This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube video titled "Why Mid-Market Companies Are Betting Big on ABM in 2025" (published/created 2025-01-10). The excerpt is a spoken monologue by Eric Siu discussing account-based marketing (ABM) for mid-market and enterprise customers: insights from discovery/demo calls (short demos, January buying cycles), product-market observations (many ABM products perform poorly despite high pricing), pricing perceptions for platforms vs. agencies, and the need to move quickly. He also describes doing customer development with his CTO, recounts an antagonistic attendee who tried to turn a demo into an acquisition discussion, and promotes the Agency Owners Association (run with Neil Patel) and marketingschool.io/agency. Content type: YOUTUBE; topic: ABM, sales/discovery calls, agency economics, and a call-to-action for agency owners.
Chapters
Account-based marketing is very big. So those that don't know, account-based marketing is you are basically targeting like a whole company and a bunch of people that work there. I'll give you a couple of interesting facts from these calls. One thing is when you're talking to these, um, call it mid-market to enterprise companies, they're all ready to go in January, right? Like we're, we had a lot of these calls in December to like, yeah, no, we definitely want this. Um, and we're ready to start in January. And also the other thing from these calls too that I've learned is that If you have a product that's very understandable and they just get it immediately, these demo calls are taking 15 minutes, less than— sometimes it's like 7 minutes or so, right? They're just like, okay, what are next steps here, right? They're ready to go. I think what I've also realized from the ABM space is most of the products suck. I'm just like, how is it that like there's some of these products that are doing like multiple 9 figures a year, but all the people on these calls are complaining about it? I'm like, how much are you paying for this thing? It's like $120 grand. I'm like, $120 grand, that's the base cost. Plus there's ad fees too on top of that. I'm like, how does— and they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna churn next year. And like everyone's saying this one product, they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna churn next year. And then I'm like, okay. The other thing I've learned too is we need to move very quickly on this. We can't just sit on it, especially because I'm talking about it right now. We have the faster we move, the better, right? Because everyone's like, this is a duh thing. And then the second thing is, okay, all the ABM stuff sucks out there. So if I were running an ABM software company, why wouldn't I just look at this and just like, try to integrate it in, right? Yep. So the other thing I would say is both my CTO and I are on a lot of these calls. So we're doing a lot of customer development on these discovery calls as well. So we double the calls up. It's not just a sales discovery call. It's also just, it's a customer discovery call to figure out what are they using right now? And what is it that they need? What are they struggling with? Because everyone is like, oh, we're not really doing account-based marketing right now. But we want to spend a lot next year on account-based marketing. I was like, oh, that's interesting. Right. The other, the final thing I'll give you here is agencies are freaking cheap. Okay. So with the ABM companies, like the mid-market enterprise companies, like how much would you pay for this a month? It's like a couple thousand dollars, right? And then as the platform fee, and I talked to agencies, how much would you pay for this a month? Like $100? It's not worth more than $100 a month, $200 a month. And then by the way, there's this one asshole that showed up to the call. He tried to flip it into an acquisition call. I was like, you motherfucker. Sorry, pardon my language. If you're an agency owner, Looking to break high 7 figures, 8 figures, or even 9 figures, the Agency Owners Association is for you. It's ran by my partner, Neil Patel, and myself. And we've been there, done that from an agency standpoint. And if you want to learn more about it, if you want to grow faster, get more clients, take yourself out of the day-to-day, just go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more. Wait, what do you mean acquisition ads and to try to buy the company? He was like, how, what does this have to, how does this relate to Single Grain? I was like, oh God, he's trying to flip it, right? And then we were showing him the software. He talked down to us. This is the only call where he Talk down to us, right? And I'm like, I will never do a deal with you. And then at the end he said, hey, are you interested in selling it? No, in the middle of the call he was like trying to say, well, you know, we're— he tried to reposition the calls like, well, you know, we're doing acquisition stuff, blah, blah. And then he's talking about the software. It's like, yeah, you know, this is honestly not that special, blah, blah. And I'm just like, this guy's a YPO guy, by the way. Um, so I'm like— Is it in your chapter? No, not in my chapter. Oh, that's good. Yeah, not in my chapter. He's, uh, we might see him at the event. We'll see. We'll see. So that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe, and don't forget to check out marketingschool.io/agency if you want to grow your agency faster, and we'll see you tomorrow.
