128 | Growth Marketing: Where ABM and Demand meet

Jon Busby: Welcome again to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast. I'm very pleased to be joined in the virtual recording booth by one of our podcast veterans Minaz, our head of ABM here at Together, but we're also pleased, I'm also pleased to be joined by Cat Dutton, VP of Global Growth Marketing at Pegasystems.

Cat, we're really excited today to dive into your approach with ABM and get into touch, with some of the themes around creativity, leadership, and really the future impact of marketing. So, Cat, welcome to the podcast.

Cat Dutton: Thanks for having me.

Jon Busby: It's great to have you here. So you've had an incredible journey through marketing to get to where you are at Pega.

Tell us a little bit on your career background. How did you land as VP of Global Marketing at Pegasystems?

Cat Dutton: Thank you. Yeah, a bit of a journey, I think. Yeah, so I started my career I'm I was a bright eyed, quite bolshy graduate with a company called Fujitsu. And I was there for about, just over 10 years.

And in that time, I actually did a number of different roles around sales. I got involved with clients. I did some, pretended to be a bit of a consultant for a bit. I did service delivery. I really just learned different client facing roles actually within Fujitsu. And then I got the opportunity to join the marketing team.

And I worked in the brand and comms team for a year, which gave me a really good understanding about how important a brand is to a company. But I did find I missed the client side. So I ended up jumping into. A role where actually it was, we were actually doing account-based marketing, but didn't really have that term at that time.

And did my first kind of business marketing role at Fujitsu and then worked my way up. And by the time I left there, I was leading the private sector marketing team. And then I got an opportunity. Which I was approached about actually three times to join a company called Atos. And I said no a couple of times.

It was a big promotion from where I was. I felt it was. Anyway, I ended up going on a leadership development program, which just gave me a bit more confidence, I think. And I went for the interviews. Atos got the job and joined to lead their UK and Ireland marketing team. And they hadn't had a marketing director for a couple of years.

So it was a very interesting time to join the company and take on a team. That wasn't really a team, actually. And I spent quite a few years in ASOS just building that UK and Ireland marketing function for the company. And within that, we did a whole load of different things around demand generation, account based marketing, bid marketing, or deal based marketing.

We ended up, Cornet Was a big focus. And then I did a couple of different global industry marketing roles at Atos. And then we basically got an individual within our organization who ended up heading up marketing. He wasn't a CMO and we had a conversation and he said to me, do you want to do the deputy CMO role?

I actually thought he was joking and went, yeah, of course, not a problem. And then literally within 24 hours, he got me paperwork. I was like, okay. And then I ended up doing the global CMO role for a bit. Which I really enjoyed. I had a fantastic team at Atos. But what I did find was that I really missed that client piece and the actual delivery of marketing.

So the opportunity came up with Pegasystems to. Lead the EMEA marketing team. So I moved over to Pega a couple of years ago. And for some reason I've ended up back in another global role. I think I lasted in the EMEA role for about two months before things changed. And because of my expertise and background, I ended up leading their global account based marketing team and here we are today.

Yeah, I've had a bit of a varied journey, but always in large kind of B2B IT organizations.

Jon Busby: It's it's incredible. Minaz, I didn't get a chance to really give you a chance to speak at the beginning, so I'm going to let you jump in here. That's okay. I realise we just went straight into it, and you, and because I was just too excited to hear about Cat's journey.

But Minaz, give us a little bit of background here on, on firstly your role at Together, but also, what you were excited to talk to Cat about.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah no, cool. That's no problem at all. As you said, John, I've been on here a few times. Hopefully the listeners will vaguely remember me.

But I'm exec client director at Together. So really working with key accounts our tier one strategic accounts, Pega being one of them Atos not being one of them. So don't worry. But really to look at strategy planning, future of the account. Are we always Pushing the boundaries of both demand generation, ABM and beyond and brand as well.

So yeah really the guy in the room to make sure we're asking the right questions and achieving the best work and outcome for clients there. So that's the sales pitch LinkedIn description of my job. Why actually do spend most of my time talking to people like Cat about non work based things, and then eventually we share some great ideas.

And to your point as well, Cat, I think. I think we've all pretended to be a consultant at some point, haven't we?

