B2B Nation
By B2B Nation
B2B NationAug 03, 2022
What’s Working for B2B SaaS Challenger Brands?
Operating in a space dominated by large, well-known brands poses a challenge for companies in any sector. In the SaaS software market – and in CRM in particular – the challenge can seem monumental.
Clare Dorrian is the CMO of SugarCRM, where she and her team are leading their challenger brand up against heavyweights like Hubspot and Salesforce.
The advantage held by many challenger brands is that they are often more agile and can pivot more quickly than the leading brands. On the other hand, challenger brands have less margin for error, so they need to make well-informed decisions.
RELATED EPISODE: What’s Working in B2B Cybersecurity Marketing?
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Clare about what it’s like to operate as a challenger brand today, which tactics and messaging are working for SugarCRM, and what we think is head in 2024,
Episode Guide
3:20: What is the message Clare and her team want to deliver to CRM buyers?
5:08: Advice for CRM buyers.
9:28: What are the channels and tactics showing results for Clare and her team?
17:14: The role of in-person events in Clare’s strategy.
19:17: Three things that get Clare excited about 2024.
27:23: What is Clare’s favorite tool?
The Roles of Business and IT in Today’s Buying Process
The biggest change in the purchasing process for business technology over the past decade is the role of business users. IT no longer makes all of the decisions about technology. Instead, it’s the business users who use the tech on a daily basis who do much of the work.
The area of low-code development, which allows business users to create workflows and automations for business processes, is a perfect example of this evolution.
Business users and IT both take part in the purchase process for low-code solutions. And each role has its own part in managing the solution once it’s deployed.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk with Mike Donaghey, Chief Commercial Officer at CMW Lab, a workflow software vendor, about the modern buying committee, how vendors market to diverse committees, and Mike’s favorite too.
Episode Guide
4:02: How are business and IT teams involved in today’s purchase process?
6:29: How does CMW develop messaging for diverse buying committees?
7:57: How do diverse committees impact the sales cycle?
8:47: Do diverse buying committees require casting a diverse net for prospects?
11:11: What to make of the in-person event channel?
11:48: What should we expect from 2024?
14:29: What is Mike’s favorite tool?
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Strategies in B2B Marketing
Audience marketing is essentially the practice of building an audience of prospective buyers for your product or service that you inform and educate until such time as they’re ready to buy.
Sounds pretty intuitive, right? It is. But it’s often a tremendous challenge to pull off successfully.
Most marketers work in an environment where it’s difficult to play the long game of audience building because leadership wants revenue now. So while audience building can generate significant returns over time, what’s a marketer under pressure to deliver now to do?
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, I’m talking to Bolaji Oyedije, a marketer with 20 years of experience in the B2B sector, about how marketers can combine short-term and long-term activities to meet their immediate needs for leads, opportunities, and pipeline, and revenue.
We also discuss how to have the “long-term vs. short-term” conversations with leadership, how to earn the trust of today’s audiences, and Bolaji’s favorite tool.
Episode Guide
2:56: What, exactly, is audience marketing?
4:10: Audience marketing takes time many marketers don’t have
8:48: The danger of too much focus on short-term opportunities.
12:10: Goodbye BANT, hello FAINT
14:07: Can you convince someone who isn’t in market to become in market?
18:38: “I want content professionals to make content like a comedian...”
21:00: How does Bolaji recommend marketers have the long-term vs. short-term conversation with leadership?
29:32: What is Bolaji’s favorite tool?
The Original PLG: Marketing to Software Developers
More than 15 years after it happened, you can still find videos online of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer chanting “Developers! Developers!” more than a dozen times at a Windows conference in 2006.
You can’t blame Ballmer for his excitement. Put the right combination of tools, technology, and ideas in the hands of a developer and you’ve got the foundation for a number of applications and platforms we use every day.
RELATED PODCAST: How Business Users Change the Game of B2B Marketing
Since Ballmer’s viral developer movement in 2006, the focus on developers has only intensified. The concept of “shift left,” which moved testing, quality assurance, and performance monitoring earlier in the software development lifecycle, meant putting more tools into the hands of dev teams early in the process with the goal of eliminating costly fixes later in the lifecycle.
Roee Kriger is the CEO and co-founder of Metis, which creates tools for database observability tools designed to help developers create applications with confidence.
His team’s go-to-market strategy focuses on differentiation in a crowded market, meeting developers where they are, and self-service experience.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Roee about the challenges of marketing to developers, why you won’t see the familiar social media icons on the Metis website, and his favorite tools.
Episode Guide
1:58: Rosee identifies the two biggest challenges of marketing to developers .
3:42: How does the GTM strategy at Metis address the challenges of marketing to developers?
5:05: It’s all about marketing and selling to the end user.
6:38: Why it’s important to nail your PLG motion.
7:14: What does Metis do to meet developers where they are?
10:53: Are developers more likely to give feedback to improve products?
12:29: What is Roee’s favorite tool?
How B2B Marketers Can Accelerate the Buyers’ Journey
How many times, B2B marketers, have you sat on a pipeline call reviewing open opportunities and heard someone comment on how long an opp has been open and what can be done to move it along? Quite a few times, no doubt.
