Rebecca Swindell
Job title: Field marketing professional, IBM collaboration solutions
Organisation: IBM UK
Twitter: @RSwindell
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Your network is your most important asset, be this people in your own company, people you meet at events or people you meet through social channels. Your network can help you grow your own skills, promote your company and help you develop your unique ideas.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Put the customer at the heart of everything you do. Your marketing shouldn’t be a push message to them or a scatter gun approach. It should address their individual pain points, and should be a pull message – you want them to engage with you and your brand positively Then marketers must develop the relationships so that your customers will become your brand ambassadors.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
I think Social Influence is going to become absolutely fundamental in B2B marketing (a great book on this is by Mark Schaefer called Return on Influence). Research is showing that people trust a recommendation from a recognised influencer, more than any brand advertisement. There are now tools such as Kred and Appinions that can help you find your influencers online, enabling you to engage with them, with the hope that they will tell their network how great your brand is. You should also work on building your own social influence, your personal brand, by sharing original content and ideas online and responding to those who are talking about the things that are interesting you. It’s no good just listening, you have to engage.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Getting others to see how beneficial engaging in social can be and that it isn’t just about canned tweets and a generic push message from marketing. I think it works best if it’s top down – once your SMEs and execs start interacting with customers and influencers online, others in the team can see the return they are getting.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
As you might have guessed from my other answers – my top tip would be et social. Your customers and influencers are on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging etc. You don’t have to tackle it all at once, dip your toe in with Twitter, think of 140 characters of something valuable you would like to tell then world about and get tweeting.
Paul Higgins
Job title: Head of marketing
Organisation: TalkTalk Business
Twitter: @TTB_Business
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Treat the marketing budget like it’s your own money. Twelve years ago I worked for an owner/operator business, about 70 people in total and the MD would always tell me “are you sure about this spend? This is my kid’s college fund,” and it was. It’s an often used comment but it is very, very true. If you can’t show a return, then return to the drawing board.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Talk the same language as other key decision makers working within the business. Getting buy-in from the board is often the B2B marketer’s biggest hurdle. Showing value in everything you do is the only way to win the hearts and minds of the wider management team.
The trick is not to get bogged down in what is becoming an increasingly complex set of activities, rather concentrate on simplifying your messages – to your teams, to your stakeholders and to your customers.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
B2B Marketing is becoming the trading engine of a business. Adding tools like revenue performance management (RPM); ownership of the customer; and gaining insights into the markets and segments we operate in, can be the trading driver of a business.
The concept of RPM is nothing new but it’s an acronym that will almost certainly receive more airtime in 2013 as it becomes more mature and understood. Marketing automation has been held up as the pinnacle of seamless lead nurturing for some time but these platforms are not being used to their full potential. By providing a new approach to the age old disconnect that exists between sales and marketing we can position the Marketing function as the driver of sales activity more than ever before.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Taking our activities beyond the traditional marketing funnel and moving towards a ‘connected funnel’ with the ability to track all traffic sources, pinpointing advanced ‘digital body language’ signals to send appropriate content and follow conversions from leads to sales. With a focus on content and a commitment to take a thought leadership stance the objective is to achieve more balance between paid, earned and owned media in 2013. Being able to deliver automated sales in our transactional business areas will give us the opportunities to free up SAC and deliver more outputs than ever before.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Be clear on what you’re trying to achieve, it’s easy to get lost along the way. Once you’re clear make sure everyone’s working to the same plan. It sounds simple but orchestrating a single vision is crucial. With one plan in place you can get your teams excited about what they’re doing so they’re challenging the norm and continually improving performance. Finally, don’t forget the creative angles. With so much measurement, process and system interfaces to consider in a complex buying cycle the creative angle can be forgotten – at the end of the day we’re all marketers and we’re good at being creative.