Cat Dutton: Obviously, I know I have a lot of seminars, but great learning experience.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah, definitely. No, all good.

Jon Busby: I loved, Cat, how you shifted between being, how you say, more kind of client facing, did you say?

More, what were the elements that you really missed? What were the bits that you enjoyed the most?

Cat Dutton: I think for me it's making an impact. I, I think whenever you're out with clients or individuals, your organization works with, whether it's partners or different influencers, I genuinely think that's where you get the real insights into what change you can actually make within your organization.

And I always, I don't know, I just get more motivated, more energy from spending time with clients and out in the field. And that, that's what I really enjoy. I think

Jon Busby: I think it's something we've all got to be mindful of, especially when it comes to, to, we interview, we've interviewed a lot of CMOs and similar people to yourself over the last year cat and one of the biggest changes we've seen on the podcast is just how this kind of understanding more about your business and how it makes money and how you can demonstrate that impact to your business, how much more important that is to CMOs and to the board.

Cat Dutton: Yeah.

Jon Busby: And I think, if you can combine that with what you enjoy, as you say, like demonstrating that impact and being out in the field, I think that just, Makes you more valuable. Probably why they kept chasing you and you kept having to turn them down. Let's be honest. Yeah.

Minaz Tejani: The global world keeps on coming to find you, it's not a life you choose, Cat, but life chooses you.

I think it's a good point there, John. Just to jump in, I think also, it sounds quite similar in terms of my experience over the last, God, sadly, 25 years. Of, wide scale demand generation programs, advertising campaigns, all the way down to very specific one to one types of ABM.

And I think the driving force of being able to really understand what sales are talking about and marrying the sort of two. And I do think that this for all marketers out there listening, I do think they should spend as much time as physically possible with sales teams at different levels. Started off in 25 years ago as a BDR type of role, then moved more into marketing.

And I'll never, ever forget the importance of putting something out there. That's going to be meaningful. That's going to strike a chord. That's going to be in line with what they want to talk about from a sales perspective. And I think, I don't think enough marketers are given the opportunity. I'm not going to say they don't.

They're not given the opportunities to be able to spend time with sales teams and get on the front line. And I

Cat Dutton: do think, I do think people can make their own opportunities. I, I think, if people are listening and they haven't spent time with sales, go out and shadow some salespeople, build it in as part of your development plan or build it in as part of your week, go spend a couple of hours with someone.

Those people are more than willing to, Allowing you to go to certain meetings. Maybe not all their client meetings, but they'll definitely let you listen to it. I think make those opportunities. Yeah. No,

Jon Busby: Yeah. No, I mean. That's yeah.

I'm not gonna call sales people lazy here, but when he's a Bill Gates quote, which is, I'll always give a lazy man a difficult job because they find the easiest way to do it.

And it makes me think a salesperson is never going to say no to you joining them because it's just going to help share the load. Hey, we might, they might let's take notes, which is something we all know that sales do terribly well to update their CRM, but I'm with you cat. Like I spent some time on this one.

Last year got out in the road with a salesperson in tech and what it taught me about how we need to change some of our marketing comms was absolutely mind blowing like how they pitch certain solutions and how they made sure that they went in with one option which at least anchored people and you know these things we just don't tend to see as marketeers unless you're out there in the field so I’m completely with you

Minaz Tejani: definitely yeah what can happens you're getting that becoming and I’ve We've seen this before over my career and have it to bring it back as well as Marketing just becomes an echo chamber of a load of words that they think that people want to hear And then sales teams look at those messages and I don't I wouldn't say that in a sentence B I don't talk about, big data small data agile cloud based, they're using like human outcomes and languages and I think the the marriage of the two of that really toning it down is a You Yeah, I've seen some pretty strange campaigns out there that you think that's definitely been written by a marketer and the sales never even probably had a look at it, but let's try and change it for 2025.

Jon Busby: I would, um, coming back to, I think, a point, the point we've just made about sales and marketing alignment, I would actually say we're probably going through a inflection point in marketing, especially in B2B, where I think, I'm going to theorize that I think that sales and marketing alignment we may finally solve.

It's been the discussion for decades. I think we are actually at a point now where just through some of the technology and some of the changes in the B2B buyer journey, I think we might finally be at a point where we can resolve it anyway. We could go down a massive rabbit hole there.

