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In this episode of Confessions Of A B2B Marketer, I'm joined by a demand generation legend and LinkedIn influencer: Adam Holmgren of GetAccept. We get Adam's view on the demand generation movement, how they run demand gen at GetAccept and his thoughts on personal branding.
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I think personal branding is the one thing that is really exploding right now. And sometimes I've even seen like companies hiring just because someone have a big personal brand, right? It's really hard to get stuff out there these days.
Adam, welcome. Nice to be here. So first of all, thank you so much for your time. There's a like two core area that I wanna dig into a like for this discussion. First is your approach to DemandGen. Get accept. I understand, like did you pioneer the change in the way, get accept markets itself? We, I wanna dig into that and then kind of separately, I wanna understand more about like your advocacy, I guess, about this demand gen movement and the work you're doing there and kind of why you're doing it and the impact's having, Does that sound good?
Yeah, sounds good. Two big topics, but I'm excited for sure. Before we actually jump in though, I have a question. How much are you currently dead? 200 kilos. I currently, you're saying I'm a father now, so I'm probably down at, uh, 180, maybe kilos. So, uh, yeah, but that isn't massive. I think I do like one 30.
It's going down day by day now, but that is absolutely massive for one rep. Right? This is one, one rep max. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible. So in like next week you'll be one 60 and then you'll be at my level . Exactly, Exactly. Because downside the kids, it's gonna hurt my ram at maxes. Maybe I should delay that , but, Let's talk about, um, so get accept.
When did you join? I joined get accept about one and a half years ago now. Got it. So yeah, I've been there for a while now and kind. Both developing, as you said,the manual strategy, but also the team and so on. I think before I joined my cmo, Frida, she joined about three years ago. So, and at that point we were three marketers.
I believe today we are 27. Wow. Like kind of the marketing team as a whole at the Manion, at the get accept had like a massive transition, a massive. Then Manion was of course a big part of that eventually. So the like would you say that the Demand Gen like thing was happening at Get Accept before you joined?
I think, uh, I won't like take credit for pioneering it completely and for sure certain things were already going in that way. I think one thing. That was very clear before I entered, Get accept whilst the kind of executive buy-in for marketing and the value of marketing. So there have never been like any big question marks on, Oh, why?
Why should we spend money there? So that was super good for me when I came in and wanted to do certain changes that we can talk about in a second. But like to in the beginning have the, both the, the CMO, the CEO, the CFO, all on board, like marketing is important. We want to grow our brand because we believe that will create value and create revenue.
So that was actually already in place. Uh, much thanks to my Chief Marketing Officer Of course. I was gonna say, and it was also a really vital part for me to join. I think that was like in the interview process and all of that. You want to get a feel for where the company are, how they approach marketing. And that was probably the main reason why I felt so excited about joining.
Yeah. Oh yeah, I was gonna say, shout out to Frida for like setting that up. . Yeah. So in the interview you were like, How do you, like, is the CEO a big fan of marketing? Probably in a better way. You probably asked that question better, but you actually, this was a thing you wanted to Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Because I think that's, that really sets it all. The CEO doesn't have to completely understand marketing, but just I think. Has to understand why it's important, at least I think that's important. And maybe let marketing do a thing without pushing too many, having too many boundaries and so on. I think that's important.
So demand gen was a thing, but there are still changes to make. And then we fast forward to June, 2022. And there's a a h and all time high for both ARR and marketing sourced arr. So I want to just go through this year and a half understand what you've changed and if that has impacted or if that has led to, would you say the results you achieved in June?
Yeah, and I think that's the tricky part with Manion, right? Usually it means that we will have a less measurable marketing strategy, so it will be hard to to account for assaults right away. But now when one and a half years, Actually past, It's great to be able to see some results, right? Otherwise it will be hard to justify all the changes we have made , to be completely honest.
But yes, I think usually when, when some people think of demanding, they think of, yeah, we, we gotta ungate stuff. That's where it is. And of course that's one thing that was maybe the first thing we did at Get Accept when I joined. We. We didn't have any gated things anymore because we wanted stuff to be visible as much as possible.
That is one small thing, but I think the main thing that we really started looking at when I joined was like, okay, this is our sales funnel, however it works, how much revenue is actually coming through it, and how much revenue is coming in from what we call then the high intent buyers. Maybe the people that have raised their.
And then how much is coming in from all the other sources that we have. For us, for example, it was frees because usually free trials or frees at SAS companies account for a very large portion of the leads, but a very small portion of they are, And that was the exact same thing we saw, and I think the exact thing I have seen at all companies I've been working on and after I, we could kind of see that in numbers.
