The convergence of B2B marketing automation & ABM platforms

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You at the start said right you chip in James right make sure it's conversation and then I do and you go if you just let me if you just let me I was just trying to keep the flow going. Okay, right. Well you you go you go

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the wave report on revenue marketing platforms that came out in the end of July was something that caught our attention, raised quite a lot of interesting issues and certainly considerations for our clients and obviously the wider sales and marketing community, particularly those making decisions around investment in technology. We know that there's a lot of

a lot of sort of focus right now on the future of tech. And I think we can see the direction of travel for a lot of these platforms are definitely gonna, is definitely gonna necessitate people to reevaluate what they've got. And I think the report that came out talks about, and you can probably build on this, in very short summary, talks about the way that tech has evolved over the last few years.

these sort of central marketing automation platforms that do a lot of the general day -to -day execution of activity to help you run your marketing program online and manage all your digital channels, manage your website, et cetera. And then you've got, which obviously more relevant to the world we live in, which is B2B, you've got these ABM platforms that provide more sophisticated ways of engaging with the...

with target accounts with multiple buyers, et cetera. Life, Sixth Sense and Demandbase. Yeah. What the report says is that at the minute clients and organizations are needing to have basically dual investment in those two different systems because for any B2B enterprise marketing and sales function, you'd need to have an advanced capability in ABM, ABX. And you also need to have the...

the centralized platform that you mentioned to run your email automation, your marketing automation generally host your website and run your marketing program. But if you are as many larger enterprises are that they want to have that kind of dual approach where they're a demand generation program, but they want to have a dedicated focus on a smaller set of accounts. They want that level of sophistication to manage that.

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then they will choose a platform like demand base. But I think because of this convergence that Forrest had talked about and this sort of now move to more of a single platform, if we're going down the single platform route, then it requires a lot more consideration than maybe buyers of the past have taken when they've purchased various different forms of tech.

You know, as we went to an event last year, the B2B Martech event, there was a stat that someone shared where, you know, the typical marketing operation in a large enterprise, there's something like 120 plus different tools and platforms that marketers have invested in. Clearly that's not sustainable longer term, but it's much easier to buy specific tools for a particular need and get that through without, you know, extensive approval.

Whereas if you're going to go down the route of a single platform that's going to do a lot more, it's going to be more expensive and it's going to require a lot more evaluation and you need to look at things not just in the here and now and what your current needs are. You've really got to think about the future. And I think what was used in the report is it kind of points to the direction travel for a lot of these vendors. Yeah, and points towards their current strengths and weaknesses. You know, and it's clear that, and it's obvious that a dedicated ABMA ABX platform like Demandbase

is going to be much stronger in servicing that particular need. But for a demand gen program, a platform like HubSpot is going to be head and shoulders above something like demand base naturally. And the convergence that they're talking about is not only important because of that kind of needs and meeting those needs, but also because, as you said, choosing a platform now, which is going to in the future,

enable you to do both of those things in a unified platform also solve some of the pain points that people have when they have that dual investment. The obvious one is that they're spending more money than they probably would on a unified platform because there is some level of overlap in functionality. But the other, as we know quite intimately, having run a project to help fix this problem recently, is the necessity to integrate those platforms, which comes with a whole host of headaches.

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And often requires in some cases, such as the one that we've worked on recently, quite complex and technical solutions to fixing what in a unified platform wouldn't be an issue at all. so ultimately there's a level of pain now in having that dual approach, which I think is driving that conversion point because people will want a unified platform that can do both of these things, but none of those platforms as it stands.

are able to service their clients across both of those two key disciplines. And so the point that you're making there is that choosing the right platform now to put your eggs into basically putting your eggs in one basket, if you want to think of it that way, is the right thing to do to future proof your investment. it's really about backing the right horse now, isn't it? And I think the report that Forrester produced

whilst very good, very comprehensive, it doesn't really compare apples with apples. A lot of these products are very different and their product roadmaps, the strategies are very different. So you can't really compare HubSpot with Sixth Sense because it is a very different platform. HubSpot is...

The Sixth Sense does what it does very well. HubSpot does what it does very well. The problem is there is not a platform out there that does everything. What HubSpot does very well and what Sixth Sense does very well. And that's the point of conversion. They're all plotted on the same revenue marketing platform quadrant, if you like. I think, you know, if we were to talk through the main three or four vendors that are positioned in the top right as the leaders, think maybe that will give

some insight to people that are now thinking about the future strategy. So we mentioned HubSpot, that's obviously building out its capability across marketing, sales and service with its various different hubs. It's got a very advanced website platform as well. really the HubSpot suite, if you want to call it that, allowing an organization to manage

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all of its interaction engagements with customers. And it's also got CRM. So it's a far different platform to Sixth Sense, which Sixth Sense is much more about being a tool that harnesses data and uses analytics and AI to model your kind of ideal customer, find more of those, and also look at where those potential accounts are in the buyer journey to pinpoint those that may be more ready to buy.

