Welcome to Shark Week! This week, people from all over the world are tuning into content programming dedicated to—yep, you guessed it—sharks. This Special leads follows the well-timed release of The Shallows, a movie about a lone surfer’s survival attempts against a shark attack. With the fascination surrounding these mysterious creatures of the sea, I’d like to draw Special leads some parallels from the underwater ecosystem to our very own marketing ecosystem. After all, as marketers, it’s in our genes to keep abreast of and ride the wave of (pun intended) trending topics.
So, how are marketers like the giants of the ocean—sharks and whales? The Special leads similarity lies in our “feeding” habits. Sharks find a specific target and then spend time hunting it down, similar to account-based marketing (ABM), in which an organization identifies a number of target accounts and dedicates sales and marketing resources to penetrate and close them. On the other Special leads hand, whales, specifically baleen whales, swim with their Special leads mouths open, taking in large amounts of water that contain tiny creatures.
This is evocative of the traditional demand generation approach, with Special leads broad-reaching techniques that focus on generating and engaging a large number of qualified leads based on their attributes to move them further down the funnel and eventually close them. Ultimately, whether you’re most like a shark or whale will depend on your objectives and nature of Special leads your business. In fact, both species are critical to the ecosystem, just like most B2B organizations need an optimal mix of both broad-reaching and targeted strategies to achieve their different goals.