Outreach from the sales rep, an open opportunity nurture sequence, and even executive outreach are all possible solutions. But wouldn’t it be better to avoid the problem to begin with?
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk with Trinity Nguyen, VP of Marketing at UserGems,about her team’s approach to closing deals faster. And it relies on a rather old tactic from the B2B marketing toolbox – personas.
Trinity’s team discovered that when three personas were involved in the buying process,her company closed more sales. The personas were dubbed “The Three Musketeers,” and today Trinity and her team strive to marketo to these roles to get them involved as early in the process as possible.
RELATED ARTICLE: How Business Users Change the Game of B2B Marketing
Also on this episode, we’ll talk about Trinity’s hopes for the second half of 2023, the most important relationship she has in her organization as a marketer, and Trinity’s favorite tools.
Episode Guide
3:03: Trinity explains the “Three Musketeers” her team targets in prospect organizations.
6:27: What has Trinity learned or changed because of the current economic conditions?
8:50: What is Trinity looking forward to in the second half of 2023?
11:50: What’s the most important business relationship Trinity has right now?
13:48: The importance of customer experience in the SaaS space
16:10: What is Trinity’s favorite tool?
How to Approach Innovation in B2B Marketing
Because we live in a world surrounded by technology, we often equate innovation with devices and software. But innovation is about taking a different approach to just about anything. If you can make something faster, more efficient, and more productive, you’re innovating.
During times of economic uncertainty, innovation and experimentation are often cast aside in favor of short-term returns. Testing out new systems and approaches carries risk, and companies and their employees have a lower tolerance for risk during a slow economy.
If you slow your pace of innovation too much, however, you can find yourself at a disadvantage when things pick up.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Jonathan Sedger, DIrector of Innovation and Partnerships at B2B marketing agency Twogether, talks about how B2B marketers can use innovation to improve outcomes for their customers and prospects and help achieve goals quickly and efficiently.
RELATED EPISODE: How Economic Conditions Help You Rethink Your Marketing
We’ll also touch on creating a culture and frameworks for innovation and experimentation, Jonathan’s favorite tools, and more.
Episode Guide
2:37: Where do many businesses go wrong in their approach to innovation?
4:00: What are some strategic approaches to innovation worth trying?
5:47: How do companies approach experimentation today?
8:55: Jonathan shares the framework his team uses for innovation and experimentation
9:43: Which technologies are Jonathan and his team experimenting with right now?
10:49: What are Jonathan’s favorite tools?
How Economic Conditions Help You Rethink Your Marketing
Resource constraints are hitting B2B marketers hard. The teams are often smaller than they were two years ago. The tools are fewer. But the goals are often headed in the other direction.
Many marketers are tired of hearing “Do more with less.” And a better approach to economic uncertainty might be rethinking what your company is doing to see if it still makes sense. That’s true in both your messaging, where prospects are in a different reality than they were two years ago, and in your tactics.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking with Ting Ting Luo, VP of Marketing at Orum, a sales tech company that aims to make sales calls as efficient as email.
Among the topics we discuss: Ting Ting’s career journey from management consulting in one economic downturn to VP of marketing in another; building the marketing team at Orum from the ground up, and the challenges her team faces when marketing to prospects whose tech investments are under increasing scrutiny from executives.
Episode Guide
2:40: How did beginning her career during the 2008-2009 downturn impact Ting Ting’s career journey?
5:00: Does the volume of information at people’s fingertips help or hamper their outreach efforts?
9:19: How the new dynamics of tech purchases change the sales-marketing dynamic.
12:00: How macroeconomic conditions are affecting the buyers’ journey.
14:49: How Ting Ting built her marketing team at Orum.
17:30: What are the most significant challenges facing Ting Ting and her team?
21:05: What are Ting Ting’s favorite tools?
Why Don’t We Treat Talent Acquisition More Like Customer Acquisition?
The modern marketing and sales organization often integrates several platforms to deliver a comprehensive view of prospects and customers.
But when it comes to recruiting talent, the systems are often years behind what’s available to marketing and sales. Recruiters, for example, often can’t target potential employees the way their colleagues in marketing can target potential customers.
Add all of this up, and it means pain points for recruiters and hiring managers.
RELATED EPISODE: Why You Need Brand to Support Demand in B2B Marketing
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Sam Kuenhle, VP of Marketing at Loxo. We’re going to talk about a different approach to recruiting and hiring talent, his team’s challenges and goals, and the difference between content that matters versus content that converts.
Episode Guide
2:28: Sam explains Loxo’s approach to HR tech.
6:41: What are the challenges Sam and his team face at Loxo?
10:18: Creating content that matters vs. content that converts.
14:27: The impotence of messaging around customer needs.
16:23: Sam shares some of the goals he and his team are working on in 2023.
18:39: What is Sam’s favorite tool?
How to Market AI Outside the Tech Sector
Businesses in the technology sector understand the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) better than most. But the full scope of AI’s potential lies beyond tech, in industries that have been slower to adopt tools that can rapidly analyze data and help manage risk.
