t seeing the results you want, you’re in the right place. 

Let’s dive in together!

Why We Love Account-Based Marketing: 

The B2B buying journey is complex. If you’re not using ABM, you have a contact-level attribution model. That means that the revenue is credited solely to the contact who signs the deal. 

This is inherently flawed. 6sense published a report in 2024 that estimates that the average B2B deal of over $10,000 has 9 people on the buying committee. How on earth do you create a fair attribution model when one contact came in from word of mouth, one from a trade show, one from paid social, and the rest via an email chain? 

ABM recognizes that sales and marketing must work together for the larger overall goal: marketing creates touchpoints along the buying cycle via educating target buyers for sales to close deals. A mature ABM organization doesn’t give a single thought about “whose revenue” it is – because at the end of the day, dollar bills are the same on the P+L sheet no matter where they come from. 

Our Approach to Account-Based Marketing

Our approach to account-based marketing is fairly simple, and it starts with three questions: what is your inbound marketing strategy today, how effective is your current approach, and what’s your level of marketing sophistication?

• What is your inbound strategy today? Often, organizations in the scaleup phase don’t have an inbound strategy, at least not a real one. They may get the occasional inbound lead that is actually a referral, but if you can’t clearly articulate how you’re generating demand, you don’t have an inbound strategy.
• How effective is your current marketing strategy? If they’re talking to an agency, chances are they aren’t happy with their results. However, is that because there is an unrealistic expectation on marketing? Or, rather, is marketing responsible for an OKR that drives little business value? If you don’t know – do some digging before getting to question number three. 
• What’s your organization’s level of marketing sophistication? This is difficult to quantify, but when you start to have discussions about ABM, a few things become clear quickly. Fair warning though, this question can turn into about a dozen followup questions, which is why we save it for last.
  • Is the organization set up to receive inbound leads? How are deals being worked? Who controls budget? Who represents marketing at important organizational meetings? Are you a leads, or a revenue KPI organization? What tools do you currently have in place to measure success? What does success even look like? 

Depending on these answers, we will recommend a varying degree of account-based marketing, in which the level of sophistication and investment increases or decreases based on what needs to take place. 

For each of these, we recommend an account-based measurement approach, not a contact-level measurement approach. It’s far more important for the revenue from the target account to close than who gets credit. 

We’ll tier these into a few organizational personas: 

• Entry-level ABM 
• Roller Coaster ABM
• Legacy ABM

Entry-Level ABM:

If you’re new, or have no existing inbound volume, don’t get started by buying a fancy tool, like Demandbase or 6sense. We’re a huge fan of these platforms (and speak more on them later), but the last thing you need on your P+L before validating your ICP, target accounts, or more is a six-figure software.

Instead, we recommend taking a scrappier approach. Ask yourself these questions: 

• If we could sign 100 new companies tomorrow, who would they be? (Note: it doesn’t have to be 100, but for this example, we’re using it. The actual number you’ll need depends on a lot of things, including organization size at the organizations you’re marketing to.)
• What types of businesses are my best customers? 
• Who at the organizations are the people buying my product or service, and who else at the organization is involved in the buying process? Who is the final decision maker? 
• What materials do I have that speak to my target audience? If I don’t have any – how can I create something that will be valuable and educate my audience as to what I do, and that I know the problems they are dealing with daily? 

These aren’t super hard questions to answer, but it may take some time (and grunt work using ChatGPT, or AI for Work). We recommend starting with a lead generation approach to validate that you are reaching the right personas at target companies, and then once you feel confident in your ad targeting, expanding into a demand generation strategy. Which brings us to 

Roller Coaster ABM:

If you’re a marketer at an organization using an ABM strategy that is currently measured on your ability to bring in MQLs, this one is for you. 

Chances are, you are caught in a roller coaster of lead optimization, and your love of your job depends on what your CPMQL is on any given day. Your biggest challenge? Attribution, and justifying the expense to finance and revenue operations when content downloads don’t turn into sales opportunities. Likely, your organization has a “me” mentality, and not a “we” approach to revenue generation. 

