Our fortnightly Ignite Twitter chat series hit its zenith last week, as we tackled the subject of acceleration. With topics such as ABM, predictive analytics, and sales/marketing alignment leading the line, there was plenty to discuss. Here are our key takeaways.
Our next Twitter chat takes place on Thursday 18 May. Follow @MarketingB2B using #IgniteB2B to join.
Unsurprisingly, people couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into this issue. Here were the most popular responses:
- Talking about how everything’s going to align, then simply not changing behaviour day-to-day.
- Attempting to dress them in the same outfits.
- Not getting buy-in early enough from sales leadership.
- Setting separate and often conflicting targets and not encouraging proper dialogue to share learning and support from each other.
- Operating with two different views of the customer, you have to set common goals.
While people were still arguing the merits of different sales/marketing departmental structures, the question of data hurdles and how to overcome them yielded a similarly dynamic range of responses.
Inaccurate data and integration issues popped up a few times, while one user lamented marketing’s tendency to manipulate data to tell them what they want to hear.
All talk and no action was mentioned: too many marketers collect data purely to tick a box, with it rarely leading to any action. Tweeters debated the fight between data and anecdotes, with subjectivity often overruling the arguably more reliable source of solid raw data.
However, one user argued that marketers expect too much from data, often overlooking the all-important human factor.
I appreciate the irony of using ‘staying ahead of the curve’ and ‘predictive’ in the same sentence, and anything containing the term ‘AI’ was bound to get people talking.
One tweeter said the trick is to bravely trial new techniques (such as chatbots and bidding on voice search), while another suggested focusing on how AI can enhance the lives of customers rather than egotistically using it to inform how well marketers are doing their jobs.
One user concisely put, “There’s no shortage of things AI can do, but you need to figure out what actually needs to be done before diving into platforms.”
A fear all marketers quite openly harbour, this question asked which areas of the traditional marketing function would become defunct as predictive marketing becomes more widely implemented.
One attendee urged marketers to remain undistracted, arguing that true predictive marketing is still a pipedream. Another user speculated the ‘reach’ metric would hold less sway in campaigns, with more focus being placed on the relevancy of marketing messages.
Most users of Agile techniques eulogise its impact on the marketing function, so this question sought to understand exactly how Agile can accelerate marketing results.
As revealed in the chat, the main benefits of Agile included allowing you to make mistakes, adapt campaigns in real time, and respond quickly to change in order to achieve competitive advantage.
There’s still so much confusion surrounding the term that it’s well worth pointing out that Agile is so much more than merely going faster in marketing; as one user pointed out, it’s about doing the right work at the right time. (If you’re still unsure, our report How to apply Agile successfully to your marketing contains everything you need to know.)
Best presented in list form, here are some of the top suggestions that rounded off our acceleration Twitter chat.
- Give marketers permission to refuse to make crap.
- Allow them to be creative: inspire and lead by example.
- Connect marketing to the common good of helping people/customers and not to charts/graphs on meaningless data.
- Celebrate success.
- Ask them to surprise you.
And finally… get drunk. If I can relate to any of these, it’s definitely this last one.