Helen Tupper
Job title: Head of customer experience and thought leadership
Organisation: BP Castrol
Twitter: @helentupper
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Through the Marketing Academy I’ve been privileged to receive mentoring and words of wisdom from some inspiring marketers. Recently, Simon Devonshire, director of Wayra, told me that “Silicon Valley isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind”. As an individual with a passion for innovation, it has really resonated with me and made me think about how I can work to create this state of mind in myself and others.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Build strong cross-functional relationships within your business to create a consistent and responsive customer experience which meets or exceeds expectations at every touch point.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
I believe truly integrating social within the end-to-end customer experience is one of the most important evolutions coming for B2B marketing. Social should not sit as a separate brand or campaign-led activity. Instead, I think it should and will become a core part of the customer experience. All functions will be able interact with customers, opening the relationship up beyond the traditional sales/customer model, driving deeper connections and greater understanding.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Customer needs within our different international markets are complex and changing rapidly. Being able to execute global campaigns consistently and quickly in order to respond to opportunities is certainly a challenge and one I’m keen to develop solutions for.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Continue to test and learn new approaches to marketing and share this externally to showcase the great work that exists within B2B and attract more great marketers to our world.
Gareth Case
Job title: Head of marketing
Organisation: Xchanging Technology Services
Twitter: @gareth_case
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
My first boss once said ‘To lead a successful team, you must understand the intricacies of every element you’re managing’. Fifteen years on and, after a career of learning from the ground up, I really appreciate what he meant. Without the knowledge of how websites are created, campaigns run, social profiles grown etc. etc., how can we effectively manage a team or an agency to do it for us? My advice? Before writing your next brief, research and understand what’s involved in delivering it first and if you have time, give it a go yourself.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Innovate. The B2B IT channel, where I have spent most of my career, is overflowing with marketers unwilling to push the boundaries. Time and time again, I witness ‘safe campaigns’ that appear to be nothing more than a tick in the box. To truly succeed and stand out from the vanilla marketing world around you, take those ideas you’re too scared to approach your boss with, add a little conviction and nail the next big innovative campaign in your sector. Do it well once and you’ll never ‘do safe’ again.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
I think the next big thing will be the rise of the content marketing manager and their role in B2B organisations. With budgets typically remaining static and marketplaces becoming increasingly competitive, the need to stand out from the crowd and differentiate is more important than ever before. The content marketing manager should not only own and manage content across different channels, but should also be tailoring it for specific vertical markets and job functions, all tied in with customer need. The results if done properly are astounding: incredibly targeted, relevant and engaging communications.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
The increasing number of tools we use is becoming a challenge to manage. We currently use Salesforce.com as our CRM, integrated with Marketo for email marketing and automation. We have Google Analytics to measure web traffic and Adwords to drive more our way. We have more than 15 social profiles to manage across 6 different networks, consolidated and managed through Hootsuite and I’m currently in the process of setting up an on-demand, integrated print portal than handles the DM element of our campaigns. Most of these platforms integrate with one another to a certain extent but as the technologies that support our efforts continue to evolve, the challenge will not only remain but will potentially become even more complex.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Skill up and specialise. There is a growing need for marketers with skillsets that support specific marketing disciplines such as automation, email, social media, events etc. I have moved, in the past 4-5 years, from having a team of marketing execs and managers supporting me across the mix, to having a team of dedicated specialist marketers to enable me to plan and execute a fully integrated marketing plan, in-house. Your stock will be higher as a specialist than a generalist and you’ll spend all your work time doing what you enjoy the most.
Rob Coveney
Job title: Communications manager
Organisation: GL Noble Denton
Twitter: @robcoveney
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
When planning marketing activity early on in my career, I remember being told by a senior colleague ‘if you can’t measure it, don’t do it.’ That’s probably the best piece of marketing advice I’ve ever been given. It’s easy to be dragged into conversations with business stakeholders about how grand or exciting a campaign or event could be, but if you don’t have the mechanics in place to measure its impact and success, you’ll never know whether it’s been worth all the effort you’ve put in.