Let's bring it back to ABM. And talking a bit about impact, as you mentioned, Cat. There's nothing more impactful. I think then the board asking for how our demand gen programs are going because let's be honest that's where the rubber meets the road where they get to see how many leads and what their pipeline looks like how do you see ABM and demand gen working together most successfully?

Cat Dutton: Yeah it's interesting, actually, John. The role that I've been doing in Pega for the last couple of years is very much focused on building a global account based marketing function. And the, the core kind of metric and KPI we'd used around that was. absolutely nothing to do with leads.

It was around client engagement. And how do you really make sure that you are deepening those engagements with clients? How are you providing opportunities for, our clients to get involved and some of the breadth of our capabilities. But as we've moved forward with our strategy we are bringing in, and we've started to bring in, Just in the last couple of months, more of a demand generation element to the team which we're calling growth marketing.

So it encompasses everything. I think for me, there are elements of account based marketing depends on what the strategy is for that client that you're working with. does bring in demand gen. It's not a separate activity. I think they all link together. So if a client your agenda with that client is actually want to break into this part of this business, and we're going to use marketing techniques to get us in front of those stakeholders.

That is demand gen. It's not a separate activity. I think we tend to think about Demand gen in the element, the elements that you've just mentioned, which is leads. And we, within Pega, we're very much starting to look at that way in terms of wider campaigns. But I do think there is an element there that is more targeted, more focused, more personalized, and actually the return on investment you get through account based marketing is way much higher than doing a, a spray out kind of mass campaign that goes yeah, we want to generate thousands and millions of leads.

I, that's Does it get you the ultimate return, which it isn't leads that you're actually looking for. It's new business. It's closed deals. So I think they're very much interwoven with each other and I don't think you can look at it separately.

Jon Busby: I completely agree, but I'm going to redefine what we say is demand gen here, right?

Because this is a debate we've had internally together as well quite passionately, or I'm going to say quite aggressively, which is I think in ABM, it's much more about relationship generation or relationship management than it is about demand generation. Because at the end of the day, yes, you are creating demand, but it's not in the same way That we would see a typical demand generation program be created.

It's still over a longer time frame. It still requires it requires a personalized and Considered approach. It's not that you're just, it's a very different set of processes and activities to your typical demand gen, exactly as you've said. But I tend to look, we tend to look at it as relationship building rather than the, rather than demand gen which I think sits neatly between the two.

But completely agree with you. Minaz, what's your thoughts on how the two works? Yeah.

Minaz Tejani: There's. There is no I think there's largely not a right and a wrong answer. It does depend on the organization and the situation that you're in. I think what I said on it is that actually I do think they're very closely intertwined, but it's important to define what we mean by that.

For me, demand generation is still the large scale acquisition strategies, taking people through, registering for X, Y, and Z, top of funnel, middle of funnel, MQS, it's, it tends to be more. Like high volume lead generation, if anything, and then pushing them through the funnel and converting some that qualify through your BDRs.

It's an engine and those do exist and they have done existed and they've done well for clients that are selling high volume solutions. Could be hardware, it could be, SAS, it could be devices. But for me, it's what I'm seeing in the market as well, is that those sorts of programs, they're starting to see that the actual return on those, because they're looking at the actual revenue return, doesn't always really add up, because everyone gets quite hooked up on, focused on the soft metrics.

So as long as we've hit our KPI of the number of MQLs, number of downloads, number of people that are registered for an event, and most sales and CROs are looking at what we're interested in, okay, how much business are we actually closing? So that. for me is more your sort of demand gen world, which I'm seeing is quite, is evolving.

I think there is another factor though. There's the, what I call it, like the catwalk strategy. Yeah. So if you look at someone like, I'm going to grab Armani, that's just because it'd be a bit late. What Armani put on the catwalk to grab people's attentions and push the boundaries and innovate will never see the light of day, but 10 percent 20 percent of those ideas will then make it onto the rail.

the next. I'm clearly talking about something I really don't know anything about here, but I'm going to pretend. But fundamentally is some of those key ideas and innovations then end up on the high street. And that's always been the way of the sort of the fashion houses. And I think ABM is pretty similar in that it's a test bed for innovation, for new thinking new ways to be able to really communicate and build relationships with key customers.

