What You Need to Build ABM MarTech Stack

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A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More with Pam. Today my guest is Moni Oloyede, an Operations Manager at Fidelis Security.

Today we will talk about our favorite topics: marketing, marketing operations, MarTech and how to build a MarTech stack for account-based Marketing.

Moni has been in the marketing technology space for almost 13 years, at the start of the dawn of a marketing technology platform. She is a 2020 Marketo Champion. Marketing Operations expert, a digital marketing professional and a co-organizer of DC Marketing Tech Talks.

In this episode:

• What is Moni’s definition of account-based marketing?
• What is in-market, and how it can help business?
• How to identify the right accounts and align the processes with sales?
• Is it possible to build one Martech stack and support all the channels?
• How to evaluate Martech and different platforms?
• What is the best way to set up and build a Martech stack?
• How to manage a centerpiece tech and should be responsible and involved in the process?
• What is the centerpiece technology that every company should have and build on?
• How to make a call in terms of what features to use at what tool?
• How can business overcome the challenges of automation?
• What are some Martech best practices?
• What is the key to setting up the balance between the process and marketing efficiency?

Quotes from the episode:

“A lot of marketers want to get in there and start adding other features onto these technologies. The number one thing I say is: use the technology for what it was meant for.”

“Even though you may have a homegrown system that someone in there just loves to use if it’s not performing optimally, it’s wasting time.”

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If you want to chat, reach out to any social media channels or email me hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community: Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. When you join, you get a free Starbucks on me. You can go to the Announcement tab and click on the barcode of the gift card.

To expand your knowledge about marketing, martech, and ABM Martech stach, check out some of my previous blogs and episodes.

Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

5 Steps To Work With Sales On ABM

The Importance of Understanding Martech

How to Understand Your Company’s MarTech Stack?

How to Create and Evaluate Your MarTech Stack?

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, a big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More with Pam. Yay! I have a special guest today. Moni Oloyede. I practiced several times to say her name! She’s Operations Manager for Fidelis Security. And this is a cybersecurity firm that sells cybersecurity and end-point solutions. 

So we will talk about our favorite topics, marketing, marketing operations, and guess what? MarTech and how to build a MarTech stack for Account-Based Marketing. So that’s get started. Moni, welcome to the show!

Moni Oloyede: Thanks for having me. 

Pam Didner: Yeah, I know that you asked me a Senior Marketing Operations Manager. And, uh, can you tell a little bit about yourself, uh, in terms of what you do and your experience. Love, love to hear that. 

Moni Oloyede: Absolutely. Thanks for having me appreciate it, Pam. Um, so I have been in the marketing technology space my entire career. So almost 13 years, um, I got into it around say 2007ish, very early on in the dawn of the marketing technology platform. Some of the common ones you think of today are Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot, right? Yeah. And, and, uh, so I started at a cybersecurity company right out of college, and they were an early adopter of the platform.

So they were doing a lot of lead scoring and nurturing before that was even like coin terms. Um, so I got to learn very quickly and, uh, went on to consult, done consulting. So I got to see different environments B2B, B2C, large, medium and small. So that was great learning for me. I did that for three years. That was awesome. 

And then it was just the travel. I just loved all my clients. It was great to work. I was on the road all the time. So I came back in-house and more in-house marketing and just, you know, but helping companies build, you know, these marketing technology platforms. 

It’s a very large undertaking. A lot of companies get into it with the best of intentions, and then I’m sure you’ve seen it. It just went sour at some point. So helping them get the processes right and put it on track is what I’ve been doing since then. 

Pam Didner: Awesome. Awesome. So MarTech marketing technology, stack and account-based marketing. Before we can dive into that a little bit more, can you tell us your definition of account-based marketing? 

Moni Oloyede: Yeah. So this is one of my favorite things to do, too, because if you ever started an account-based marketing strategy, just go around and ask the different people in the organization what it means you’re going to get 50,000 different answers.

Pam Didner: Yep, yep.

Moni Oloyede:  A thousand per cent. Um, so my definition starts with the definition of marketing, right? Definition marketing, simply put–communication of value. So, to me, account-based marketing is the communication of value to an in-market or a target audience. 

Pam Didner: So what do you mean by in-market? 

Moni Oloyede: So in-market means to meet people who you either know the suspect or have a, uh, an idea that they are actively looking for your products or solutions. Right. So that’s the difference? In my opinion, it’s just like, yes, marketing is marketing to your target market. That’s part of the definition of it. But account-based is identifying those accounts or people actively looking to purchase something you buy or sell. 

