Splunk is a revolutionary data-to-everything platform that enables IT, security, and DevOps teams to gain visibility and insight into their machine data. Splunk provides companies with actionable insights into their data, regardless of the source, and AI enables them to make proactive and predictive decisions.
Recently, Splunk’s Senior Director of Worldwide Commercial Marketing, Joe Paone, joined David Lewis on DemandGen Radio, to share his initiatives for growing pipeline within Splunk’s mid-market segment.
In the podcast, Joe and David discuss how the demand generation function is structured at Splunk, the tools and technologies that Joe’s team relies on, and advice to those interested in a marketing career.
David: What are some of the key considerations when marketing to the mid-market versus the enterprise?
Joe: It’s a good question! Splunk’s approach had marketing covering both enterprise and commercial accounts. One team focused on the worldwide commercial market, while the other focused on the broader enterprise group. At the enterprise level, we use a target account approach and high-touch tactics, with an emphasis on account expansion and cross-sell. We create general awareness using always-on campaigns, field marketing, and experience events, combined with the high-touch programs.
On the other hand, the commercial side is more of a velocity business — we have over 65,000 accounts in our worldwide commercial segment. The objectives here are different from enterprise. We start with prioritizing and segmenting accounts to drive maximum impact for the business. Entering the mid-market is a land-and-expand motion; by providing one solution, we open up the potential for much larger subsequent opportunities throughout the entire business.
David: Splunk had immense initial success before it even had a formal marketing department. Many other companies wait until they reach a certain threshold to fully implement a marketing team. When’s the right time for a company to begin thinking about creating that dedicated marketing team, and what are those conversations like?
Joe: At the beginning, Splunk was like a rocket ship because of a great sales team and a revolutionary product. At some point, we needed more structure from a demand generation perspective, and there was no centralized role in charge of driving that. We had to make a decision about how to support business growth at both the commercial- and enterprise-level.
In the Americas, we had commercial and enterprise all mixed into the same marketing team, although sellers were already separated into their respective levels. It was reasonable to assume we’d need a dedicated budget and resources to cater to the different needs of each level. With 65,000 commercial accounts, we need to hit our established targets and communicate differently with them than we do with our enterprise accounts. Enterprise clients are already familiar with Splunk. As a commercial seller, your targets are not based on renewals or existing business, and you need to continue to generate new business.
We had conversations around how to best support demand generation, since marketing was making up about 50 percent of pipeline contribution. We needed to think about how to most effectively align with the SDRs and BDRs, and how that may look different on the commercial versus the enterprise side of the business.
David: In your experience, is the marketing budget for the mid-market segment typically higher than that of the enterprise segment?
Joe: It changes from company to company, but for us, we tie it directly to the objective, which is the pipeline numbers that we set for the commercial and enterprise segments. Our marketing operations team goes through an exercise of examining the average cost per MQL, all the way to average cost per opportunity. We determine what we need at the top of the funnel to achieve our outcome and set the budget from there. There are definitely some nuances to the process, but it’s a good, data-driven way to establish a realistic baseline budget.
David: So, you’ve got an enterprise team and a commercial team dividing a budget and sharing resources. How are you allocating those resources for different campaigns?
Joe: The commercial side is disproportionately advantaged with resources; as email is such a big channel for us, we have a significantly larger database that reaches across different use cases and personas. We have a marketing operations team that manages ticket requests and then leverages the DemandGen (now BDO Digital) Campaign Services team to build out programs. Our approach with email marketing is to get really granular with our segmentation by building as many different positive-outcome leading permutations as we can. To summarize, our resource pool is shared but the commercial side does much higher volume, particularly in the email channel.
David: Are there tools that you use differently between commercial marketing versus enterprise marketing? Do you have any recommendations regarding tools that you’ll need going to the mid-market versus ABM?
Joe: There are some tools that are standard regardless of what your target is, such as marketing automation and attribution. Since our numbers tie directly in with the SDRs and BDRs, sales productivity tools such as Outreach and SalesLoft are key. Their insights are subsequently fed into our marketing programs. On the front-end, we generate MQLs for the inbound team and track their progression, which enables us to further optimize our campaigns. Things are done differently on the enterprise side, but overall there is a heavy reliance on sales productivity tools. Leveraging tools for appending data is extremely important, as we need reliable data to provide to our teams. For example, we need to ensure that contact information is correct so that the SDR team can complete their required tasks.
David: Earlier, you mentioned the need for different messaging for different audiences. How do you structure your team for that sort of expertise, and are those resources being shared with the enterprise side?
Joe: It’s a shared resource. My team is structured to have inbound campaign managers and outbound campaign managers with their own objectives. So, the way the team is structured aligns more with our inside sales team. When it comes to messaging, we partner with product marketing as a shared service across both commercial and enterprise. This gives us a true voice at the table; when we meet with the other team, we can make the needed tweaks to our messaging, so it resonates with the commercial audience.
David: Back in your Marketo days, you had guys like Ted Purcell who led commercial sales as well as Matt Heinz who led enterprise sales. How does that organizational structure compare with the structure at Splunk?
Joe: It’s very similar. We’ve got a VP of Worldwide Commercial Sales and a similar counterpart for the enterprise side. Below that, we have GVPs, AVPs, RSDs and sellers below them. From a strategy standpoint, our primary stakeholders are the VPs, AVPs and RSDs. We ensure that the RSM has full visibility into what we’re doing and that everyone is aware of what marketing programs are being implemented.
The way we were structured before, we would receive feedback from our commercial sellers but had no way of acting on it. We didn’t have the resources to do two campaigns for the same topic, one that resonated with enterprise and one with commercial. Our current structure enables us to get that feedback and implement it into our marketing programs effectively.
David: Is there anything else you’d like to share about life as a commercial leader in demand generation?
Joe: If I had to pick, although I’m biased, I’d certainly choose to be working on the commercial side of things. It’s a different motion than on the enterprise side. It’s about volume and it’s more dynamic. Even though Splunk is getting to be a much larger company, we still operate like a startup. We try things, we fail fast, and we constantly iterate on what we’re doing. There’s a lot of excitement in how we approach marketing on the commercial side.
David: What advice would you give to someone already in the field of marketing, or students that are considering this path?
Joe: I think the most important thing is to be likable. People want to work with people they like. When I hire someone, I look for qualities such as internal drive and motivation, as opposed to raw skillsets. You need to work with individuals who are not so rigid in their mindset and are willing to give and take in their relationships. It can be incredibly taxing for an organization to have negative individuals who are difficult to work with. We need to be on the same page and respect each other in order to thrive.
More Q&A with Joe
You can also listen to a replay of the full podcast with Joe, or find other episodes featuring outstanding marketing leaders at demandgenradio.com.
The post The Difference Between Mid-Market vs. Enterprise Marketing: A Q&A with Joe Paone appeared first on DemandGen.