So it's a very advanced set of analytics and AI, which again, you don't find in HubSpot. So the big question, I suppose for me is, HubSpot going to get there sooner and build that capability into their current suite? I certainly think that's probably more likely the case than Sixcent building out all of these. I think they're better placed, that's for sure, because of course they've got to build on

they've got to essentially recreate what SixCents has done and bolt that onto a platform which is much broader already. For SixCents to build out all the functionality that HubSpot has in service hub, the website platform, the sales platform, and the more advanced elements of the marketing platform where there is some overlap with SixCents in the automation capabilities that SixCents has, then they've got a lot further to go in that journey to be competing with HubSpot across the board.

whether HubSpot has the desire or the intention to build out that ABM functionality. Well, guess time will tell. I would be interested to get Sixth Sense take on it, but I don't see them. I can't imagine their strategies to become like HubSpot. wouldn't make any sense. this is where acquisitions will come into play potentially. as we know, HubSpot doesn't do that. Yeah, it builds its platform from the ground up.

And this was one of the things that struck me when I was reading the Gartner report, sorry, the Forrester report. In the analysis of platforms other than HubSpot, they were often praising the, say for example, the Salesforce system. They were praising the fact that the Salesforce CRM is well integrated with what used to be called Pardot, it's now called something different. And that to me seems ridiculous when comparing it to HubSpot. know, that's a point of...

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That's a point of criticism for me that there's even an integration that's required there in the first place. And so it's probably in my view, more likely that a platform like Salesforce may go and buy something like demand base or Sixth Sense and bolt that onto their existing platform. But where that's a questionable choice for people, therefore thinking, okay, we'll go with Salesforce because they're highly acquisitive. They might buy something like that, bolt it on.

is that you end up with all the same pains that I talked about earlier. You end up still having to integrate your Salesforce CRM as you have to with Pardot already with whatever they end up calling Sixth Sense or demand base, whatever they look to acquire. mean, it's like Salesforce strategy is just to acquire all these different tools and make them available to customers. But then the customers themselves have got to figure out how to make the most of them. You know, with expensive consultants, lots of customization.

you know, they've got Tableau, they've got MuleSoft, I think they just announced their results. Slack, mean, Slack, mean, that seems like a, an interesting acquisition. It doesn't necessarily fit with the revenue marketing, strategy, still a great, fantastic tool. But, yeah, I think the, the Salesforce approach, very, very different to, to HubSpot. and, it's, think I was just about to say Salesforce.

recently announced their results. And I think the thing that's driving their growth is, is those analytical tools. Obviously, sixth sense is growing as well. It shows that maybe that's a really key area that people are looking for now to make the most of. And we know that that maybe is a weakness in HubSpot's suite right now. Certainly from a B2B ABM perspective. Yeah, but suppose the point I'm making is that

You could buy Tableau and integrate it with HubSpot as easily as you could with Parallel. There's no benefit. Yeah, there's no benefit in going down that route really with Salesforce. All your eggs in the Salesforce basket in my view is, you might have a more consolidated billing structure. And in fairness, the integrations between platforms in Salesforce's ecosystem will be made more easier than they will with third party.

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platform is probably more of a more favorable licensing model where you're going to get this. We know that, you know, if an organization by Salesforce, quite often they get part of thrown in for free or heavily discounted. there's some benefits from that perspective, but it's, know, but ultimately it's got to be about how you're using the system. And if it's, if it's all fully integrated and all built in the same platforms, far easier to use. You haven't got data silos and you haven't got,

different skill sets required. it does feel that HubSpot is in a very good position now to sort of capitalize on this future trend. It does. But I suppose there are question marks there around whether that is the direction of travel that they would wish to go down. Because HubSpot is a platform, not just for B2B, not just for those that have ABM as part of their programs, but

for a broader range of different organizations than say, Sixth Sense or Demandbase. I think where they, if I had to make a bet on how that might work is that ABM, and we have no knowledge of this, I should be really clear about that, could become another optional hub as Service Hub as Content Hub has. Because ultimately, if you were a HubSpot customer that

didn't have ABM in your program and lots of people that have HubSpot don't. I think that will get less and less over time, particularly within the B2B space. for those that don't, aren't enterprise level and therefore don't have the bags of cash that are required to take a really dedicated ABM approach, they won't want to see HubSpot invest in what is probably tens of millions of dollars in the platform to build its ABM functionality, only for them not to need it and their bills to grow up and ultimately be invested.

having to pay extra for something that they don't need. It's sort of this, it's really down to the maturity and level of sophistication of the buyer. you're an organization that would really prefer ease of use and a platform, it's not even integrated, built together, it's all one platform, you don't really have to think about integration. Everything's all there. If that is more important to you than having a really sophisticated ABM.