Pam Didner: Yeah. So with that being said, do you think it’s important that, um, because you will, you own to identify specific people or accounts that you need to align with a salesperson first or your sales organization?

Moni Oloyede: I think so. Definitely. That’s your starting place for sure. Um, but what often happens is what sales think is their target is when you get into the account-based marketing, you feel like you learned this like there are other accounts that we didn’t even think of that could be this, right? So that’s the other thing that comes in with it.

But yes, sales alignment is the number one place to start as far as trying to get, uh, an idea of who your ideal customer profile is. 

Pam Didner: Got it. So when you tried to bill the MarTech stack, while you want to build, um, kind of like a marketing technology to support, uh, different stages of the customer engagement, many marketers been doing the ABM for a while and, um, they are using different marketing channels, for example. 

Some people are probably leveraging email campaigns, and some, probably doing a lot of customer events. Do you think you can build one MarTech stack to support all channels? And what is your, uh, point of view in terms of, um, evaluating MarTech or a different, uh, platform? What is the best way to set up a Martech stack?

I know a lot of people are curious about that. And so you’ll love to hear your thoughts. 

Moni Oloyede: Yeah. It’s a great question. And I say, uh, no, you can’t have one tool or technology that’s gonna cover all of your channels. I advise you don’t do that. Why do I say that? So one of the issues that marketers run into with marketing technology is they don’t treat it like technology (laughs). So when you have a platform or solution, you’re supposed to use that solution for what it was meant for, right? This is like a technology basis, right? A lot of marketers want to get in there and start adding other features to these technologies. And then they slow down and then break, and it does something you don’t expect, and you have more problems than you were expecting.

So the number one thing I say is to use the technology for what it was meant for, right? If you have an email marketing platform, you should be email marketing with that platform, not doing a lead assignment to sales. It can do that, but it’s not what it was meant for. So then that’s going to bog down your system, and that’s something you have to manage that’s taking away from doing good email marketing. 

That’s how I, like, I just get back to the basics and simplify it. I guess the better question I think from, from my point of view, is how do you build the stack? Right? So what pieces do you put in place in how you put it all together?

So you normally start with like a main, your centerpiece kind of technology that everything’s going to build around.  

Pam Didner: So what are the centerpiece technology that everything should build around? What, what is like one or two, like centerpiece that, uh, that each company should have?  

Moni Oloyede: So in marketing automation like this typical marketing tech, you think of it’s your, your marketing automation platforms–this is your Eloqua and Marketo or HubSpot, that’s your centerpiece. And a CRM solution would be your Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, something like that. And then, an account-based marketing tool would be like a Demandbase or Terminus or something like that. 

Can you have all three of these at the same time? Yes. But something has to be the centerpiece because you need a database of records per se, right, something that overrides something else. So that’s often the organization with that. It is normally the CRM because so many people in the organization use that one tool. Um, but that’s how you kind of have to start thinking about, like, what’s my centerpiece tool? And then what does that do? What does that purpose and then fill in the gaps with the other technologies?

Because lots of people get like, um, they’ll get a marketing automation platform and then like another like content and tracking platforms. It’s like. Well, then you have overlapping uses, right? This technology does this and this. So why do I need it’s like, it’s doing one thing, but I have overlapping uses for, they both do the same thing, essentially. 

Like a lot of technologies will send, have an email sending thing. Like, I don’t need four of those. I have the one. So what am I using this other tool for outside of just this? So that’s how you kinda start to evaluate how to build the stack. 

The other thing of building a stack that you have to seriously consider is who’s managing it. That’s the number one thing. Who’s monitoring this on a day today? Because then it’s a technology. It’s an evolving, breathing thing, right, as we know. Software updates, constantly learning if it’s a new feature functionality all the time. So if you don’t have someone who’s wanting to keep up with that and learn that, I highly advise you don’t get it because, again, it’s going to bog you down more than it’s going to help you execute good marketing.

Pam Didner: When you say monitoring, let me be a little bit clear. Um, Is it somebody who needs to manage it? Does that mean that you have to assign the owner who owns that specific centerpiece? 

Moni Oloyede: 100% somebody has to own this because there will have to be decisions around technology that affect the entire business. So when those decisions are made, someone has to, if they fail or break or have to be updated someone, we need to look at someone who owns that and can manage that. 

Pam Didner: Do you think that should be part of the IT organization, or should that be part of the marketing or sales organization? Of course, I’m talking about sales and marketing tools.

Moni Oloyede: Absolutely. Like that’s what I mean. So if it’s a marketing tool and marketers use it, marketing owns it. IT needs to be involved 100%, but this is a marketing tool the marketing department uses. So the best way– you’re going to the most you’re going to get out of that tool was from a marketing standpoint.