The construction industry, for example, touches almost everything we do. But it’s an unlikely place to find tools like predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. But like any area of the economy, construction companies and their leaders are interested in tools that will help increase speed, better manage costs, and make more efficient use of resources. And that’s where artificial intelligence can help.
Stephanie Seril is VP of Marketing at Avvir, which uses AI to help construction companies and their clients compare projects to digital twins and identify errors long before they become expensive and time-consuming to fix.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Stephanie talks about the challenges Avvir faces in its marketing, how marketing tech to an industry like construction differs from her days in Silicon Valley, and why steel-toed boots are now part of her work attire.
Episode Guide
2:10: Stephanie explains what Avvir’s technology does and who uses it
4:08: What are some of the challenges Stephanie and her team face when marketing Avvir’s solutions?
7:51: How does marketing tech outside of the tech industry compare to Stephanie’s roles in tech?
10:07: What are the most effective messages and tactics for Avvir?
14:46: What is Stephanie’s favorite tool?.
There’s More to Generative AI Than Content Creation
ChatGPT and other generative AI tools that create content are capturing a lot of attention. But content is only one application of generative AI. It can generate just about anything in terms of data.
Getting AI and machine learning projects off the ground remains a significant hurdle for many businesses. One of the biggest obstacles companies face is access to the datasets they need to properly build and scale their machine learning models.
Let’s say you work at a financial institution and you want to use machine learning to improve customer service or help introduce cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Because of the sensitive nature of customers’ financial information, training the tech on real data isn’t a good idea.
That’s where synthetic data comes into play. MOSTLY AI generates synthetic data that looks and acts just like an organization’s real data. It can be used to train machine learning models, so they can work with seemingly real data without introducing additional risk.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Sabine Klisch, VP, Global Marketing at MOSTLY AI about the market for synthetic data, challenges, and goals for the year ahead.
Episode Guide
2:13: Sabine explains the concept of synthetic data and why it’s important to MOSTLY’s audience.
4:42: What is the most effective message for MOSTLY’s target audience?
8:08: What are the goals Sabine has set for herself, her team, and her brand in 2023?
10:16: What are the challenges Sabine expects to face as 2023 continues?
12:34: How the popularity of ChatGPT helps raise the profile of all applications of generative AI.
15:23: What is Sabine’s favorite tool?
Your 2023 Guide to Media Buying and Planning
There are some things about the art and science of media buying that haven’t changed much in recent years. But other elements of media buying are in a constant state of flux. Social media is one example. Would you have predicted even one year ago that brands would be skittish of Twitter but taking a serious look at Reddit?
Jason Gladu is the president of Avani Media, a demand gen agency that specializes in working with B2B tech companies. Back in early 2021, Jason joined the B2B Nation podcast to talk about media buying strategy. The episode was so popular, we decided it was time to revisit the subject again.
RELATED EPISODE: Why You Need Brand to Support Demand in B2B Marketing
In this episode of the podcast, Jason guides us through the media buying landscape of 2023. This time around we’re talking about the impact of economic uncertainty, old approaches to media buying that are making a comeback, and the quest for more engagement and shorter sales cycles.
Episode Guide
1:42: What has changed the most for B2B media buyers in the last two years?
4:46: What is the “temperature" of marketers and media buyers right now?
8:08: Are media buyers still setting aside precious budget for testing?
10:10: How has the media that marketers are buying changed in the past two years?
13:30: What are the most overlooked opportunities for marketers buying media today?
15:37: What are the downsides of being “safe” with your media buys?
20:05: What is Jason’s advice to marketers for the rest of 2023?
How the Proptech Market is Changing the Real Estate Sector
Location, location, location. That’s the age-old advice given to real estate investors. And like the age-old advice given to many areas of life and business, today it’s often tweaked just a bit. Location, location, location – and data.
Today’s real estate investors and developers have access to millions of data points to help them gauge the potential of a property. That level of insight is especially helpful during times of economic uncertainty, when investments carry more risk.
Max LeBlond is the Director of Marketing at Local Logic. According to his company, location impacts 48 percent of a property asset’s value. That’s why decisions fueled by location data provide a competitive advantage in today’s real estate market.
RELATED EPISODE: How Business Users Change the Game of B2B Marketing
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Max talks about the proptech market, what 2023 has in store for the Local Logic team, and more.
Episode Guide
3:22: Max explains the proptech landscape.
5:24: What gets Max excited about 2023? What are the challenges his team will face?
6:58: How proptech tools create value during economic uncertainty.
9:04: What are the goals Max and his team are trying to achieve in 2023?
11:00: The role of events in the Local Logic marketing strategy.
11:50: What is Max’s favorite tool?
How to Market to Finance Roles During Economic Uncertainty
The pressure is on finance teams to better control spending and account for every dollar spent. And that probably doesn’t sound like a great time to be pitching new software to finance roles. But if tracking and managing an organization’s spending is the primary focus of your product, this might be your time to shine.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Idan Gol from Mesh Payments. Like many marketing teams, Idan’s team is trying to convince businesses of the benefits of its platform at a time when many are working to reduce their spending. And Mesh Payments is not the only one in the increasingly crowded spend management space trying to make their case.
