In this First Episode of the Healthtech Marketing Podcast, you will hear from Ben Person, who leads marketing for the fast-growing Software firm, Nuvolo. This is a master class on ABM and focuses on how to make it work, how to measure it, and how to build an ABM Demand Generation Engine.
This podcast is brought to you by HIMSS and healthlaunchpad.
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Podcast Highlights With Timestamps:
- [2:47] Nuvolo’s Background
- [3:57] Ben Person’s Career Journey
- [5:32] How Nuvolo Restructured Its Marketing
- [7:22] Nuvolo’s Approach To Brand Awareness
- [9:24] How Nuvolo Implements ABM
- [10:11] Explaining Intent Data
- [11:28] Nuvolo’s ABM Campaigns
- [13:00] One-to-Many ABM
- [14:30] Linkedln Targeting
- [15:25] Nuvolo’s Experiences
- [16:53] How Nuvolo’s Measures ROI
- [19:43] ABM & Terminus On Sales Revenue
- [22:15] Ben Person’s Key ABM Advice
Healthtech Marketing Podcast 1 Video – Ben Person, VP of Global Marketing – Nuvolo
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Healthtech Marketing Insights – Episode 1 Podcast Transcript – Guest: Mr. Ben Person, Vice President of Global Marketing, Nuvolo. Host: Adam Turinas, CEO, healthlaunchpad
????[0:26] Introductory By Adam, healthlauchpad.
[Adam]: Welcome to the Healthtech Marketing podcast brought to you by healthlaunchpad, and HIMSS. Hi, I’m Adam Turinas. I’m healthlaunchpad founder and CEO, and your host for today.
This health tech marketing podcast is for anyone in the healthcare technology marketing industry, who wants to learn from the Masters who are in the field and doing it now.
So, thank you for joining us today. As we all know, marketing to healthcare is really hard. And we could all use a little help.
The Healthtech Marketing Podcast is the chance for you to hear directly from leading health tech marketers, where they’re going to share insights on what works and what’s not working in their business now, and what they find as really effective in getting the attention of healthcare organizations.
The aim of this is to podcast is to give you practical advice on things that we hope you can take away and start putting into action immediately.
The podcast is brought to you by HIMSS; a global advisor, thought leader, and a leading member of Associate of Healthcare Technology that’s committed to transforming the healthcare ecosystem.
It’s also brought to you by healthlaunchpad, we’re a specialist marketing consultancy, and we work exclusively with healthcare technology brands.
????[1:50] Welcoming Mr. Ben Person From Nuvolo
So today, I am delighted to introduce our guest, my friend, Mr. Ben Person!
Ben, is the Vice President of Global Marketing for Nuvolo. He is going to tell us a little bit about the Nuvolo in a minute, a really interesting company.
I’ve known Ben for a couple of years, and I’ve just been blown away by the strategic way he’s built an ABM-based marketing engine for Nuvolo, really interesting work that he’s doing and, frankly, I’ve learned more about ABM by listening to what he’s been doing over the last years or so, than from any other sources.
So, Ben, it’s really great to have you on the pod today. Let’s start, just telling us a bit about Nuvolo. This is a fact that not a lot of people have heard about, it’s not a firm on a rocket ride right now.
????[2:47] Ben Person Explaining Nuvolo’s Background
[ Ben Person ]: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate the opportunity to share what we’re doing around healthcare marketing. It’s a little unique and, you know, the company was founded back in 2014.
I’ve been with the company since the start, and, you know, healthcare is a major focus of our business. It’s one of our focus markets besides Life Sciences. Healthcare and life sciences are our primary two markets
You’re right, not a lot of folks may have heard about us. But if you are in a hospital today, and there is a team of people managing and supporting medical devices and facilities within the hospital, they are most likely using the Nuvolo platform to do their work.
So, you know, we are truly modernizing how the clinical engineering Biomed, and facilities organizations and hospitals are able to deliver amazing solutions for the hospital. They’re the lifeblood, why those hospitals are up and running, I’m so excited for this opportunity to share what we’re doing. Adam, I appreciate the opportunity.
