B2B Growth Strategies That Actually Work (Shock!) – In Just 7 Minutes with Mason Cosby

Resources/Links:

• Want to know more practical growth strategies you can do? Click here: mojomedialabs.com/abm

Summary

Do you want to learn what the right and effective growth strategy is that fits you and your business?

Getting more agencies isn’t the answer to your growth crisis. Establishing a clear goal and aligning it between your departments will put you one step closer to the answer.

Mason Cosby serves as the lead for Business Development at Gravity Global. He ensures Gravity is constantly optimizing our marketing efforts, practicing what we preach to our clients, and making it easy for B2B organizations to create predictable revenue growth.

Listen in to what Mason has to say on how you can find the best B2B growth strategies that guarantee ultimate and promising results that will leave you in shock!

Check out these episode highlights:

• 02:17 – Mason’s ideal client: So our ideal client, as you might imagine would be, predominantly B2B, complex clients that are often on a more global scale.
• 02:58 – The problem he helps solve: At the core, especially as marketing is rapidly evolving, you likely need to partner with some kind of outsourced agency that can help provide some level of innovation. So if B2B organizations on a global scale are looking to partner with an agency for innovation purposes, they really got three options.
• 04:08 – The symptoms of the problem: So I would say if you’ve got, obviously, an absurd number of agency relationships. So yeah, I think 20 plus. At that point, if you’ve got 20 agent relationships, there’s a likelihood that you have spread yourself too thin.
• 05:23 – Clients’ common mistakes before consulting Mason: So realistically, everything that we’ve talked about thus far is essential, our agency and our value. But as far as mistakes from an actual tactical, practical marketing perspective, what most people think is, realistically, they are very tactically focused.
• 06:39 – Mason’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): I think one of the best pieces of advice is when you are making out your marketing goals, specifically, also look at obviously, again, business level objectives, but also sales goals.
• 07:35 – Mason’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Want to know more practical growth strategies you can do? Click here: mojomedialabs.com/abm
• 08:15 – Q: What is Dracula’s favorite marketing strategy? A: A count-based marketing.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Don't think tactic first, think the goal first. And then, actually, have clear objectives across customer acquisition, pipeline acceleration, and customer expansion.” -Mason Cosby Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone, and a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to on the coast of the Sunshine Coast, in fact, in Queensland, Australia, joined today by Mason Cosby in a very different part of the world. Mason, g’day. Sir, a warm welcome from Down Under. Where are you hanging out?

Mason Cosby 00:25
I am hanging out in Indianapolis and I was hoping you would say “Good day” because that is my favorite thing whenever I hop on calls with my friends in Australia.

Tom Poland 00:32
I can do one better. I can go, “G’day, mate!”

Mason Cosby 00:35
There we go.

Tom Poland 00:36
Let’s throw another shrimp on the barbie and get a cold one. You’ve been watching too many Crocodile Dundee movies, innit?

Mason Cosby 00:44
That and Instant Dream Hotel, but that’s another conversation for another day.

Tom Poland 00:47
Alright, isn’t it? All right. Well, it’s great to have you here, sir. Thank you so much for showing up, and humble apologies for asking to reschedule. Let’s kick into it! Mason serves as the lead for Business Development at Gravity Global. So he has an absolute obsession with practical growth strategies, which is refreshing because there’s so much BS stuff out there on the internet that just flat-out does not work. People want to take your money and go, “Trust me. Give me your money. And I’ll show you how to work” but it doesn’t work. He is responsible for ensuring that Gravity is constantly optimizing its marketing efforts. He’s a great believer and, obviously, preaching what he actually does to their clients. But making it not only just easy but actually more effective for B2B organizations to create and generate and scale predictable revenue flow. And I know, Mason, from my own small amount of work in this area, it’s a very deep rabbit hole. And it can get incredibly complicated. But I’m gonna be all ears to listen to what you’ve been discovering and proving that works. The title today, folks, is, “Business to Business Growth Strategies That Actually Work (Shock!). Because we know there’s so much out there that’s talk but doesn’t work. So Mason, let’s kick into it. Our seven minutes is going to start as soon as I find the clicky thing– now! Question number one, sir, who’s your ideal client?

Mason Cosby 02:17
So our ideal client, as you might imagine would be, predominantly B2B, complex clients that are often on a more global scale. So we can dive a little bit more into a bit about gravity, but at a high level, we are the world’s most awarded B2B agency that can truly provide full service across the globe, with six entertainers across four continents. So really trying to help and provide the scale for massive enterprise organizations that have really complex products.

Tom Poland 02:46
Thank you for that! It probably leads us nicely into describing the problem you solve. So we’ve got- it’s complicated for folks the like relationship. It’s complicated, but how would you define the problem that you solve for your clients?