It was quite easy that, okay, how do we. Shift our focus to get more of these high intent buyers because one thing that was quite clear for us was that most buyers or right now for us, is not educated enough. They aren't, they are too far up the buying cycle to even, Yeah. Be part of our sales process, to be honest.
So that was really the main first thing we did. And I would say the main thing everyone should do when they're starting at the company in demand. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. So it's understanding like where the revenues come from, like which sources, because you might have coming through the website, you might have coming through like free trials, et cetera, and demos on the site, which could be a separate Yeah, there's also like outbound or there's events and there's other things.
Right. And so Exactly. I dunno if you can share like exact numbers. As you joined, what percentage of revenue is coming through like the inbound sales motion on the website roughly. Yeah. No, but I, I would say it was still pretty high, like the amount of revenue. I still think Fred and the team that was there before me have had created a motion that have actually grown a lot, so I think it was probably at least 50%.
Then we have grown that now over the years. If we say, But I still think for us, I would say outbound and things like that is still very important because that is also somewhat of a brand builder as well. When we get to talk to people. I would say, especially here in Europe, we are present in both the US and in Europe and so on.
I would say in Europe, outbound is still very much a viable channel. In the US of course, it's a lot harder for sure, and it's more people are relying more on emails and things like that. But here, I think a personal outbound. Can be a really good brand builder and yeah, definitely a deal developer. So I think we, we rely on both a bit and that's one thing we try to do in demand and is to work very close with our SDR team and to make sure that we, because they are usually the first instance that p to high intent buyers.
And we all know that attribution usually works. So, so, so we can't really be sure, um, of that. But when they actually talk to a prospective buyer, They have a good feeling around how they found us, around what they're looking for, and that's how we really get the feedback we need. So that has also been key, I would say, to really have that relationship with SDR team.
Got it. And so apart from outbound and then like inbound through the site, are there any other like partnerships or events that you use that contribute to revenue? Yeah, for sure. I would say that lucky thing about Get Accept also is that they have always been very strong in terms of events. That was really how marketing started at Get Accept.
They started hacking all of these big events when they were only a few people hacking, saster, hacking, all these big events. Not paying for a booth, but instead just showing up in the serving coffee to the long queues that were outside and things like that. So I think they have always been, and they also, we have always had these like crazy TV suits on us to, to be visible in events.
So it, I think brand has always been an important part in get, accept, even when we didn't have like a marketing department. So I feel like to have that as a base and then develop it more into a story have been really. Proficient and efficient. I would say it has been, usually it's the other way around where no one have worked on brand or events.
Mm-hmm. and that's what we have to build up. But I would say we were already pretty strong with events and our brand was pretty strong. So it was more of how do we make this into a complete story and decide which channels we should distribute. Yeah. For and so on. Got it. And so what are like the key initiatives you have invested in since.
I would say there are a couple of course, but as I said, we started out with just defining, okay, what, What drives revenue? What doesn't drive revenue? And then it was more of, okay, what can we actually cut here that doesn't drive revenue? Paid search is one of those things where we usually put a lot of money, right?
We put it on Google, we put it on. One thing that we did pretty quick was to really try and cut a lot of the garbage out in paid search, and I believe many companies just, there is a lot of money flushing out in the Google Ads platform and not really driving any revenue because that's also one thing we saw.
The majority of the revenue that got in from paid search was through brand. Right? But obviously they didn't hear about us on Google, obviously they heard about us from somewhere. And then paid social, whatever. So I think one key thing from the start was to transition to, uh, more of a paid social model.
Okay. What channels in paid social are most efficient for us and where can we bump our story up? And what we've seen so far is by doing that is that also the inbound ARR is increasing from paid search, even though we might spend increase more on paid social channels, for example. And I think that has also been a great realization that that usually people hear about us from somewhere else before searching on Google these days, even though of course, Sometimes that happens as well.
Yeah. It sounds like you just have to be more intelligent about attribution, right? Because that's so interesting that you were getting a boost in pay spend, no boost on paid search. Yeah, through the increased budget on paid social. Okay. So we cut out, we saved some budget from these keywords that I assume were not like converting or just like to high up the funnel, I guess.
Yeah. Shifted some of that to pay social. What was the strategy on paid social? Was it through LinkedIn with like, I don't know, case study? Yeah, the strategy on, On pet Social, I would say was to kind of first define what channels we wanted to be present in. I usually believe that tier channels in the beginning the better because it's, Yeah, it's quite hard to keep track of too many channels.