When devising a campaign, I always try and set specific and measurable objectives against it; perhaps generating media coverage in an exact number of target publications, or securing the contact details of a certain number of potential clients of certain seniority in a certain type of company. The more you can tailor the objectives of a campaign around the strategic objectives of your business, the easier it becomes to justify the time and money that you put in. Even if the results of a campaign don’t quite measure up against what you set, at least you know so you can improve things for next time.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Be flexible. Your business, your marketing channels and the environment into which you market can change quickly and unexpectedly as easily as they can change slowly and predictably. It’s important to react appropriately in the way you go out to market.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
It’s not necessarily new, but I think that thought leadership will play an increasingly important role in the B2B sector. Marketing budgets are still not what they used to be. But they can be cleverly supplemented by drawing engaging and insightful content from key people around your business, and using that content to position your company as a credible and authoritative commentator on the latest industry trends.
It costs very little to seek colleagues’ opinions on the opportunities and challenges facing the sector you operate in, but those opinions can be invaluable. They can be used to engage potential clients into debate with you or even positioned alongside similar commentary from a client you really want to get in front of.
The channels the B2B marketing sector uses to put content out to market will constantly change, but if the content itself isn’t engaging and of high enough value to your audience, the channel you use doesn’t matter.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Like many B2B marketing teams, ours is constantly grappling with contact data. We’re on a mission to ensure the information we acquire about our current and potential clients is always up-to-date and in keeping with the audiences that our business needs to reach out to. We’re currently going through a laborious exercise to review each of the thousands of contacts we hold on our database, and to categorise and rate them. It’s a painful thing to do, but it will be absolutely worth it when it’s completed. It will be key to making sure we are always saying the right things to the right people at the time.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
I would gladly pass on the most useful piece of advice that I was given; if you can’t measure a piece of activity, don’t do it. But if I was to add to that, I would say know your audience and tailor your messages to them accordingly. The key to getting the best levels of engagement from clients is to ensure you are delivering exactly the right messages to them, using the most suitable channel at the most appropriate time.
Katrina Diamond
Job title: Director of marketing
Organisation: ProductionHUB
Twitter: @ProductionHUB
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Harvest ideas and absorb the world, even if it’s just for 20 minutes a day. Write down every inspiring idea or striking concept you come across (even if it’s a simple ‘braindump’ in a Word Doc). Make sure to browse these info-sponges frequently and then when you are in a creative rut, amazing solutions will pop out at you from other industries.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Master the art of social conversation in a 360 degree approach; from internal culture, proactive social engagement and video marketing all the way to advertising, PR, events and guerrilla marketing.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
Those who realise the potential of mobile and video marketing – and more importantly, how they can now effectively intertwine to drive targeted users – will have a powerful advantage over those who do not.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Since its inception, ProductionHUB has been a resource for professionals behind-the-scenes in pro video. But now with the intense popularity of video as a marketing tool (especially online as it relates to search), the business world has quickly adapted—and ProductionHUB has expanded into this market to bridge the gap. The challenge was educating the employers and hiring managers on where to find the pros for their next corporate video. While it has been a demanding project, we have thus far been blown away by the success stories, feedback and results from this market.
An unexpected bonus is that it has rejuvenated the office environment. Everybody became even more passionate about their job knowing how they are helping keep the industry busy with work.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Spend time and money knowing as much about your target prospect as humanly possible. (Think outside of standard surveys and demographics / geographic data). You want to know everything about their behaviour until you can paint a picture of your ideal customer’s day – only then can you truly learn and improve the product or service.
Also, stay updated on relevant trends constantly to make sure your company is still solving a problem in the most efficient way possible in the ever-changing marketplace. After all, if you want to instil passion for your product or service in others, you must first be a believer yourself.
Anum Hussain
Job title: Inbound content strategist
Organisation: HubSpot
Twitter: @anummedia
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
What you’re good at now are skills that will get you a job – they’ll help you do well. And they’ll carry you through your career to have a stable job. But 10 years from now, you’re going to find yourself in the same exact place you’re in today unless you realise you have to know more than just your job. You need to know how to sell what you’re good at, communicate with all people through all forms, and understand concepts beyond your expertise. That’s how you get into the major leagues. That’s how you go from good to great.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Study more than marketing. While having a rich understanding of marketing is part of your success, the best B2B marketers will be those who broaden their knowledge. My education in journalism has taught me how to write the perfect story, while the engineering team at HubSpot has taught me how to produce efficiently with a team. Don’t spend all your time attending marketing conferences or reading marketing books, use every brilliant resource at your disposal to be the smartest person you can be. That will make you a successful marketer.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
Personalisation. When social media platforms became the new hot tool for marketers, everyone discussed how the conversation suddenly shifted from one-to-many to one-to-one. Marketing was moving away from a general advertisement to all viewers, and turning into individual conversations with users.