But if you now look at the demand gen programs. John, how many demand gen programs are you exposed to that don't use a little bit of intent that might use personalization at scale that probably use technographic data? That's all stuff that sort of started really in ABM has had a waterfall effect on demand gen.

So it's actually even though ABM is critically and it's important. I think as a bigger picture, those two do naturally work like brother and sister, but it's just happening. As a sort of natural ripple effect of some of the work that's going on. And I would say I do feel like the bigger, large scale, spray and pray, wide scale demand driven programs are on their way out.

People are still going to do less is more, right? So targeting your top 500 accounts or even a thousand, there's still a lot of accounts, but there's so many tools now that you can still use a little bit of ABM to get more intimate and build those relationships and create experiences and use data and insights.

Thanks. That those demand gen programs, you'll see a marriage of the two until it is just one type of strategy, I think for customers, but that's just, you know what I'm going to say here, right? That's me being a consultant there, by the way,

Jon Busby: pretending to be. You know what I'm going to say here, though, because it's, Nia's even pre empted it and written it in my talking points for me, which isn't ABM just better marketing?

Because it, in some ways, it is just good marketing in B2B. Like, why would you just Why would you not innovate and personalize and do everything you've just talked about? Because just feels obvious that you would want to do that

Minaz Tejani: too. That's a lot of money. It's budget and time, John. The two things that no one has in life, unfortunately.

Cat Dutton: And resource. I think, with account based marketing, it's really resource intensive. It doesn't matter how good the tools are that you're using. I think it is getting a balanced strategy. So we in Pega, we have going into next year, we've got what we call a blended approach. So we have strategic one to one ABM orgs.

But then we also have what we call ABM light. So it's a kind of lighter touch of what we're doing there, but it's still a very one to one approach. And then we've also got our kind of demand generation piece. I think it depends what your company strategy is and how you build it, but I see your point, John, on is it not just great marketing?

It's a form of marketing, but it's personalized.

Jon Busby: Yeah, but in B2B, like we know how some of the truths compared to other marketing approaches like B2C. We know that the audience is much, much smaller. We know we can get, normally get much more data on that audience. So we know exactly what our target account list looks like.

, it just feels like we should be using a BM approaches. It was my problem when my, when I, when Minaz actually first started introducing me to a BM, goodness, probably five, six years ago. I was just like, it just sounds. Sounds like everyone should be doing that. But I definitely get your point, like you can't do that, you have to, when you, to do it truly well, and to do it down to that one, that magical one to one level especially when we consider buying committees on top of it, like that's a huge amount of effort to understand 13 different people's tone of voice, how they want to be approached, what they care about, what their values are when you do it right, it's amazing.

Yeah. I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. You mentioned this a moment ago, though, Cat, you talked about it being now your growth marketing strategy. Like what why the term growth? What's the, give us a bit of the background about why it was called that.

Cat Dutton: I think because the company strategy that we have, has been very focused and very targeted today on our existing clients.

And I think there's now an element of what we're doing, where, do you know what, we also want to work with new clients. So for me, we wanted to come up with something where we depicted if we brought account based marketing together with demand generation and with our partner marketing as well.

How do we explain that? And how do we describe that? I think, there's other organizations out there that have also used the term, so I'm not by any means saying we've created it. But it just felt right because the outcomes that we want to drive through what we're doing is growth ultimately for the organization.

And we are making a subtle adaptation to not just focusing on how we impact on client engagement, but also how we impact on the bottom line for the organization. And, if you, for me, growth is an all encompassing term of bringing those together.

Jon Busby: Yep. Yep. I think it also, for me, encompasses the fact that, especially with an ABM approach, you're talking, and especially in the modern world where, We care about things like renewal rates and client retention that you've got to focus not just on one type of customer

Cat Dutton: Yeah

Jon Busby: Which I think is really important.

What's an incredible conversation we've had so far Cat But there's still so much more to come So we've decided to stop here and split this episode into two parts to give all this valuable content to you The attention it deserves. Be sure to tune into our next episode on the tech marketing podcast, where Cat will share even more marketing gold.