Pam Didner: Got it. Got it. That makes sense. I understand. That one, another question I always encounter, because I work with multiple different clients to help them build MarTech stack. Some of them are very complicated, and the stuff I’m working with them, it’s an only very small piece of those bigger, you know, that MarTech stack they are looking at. And I’m only focusing on one or two tools and then build a back-end integration. 

I have come to realize that many tools, especially SaaS-based platforms and because they are software and to every single tool, tried to build additional features to serve their customers. So when you pick up a marketing automation tool, which is the centerpiece, you pick a knowledge tool that you want to use safe for lead scoring. But unfortunately, this company want to expand their product portfolio, so they build additional features that can also do the marketing automation tools you are using. 

Then all of a sudden, there’s a, uh, there’s a duplication of features between those two tools. How do you make a call in terms of what features to use at what tool? That’s one thing I’m always struggling with. And your thought on that?

Moni Oloyede: So I always go back with technology, the usage of the tool. Cause that’s again. If it’s hard to use the tool or not executed properly, it’s a waste. It’s just a waste. So which tool is executing the best, most properly going to give us the best performance? That’s the one that we go with. 

So even though you may have a homegrown system that someone in there just loves to use, and you know, that’s their baby, if it’s not performing optimally, it’s wasting our time. So I try to be unemotional and focus on the technology and how you will get the best marketing out of it, right? That’s how I evaluate it. 

So sometimes, that is the homegrown tool. Sometimes it’s not, but that’s how you kind of get your emotions out of it and be more agnostic and do the best for the business. 

Pam Didner: Yeah. Is it so just being kind of like a devil’s advocate for a minute. I 100% agree with you for both of us working with our internal stakeholders or my clients, for example, on setting the MarTech stack. I have a hard time overcome or even help my clients overcome it’s very hard to change the behavior. You kinda allude to that, right? So, they like to use the tool a certain way, even though it is most optimized, but it’s so hard to change their behavior.

Because they were like, “you know what? I just have to log in, and then there’s two automatically open, so I’m just using it” because they set up that way. Or they are so used to a certain kind of process that is set up ten years ago. And now you have a new tool, you have a new process that you want them to change their behavior, and they are just not up for that.

And I have so many issues-not issues. I have challenges, if you will–to help my clients overcome that. Do you have any suggestions in terms of how to do that?

Moni Oloyede: So I’ll give you two, two options. So number one is trying to upfront explain and logically, the best I can, what they’re doing. So like, I always compare it to Apple software updates or like-new Apple phones. If you want the functionality and the clear camera, you need the iPhone 10, 11, 12. If you’re on the 6, because you liked the 6, that’s great, but that’s going to give you poor quality. 

It’s the same kind of concept you have to give the give and take. Your comfort is sacrificing the best execution of the business. Do you know what I mean? And then on the other end, uh, again, when like, like when the interface has changed and stuff like that, as we hate it when you go from Microsoft XP to 10 to whatever the heck (Pam laughs), we hate it. But once you learn, you know, after a while, you know, a week or two and get used to it, you’re fine. And it’s the same thing. They don’t like change and new. It’s not that it’s bad or whatever. It’s that you don’t like change. 

So I try to calmly explain what is happening in that long-term they’re negatively affecting the business. 

Pam Didner: You know what, the other thing I do is just try to pull the cord. It’s like, “you know what? That platform is going to be off. You are just going to use a new platform.” That’s another, which is a very extreme way and forced them to change. But sometimes that does it, you know?

Moni Oloyede: You have to sometimes because they will dig in. Absolutely. Sometimes you just have to cut it. Absolutely. 

Pam Didner: Yeah. And another question I would like to ask you is that I 100% agree with you; you have to know your centerpiece and then bill your process and tools around that. And, um, another question I have is the integration. Yeah, man, I put so much time. I hated it. I have to drink, just because of that so much time. It doesn’t matter if he’s API or without API; you always have to do custom coding to integrate or make two systems to talk to each other.

So Moni, I want to hear your experience on that. My experience has always been tough, tough, and it just, I cannot get this like two systems to talk in a way that I wanted to, and always spend so much time and money on doing that.