So we chose LinkedIn of course, but also Facebook. I still think Facebook is a pretty viable channel these days, especially with all of these tools where you can kind of narrow down the target groups also on Facebook. So that have helped us Tremend. Then it was more, we have done a lot of work on paid social before, but that, I would say that it was more static.
We were thinking in terms of like people are moving from top funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel, and when we started putting more attention to paid social, we kind of shifted that around. Because we never know where a buyer is in the sales process, right? And we, we never know how far they are. And that was one of the realizations we made.
We obviously need to educate people more, but we also never know where they are. So we need to kind of create material for the entire buyer funnel, but we need to send everything to everyone since we don't know. And we also change to more of a, looking at engagement metrics. We don. Think that our buyers will be direct response from paid social channels, so they won't come in and look at them immediately from a paid social ad.
But instead, we want to see that the direct trafficking increases. We want to see that the brand related searches increase, and we want to see that the engagement in the platform increases. Then we are doing a good job in. And then like long term, we obviously see that the high intent demo request increases, but that can't be from any source really.
I think that's also key to realize that paid social might not be a great channel for direct response if you're not selling like a consumer good. I guess that's different. Yeah. So you started investing more in this like as you joined over the past year or so, and then now you are really starting to see the benefits eg.
Would be all time high and marketing source revenue in June. Yeah, exactly. And that's also one thing, like if people start transitioning to more of a demand generation model, you say so, or just more of a revenue focused model. The results will, it will take time and especially the results down will go very fast.
You know, the, the NQL levels and the lead levels, they will get lower, obviously pretty fast. And that's usually when the panic hits for companies and then it's usually shift and revert back and then it's all to a waste. So I think that's also important. You will probably need like a year right, to, maybe not a year to see any results, but maybe a year to see the results you are really looking for.
And I think that's important. Fortunately you had the CEO and CFO on site already. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's not like we have to argue against them sometimes to, but still it's, uh, yeah. I think we are a, a great tag team here for sure. I saw one of your retarding ads that you posted personally on LinkedIn.
And it had, I think somebody within your team just juggling. Yeah. And so what I liked about this is that you are like showing the personality of the brand, but also displaying the value proposition, which is enabling sales people to, I guess, manage their deals. Yeah. Or juggle deals, right? Yeah. Could you share more about like how you got to producing the ad?
Cause I think it was brilliant. No one, that's also one thing we have seen on social. Different things work, work differently, right? But, but. Prioritize engagement a lot. So what engages our audience the most? And usually it is stuff with our people because they are really our brand and it's usually something around humor.
So when we combine our people and humor, that's really where we get the most engagement. So that was really like the baseline for that ad. And then we, we asked, the juggling was a funny that it ended up being juggling, but we were more looking for different types of skill sets in the company. And then we found, we had someone that knew how to juggle.
We had someone that knew how to riff a guitar so than we had someone. You have to dunk a basketball. Right? So that kind of became the three, three retargeting ads. And I think that's really key in in tech these days is to try and stand out because everyone is really competitive in the feed. You know, in IT tech, everyone that's like trying to target the IT tech companies, the sales people within those companies, they are seeing a lot of different ads.
And then to try and create something that doesn't look like an ad, but gives them something, that's really what we try to achieve. Yeah. So those we have, Yeah, we have been receiving a lot of good feedback on those, even though it's not like we can't really tell and educate a lot in such an ad, but we spark some kind of interest maybe, and that's the whole point.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's say, yeah, you're like, I think. Effective in communicating the value of the product there or different me through a, through a very clear metaphor. And so to clarify, the all time high in June, so it's marketing source revenue. So is this essentially revenue that closed that came through the website?
Yeah, that's correct. Cool. Awesome. And that was an all time high in June. Yeah, that was an all time high and we had an all time high for total revenue, so that was also like, it's not like we're just seeing like the marketing is working. We're seeing like also the outbound motions are working better, which is reasonable if people know more about our brand.
Right. We will never be able to prove that, of course, but I, I'm pretty confident that it helps. Yeah. Yeah. It's. You might be able to get some qualitative feedback from one sales rep who pinged you in Slack saying, Great work guys. I just reached out. Call to this person. And they said they loved your LinkedIn redacting ad.