The good news is that there is an answer to your problem, and it’s measurement. The easiest way to get out of Roller Coaster ABM is to: 

• Take a step back, and audit your lead and revenue pipeline. Chances are, your content downloads are converting into opportunities at a sub-5% metric, and that’s not sustainable. 
• Evaluate what other KPIs exist within your revenue pipeline that you and sales both agree are problematic: is it velocity? Is it win rate? Is it deal size? Is it new logo acquisition? 
• Assemble a plan of attack for how you could measure the effects of one of those KPIs with a structured (non-lead) generating test. 

Each one of the KPIs listed above can be tackled with a structured account based marketing test, using control and test variations. If velocity is an issue, you can market to half of your pipeline with content designed to nurture them through the funnel. This content has to be ungated and able to be consumed by prospects at target accounts. Over time, you can begin to measure the uplift in velocity, and start to create internal buy-in for an account-based measurement instead of a contact level attribution model. 

This journey won’t, and can’t be easy. It takes a humble and dedicated marketing leader to turn the conversation from “how can I get more leads” to “how can marketing better support sales and revenue generation?”. This process can take a year, maybe even more to create internal adoption – and even then, can lead to a lot of internal skeptcism, so have the narrative and data ready at all times. 

Legacy ABM:

Legacy ABM organizations are organizations that have a fully bought-in revenue, sales, and marketing team to a “we”, not “me” mentality. In our experience, these are the least common type of organizations, but they do exist! 

A Legacy ABM organization has to have a test-and-learn mindset to continue evolving processes, systems, tools, and teams. If they don’t, they’ll get stagnant, and likely end up back at the Roller Coaster ABM approach. 

There’s a lot to learn from what successful ABM operations do, and the most common traits we’ve found are: 

• They constantly are evolving their approach to fit the needs of their revenue goals – tailoring their strategy based on the various stages of the buying process. 
• Their content, collateral, and messaging speaks authentically to their target audience. No faking it. 
• They invest in the full funnel – from awareness through to retention. 
• They use all three ABM approaches: one-to-many, one to few, and one-to-one across marketing and sales. 
• Marketing, sales, and revenue operations meet and connect frequently about goals, areas of opportunity, and how they can work together. 
• They use intent data from providers such as 6sense to help inform their priorities and share insights across the organization. 

The biggest issue many Legacy ABM organizations face is scalability, and finding a partner or approach that allows them to find the right measurement and paid strategies to unlock more growth. Often, they’ll use a dedicated partner to manage the paid strategies, while they continue to own content production and RevOps themselves. 

When to Buy a Tool While Setting up an Account Based Marketing Approach: 

There are several different types of tools you can leverage in account-based marketing, and depending on their level of sophistication can range between a few thousand, to well over a hundred thousand dollars to invest in. We recommend holding on investing in a true ABM tool until you’re in at least the “Roller Coaster ABM” persona, and perhaps beyond, where you can clearly measure the benefit of having the tools to scale results. 

To run a successful ABM strategy, you’ll need at least the following tools and resources, so also consider the total investment required when deciding whether or not to buy a tool. 

• An account targeting list: this can be generated manually (difficult) or via a tool using filters and intent data. 
• A CRM: Your CRM should be your source of truth for sales and deal activity. 
• A content marketing strategy: regardless of stage in ABM, you’ll need to have content to market that speaks directly to your target audience. 
• Money and time: to market, you’ll have to invest in ads on LinkedIn (most likely) or other ABM channels such as Stackadapt. Results also take time, so having a clear roadmap and timeline is helpful. 

Comparing ABM Tools: 

Our favorite tool: 6sense

6sense was named as a leader in the Magic Quadrant from Gartner in 2024. With dedicated CSMs and onboarding support, 6sense can help take your account targets and help you tier your spend based on actions your accounts are taking right now. If an account is showing high levels of intent? It can automatically move to a new marketing segment to continue to nurture it to a state of conversion. 

Other Intent Data Providers: Demandbase

Demandbase is another category leader in intent and ABM data. However, in our experience, is built a little more to be “out of the box” than 6sense. This can be beneficial to less sophisticated organizations who need less customization, but also can be a limiting factor for RevOps teams who are looking for more robust reporting and modelling. 