[Adam]: You’ve come to marketing from a really interesting route, just share a bit about your journey.
????[3:57] Ben Person’s Career Journey
[ Ben Person ]: So just to give you the shorter version Adam, I have been in technology pretty much my whole career. In my degree study, technology has always been a passion of mine. I came into Nevolo with a big passion for healthcare.
My mom’s a retired nurse and my sister’s a respiratory therapist, my wife’s a clinical engineer, and one of our customers as well. Dad’s an engineer and my brother’s a mechanical engineer
Ben’s Technical Experience
So, my whole life has been kind of centered around health care. That’s one of the reasons I joined this company. You know I came in with more of a technology-focused mind. Obviously, Adam, I’ve done a number of technical sales roles.
What got me here in marketing was the fact that through my experience, I developed a deep product knowledge.
I was in the field selling to all of the major healthcare organizations that are our customers today. This brought me to the role of leading marketing.
This equipped me with the knowledge and experience to be able to speak the language of our buyers. I was able to tell the story of what problems we’re solving. And that really is what got me into the place that I am today.
[Adam]: Very interesting.
Now, you’ve set up, you’ve moved into the role of leading marketing. And you said when you took on that role, you restructured marketing and I think the way you’ve got marketing organized is really different. There aren’t a lot of organizations that are setting up the way that you do.
[5:32] How Nuvolo Restructured Its Marketing
[Ben]: Sure, I was hoping to give you a little bit of context. So, yeah we split up this organization in October of last year. We had a couple of marketing folks that reported to sales previously
We decided to take marketing and actually have our CEO and I’m here with our, CRM, who leads, new leads sales and work very closely with sales.
In the way we structured marketing, I wanted to build it out in three key areas in the business, and that is product marketing dedicated to both the industry and for products.
Then we have Corporate or Field marketing as we call it. It’s dedicated to ABM programs that are running around social programs that we’re doing around content creation and creativity.
Ben’s Focus Areas: Brand Awareness & Pipeline Generation
And so, in business development, we have about 25 BDRs that are verticalized as well to have industry expertise. They are calling into our target market, so all of that, out.
So, when I say what gets me gets me up in the morning, what am I focused on every day, are two things: It’s brand awareness and pipeline generation.
That’s what this business does. So for me, making sure that people know we exist and focus especially on healthcare is why we do work with HIMSS as well.
Other organizations are working to get our brand out there in these markets. We make sure folks know the value we’re providing, the solutions that we can help our customers with.
[Adam]: Why did you make the decision?
[7:22] Insight On Nuvolo’s Brand Awareness Decision
[ Ben Person ]: Yeah that’s a good question, if you look at the sort of at one of the things we’ve looked at is, you know, deal cycles. Our deal cycles, tend to run somewhere around six to eight months. On average, you know, from start to finish.
Obviously, a question is when does it start? Our brand awareness goals, can start early, early but on longer sales cycles for software companies like us.
Relations Between SDR & BDR Teams
We’re an enterprise software company right and so for us, we wanted to keep the BDR and SDR in the same organization as marketing for shorter sales cycle organizations, that’s where you’ll put an SDR BDR team play with sales, right when you’re looking at month to month sales cycles.
What do you start to look at enterprise software complex software sales, we chose to put the BDR in SDRs, and we wanted the same with marketing because we want to make sure that the message they’re sending is right in locked up with the message the market is building, value propositions and scripts, all come from Product Marketing corporate marketing, ultimately handed to our business development team to execute
[Adam]: That’s really interesting. The connection is not so much the connection with your marketing, creating campaigns, and the creative aspect, it’s that connection with product marketing. That’s right, that’s the most important.
Yeah, and actually, so it’s, I find it very interesting when I work with you and your team. I see the relationship between your product marketing experts.
For example, your expert, Tony Bailey in OT security, and how he works with Lisa in terms of creating programs. It’s very refreshing seeing that t that kind of structure.