In the episode, Idan talks about standing out in the payments and spend management space, goals for 2023, lessons from 2022, why “efficiency” will be vital to marketing in 2023, and more.
Episode Guide
2:27: What goals does Idan have for himself and his team in 2023?
5:13: How Mesh Payments uses aggregate data from its platform to create content.
9:30: What lessons did Idan take away from 2022?
11:54: What does “efficiency” mean for Idan’s marketing?
15:34: What are Idan’s favorite tools?
How to Put Your Product at the Center of Your Revenue Organization
An increasing number of B2B revenue organizations are aligned around their product and customer lifecycle. Marketing generates awareness, sales closes deals with customers, and customer success is tasked with increasing renewals and lowering attrition.
But just because the teams are organized in such a manner doesn’t mean the motions are carried out correctly.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Greg Bond, who leads enterprise sales and channel partnerships at email marketing vendor Constant Contact.
RELATED EPISODE: How Business Users Change the Game for B2B Marketing
Throughout his career in B2B, Greg has held almost every imaginable title in the revenue organization, including sales and customer success roles. Our conversation touches on the lessons he’s learned across his journey, the challenge of marketing to marketers, goals for 2023, and more.
Episode Guide
2:03: What are the biggest lessons Greg has learned from a career in revenue organizations?
8:51: What are the challenges of selling into marketing and revenue roles?
15:00: What are Greg’s goals for 2023?
16:54: What will we be talking about in 12 months, at the start of 2024?
20:33: What is Greg’s favorite tool?
Why You Need Brand to Support Demand in B2B Marketing
Branding might be the most undervalued aspect of B2B marketing. Just take a look at any list of the dominant brands in the world, and you might see a B2B brand or two, but branding remains synonymous with the B2C world.
But the lack of investment in branding is putting many B2B brands at a disadvantage. Demand generation is the dominant marketing philosophy in the B2B space, and your demand gen efforts are much more effective when your brand works to support demand.
Without brand recognition and trust, B2B buyers are much less likely to respond to demand gen tactics and give up personal information.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk to Jordan Liebman, Vice President, Global Demand Generation and Brand Marketing at Blue Jeans by Verizon. Among the topics we discuss are the state of branding in B2B marketing; Jordan’s career journey, from agency to brand and from B2C to B2B; and the trend toward consumer-like B2B experiences and more.
Episode Guide
2:40: Why Blue Jeans by Verizon provides self-service B2B purchases for its customers
7:34: Jordan discusses his career path, from agency to brand and B2C to B2B
13:19: What do B2B organizations get wrong about branding?
18:37: How does brand support demand gen tactics in B2B marketing?
21:39: What are Jordan’s goals for his team, brand and himself for 2023?
24:15: What is Jordan’s favorite tool?
27:01: What’s the short-term future for popular social media platforms?
How Business Users Change the Game of B2B Marketing
Twenty years ago, software vendors that wanted to sell into an enterprise organization would target the tech team and its leadership. They could develop and distribute whitepapers and product guides, and attend the conferences where technology leaders went to talk shop.
Today, everyone is a software buyer. And that requires a radical shift in the way software vendors market their tools, support their customers, and even develop their products.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to John Ragsdale, Distinguished Researcher, Vice President of Technology Ecosystems at Technology Service Industry Association (TSIA). John and his team spend their time helping enterprise technology companies that are TSIA members evaluate their own business and technology needs.
RELATED EPISODE: The Rise of ‘Product’ as an Engine for Growth
With business buyers now playing such a prominent role in technology purchases, many enterprise software brands find themselves struggling to provide consumer-like experiences in their marketing, customer success, and sales motions.
John discusses these challenges and more in our 35-minute conversation.
Episode Guide
4:27: What do the technology companies John recommends to TSIA members have in common?
9:15: John identifies an under-valued revenue source for tech brands.
10:31: How business buyers have upended the world of software marketing.
13:22: What are the biggest barriers to providing top-notch customer experience in tech?
18:58: What are the growth opportunities technology companies are not taking advantage of?
24:45: What guidance does John provide to TSIA members that the B2B Nation audience would benefit from hearing?
26:30: Why software vendors have gone sour on customization.
30:50: What is John’s favorite tool?
Why B2B Brands Need to Embrace Emotion and Education
One of the challenges B2B marketers face today is the perception that their brand is boring. As a new generation of B2B buyers takes control of the market, many of the tried and true – but potentially stale – tactics that worked in the past might not produce the same results.
That’s why today you see more video content in B2B marketing, more brand building, and more top-of-the-funnel content that plays to emotions. This new generation of buyer expects the messages they see from B2B firms to be on par with B2C marketing.
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Megan Noel of Trava Security about introducing humanity, emotion, and education into your B2B marketing.
RELATED: Follow B2B Nation from TechnologyAdvice on LinkedIn for more B2B marketing resources
We’ll also discuss how Megan’s background in education helps her succeed with what she calls the “new marketing” and increases the appeal to Millennials and Gen X buyers who don’t research products and services by the same rules previous generations of B2B buyers used.