B2B marketing as a whole will follow in the same footsteps. B2B marketing will start looking more and more like Amazon, where the business’s web presence will match the person landing on the site. This element of context will make every website more personal, adapting the page to the interests of the person on it.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
I am struggling with what I am simultaneously succeeding at: the content component of inbound marketing. It’s clear to all that content is cluttering the internet. But as any good inbound marketer knows, content is at the foundation of what we do. And while I am leading long-form content creation at HubSpot, I’m struggling to know how we measure the true success of our content How do marketers truly gauge content’s impact on the rest of their marketing strategy? What content is best for nurturing, for driving sales, for retaining customers?
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Take risks. There are far too many businesses, too many marketers, who simply follow the same models, the same processes, the same methods, to do their jobs. They enter a business and immediately adjust their thinking to that of the company. A business should never hire you to help them keep doing what they are doing, they should hire you to come and improve what they’re doing. The only way to do that is to take risks, push ideas, and see what happens.
Nicol Allen-Burt
Job title: Business insights manager
Organisation: Brother UK
Twitter: @Brother_UK
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Stay curious, assume nothing.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Set clear objectives in order to measure outcomes and impacts – to effectively define ‘cause and effect’.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
The explosion of available data allowing any marketer to put their world into context in order to make strategic and/or tactical decisions (FMCG have been doing this for a while but it is new for B2B marketing).
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Converting the mass of data into actionable insight and communicating this insight.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Keep learning and developing – there is always something new to discover (in marketing and in the outside world).
Maiko Davison
Job title: Marketing executive
Organisation: Toshiba Medical Systems UK
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Do not just use one marketing agency as it is not good to put all your eggs in one basket. Marketing agencies tend to have strengths/weaknesses so find a couple of agencies that complement each other. I have implemented this into Toshiba Medical Systems UK so we now have a very strong team which I am delighted with.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Be versatile and able to adapt around everyone and anyone (internal and external). It is important to market marketing and obtain buy in. The more people you win over the easier your job will be.
You need to be creative and think outside the box whether it is for external or internal marketing. Allow and allocate time to enable you to have creative thinking time. Do not become complacent by just implementing the same things year on year or copying your competitors. Inspire and engage people by being innovative and creative where possible. Adapt as the market changes but ultimately, ensure your customers are at the heart of everything you do.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
B2B marketing to catch up with B2C marketing in terms of creativity, pushing boundaries and focusing on the customer.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
I am currently studying my diploma in digital marketing but still unsure whether we should/should not concentrate our resources on social media. We will do some research to establish how many people within this industry use social media for business purposes and what they use it for. I am yet to be convinced that social media is the way forward for us.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Research, research, research. Invest heavily in understanding your customers and market (market research, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, competitor research etc). By doing so you have more chance of your marketing activities being successful. This will also enable you to spend your budget wisely. Never do anything without doing your research first and never assume.
Rosie Brewster
Job title: Marketing manager
Organisation: Emap
Twitter: @rosie_brewster
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
To not be afraid to try anything new or different and to proactively assign 10% of your budget to new activity. Ideas should create questions.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Know your customers, know your competitors’ customers and be relevant.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
Content marketing: with so many sales messages out there, what we do with content and how we can spin it into solid marketing message is going to be key.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
To create engaging conversations on social media; a lot of the customers I work within are very senior, so knowing what is right for them is quite challenging.
What piece of marketing advice would you give B2B marketers?
Take the time to know your customers and sectors. Getting under the skin of your customers, knowing what makes them tick and what they see as a good ROI on purchasing from you is half the battle.