whacked’s Demand Gen + ABM program

Role

Marketing strategist, Social Sales Executive, Data Analyst

Background

In line with whacked’s commitment to continuous improvement, I identified several areas that could be improved.

At the time, whacked primarily relied on word of mouth and social sales to secure opportunities. The strategies were not integrated, with two departments, Demand Generation and Social Sales, working in silos. My goal was to merge these departments to collaborate on an integrated strategy combining Demand Generation and Account Based Marketing (ABM). This strategy aimed to reduce silo, reduce workload for both departments, increase brand awareness, get more handraiser leads, expand account penetration list, and increase the quality of the leads.

Goal

1. Create an integrated strategy that combines Demand Generation and Social Sales department.
2. Increase handraisers type of leads: Receive more leads that directly communicate with us to express their interest in working with us.
3. Increase brand awareness

Process

Crafting strategy and Team Alignment

I crafted a 2 strategy to align with the team achieve the goals

1. Demand Generation.
2. Account Based Marketing.

I conducted pre-meetings with the team individually to gather individual opinions before we had a meeting with the entire team. This session evolved into a workshop where we discussed improvements, activities, and metrics for this new strategy.

After receiving approval, we began to align our business decisions and started to create much more in-depth project documents, which included processes and continuous improvements through reports.

Based on the workshop, we also decided to launch several new initiatives, including webinars, live events, and podcasts. The founders are also keen to participate in physical events to increase word of mouth.

Know → Like → Trust funnel

Demand Gen User Journey

Solution

Relationship-focused strategy

Based on our past data, we observed that most of our opportunities came from word of mouth. Based on this information, I figured that the new strategy should focus on building a deeper relationship with our potential ICP. We achieved this by increasing touchpoints with our engagers and enhancing our relationship through several levels (Know → Like → Trust & Very Cold → Very Warm relationship).

Demand Generation team goal is to create contents with the goal of increasing reach through a Know → Like → Trust funnel, which ends with Contact → Close.

ABM team goal is to deepen relationship with people who have engaged with us or with people that we target to have relationships with. The goal then is to move them from Very Cold to Very warm.

• Very Cold (No communication)
• Cold (Engage but no relationship built)
• Warm (Talked in DMs: questions, requests for help, comments, etc.)
• Very Warm (Had a meeting, collaborated)

Solving Silo Problem

We have one department that creates content for the business and the client, and another that conducts cold outbound. Each department has its own SOP and clear KPIs; however, they were not integrated.

This new strategy ensured that both departments would work together. For example, if the ICP engages, the Demand Generation would create content, and the Social Sales team would keep the data and find ways to further the relationship.

Thus, the goal of the whole team is no longer just impressions or the number of engagements; they must also consider what content attracts and increases trust among the audience and how to deepen the relationships with the audience. For example, in webinars and live events, the Demand Generation team was responsible for creating content that captivated and educated the audience. At the same time, the ABM team engaged directly with participants through direct messages, addressing questions, and facilitating interactive elements like Google forms to gather feedback and questions. This collaborative approach maximized the impact of each campaign and ensured strategic alignment across all marketing program.

The strategy are demonstrated in the diagram below:

Demand Gen + ABM workflow

Building Touchpoints

We realized that to ensure the success of this strategy, we needed different ways to create demand with the goal of increasing touchpoints with potential ICPs.

We then decided to start a webinar and events program.

This program managed to generate an average increase of 100 followers & connections across all clients. We also managed to create an average of 50 conversations activated, from new and past followers.

Another program that we ran was lead generation + ABM (content hubs, content collaboration, etc.), which yielded a higher result in opportunity creation, with an average of 8 meetings per program and an 80% reply rate.

Ensuring Continuous Improvement

To guarantee progression and enhancement of our strategies, we have created a continuous improvement model. This model is important to ensure that each aspect of our marketing efforts is optimized based on ongoing data analysis and feedback.

Reducing Workload

By repurposing our contents across different channels and formats—such as social media posts, blog articles, and newsletters — we effectively expanded our content’s reach without requiring additional resources for new content creation. This practice not only extended the lifespan of our original content but also allowed us to present it to different audience segments in the most appropriate formats, increasing overall reach and engagement.

Deliverables

• ABM lead generation process
• Demand Generation strategy and workflow
• Data Sourcing and Analysis for different initiatives that includes
  • profile views
  • content engagements
  • webinar
  • outbound (connection requests and dms)
  • content performance dashboard

Profile Views Database

Accounts Penetrated Database

Engagers Dashboard

Outcome

• 4-5 opportunities per month: 2x increase than pre strategy.
• Higher quality leads: We discovered that our opportunities now include people from top companies in Singapore and Malaysia, including those from Fortune 500 companies.
• Averaging an increase of 100 followers & Connections per month across all clients.
• Averaging 5000 content impressions per month across all clients.