Episode Guide
1:38: How will B2B marketers adjust to the changing demographics of the B2B audience?
4:58: What is the biggest challenge Megan’s team will face in 2023?
9:30: What does marketing bring to Meghan’s interest in education and how does her background in education impact marketing?
12:44: What is Megan’s favorite tool?
How AI Can Improve Revenue Processes and Results
A surprising number of the daily activities that take place on revenue teams remain manual. Sellers still create reminders to follow up with prospects or customers. Data is manually entered into CRM applications and other tools, increasing the likelihood of human error in the process.
It’s a little hard to believe when you think about it. The combination of automation and business process tools was supposed to save us from all of this, wasn’t it?
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Jim Kaskade, CEO of Conversica, joins us to talk about Revenue Digital Assistants (RDAs). These assistants are AI-powered bots that can take some of the manual, time-consuming tasks that hold back marketing, sales, and customer success teams. They don’t get tired, sick, or stressed. And they can work at a scale that most revenue teams can’t replicate.
RELATED EPISODE: How to Succeed in the Age of the Anonymous Buyer
Jim also discusses the cultural shifts that make it possible for companies to deploy AI-powered assistants, the messaging that helps his team appeal to revenue leaders, and more.
Episode Guide
5:22: Why do revenue organizations still have so many manual processes?
9:28: How do digital assistants work for revenue teams?
21:31: How comfortable are businesses using AI in their revenue organization?
26:03: Which messages are resonating with Conversica’s customers?
30:18: What is Jim’s favorite tool
A Martech Entrepreneur Shares His Journey
Some people encounter a problem at work with no obvious solution and find a workaround. Others see roadblocks as part of their job or the task at hand and learn to deal with them. And for other people, the desire to solve a problem impacting their daily work fires up their imagination.
Chad Waite came across a problem while working in partner marketing that lacked an obvious and easy-to-use solution. Many of his partners wanted co-branded materials to use in their own marketing efforts. So many materials, in fact, that his colleagues in creative couldn’t possibly deliver what was needed.
That experience led Chad to start PieceKeeper, a platform that helps marketers keep their promotional materials on brand and in compliance, without requiring a designer to make every single tweak along the way.
RELATED EPISODE: How Content Marketing Done Right Drives Your Revenue Organization
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Chad shares his story as a marketer turned martech entrepreneur. If you’ve ever thought about solving a seemingly unsolvable problem at work by building the solution and turning it into a calling, this one's for you.
Episode Guide
2:26: Chad shares the story of PieceKeeper
6:31: What is it like to go from marketer to co-founder?
9:27: What has Chad learned from his start-up experience?
12:03: The role of customer feedback in a product-led start up.
17:23: Chad shares his thoughts on what’s ahead in 2023.
22:33: What are Chad’s favorite tools?
What’s Working in B2B Cybersecurity Marketing?
Every business needs to think about cybersecurity. As a result, there’s a huge market for the growing number of vendors selling the tools and platforms that help keep businesses, their users, and their data safe. And that means noise.
For B2B marketers in the cybersecurity space, cutting through the noise and reaching information security professionals is a daily struggle. You can’t scare people into buying your product. You can’t chase after every company that’s suffered from a breach or ransomware attack.
But you also can’t make the mistake of treating all of your prospects alike. Every business and industry operates in its own cybersecurity environment. They all face unique challenges and circumstances that marketers and sellers can’t ignore.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, our guest is Sawsan Hamawandy, head of global demand generation at Heimdal Security. Sawsan has held both marketing and sales roles in B2B organizations. Our conversation covers the Dos and Don’ts of cybersecurity marketing, how marketing can help accelerate the sales cycle, bridging the sales-marketing gap, a look ahead to 2023, and more.
Episode Guide
3:08: What is working in cybersecurity marketing today?
8:52: How can marketers bridge the gap between sales and marketing?
14:08: How can marketers influence the sales cycle?
20:35: What are Sawsan’s thoughts on the year 2023 for B2B marketers?
30:45: What’s the difference between marketing for large and small organizations?
35:46: What is Sawsan’s favorite tool?
What’s Working for Companies Marketing AI Solutions?
An increasing number of technology vendors are making artificial intelligence (AI) central to their products and their messaging. For B2B marketers that like to talk about ROI and value, AI presents a conundrum: How do you balance the use of AI with business outcomes?
AI is a foundational technology that is incredibly complex to explain, especially to business buyers without a deep technical background. That means marketers need to know their audience – their role, their industry, and the challenges they’re looking to solve.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Stephen Gold, the CMO of SparkCognition. His company makes tools built on AI to help businesses better predict outcomes and improve processes for everything from manufacturing and transportation to cybersecurity.
RELATED EPISODE: How Your Target Market Changes When Everyone is a Tech Buyer
Our discussion covers the challenges and opportunities that face marketers when everyone seems to be talking about AI today, whether AI even matters to business users looking for better outcomes, and what gets Stephen excited about what’s ahead in 2023.
Episode Guide
2:28: How does SparkCognition make its message stand out when AI is such a hot topic?