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technology in place or if you look at other elements that HubSpot's building out around service. Service, again, strong functionality in the service suite, but it's not comparable to what we might know or might see a managed service provider have in -house, like Kinect -wise that's highly focused on managing tickets and the whole service. It's the same. It's same with websites as well with the headless.

And it would be the same with ABM I think yeah, yeah because there's always gonna be a specialist out there that can do really advanced an individual thing in a much more advanced way than a Than a platform that is more broad like HubSpot but the question that you have to ask there and CMOs will be asking this question now is whether we need that level of advanced functionality and most the time the answer is no, you know, you have to be in the top 1 % of all top 5 % of

Organizations that are running ABM programs at scale and with a really sophisticated, a really sophisticated approach to need some of this really advanced functionality that comes with tools like Sixth Sense. And because of that advanced functionality, the other thing that doesn't get mentioned, bless you by the way, I think it does in, in the, in the Forrester report that Sixth Sense obviously comes with a massive price tag. Now, if you're going to have to invest in that and in a platform like HubSpot,

then it focuses the mind even further on whether you'd need all the additional functionality that it brings. And I hope in time that HubSpot brings in an ABM hub that enables some of this more advanced functionality around data and around modeling of accounts and around buying groups that gives that level of functionality to people that are using HubSpot in a way that is...

not coming with the price tag that Six Sense does. Yeah, I mean, if you go down the advanced route, it's typically the platforms are building these advanced capabilities because they're targeting enterprise customers and they know that they can basically command a premium price if they do that. But it's a trade off, isn't it? If you go down that route, then you're to have this really, really advanced set of features and functionality, you're paying a premium price for it.

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But as we know, you know, it's evidenced every year from Gartner when they do their utilization of MaTeX analysis. It's actually going down every year and I still think it's a quite a low percentage of if you look at all the tools and features available in a, in a advanced platform, only a fraction of them are being used and that trend is going down, not up. So continuing organizations are buying this stuff and then probably not using it to its full potential. Whereas, and that leads to other

knock -on impacts in terms of low adoption across the users and limited integration because you've got these really advanced tools that don't necessarily integrate as well. So it's a trade -off between that really advanced functionality versus something that is much easier to use, is all in one and is going to have higher adoption across those different teams. And it gives those teams the ability to collaborate better as well.

I think that's the big decision I think people need to make longer term, what is most important. Yeah, and if people do conclude that we want to run an ABM program, we want a consolidated unified system because we've got all of these headaches with integration. We don't want to have to spend eye -watering sums on platforms like Sixth Sense and Demandbase, but we do want some more advanced

ABM functionality, then choosing a platform like HubSpot makes a lot of sense. I think if you do need that advanced functionality, you do want to stretch a platform like Sixth Sense or Demandbase to its limits, then you've got, I suppose, two choices, and that's to stick with what we've got now, which is a dual approach, or to throw your eggs into the Sixth Sense basket in the hope that they do. And I doubt that they will.

But bring in some of the capability that means you might be able to run some of your other demand gen activities through that platform too. ultimately that's how we would advise that that decision is made. ultimately comes down to where you believe your focus and your investment is going to go into predominantly in the future. If it's heavily, very heavily into ABM and ABX, and for some it really is, then

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choosing a platform to sit at the center of your organization, such as Sixth Sense or Demandbase, may be a wise choice. I suspect that that's a very small percentage of Yeah, we're just at the very early stages of all this convergence, we? I it's quite clear what would be a real game changer given, you know, if we look at all the different platforms, as you said, if HubSpot came out with an ABM Hub,

that would be a real game changer if it could even get close to some of the functionality that is offered by six cents or 10. of the functionality of one of those platforms then for many that's sufficient and it would absolutely be a game changer. Can HubSpot sort of compete on all fronts? Can it then invest in a commerce platform that is obviously starting to build out commerce? Is that going to compete with Shopify for example? It never will and that's point. There's always going to be a specialist out there that can do what?

a platform like HubSpot does, but in a much more advanced and specialist way. that's just, that is the nature of it. What we're talking about here is the fact that most people don't need the upper tiers of that sophistication within their programs. Most people would be perfectly fulfilled with a 50 % of what demand base can do type platform, which is absolutely where HubSpot would be. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably a good place to wrap up.