Now you mentioned ABM. I really want to spend a lot of time on this. I think that the way that you’re approaching ABM is what we can all learn a lot from in this talk. Talk a bit about the overall approach. And then, I’d like you to kind of break it down into a bit more detail.
[9:24] Nuvolo’s Approach To ABM
[ Ben Person ]: Yeah, I mean ABM for us so we actually, we now have a dedicated full-time resource to wake up every day and focus on ABM, we are leveraging Terminus as a tech stack that we’re leveraging today for that but for us, Adam, we want to.
There’s so much opportunity out there in prioritizing and focusing and looking at real data to drive our decision-making. So let me use some examples there.
We use intent data. We look at real intent data based on who the potential buyers are and who’s looking to buy now.
So that’s one of the pieces of data we’re looking for. We run campaigns based on intent, there are really three main areas, go ahead.
[Adam]: Do me a favor because not everybody knows this podcast may actually be familiar with what intent data is
[10:11] Ben Explaining Intent Data
[ Ben Person ]: For sure, the tech stack uses multiple tools out there that are going to do it, but basically we can see if our buyers are potentially out there looking for something that would fit what we sell.
So if someone’s out there looking at one of our competitors, for example, clinical engineering maintenance software, we actually can leverage data around that to be able to help target our buyers. Buyers who are actually currently looking for a solution. And by the way, it’s not just intent data. It’s also intended based on job titles.
So you can actually look at a couple of different angles at that data to be able to help us prioritize, not only with our BDR or SDR organization but also with sales, that say there are potential accounts that are showing intent and looking for solutions either in your space or in your competitors’ landscape.
[Adam]: Yeah, that sort of precision is really powerful. I think the other thing that’s so interesting is the way the marketing is working with sales in a proactive way and this is not always the case right? I mean ABM seems to be changing the dynamic a little bit…
[11:28] Highlighting Nuvolo’s ABM Campaigns
[Ben]: Yeah it is.
And so for us, let’s talk about some of the types of campaigns we run. Yeah, right, you know, for us, it’s either an awareness campaign, or it’s some form of lead generation or influence campaign.
So for us, for strategic accounts, Adam, we may run what we call an ad, a one-to-one campaign where we have a very targeted personalized branded one-to-one landing page for our buyer that we’re targeting strategically.
One-to-One Campaign With Targeted Ads
Some strategic counsel we looking at building out one-to-one ABM programs around the whole goal is making sure that we’re getting ads and content that’s relevant to that specific buyer with the right information that they’re looking to solve real problems with as our one to one model.
We don’t have very many of those media about five to 10 per quarter is typically how we run those, they don’t take a lot to set up, but again they’re formed based on value, we think about one to many campaigns, we’re looking at either industry-based campaigns, obviously running healthcare but then targeting specific departments within healthcare with those one-to-many campaigns.
So if we’re looking at facilities, communities within healthcare, you would target very specific personas with very specific messaging and landing pages with content relevant to their job.
[Adam]: So, in the one-to-many. Explain how you use Intent Data on that. And then, what the mechanism for actually targeting, you know, what’s the nitty-gritty here.
[13:00] How Nuvolo Uses Intent Data In One-to-Many ABM
[ Ben Person ]: Yeah, so on one-to-many, we’re taking a swath of accounts. So, obviously, we’re going to decide which accounts really need to be targeted for the one demographic as the first step in the journey, and then we’re prioritizing based on intent data
Typically we’re replacing in healthcare, they’re looking for a CMS we’re gonna be putting content relative to that intent data, right in front of them, like: here’s content around CMS technology, relevant to our capabilities, basically addressing that specifically, it does allow us to prioritize our accounts so, we’re outreaching now with BDRs because typically what we’re going to do out isn’t just an ABM only effort.
Nuvolo’s One-To-Many Campaigns
We’re using ABM plus social plus BDR is to execute that campaign. Right, so now we’re running, again, that awareness first, then we’re running out one-to-many based on intent data, prioritizing that account list based on what we’re seeing in terms of Terminus prioritization, in terms of intent.