Other Intent Providers: ZoomInfo Buying Signals

ZoomInfo is a leading provider of company contacts and now, Buying Signals. No longer just a place to get enriched contact data, you can use ZoomInfo data to measure web activity, technographics, and more. In our experience, if you’re using a provider such as 6sense or DemandBase, you likely are using ZoomInfo already for enriching contact data, but this is another potential area to explore if you are looking for an intent-based solution. 

Other ABM Tools We’re Excited About and Trialling: 

The ABM space is continuing to evolve, and with that, new tools and opportunities continue to present themselves. Currently, we’re using all sorts of new tools and will be reporting back on their use case. 

• R!B2B: Identifies contacts that visit your website, and sends their contact data back to you in Slack
• Apollo.io: Newer to the enriched contact game than ZoomInfo, they are disrupting the go to market process and motion. 
• Terminus: A premium DSP that allows you to market to target accounts and personas on premium ad inventory. 

Ready to Supercharge Your ABM Strategy? 

If you’re new to ABM or if you’re stuck in the Roller Coaster ABM, we’re happy to help. Our team of growth strategists, content marketers, lifecycle strategists, designers, and paid experts are able to plug into your existing sales and marketing functions to help take you to the next level. Let’s talk! 

Richard Meyer

Richard has spent the last five years working at digital agencies, exploring various industries and company lifecycles. I’ve created and implemented growth campaigns on just about every platform for startups, $20,000,000 a year companies, and everything in-between. When not at work, I can be found cheering on the Penguins or Steelers, spending time with my wife and son, playing disc golf, baking, or walking my dogs.

The post Investing in an ABM Tool: Comparing 6Sense, Demandbase, and Other Effective Alternatives appeared first on Tuff.

We’ve written blogs about the key components that make up performance creative and how to utilize this type of creative to generate results and we’ve written blogs about how to use targeting platforms to build super segmented audiences. But how do you merge the two together to make sure that you’re targeting the right people with the right creative?

This is where the fun part comes in – figuring out how to differentiate different creative for each stage of the lifecycle and growth marketing funnel.

The marketing funnel – what is it?

For several of our partners, it’s a priority to differentiate their advertising strategy and marketing dollars by each stage of the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel outlines a customer’s journey and helps categorize where in their journey they fall into, which then dictates the best way to reach them, market to them, and nurture them. The most prevalent stages of the funnel are:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision/Purchase/Conversion

As a growth marketing agency, our role is to apply strategies across the entire funnel by implementing data-driven process for launching structured experiments to drive a specific behavior/action. While it’s definitely possible to create audiences that target each part of the funnel separately directly in certain ads platforms, such as LinkedIn where our targeting can get really granular, we also tend to see our partners find more success when they use account-based marketing (ABM) audience tools such as 6sense, DemandBase, and more. This allows them to truly find which companies make sense to reach depending on their level of engagement with the company already (for instance, if someone has never been touched by a company, they’d fall into the awareness stage; whereas if they have interacted with the company in one way or another, they’d fall into Consideration.

How do you determine the type of ad creative to show at each stage?

If you’re choosing to segment your audience targeting by stages of the marketing funnel, it’s in your best interest to also prioritize producing content and creative, especially will ABM creative- otherwise, you’ll be showing people who are at very different places in their buying journey the exact same ads and you won’t truly be tailoring to the way they’re thinking. 

When you’re looking to get in front of people who are higher in the marketing funnel at the Awareness stage, the goal is to show them inspiring ads that are simple and get the point of the company/service/product across pretty easily but also are inspiring and tap into their emotions to hook them to learn more, thus journeying down the funnel. Once a person is in the Consideration stage, it’s important to begin to lean on educational ads – sometimes this means you may need to expand your assets to include more robust content or landing pages where you can provide more information with more time to explain. Finally, you want to leverage persuasive assets that will drive home that decision once a person is in the Decision stage. A good way to look at it is:

Inspire → educate → persuade 

It makes sense once you start to think more about it, right? But the hard part is what parts of an ABM creative asset can be customized to speak to that part of the funnel? 