5:28: How do you find the balance of talking AI tech vs talking business outcomes?
7:00: How does SparkCognition handle the challenge of targeting diverse industries?
9:18: “You’ve got to present technology in a way that resonates with the way that industry thinks, acts, and operates.”
12:04: How does SparkCognition develop the subject matter expertise across the industries it targets?
13:44: What gets Stephen excited and nervous about 2023?
18:11: What is Stephen’s favorite tool?
How to Win at B2B Social Media
B2B marketers that want to put their brand where the conversations are taking place need to understand how to use social media. That might sound obvious given the dominance of social media today across B2B and B2C audiences, but all social media platforms are not created alike.
LinkedIn is the first platform that comes to mind when most people think about B2B social media, but video content on TikTok has broad appeal. There might also be less noise for your B2B offer on Facebook. You can’t forget about Twitter either.
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re joined by Cat Anderson, head of marketing EMEA at Sprout Social, to talk about why social media remains such a challenge for so many B2B organizations.
RELATED EPISODE: Which B2C Tactics Will Help Improve Your B2B Marketing?
Among the topics we’re going to cover are how to choose the right platforms for your social media efforts, the right KPIs to help track performance, and Cat’s thoughts on marketing in a down economy.
Episode Guide
2:45: Why do B2B organizations struggle with their social media strategy?
6:25: What’s the relationship between company size and social media strategy?
9:39: Which social media platform is right for your brand?
13:35: What are the most important KPIs to consider in your B2B social media?
16:00: How does social media fit into marketing’s plans when the economy slows?
18:43: What is Cat's favorite tool?
What’s the State of Measurement and Attribution in Paid Media Today?
The great promise of digital advertising was the ability to measure performance and optimize programs. And unlike traditional forms of media, marketers using digital ads would have detailed visibility into attribution.
Digital advertising has helped brands big and small reach their target audience using a number of platforms and networks. Self-service tools and reporting allow even part-time marketers to launch campaigns and track their progress.
But digital advertising hasn’t always lived up to its potential. There are a number of platforms where businesses can buy ads, including giant media companies like Google and Meta. Each has its own reporting tools, which makes cross-channel measurement a challenge for many marketers.
The ever-changing privacy landscape has also made it more difficult for marketers to get accurate attribution data and will likely get more restrictive moving forward.
RELATED EPISODE: Which B2C Tactics Will Help Improve Your B2B Marketing?
In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk to Clay Cohen of Measured. His company helps marketers make more-informed marketing decisions around their media spend with a special focus on incremental media contributions.
Join us as we discuss the importance of unified measurement of media, how privacy regulations and vendor moves to protect data impact digital media, and how marketers should approach an economic slowdown.
Episode Guide
2:30: Are marketers properly understanding and using the vast amount of data generated by their media?
5:33: Why are marketers reliant on last-touch attribution despite all of the tools and data at their disposal?
9:16: What is the impact of privacy regulations and data privacy policies on media tracking?
15:17: How will a down economy impact how Clay and his colleagues market their tools?
19:22: What is Clay’s favorite tool?
Where Does ABM Go from Here?
Account-based marketing is such an integral part of the strategy for so many B2B marketing teams that it is hard to understand how marketing worked before ABM burst onto the scene.
The early promises of ABM included increased efficiency and better alignment between marketing and sales. When marketing knows exactly which accounts it needs to target, there’s less wasted effort. And when sales and marketing collaborate to identify those accounts, they are (in theory) on the same page.
Today, B2B marketing is in a new phase of ABM. Beyond identifying accounts to target, marketers are combining account names with other forms of data, such as intent, to fine-tune their list even more.
RELATED EPISODE: How to Succeed in the Age of the Anonymous Buyer
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk to Randi Barshack, CMO of ABM platform vendor Rollworks, about the evolution of ABM, how her team works to stand out in the very crowded market for marketing technology, and how marketers should approach their work in a weak economy.
Episode Guide
1:52: Have we reached the point where ABM is now the standard for B2B marketing?
5:13: Does Randi think ABM has helped align marketing and sales?
8:33: How does Randi help her brand break through the noise in the crowded martech space?
12:13: Randi’s advice for maintaining and growing demand in a down economy.
15:58: What is Randi’s favorite tool?
The Rise of ‘Product’ as an Engine for Growth
Product-led growth is a go-to-market strategy that relies on your organization’s products to acquire and retain customers. With the demand for digital products and experiences at an all-time high, it’s not surprising to see product-led growth gaining popularity.
Digital products and the experiences they deliver are significant differentiators for many organizations. Today’s consumers expect seamless experiences across channels that make it easy to accomplish their goals and get what they need without delay.
This emphasis on product as an engine for growth puts roles like product management and product marketing in the spotlight for many businesses. It also requires businesses to maintain the resources required to continually create and improve products that deliver even when market demands shift.
Product development agencies help businesses create products from conception to go-to-market strategy. They are, in many ways, the next generation of development shops that did the coding and testing to bring digital products to life.