Knowing our BDRs, knowing which ones to work on first, second, and third, based on that intent, and interaction with our content.
[Adam]: That’s incredible. In terms of sort of mix of intent, social, and NBR. So, from intent, are you using display, or using any of the display networks to run banner ads, is that right?
[Ben]: yeah sure are.
[Adam]: Is that LinkedIn?
[14:30] Using Linkedln Channel For Targeting
[Ben]: Linkedln is a primary channel we’re doing. We’re also targeting Facebook as the secondary. So based on someone engaging, we retarget Facebook in a couple of different angles to keep our brand in front of folks. So that’s what we were doing
[Adam]: What always amazes me is that it is something which is highly technical, very much an enterprise. Yeah, that always amazes me.
We’ve talked about it quite a few times. You’ve been at it with IBM for about two years and it was not an easy journey. It took a while to get it right. Tell us about that. Tell us about some of the trial and error experiences you’ve had, how you stack assets.
[15:25] Ben Person On Nuvolo’s Experiences & ABM
[Ben]: Yea, figuring out really the approach is the key there. For us, it’s determining where we are going to spend our time and energy, and investment. There are costs associated with it too.
Right, so for us it’s focused on exactly really the key data points. So we focus on what industry and what target personas we want to hit on. We make sure that those intent topics are also included.
So when considering intent data, we work with Bombora. It’s the technology behind the scenes that allow us to have intended topics. This technology stack so for us, making sure the right intent topics are in that list.
Ben On Nuvolo’s ABM Optimization
We’ve made the decision over the last year and a half, two years that we’ve got to dedicate a full-time resource to this, you know, part-time resources wasn’t enough.
[Adam]: Yeah, and that seems to be the way, a lot of companies bringing everything in-house.
And that’s just fascinating. Yeah, one of the issues that you hear is like the number one issue that ABM practitioners say is that the biggest challenge is measuring the ROI. Talk a little bit about the journey you’ve been on that.
[16:53] Ben Person’s Insight – How Nuvolo’s Measures ROI
[Ben]: Yeah, you are definitely right, measuring ABM is hard. We’re starting to now finally get to a point where we’re truly able to measure ROI and I’ll just give you some metrics.
To give you a few different data points, with just ABM in the last quarter, we got 6,000 page views that were influenced through ABM just this last quarter. We had 17 million of net new pipeline that input through ABM as net new.
And we had 47 million to an existing pipeline. One of the things that we’re also pivoting on, Adam, is targeting our current pipelines or running ABM and not only just to find opportunities and find leads, but also influence opportunities through this, the buyers’ journey. Yep, I, what I mean by that is we now have an opportunity of running through pipeline stages.
Ben Explains ABM Role – Brand-building & Buyer Journey
One of the things we’re doing now is for all of our current active opportunities to keep ABM running through that buyer journey.
What that does that keeps our brand in front of that buyer through that entire process you think about an RFP for example request for proposal and we don’t have a lot of interaction with our buyer during that process, besides the procurement person, but ABM can keep our brand and our message and our information in front of those potential buyers through that entire RFP process.
So while some nice flexibility allows us to keep our brand, our value in the front of our potential buyers but one of the other data points that are early on in this measurement, but we’re looking at a couple of other data points.
Creating New Pipeline With ABM To Boost Revenue
How is it potentially increasing the value of our opportunities using ABM so as to create a new pipeline, when we applied ABM to it?
It was increasing the average size of that opportunity by almost 50%, increasing annual revenue, recurring revenue increase just by applying MDM to that early stage in that measurement when you think about that value-wise.
How is that happening, Adam? We don’t just sell into one department within a hospital or an organization.
We sell into multiple departments within an organization. So the more departments and organizations can see our brand and our solutions, the more we expand our footprints.
[Adam]: Oh, that’s mind-blowing. I mean that’s marketing Nirvana. So, how do you attribute, what the revenue and pipeline associated with ABM versus not?