Creative aspects to differentiate for each part of the funnel

For our partner, Multiverse, who designs and manages apprenticeship programs for US and UK-based companies, we were tasked with strategizing and executing their B2B efforts targeted to companies who would be interested in hiring Multiverse to create programs for them. Last year, we had a brainstorming session to chat through the particular companies/personas that fall into each stage of the funnel for them, and how they were looking to market to them. We took a look at a variety of aspects:

1. Content

You may hear the phrase “content is king 👑” quite often, and this is especially true when it comes to B2B marketing, and even more true when it comes to the main social ads platform we leverage with Multiverse – LinkedIn. No matter what stage of the funnel, content is extremely valuable for anyone in their journey with a business, but it’s really important to be intentional about the type of content you promote to each stage. For the Awareness stage, where people are just looking to learn about a company and gain more information, content is a huge incentive for them to engage. Therefore, we lean on gated content, whether that be directly gated in-platform or gated behind a landing page where people can learn even more information before submitting their information. Even once someone travels down the funnel toward Decision, content is still valuable and worth utilizing, and you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing content that is even more helpful to people who are about ready to make a decision in their buying journey.

2. Messaging

Arguably one of the most important parts of an ad is the strategic messaging behind it as this dictates the ad copy used and the text overlay in the creative, both of which make up the entire ad itself that people are seeing. When it comes to the Awareness stage, we like to lean on educational and informational messaging that will help someone brand new to the company get a general idea of what the company does or offers. For those in the Consideration stage, messaging that offers more specific selling points is useful. And finally, for those in the Decision stage, messages that are relevant to the journey this audience has already been through that will help bring the sale home are necessary.

For Multiverse, we came up with the following value propositions for each stage of the funnel as follows:

• Awareness = educational and informational about what Multiverse does and how it can solve a problem for a company
  • “Compete for the same pool of talent with other big tech companies”
  • “Create your OWN talent”
  • “Is outsourcing the best option for you? You can cultivate your own talent development in-house!”
• Consideration = more specific selling points
  • “Customized curriculum”
  • “Time and efficiency with value”
  • “Coaching support”
• Decision = relevant messages to bring the sale home
  • “Sense of urgency in solving problems in today’s economic climate”
  • “Avoid burnout of your current team and foster retention”
  • “Other companies are getting ahead of this and you should too”

3. Call-to-actions (CTAs) 

While they may be considered part of the messaging, call-to-actions are another way to personalize and differentiate an ad to a particular audience who is in a particular stage in the funnel. CTAs are easy to get to stick out too because you can make them pop on a creative asset but also, most platforms offer a button to customize with CTA text or you can choose from a drop-down of options. 

Keeping in mind the stage of the funnel the audience you’re targeting is in will help you make sure that you’re showing them the CTA that makes the most sense to them. The higher in the funnel they are (the newer in the journey), the softer the CTA. The further-down-the-funnel, the harder the CTA. Here are the CTAs we’ve rotated between for Multiverse:

• Awareness: get in touch, learn more, see how, discover
• Consideration: learn more, book a call today, see how
• Decision: let’s talk, get started

Real-life results from Multiverse

We began testing this “creative by lifecycle stage” approach with Multiverse’s audience segments, which were targeting companies that were likely to have needs for data apprenticeship programs based on the nature of their products or services. Our creative team designed 3 concepts for each stage of the funnel. Here is the top-performing concept from each of those stages in terms of click-through rate:

When looking at two months of performance, the campaigns’ CTR are as follows:

• Awareness: 0.32%
• Consideration: 0.34%
• Decision: 0.41%

Right away, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that CTR increased from top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel, which can very much speak to the more tailored the messaging became and “harder” the CTAs were as we traveled down the funnel to the Decision creative.

How can you get started?

If this type of creative brainstorming and production sounds like something you need to tap into to make sure you’re approaching each stage of your funnel with the right ads, then take some time with your team that communicates with these audiences every day to see the type of messaging they resonate with and translate that exactly into the creative you’re serving to them. And, like we always say, the most important next step is to test, test, and test again!

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