RELATED EPISODE: How to Market Your Tech to Software Developers
On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Margarita Mangino, Chief Growth Officer at product development agency Uruit, talks about the rise of digital products and product-specific roles in organizations, the challenges of transforming your go-to-market message, and how marketers should approach economic instability.
Episode Guide
2:01: What’s the difference between marketing services and capabilities and marketing products?
5:00: What’s the biggest challenge Margarita and her team face in their marketing today?
7:57: How does marketing to product teams differ from marketing to IT roles?
10:40: What is Margarita’s advice for marketers with economic stability on the horizon?
13:44: The advantages of offshoring work to Latin America.
17:19: What is Margarita’s favorite tool?
What’s Working for Marketers in B2B Healthcare Tech?
There has been a lot of attention on the healthcare industry over the past two and a half years, and it hasn’t all come from consumers and the news media.
Healthcare is more complicated than it was 20 or 30 years ago. There are more specialists involved in care, more facilities, and more data. That’s one reason why healthcare is a popular area for technology companies that want to help the market innovate. It’s still widely seen as a sector where the information isn’t always widely shared, the data isn’t easily converted into decisions, and manual processes remain in place.
Tech companies looking to market solutions to healthcare providers are also finding complexity and a high number of influencers behind purchase decisions. Roles like Chief Medical Information Officer and Chief Nursing Information Officer simply did not exist in years past.
On this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Wendy White, CMO of healthcare collaboration platform TigerConnect. We discuss how the pandemic played a role in Wendy’s move to healthcare tech marketing, what’s working in marketing for healthcare tech, and the role of virtual and in-person events in TigerConnect’s strategy.
Episode Guide
2:15: What was it like to move into the healthcare industry during the COVID pandemic?
3:46: Why collaboration and communication present such a challenge in healthcare.
5:13: What makes marketing to healthcare organizations different from other verticals?
6:46: What’s the biggest marketing challenge for TigerConnect?
7:58: What is the one tool Wendy cannot work without?
10:35: How much are in-person events contributing to TigerConnect’s marketing?
12:03: “We’re all about having quality conversations.”
Which B2C Tactics Will Help Improve Your B2B Marketing?
People don’t remove their B2C hats when they’re researching products in their business life. That’s why B2B marketers are often reminded that some of the tactics and platforms that have the “B2C” label deserve a look in B2B marketing. It’s all marketing to people, after all.
But B2B purchases are still made by a committee of people, each with their own preferences around content and their own needs to be met. And that’s why B2B marketers are asking questions.
Can one-to-one strategies work in B2B where no single person has purchase authority? Can personalization, which is a cornerstone of many digital experiences for consumers, work in B2B? Do social platforms other than LinkedIn influence members of the B2B buying committee?
RELATED EPISODE: How Customer Advocacy is Evolving in B2B Marketing
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Chuck Moxley, CMO of digital experience vendor Blue Triangle and co-author of An Audience of One. We’ll look for the answers to these questions and more.
Episode Guide
2:04: Chuck discusses his book and the idea of personalized marketing vs. mass marketing
3:53: The three major shifts in the way people consume media and choose brands today.
4:54: How B2C concepts like personalization apply to the B2B world.
7:53: What do B2B marketers get wrong about personalization and 1:1 marketing?
12:18: “You’ve got to stop thinking ‘B2B and all the rules that used to be…’”
12:40: How does buying by committee work with personalization efforts?
15:28: What is Chuck’s favorite tool?
How Content Marketing Done Right Drives Your Revenue Organization
Content marketing is more than distributing thought leadership and offering eBook downloads to attract leads. Your organization’s content can continue to serve your revenue organization (and your customers) as they interact with your sales and customer success teams.
But your content can’t serve anyone if your team doesn’t know where to find it or can’t be reasonably sure it’s up to date and on-brand.
Sales enablement plays a pivotal role in making sure the entire revenue organization has the tools and content it needs, And when it’s working, the right content, at the right time, for the right customer or prospect helps create those “these people get me” feeling we all aim to achieve.
RELATED EPISODE: Does Your Sales Enablement Match the Modern B2B Experience?
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Nikki Dawson, head of EMEA marketing for sales enablement platform Highspot. Nikki discusses how it is that as much as 70 percent of the content organizations create goes to waste, what’s working in demand gen for Nikki and her colleagues around the world, and how marketing, sales, and sales enablement can better work together in an effective revenue organization.
Episode Guide
2:17: Investing in and creating content is just the first challenge
5:14: How is Highspot helping its customers solve sales enablement challenges?
7:58: What’s working for Nikki’s team in their demand gen efforts?
9:00: How do different marketing tactics perform in different global regions?
10:40: What is Nikki’s favorite tool (other than Highspot)?
Do We Under-Value ‘Experience’ in our B2B Marketing Efforts?
Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective marketing tactics in B2B, but has the content evolved to keep up with the audiences?
Experiences and interactivity are more commonly found in B2C marketing efforts where the audience is large and the resources are often more plentiful than in the B2B space. It’s simply difficult to justify the cost of the developers and designers needed to create interactive experiences.