Do you know what I mean? So that's like Yeah, exactly. And they have heard about you us before. Right. And that's like, I feel when I say to normal people, that doesn't work in b2b. Talk about these big B2B companies. No one knows who they are, but in the B2B sphere it's a completely different story. Yeah.
It's actually like one of the best feelings as a marketer when someone in sales is like, Happy with you. . . Yeah, exactly. I dunno if that's, It's rare, but it happens. Yeah. They're like, Oh yeah, I heard of you guys. Yeah. It's like the absolute dream. It, it makes you look really good. Okay, Awesome. So that's get accept.
Yep. And so the marketing team, you said come from three to how many? 27? Yeah. 27 today I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And you, your plans is still growing. I think we will try to be a bit static for once, you know, when we're growing as a marketing team also it, it puts a lot of, we need a lot more processes and a lot of, Yeah, that's the tricky part, right?
Because now we have a big engine that we need to kind of oil. So yeah, I think we will stay like this for a while and then of course we will move with the company as we grow. But, um, I think we have a really good structure right now where we have kind of built out the. We think that we need right now.
Now it's more about getting, I think last year was about growing and getting everyone up to speed, and now this year is really about hopefully exploding. Not in terms of growing the number of employees, but more in terms of hopefully growing their revenue. Exactly. Are you happy to like roughly share like the group, like how you split the team of 27 into different groups?
Yeah, yeah, sure. We have a couple of different teams that are, we call them global teams and then we have a couple of different teams that are more regional teams because we are, as I said before, we are both in the US and we are in Europe, so we have a demand team that I lead that is responsible for Europe.
And then we have a similar demand team but that are responsible for the US and of course we collaborate on all of that, but we have kind of, since our go to market model is pretty different in US versus Europe because it's US is a way more competitive market and we need to do different things there.
We decided to split it that way, so to kind of demand regional teams. Then we have a couple of global teams that's more all over the place. We have a brand team, we have the signers, We are everything related to the brand, the to events and all of. We have a content team that are lot of resources. When we create stuff, it can be everything from SEO to paid social ads, to everything related to content.
We have a partner team that I would say is very important. I would say that we are, for many companies, very much an add-on to their crm, right? So having a partnership with these big CRM vendors is really critical for us and to get. Yeah, partnership going, so that's really valuable. Uh, we also have a web team, so handling all of our web stuff and the CRO and all of those things.
And finally we have a product marketing team. And I would say product marketing team is probably the last one we've added now, where we really see that. Okay. Our customer base is growing, our revenue's growing our product is getting more and more complex. We need to really have a team that understands this whole picture.
Yeah. So that's it right now, I think. Yeah. Sounds good. So I wanna switch now more to like the work that you've been doing both through the podcast and through your like, I guess personal brand slash LinkedIn. And it's more like educating and building awareness for the category of demand gen, specifically in Europe.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Why did you start doing this? I think in the past few years I've been a part of a lot of different communities, marketing communities as a whole, and you know, we all have seen the rise of demand and as a topic big and. It has mainly, to be honest, being very US centric in terms of who talks about it.
I would say we have all of these refined labs is a great example. Of course the big influencer in the space of Manion, but there's, there has been very few from Europe or surrounding areas that have been. Talking about this space, even though we are a lot of people working in it. So that was kind of one part of why I wanted to do something with it.
And the second part was also, I've been in all of these communities. Many of them are very big. They're very big like marketing communities where we talk about all of these different things and they didn't really provide any value to me specifically. Sometimes they did of course, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack.
So I really wanted to find something, niche it down a lot, and really talk about just this topic that I'm very passionate. Then I found, you know, started a podcast called The Demand Generation Movement. Started interviewing some people and starting, of course learning from them. And then it grew into a small community and then we, we talked to each other there.
And it has community, of course it helps when people are in the same time zone. We can talk to each other. That's like the, the US Europe differentiation. But I also believe that sometimes in Europe we are not necessarily behind, but we are, yeah, not always the same challenge. So I think it's great. Yeah, Totally agree.
And so this is something that you're doing set completely separate from get accept it's like your own thing. Yep. Yeah. I am cool. It's completely on my spare time, so to say. And they're like support of it. They're like happy that you're doing this. It's like supporting your, I guess it's improving. It's like increasing awareness for them, right?
Cause if people follow you, they know you work for get accept. Yeah, exactly. I I think it really helps them as well. I've heard like on a couple of occasions, like, oh yeah, get accept. It's where, uh, Adam and Frida comes from and like something. And that really assess it all. I think personal branding is the one thing that is really exploding right now.
