Quotable Moments from Two ABM Podcasts with Jon Miller (CMO and CPO, Demandbase)

Marketing trailblazer, thought leader, entrepreneur, and physics enthusiast. Now also the Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Demandbase. Have you met Jon Miller yet? Get to know more about his marketing philosophy (and his secrets for a killer cocktail) with these two podcasts.

How he got here

Jon joined Demandbase in June 2020 with the acquisition of Engagio, an ABM SaaS company he co-founded. (And before that he created and co-founded the popular marketing automation software Marketo. Needless to say, he has some serious street cred in B2B tech.)

In just five short months, he’s led the integration of the B2B, DSP, intent data, and machine learning technology of Demandbase with the marketing automation-based platform of Engagio. The result: Demandbase One, the most comprehensive ABM platform in the industry.

Here are some takeaways from a couple of podcast interviews—a captivating blend of personal particulars mixed with B2B insights. Jon shares things like his hearing loss journey, his distaste for super-sucker DSPs, and (of course) his vision for the future of B2B sales and marketing and how Demandbase One is driving the train.

Quotable moments from an interview with TechConnectr

The Engagio and Demandbase merger

“Mergers are hard. In many ways, we did everything right on this … We took all the Demandbase functionality and brought that into the Engagio application. How well those jigsaw puzzles fit is basically why we were able to do it so quickly.”

What excites him

“What I’m excited for is what this (Engagio + Demandbase integration) means for the whole ABM market. Because what we are finally starting to get to now is a definition of what a complete platform has.

In many ways, it feels like what happened with marketing automation back in 2009 where there started to be a handful of players with complete solutions. And the market started to recognize: You need this. So it moved from being a nice-to-have to a must-have. From Should I buy this? to What solution should I buy?”

Bombora intent alongside Demandbase intent data

“More intent data is good, why wouldn’t you want more signals? It’s kind of like having more leads.”

Brand safety and digital advertising

“We have a pretty specific publisher network of high-quality sites … The largest social networks, the largest software companies use us for their B2B advertising because they care about that brand safety.”

Super-sucker DSPs

“When you use another DSP you don’t have very good control of how your ads get distributed across your accounts. The vast majority of the impressions go to a small set of the largest accounts. We call them super suckers. They suck up a lot of budget. But because Demandbase has its own DSP we can more effectively spread those ad dollars across all your accounts.”

(Side note: Read a blog by our VP of Advertising, Gareth Noonan, for more details about the Demandbase DSP.)

Experience the entire podcast episode with TechConnectr.

Go to TechConnectr for the full transcript.

Quotable moments from an interview with CoronaTV

On his hearing loss

“The one silver lining to having hearing loss is that it’s like having noise-canceling headphones any time you need it. Much to the chagrin of my wife, when my children were young and they’d wake up crying, I wasn’t the one waking up to the noise.”

Cocktails during COVID

“I have made probably a couple of dozen Manhattans. More tiki cocktails than I care to count. Old Fashioneds. Margaritas. All sorts of good stuff … The most important thing to know about cocktails is that ice is to cocktails as heat is to food.”

Traditional demand generation vs. the ABM model

“More than 70 percent of the companies we talk to have some element of an ABM program in place. But what people are increasingly realizing is that it’s not either-or. They have ABM programs for some accounts and they have their traditional demand gen programs for everything else. And the two strategies work together in a very complimentary way when done right.”

On the ABM analogy of “fishing with spears”

“Being poked by a spear doesn’t feel very good.”

Where ABM is headed

“(You need to engage) with buyers in a trusted, relevant way on their own terms. It’s about knowing where they are in their journey and using intelligence and insights to know when and how to engage at each point.”

“You can’t have an account-based strategy if it doesn’t span the entire go-to-market team. You need Marketing and Sales and Service to all be working together to have a coordinated account experience. Otherwise, it’s disconnected and, as we all know, disconnected experiences aren’t a good customer experience.”

Offsite SEO: Building a brand today

“We used to build our brands with thought leadership first. We’re increasingly moving into a world where, because there’s such a deluge of content, the way you build your brand today is through word-of-mouth, the advocacy, and the influencers talking about you.”

“We need to invent a new position which is offsite SEO … make sure when anyone is talking anywhere outside of our site, that we are showing up in those conversations. That’s a huge part of what it means to be a marketer today.”

Experience the entire podcast episode with CoronaTV.

Dig into more.

Check out Jon’s author page for more insights regarding the power and the future of Account-Based Marketing.

www.demandbase.com/author/jon-miller