Mason Cosby 02:58
At the core, especially as marketing is rapidly evolving, you likely need to partner with some kind of outsourced agency that can help provide some level of innovation. So if B2B organizations on a global scale are looking to partner with an agency for innovation purposes, they really got three options. Option one is you actually don’t go to B2B, you go to B2C because they have the global scale. And then again, it’s one agency vs conglomerates. Option two is you end up getting 15 different agencies and some people actually hire an individual that just manages agency relationships across 15, 20, sometimes we have a client that’s got 100 different agency relationships. And then option three is you go to these massive conglomerates in which you don’t actually really interact that much with people. It’s kind of a, just a, plug it in, plug it out. So we solve the B2B complex global scale, but we actually care. And there’s a human that you interact with on a day-to-day basis that wants to see you succeed.

Tom Poland 03:53
Thank you for that. We’ve got plenty of time left. Just over five minutes. Give me some of the symptoms, if you would. This is question three. An organization or an executive, what are they seeing? What’s going on in their business, it’s kind of like a clue that they should be reaching out to you guys.

Mason Cosby 04:08
So I would say if you’ve got, obviously, an absurd number of agency relationships. So yeah, I think 20 plus. At that point, if you’ve got 20 agent relationships, there’s a likelihood that you have spread yourself too thin. And what that actually turns into are two things. One, it’s very expensive, because all agencies have a minimum. So if you’re paying at least 20 minimums, you’re losing some cost savings, and then two, operational efficiency. Because when we operate all in-house, you send us the assets once and we can then share them internally. It’s on us to make sure that everybody internally is up to date. So where you would normally be meeting with 20 different agencies to say the same thing, you do it with one agency that then spreads that message to the entire team involved. So operational efficiency helps move faster and cost savings.

Tom Poland 04:56
Right. There’s a lot of money going out to a lot of agencies. It’s incredibly complex, and you’ve probably got a feeling that things are slipping between the cracks and are simply not optimized.

Mason Cosby 05:05
Yep.

Tom Poland 05:05
What would you say- I can guess one of the common mistakes that your clients have made before they find your solution would be, “Let’s just hire another agency.” So this is question four, are there any other common mistakes that you see that your clients have made before they find you?

Mason Cosby 05:23
So realistically, everything that we’ve talked about thus far is essential, to our agency and our value. But as far as mistakes from an actual tactical, practical marketing perspective, what most people think is realistic, they are very tactically focused. So they’re thinking, “What’s our Google strategy?” Like, “What’s our LinkedIn strategy?” And realistically, what you need is a holistic strategy that then breaks down into specific programs that have clear program objectives. What is our Account-Based Marketing Strategy program? What are our customer expansion program objectives? And again, from there, once you have high-level objectives, you can build out that strategy. And then the tactics just support the strategy. So don’t think tactic first, think the goal first, and then, actually, have clear objectives across customer acquisition, pipeline acceleration, and customer expansion.

Tom Poland 06:12
And so you got alignment across every platform, rather than trying to figure out something for each platform among the billion?

Mason Cosby 06:17
Yeah.

Tom Poland 06:18
Okay. So thank you for that. So, that covers a common mistake. Are there any practical tips you could give people? This is question five. In addition to starting with the overarching strategy, is there any top tip you could give folks that’s going to help them, it’s not gonna solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction.

Mason Cosby 06:39
I think one of the best pieces of advice is when you are making out your marketing goals, specifically, also look at obviously, again, business-level objectives, but also sales goals. And what we’ve actually seen a lot of clients do in sales is have their own separate goal conversations. And marketing is having their goal conversations. And we talk a lot about sales and marketing alignment, but if there’s not a goal alignment, then how can you have that alignment? So I would, realistically, have a conversation at an executive level to say, “What’s the annual quota? What percent are we expecting marketing to deliver from a pipeline sourcing perspective?” If you can’t have that conversation, then realistically, you’re not going to find great success.

Tom Poland 07:19
Right. So often, there’s a wall between marketing objectives and sales objectives. And when the wall does come down, there’s a bunfight. So thank you, sir. 70 seconds left, a valuable free resource. Where can we direct people to get more of this?

Mason Cosby 07:35
So if you want, this is my favorite thing that we’ve ever done. So again, I work at a company called Gravity Global, but we were actually acquired. So back in May, I was part of a company called Mojo Media Labs that, in April, had hosted a day-long virtual event called, “ABM-A-THON”. So if you go to mojomedialabs.com/abm, you can find 20 ungated sessions that are about 16 hours of ABM-specific content.

Tom Poland 08:00
Yeah, this is pretty amazing! I’m on the website right now– best practices, understanding buyers, target, countless personalization, tech data and turning tech data into revenue, and so on. There’s so much more there. Thank you for that! 30 seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Mason Cosby 08:15
What is Dracula’s favorite marketing strategy?

Tom Poland 08:18
What is Dracula’s? You know, werewolves kill vampires, right? But let’s get off of that. Yeah. What is it?

Mason Cosby 08:24
A count-based marketing.

Tom Poland 08:28
Very good. Boom! Mason Cosby, thanks so much for your insights and your sense of humor. Cheers!

Mason Cosby 08:34
Thank you!

Tom Poland 08:36
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.