Moni Oloyede: So much. So this is one of my, like, core things about technology and kind of reiterating the points I was trying to make earlier because of this, this thing. So what is the technology for? What are you trying to get out of it? Like who’s managing it? Because the thing’s just like this. If you haven’t figured this out for your centerpiece, you’re going to exacerbate all of your problems when you add technologies. So the management is key. Who’s managing this? Because I don’t care what the integration is, how clean, how, whatever you’re going to have to, at some point, go adjust something, fix something, breaks something. It’s just how it works. That’s just technologies like cars. At some point, you’re going to get a flat tire, or something’s going to break just what it is. Machinery is how it works. 

So my biggest thing is like a lot of companies will do what I call “plan their technology for being most reliant.” Like I’m going to set up all these processes, and I’m having this documentation and these rules in, you know what I mean? I’m going to set it up. So like nothing goes wrong. That never works, by the way. 

Pam Didner: That never works. Yeah. Something always goes wrong. 

Moni Oloyede: I say, set your technology up for resilience, right? Not reliance for resilience. So resilience is, if something goes wrong, we know something’s about to go wrong, but we have, we can have a catch that it’s not going to like break our whole system down. So that’s how you got to start thinking about it. It’s assume something is going wrong, and then who’s going to address it? 

So you can do this two ways. I like the preventative methods. So for all your technologies, right? all of them–especially they have integrations. When I have a stack of probably, I’m probably at a solid 10. I have a stack of about ten solid tools that I regularly am ? in. At some point regularly over the month or the quarter–depending on how often I use this tool–I’m going in and checking certain indicators, right?

Pam Didner: To make sure the tools are working.

Moni Oloyede: Right. That’s preventative. Before something breaks. I’m already going to check-in, making sure da-da-da-da-duh. You have to do this. I’ve been doing this for 15 years. There’s no other way around it. I haven’t found it. Something’s going to break. So you need to go in there and regularly check before something does. 

Pam Didner: With that being said, I have another thing I would like to ask you. So given that you’ve been doing marketing operations for a long time and dealing with, uh, technologies, can you share with us a perfect case study that you were doing either with the companies or the experience you launched this MarTech stack? And you can tell us a specific platform that you use and, uh, it went very nicely. 

And granted, I have not encountered a situation I, I implemented them on tech stack (laughs) that’s running perfectly like run until the end. So, but it’s like, it’s meeting your expectation. Everything is going pretty much on schedule, and it was on a budget, which is unheard of as well.

Can you share a case study regarding when you, how, and some of the nuggets you did very well? 

Moni Oloyede: So, this is also key, and this is over my 15 years of learning. It’s resetting expectations. Never listen to the technology company, salesperson on their timeline. (Pam laughs) Ignore them completely. They’re lying. (laughs)

Pam Didner: If they tell you it’s going to be done in March, let’s bear in mind if that is March 2021 on March 2022? 

Moni Oloyede: Seriously! 2,3 even? Seriously, throw their stuff out the window. So what you need to know is the bigger the centerpiece – so CRM is the longest marketing automation platform, the longest, so on and so forth. So it’s going to take time. That’s that’s yeah. Sorry. You can’t get away. This is the way it is. You want to have markers of progress. Right. Knock, never completion. Markers of progress.

Pam Didner: It’s called job security, everybody (Moni laughs). Make sure you understand, alright! That’s called job security.

Moni Oloyede: Facts! I also under-promise over-deliver. That’s my motto (laughs).

Pam Didner: Moni, are you telling me we need to sandbag?

Moni Oloyede:  Just a little bit! You’re gonna run into issues. The business is slow. They don’t know what they’re doing, especially when they’re new. Right. If there’s some there, these technologies are way more about business process and the technology itself, right? It’s more of how the business is going to use it. What are they expecting out of it? Right? If they’re expecting some $10 million in revenue. Well, let’s see what we had to do here to like, make that happen. That’s a long-term play. 

I also like to remind people about marketing. What is marketing? Right? It’s the communication of value. But over time, use an example. If there’s, someone’s not ready to buy your product. OK. But what you’re trying to do is have enough brand impressions that when they already the purchase, whatever you’re selling, you come to the top of mind. That’s really what your ultimate goal is really. 

So, you know, one of the things with technology that we’ve done over the last ten years, I think that’s now becoming a disservice, is focusing too much on revenue and the bottom line and not enough about how to pull the right marketing levers, right? To then get your prospects to where you want them to be in the sales cycle. So we had to do a better job of that.

Pam Didner: So trying to find that balance of a setting of the process up, but at the same time, still do marketing, right? Maximize your marketing efforts. Right. I hear you.

Moni Oloyede: That’s what I try to do, Pam. It’s like when I’m setting up these technologies for these organizations. I try to tie them to like marketing stuff. So we know that I was like, back in the day campaigns. “So let’s get our first campaign out the door” and dah, dah, dah, dah. That’s kinda like built over time for me to be more like – what is the messaging here? Who is our audience? What are we trying to be like? I have to go now with these people. You think that many of these organizations are there from a marketing standpoint, and they’re not.  