And sometimes I've even seen like companies hiring just because someone have a big personal brand, right? Mm. It's really hard to get stuff out there these days, and it's almost like they should be sponsoring you. Yeah, exactly. Next level maybe. I think it's so funny, like when I, let's say I post something from my personal profile, or when I post something on the company profile, it doesn't really matter what I post, but I, it will engage a lot more if I post it like personally, right?
So I mean, imagine that everyone in the company would have, I don't know, 10 k. Followers that are really relevant in your icp, that would be like crazy how you could reach out to them. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, I totally agree that companies looking to like recruit for a role. More and more they're looking at like, we're getting this person, but we're also gonna get the attention that this person generates every month.
Yeah. Right. And so, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I. It's like, it's almost like the, the company hiring should like project their cost per click and then look at the next two to three years of how much they spend per click from their like LinkedIn ads, , and then add that onto what they offer the person they're hiring.
Do you know what I mean? ? Yeah, exactly. That would be awesome. And I guess it doesn't say anything in regard to how good you are in a role, how big of an influence you are. For sure. I think that's also important to note it. The biggest influencers out there in Manion might not necessarily be the best demand marketer for a scale up company, because I guess when people are, I think that is something I've also been realizing this past year.
For me, it's super important to always continue to execute. I feel like if I would move into more of a just a strategic role, then I would really lose a lot of my skills and knowledge really fast, because that's kind of how we learn all the time. And I feel like a lot of people, maybe when they grow bigger and bigger, that's what happens.
It becomes more a strategic position and less like an ex Yeah. Execution role. Yeah. They go hand in hand. Right. You wanna spend time talking and thinking about it, but then actually doing it. Cuz then they both feed each other. Yeah, exactly. But you do actually have sponsors already. Yeah. On the demand generation movement, right?
Yeah, exactly. And I feel like that's one way to monetize it also. Right. I feel like I haven't really created anything to monetize. But I think it's really a great thing and it also pushes me to do it better and better. For sure. Well, let's give a shout out to the sponsors now, shall we? ? Yeah, let's do that.
Yeah. But I have the two, really, two sponsors that really have, We weren't lot to, we weren't big at all. We aren't still aren't that big, but we are very niche, like pretty active community. I had a sponsor from a company called Alro and a company called Hockey Stack in Europe that have really been really nice to me and really wanted to be a part of something where the dialogue is actually going on.
Because in this community we talk a lot about different tech tools, right? But we are very honest also in the open about things that's working good and things that's working not so good. And I think that's really where the, the value lies. And I think that's the, everyone is talking about communities these days and all companies want to build up communi.
I think it's hard for a company to build up a community and get it as engaging than if a person does it, because I am in there engaging every day. But if a company would do it, it'd be hard to have the same kind of trust for it, I would assume. Yeah, I totally agree. So you can build this up. Like generate revenue from sponsorship and like it's gonna be a very valuable asset for yourself.
Or if anybody else wants to, I don't know, buy it all, I get involved in the future. So I think it's a great thing to do and a great niche as well because demand generation is like blowing up around the world. And so just picking like a smaller, like not competing with any of the bigger players in the US but picking like the European version and then becoming the leader there, I think is gonna be very.
Yeah, and exactly and I think like the hard thing I never really set out to go for. Like you, I welcome people from the US as well if they are hopefully in similar time zone because that makes it easier. But I think the space is already started to get so crowded in the us. And I think still think there are so many people that are already leading this there, and I think it's a bigger need in Europe, to be honest, to talk about this.
I, I still think it's funny when I search for like jobs in Europe around either Legion or like Manion. Manion is really. Really small compared to more legion oriented roles. So compared to, and that really says it all. Also, I think we still have a long, long way to go, , and you're gonna help us get there faster.
So if anybody he wants to know more about Adam, I suggest going, searching for Adam Horen on LinkedIn. Following connecting, because almost daily I think we're getting some demand. Generat. Wisdom, right Adam? Yeah, for sure. . And then searching the Demand Generation Movement in Apple Podcast Spotify to follow his show, and it's also demand generation movement.com.
Yeah. Awesome. Did I miss anything out? No, it's great. Thank you so much for having me, . Thank you, Adam.
And thank you very much for listening to that episode of the Confessions of a B2B marked podcast. Thank you for Adam for coming on and sharing with wisdom, for being so transparent about. They are doing a guest set in the world of demand generation. Now, I've gotta give out a shoutout to my man Yer, who is one of the co-founders of Speak On Podcasts.
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