What we didn't talk about, Craig, was why the convergence is happening from a marketing perspective. It's clearly happening from a technology perspective, but what's driving that change? What's driving the convergence? Unmet needs, frustrations. But why are organizations now more focused on ABM and ABX than they ever have been before? Because that's ultimately what's necessitating this change. People have been running demand -gen programs for donkey's years.

and beginning to automate those could argue that people were in ABM programs for donkey's years as well. I think what's maybe changing is, it goes back to some of the earlier podcasts we've talked about, in terms of demand gen and how that's measured. Undoubtedly, ABM is more effective if it's done well. And yes, some of these advanced tools now are, particularly with Sixth Sense, are enabling you to really

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make more use of data through AI. Which helps surface those accounts which are actually a good fit for you and that and actually interested in what you're having to say and therefore you can target your efforts from say for example a BDR team on those who actually give a shit what you're talking about. Yeah, so it's more timely interactions. timely and they're actually probably going to pick up the phone and listen to what you've got to say because you've identified that they are interested in what you're talking about.

through a platform like DemandBase. And of course, that's not the only thing that it does. But in contrast to the traditional DemandGen approach, whereby someone visits a webinar and they instantly get a phone call from a BDR, as we've talked about, that is no longer going to work in the way that it has traditionally in the past. And so I think it comes out of the realization that our traditional DemandGen MQL generation approach is not going to be

as effective in the future as we talked about on previous podcasts, which then raises the question, what is going to be as effective? I think a lot of people, even those which weren't necessarily early adopters of ABM have determined that that more dedicated, targeted approach to those that actually show interest in their business beyond a registration for a singular webinar is the right way to go. And I think that that is leading more people to adopt ABM, ABX.

platforms and which is therefore raising the profile of this discussion and that there's more people in that position of having the dual system whereby they're investing in two systems. They've got the headache of integrating two systems. They've got the siloed nature of the teams that operate on those two systems. And therefore this conversation is coming up more and more frequently, which I think is driving that convergence because of course platforms like HubSpot, Demand -based Sixth Sense are hit.

I'm also hearing this debate happen. Maybe not this specific one. Who knows? yeah, absolutely. they're listening to customers, they're seeing what people are asking for and they're adapting to that as always. mean, that's how these vendors continue to evolve. And I think that's why it's interesting some of the acquisitions that Salesforce have made. Because again, know, AI, report, analytics,

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probably one of the weaker areas in lot of these platforms. Yeah. And you know, we're a HubSpot Platinum partner, but HubSpot included, you know, I don't think we'd shy away from the fact that some of the reporting capability in HubSpot, despite the For B2B and for - For a very specific ABM use case, and for B2B in general, if we're being honest, is sometimes a challenge in HubSpot for some specific reasons, because it is a platform that's built for many.

And there are some use cases where it falls short from a reporting perspective. I we can be clear about that. absolutely. There is that challenge around reporting with HubSpot. shall we wrap up then? Maybe just summarize the sort of key, the key things from that discussion. Because as always, we start with a sort of hypothesis and it kind of probably where we end up is somewhere different. I think we probably started by thinking...

Interesting report points to this convergence between these two different disciplines, if you like. Yeah. And that it's much needed, I think. ended up with it's like unlikely to happen anytime soon. Absolutely. I don't think, I think we're just at the very start of that journey. And I think what Forrest has tried to do is maybe put together a lot of different vendors that are very different and try and group them in a.

in a standard kind of category, which I still think is very kind of embryonic stages, if you want to say that. I think what they're trying to do is start the conversation around this. And I think that what the report very much does well is highlight the fact that... and weaknesses of the different vendors. Yeah, exactly. And not a single one of them achieves all of the aims of a modern B2B rev ops. Are we going to use the...

We'll be back there again. RedLox function. ultimately that's where we are. And we've talked at length about the likelihood of that happening. I think it won't happen soon, but nonetheless, even in investment in a platform like HubSpot or in Salesforce or to a lesser extent demand based or six cents now is going to mean that ultimately you're to be investing a lot of time, money.

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skills in that specific platform. And it still makes sense, I think, that CMOs keep their eye on this development within the marketing industry and try to predict where those platforms Well, I think that's what I was going to say. think probably what the report lacks is just that level of insight into what the strategies of these vendors actually are over the next...

three to five years. if HubSpot were to say in that report that actually ABM is going to be a key focus for us, we're going to launch an ABM hub, then that's obviously going to give some assurances to buyers that maybe that's the right horse to back. And equally, you could be said of the other vendors, what is their product roadmap? think what the report really mainly focuses on, foresters take on the platforms as they are with some clues as to who might win this race.

And what that does do, even if it's for now, is help you determine where your priorities are from a sales and marketing perspective and choose a platform which meets your needs now. And I don't think you can do anything other than that at this point, unless you're willing to have a two system approach, which as we've talked about, many clients are having to choose through there not being another option. Yeah, 100%.