[19:43] ABM & Terminus On Sales Revenue
[ Ben Person ]: Yeah, so the tech stack that we’re leveraging does show us what a data point is actually is able to measure so, able to show us specifically, the revenue we’re generating, how much did ABM touch that accounts during that, say that sales process, so he actually measures for us, how that attributes that ABM effort attributes back to that potential revenue.
[Adam]: Is that done in Terminus?
[Ben]: Terminus is specifically what does that, yeah
[Adam]: Interesting, very, very interesting. I mean, there anything you know just any things that you’ve tried. You guys thought yeah we thought that was gonna work, but really, that didn’t work. That was was the wrong thing to do?
[Ben]: You know, for me, we’ve actually taken a little bit of a step back on the one-to-one campaigns Adam. We can get a lot of value out of making intent-based campaigns,
it doesn’t have to be one to one, doesn’t have to go down to the one to one level, like I said we can still get content, and our brand and all of the information that a buyer might need without having to go to the level of customizing and creating that one to one landing page for a buyer, there’s a value but for us, we taper that back we used to do a lot more of that and had a lot of overhead associated to it.
Current ABM Strategy: 1-to-1 & 1-to-Many Campaigns
For us now, we target our buyers through the sales process, setting up one-to-one, one-to-many campaigns based on true intent data, and based on our key target personas. That’s where we’re spending a lot of our time now.
[Adam]: Well that’s, I mean, that is like gives you a competitive advantage, but it also..I hope your competitor is not listening to this podcast. The other, the other thing obviously is like productivity right?
Because, as you say, I mean I’ve seen those websites and they are, there’s a lot of work that goes into designing them and curating them, and I’m sure that the organization’s that you’re pitching it to get a lot of value out of it doesn’t necessarily get generated the fact you can actually track the comparative ROI, it’s really interesting.
[Ben]: Yeah,
[Adam]: Well, so I mean, then this is, this has been, you know, as ever you every time I talk to you I learned so much.
But, You know, I’ve got, I’ve got a closing question for you which is if you could give the audience, one piece of practical advice that they could take away and act on today, something that you’ve learned in the last few years, that wish you, you wish you’d known earlier, what would that be?
[22:15] Ben Person – Best Advice On ABM Program
[Ben]: The one thing first is to dedicate resources to it. If you’re going to run an ABM program dedicate resources to it. Yep, that’s the first thing next is, as you’re building your ABM program, don’t look too wide. Pick a segment, like if you’re looking to sell into multiple segments.
For us, We picked healthcare first, it was one of the first areas that are so focused on clinical engineering facilities are focusing on.
So pick your target, target industry you really want to prioritize, then pick what is that persona, that is my key, the key to where I’m going to go with this.
Need For Collaboration Between BDR and SDRs
Yep, we’re working with a BDR SDRs, and then we have a weekly call every week, with each of our sales segments to go through the data if you’re not leveraging the valuable data that’s coming out of this Adam and prioritizing where you’re spending your time.
It’s so important. And so for me, that’d be the third piece is make sure sales in your SDR team 100% bought in, they’re excited, that’s going to make that program successful as an ongoing, guaranteed and by the way
[Adam]: So terrific that thank you, that’s great advice. Ben, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me today. I’m sure that for anyone listening, who is going down the ABM journey, this is a really valuable insight.
Before we go, I just want to let you know that you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and all the other podcast channels. You can also view the video for this podcast on the link below.
We’ve got a great program of guests coming up. This is Episode 1 and there will be many more episodes. Thank you all for listening. I hope you listen to some of our podcasts as well.
If you have a topic you would like us to cover, you can email me at: adam@healthlaunchpad.com. , or just find me, Adam Turinas on LinkedIn.
Other Insightful Links:
- How To Improve Your Marketing Message
- Building a Top Healthcare Technology Brand
- The perspective of a Healthcare IT Solutions Buyer
- The Use & Benefits of ABM
- How To Improve Your Marketing Message
- Building a Top Healthcare Technology Brand
- The perspective of a Healthcare IT Solutions Buyer
- The Use & Benefits of ABM