And they get these technologies, and they hate them because they’re not producing. It’s like, “well, you’re marketing stinks. There’s nothing that’s going to fix that.” 

Pam Didner: Yeah. True. True. I 100% agree with you. You know, the campaigns, the content and the creative all need to be pretty solid. Technology is important, but like there are basic elements, in terms of your creativity, content, and how you do it, how do you segment your customer? All that is very critical. 

Moni Oloyede: And you can tie all of that to the platform, right? That’s Database cleanup, that’s database management, lead management process.

Pam Didner: Oh god! Don’t talk to me about database cleanup (Moni laughs). Look at my face. I’m crying tears in my eyes.

Moni Oloyede: Yeah. I’ll just say, I would say they’re not independent. Right? You can tie all of these things to the tool’s performance, but we do it in my perspective is just backwards. Like we want the tool to do all this stuff. It’s like, no, let’s do the strategy and marketing properly and then apply that to the tool. You’re gonna have a lot more success. 

Pam Didner: Find a balance between the technology stack and do the marketing properly with the proper plans, solid content, and strategy.

Moni Oloyede:  Win-win. 

Pam Didner: Very, very good. Um, this is fantastic. Let me do a quick summary, uh, in terms of the wisdom you share with us. Obviously, um, Moni, you talking about, uh, you need to have a key centerpiece, and it doesn’t matter if it’s your marketing automation tool on the marketing side of the CRM on the sales site? Know your centerpiece. Build your process and also your tool around that. 

And another thing is that the marketing technology, uh, implementation is never done. Granted, you have a much bigger picture in terms of what you need to do. But set up the expectations and also different milestones and share that with your stakeholders. 

And another key thing that you share with us is that somebody who needs to own the tool needs to actively monitor managing and care for the tools. And then, I think that person should also have a very good picture of how different technology work together. Would you agree?

Moni Oloyede: Yes. Absolutely. 

Pam Didner: Um, so, another key point that you mentioned about, uh, the technology usage, especially when you’ll be able to process, uh, make sure that the users are using it and follow the process. And of course, doing the right marketing and good marketing to go, uh, to compliment that.

Moni Oloyede: Yes.

Pam Didner:  This is a great insight. Thank you so much for coming to my show, and I would like to end with another question. So you can answer one of these two questions. What is your most useless talent? or do you have a ridiculous goal in your life that you want to accomplish already accomplished?

Moni Oloyede: I do have a ridiculous goal I want to accomplish. So, um, I am, uh, one of my passions and hobbies is weightlifting. And I want to be able to squat 500 pounds. 

Pam Didner: OK. You are crazy. (Moni laughs) Go away! Don’t talk to me! (Pam laughs) 500 lbs.! Do you know how heavy that is?

Moni Oloyede: I’ll do. It’s crazy heavy. I’m only at 200, so I got a ways to go. 

Pam Didner: Oh my God. But you don’t look very good. So for listening folks, we do a Zoom video recording, so I can see Moni. Moni looks solid. Not like me. Never mind.

Moni Oloyede: I can come to Oregon and get you together, Pam. No problem. (Pam laughs)

Pam Didner: Fix me up! Please! So now it’s 200, and you want to go to the 500 pounds. So I guess you have a routine that you do regularly?

Moni Oloyede: Yes, but I’m probably not getting there by my schedule here till like 50 years old. I got to pick it up. 

Pam Didner: Well, the gyms need to open, too. I don’t know about you, your area. Right now, and the time we are recording, the gyms are closed, uh, in the state of Oregon. So, and then, we just need to make sure that that’s open now. It’ll give me a proper excuse. So, “you know, this gym closed… I mean…. “

Moni Oloyede: “What am I supposed to do?”  

Pam Didner: I cannot get to that! (both laugh) Thank you so much, Moni, to come to my show, and so happy to have you share your wisdom and insight. 

Moni Oloyede: Thank you. 

Pam Didner: It means a lot Moni you come to a show. So, what means a lot to me if you could subscribe to my show on your favorite channel.

Moni Oloyede: OK.

Pam Didner:  Not you, Moni! Everybody else. Well, you can, too (laughs). If you have any questions about sales and marketing, please reach out to me on any social media channels or email me hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community, Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. Any kind of question you posted on that community, I will personally answer everybody’s question. So that’s a promise. Again, love, love, love to hear from you. Take care and bye until next time.