The B2B Marketing Summit brought the brightest B2B marketers together to discuss hot industry topics and share best practice – all delivered via a personalised agenda. Gemma Huckle reflects on the day’s events
The B2B landscape is changing at a rate of knots, and marketers are rightly thirsty for knowledge in order to keep up. No-where can marketers better learn about successful and proven approaches and solutions than at face-to-face events among peers and industry experts. This was the order of the day at B2B Marketing’s first annual Summit on 14 June at The Brewery in London.
B2B buyers are, of course, also becoming much more educated. Speaking at the Summit, David Fox, chairman at Fox Parrack Singapour highlighted that B2B marketers need to find new ways to engage prospects who now have more control when it comes to deciding their own engagement levels. He commented, “It’s about playing a game of understanding their psychology and behaviour when nurturing prospects.”
This was just one of the many issues that surfaced at the event, which consisted of four compelling topic streams: content marketing, data insight, lead nurturing and social media – some of the hottest current marketing topics. Delegates created their own tailored agenda prior to the event, choosing from best practice sessions and case studies on the areas most relevant to them.
Content marketing is king
Digital and social planner at OTM, Joe Edwards’ presentation on content creation proved a hit with delegates as one of the busiest sessions of the day. Maybe the popularity of the session was down to the fact that when asked later in the day about content strategy, most people in the stream admitted to not having one. On the topic of existing B2B content, a sensationalist Edwards went as far to say, “Your content makes me sick.” He urged marketers to stop churning out the same, unengaging content and instead evoke emotional reactions from their audience. The more entertaining and valuable the content is, the more likely the audience is to share it.
A discussion on the issue of ‘gated’ content was lead by Chris Wilson, MD of Earnest. He told marketers to drop the barriers, suggesting the value of content needs to be proven before it can be gated up behind a form.
Meanwhile, Louise Ogle, marketing manager at Reed, pointed out that, rather than solely focusing on content creation, brands should divide their efforts equally between creation and distribution. This idea was given context during her case study presentation on ‘The Little Book of Learning’ and ‘The Little Book of the Future’ campaigns – runner-up in the ‘Best use of content’ category at last year’s B2B Marketing Awards. She also suggested that brands create content in collaboration with a partner in order to leverage their distribution channels.
Delving into data insight
Interesting insight on blending business and consumer data came from Marc Stares, B2B business development manager at The Read Group. He asserted the benefits of broadening reference data to consumer sets to gain insight into customers and prospects. But what about gathering customer data in the first place?
Maggie Lonergan, MD of marketing services at Amex, suggested that a cheap way of collating this information is to use social media as an alternative to commissioning expensive market research. LinkedIn was cited as the most accurate source as users tend to keep their profiles up-to-date.
Adam Sharp, MD of CleverTouch, managed to grab the attention of marketers when he told them their data erodes three per cent each month. The stat underlined the importance of maintaining an accurate database to ensure regulation compliance, as well as achieving maximum ROI.
Lead nurturing lessons
Cyance director, Steve Kemish’s presentation got off to a playful start when he told the crowd to ditch the traditional content funnel in favour for a newly designed funnel similar to the game Plinko. The game sees contestants drop a chip down a pegged board with the prize determined by where the chip lands.
Kemish aimed to highlight the point that you can’t determine where in the funnel the prospect will enter and what content they will absorb. B2B marketers need to create a bank of “remarkable” content and promote it on multiple channels that are accessible to prospects wherever they enter the funnel. Kemish humorously championed the inclusion of natural calls-to-action without aggressively selling the product, when he said, “You don’t go on a date and ask someone to marry you!”
Animated talk on lead generation also came from Neolane’s head of marketing, Martin Smith. As one of the last sessions of the day, Smith invigorated the room by getting delegates on their feet to discover who was motivated by logic and who was motivated by sex. The reason for doing this was to highlight how marketing and sales should work together for a more effective lead nurturing process.
Smith then sought to dispel the common misconceptions both departments have of each other – underlining the importance of understanding the processes that each department goes through. This creates a good relationship between both departments going forward – allowing everyone to work towards the same common, corporate goals to achieve a better pipeline.
Social media steals the show
Social media was, understandably, one of the most popular streams of the event. One of the toughest topics to tackle, and the least understood, was calculating social media ROI. James Fairweather, digital marketing consultant at Coast Digital, bravely took the subject head on and was quick to dismiss the idea that social media is hard to measure. He told attendees to lose the fear and get started with ROI, “The quicker you make mistakes in social media measurement, the quicker you’ll learn the right way. Don’t be afraid to fail,” he announced.
Fairweather also highlighted the danger of having too many vanity metrics for social media, which could lead to ‘data puke’ – a phrase originally coined by Google’s analytical guru Avinash Kaushik. He maintained, however, that there’s still a place for vanity metrics, as long as they form part of a solid bunch of KPIs.
Claire Barker, marketing manager, at LexisNexis concluded the social media sessions with an inspiring and down-to-earth speech talking about overcoming the challenges of the channel. She candidly shared a number of solid best practice tips based on her own experiences but, above all, encouraged delegates to not get disheartened and to persevere with their fantastic efforts.
In fact, this sentiment ran throughout the entire event, and was rightly toasted at the end of the day with customary drinks and nibbles in the courtyard. Well, it can’t be all work and no play.