Juan Rubio is the CEO and co-founder at Genially, a platform that allows users to create interactive experiences without the need to code or have a deep understanding of design. The idea for Genially came from Juan’s background as a biologist, where he longed for affordable tools that made complex topics like climate change and green energy easier to understand.
RELATED EPISODE: Zero-Party Data and the Future of Interactive Content
In this episode of B2B Nation, we are talking to Juan about the opportunity for interactive content creation, where interactive experiences go from here, and what Juan loves about what he does.
Episode Guide
2:58: Why don’t we see more interactive content in B2B marketing?
7:03: “When we are talking about communication, we’re talking about marketing and learning.”
7:40: Where do interactive content and experiences go from here?
8:55: What does Juan think is the best part of what he does?
10:08: What is Juan’s favorite tool?
Zero-Party Data and the Future of Interactive Content
Online quizzes and product builders seemed to find a home on the Internet the week after it was invented. And while you might joke about the answer you received when you took that quiz about the type of superhero you would be or the pet dinosaur you should own, you’re generating real data when you answer those questions.
Data generated on a company’s website and then used by that company is called zero-party data, and it’s valuable because no one else has it. That makes zero-party data a goldmine for marketers.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Saksam Sharda, creative director and CIO at Outgrow.co, about zero-party data and the future of interactive content. While quizzes and product selection tools are almost as old as the Internet itself, the future of interactive content could someday include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and personalization at scale.
RELATED EPISODE: How to Build a Content Strategy Across the Buyers’ Journey
Imagine combining the power of AI technology with an easy-to-use, low-code, or no-code platform everyone can use. That makes generating third-party data at scale possible and drives business outcomes. What kind of superhero are you then?
Episode Guide
2:23: What is the killer application for interactive content? Is it zero-party data generation?
4:30: What is Outgrow.co’s approach to interactive content?
6:00: Where does interactive content go from here?
8:18: What has the Internet forgotten about the way people choose products?
10:25: What did Saksham learn about marketing over the past two years?
13:30: What is Saksham’s favorite tool?
How to Build a Content Strategy Across Your Buyers’ Journey
How well do you understand the content you have and the gaps that exist in your content strategy? Creating content at scale requires a level of visibility that many editorial organizations struggle to achieve and which many B2B marketing organizations can’t even imagine.
Jeff Coyle is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at MarketMuse, which built a platform that uses AI to help build out a holistic content strategy that helps brands and publishers demonstrate expertise and meet their buyers across the journey.
In this episode of B2B Nation, Jeff discusses his approach to content strategy, how he convinces content purists that data and AI are the tools they’ve been waiting for, and what the future of B2B content looks like amidst industry consolidation and complicated partnerships.
RELATED EPISODE: You’ve Scaled Your B2B Creation. What happens next?
Episode Guide
2:23: Jeff explains his approach to content creation.
3:46: The inputs Jeff looks for to inform content creation.
6:09: “You need to be there at every stage of the experience.”
8:03: How does Jeff convince content purists to rely on data and AI?
16:26: Where does B2B content go from here?
25:33: Jeff predicts consolidation around B2B tech and content.
27:29: “What’s Google going to do?”
29:38: What are Jeff’s favorite tools?
You’ve Scaled Your B2B Content. What Happens Next?
Scaling B2B content creation remains a significant challenge for many companies. The demand for content assets, including papers, videos, and articles for marketing, the website, sales outreach, and more never seems to end.
With the right mix of in-house resources, reliable partners and freelancers, and clever strategies, B2B vendors can scale their content creation to help meet the demand. But that isn’t the end of your content challenges. Keeping all of that content consistent in voice, up to date as your brand and products evolve, and in compliance with industry regulations remains a requirement.
Christopher Willis is the CMO and Chief Pipeline Officer at Acrolinx, a content governance solution that uses artificial intelligence to help keep your content up to date and aligned with your brand.
On this episode of B2B Nation, Christopher discusses content creation and governance, content effectiveness, pipeline creation, and more.
Episode Guide
2:36: How does Acrolinx help marketers improve the quality and impact of their content?
6:20: The connection between content governance and content impact.
9:35: The challenges of scaling and maintaining content in the enterprise
17:09: How Christopher got the title Chief Pipeline Officer.
21:00: What are the important lessons about marketing Christoper learned over the past two years?
23:38: What is Christoper’s favorite tool?
How to Get Your Organization Started with Revenue Operations
Many organizations are putting Revenue Operations roles in place and growing the role into an entire team. But confusion around the RevOps role, the functions it performs, and where it goes as the revenue team matures continue to be an issue at many organizations.
Revenue Operations is not the same as a Salesforce Admin, but in-depth knowledge of your organization’s CRM is vital to the role. Nor is RevOps simply a sales operations job, as it should support the entire revenue organization from marketing to customer success. And maybe that’s why a definition of RevOps is so hard to develop.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to revenue operator Asia Corbett from Bread Financial about how to grow the RevOps function at your organization, how to grow into a RevOps role yourself, and how RevOps will evolve in the short and the long term.
Episode Guide
2:15: Asia’s thoughts on getting started in RevOps
4:49: The first step in developing a RevOps roadmap
7:43: What are the common misconceptions around the RevOps role?
10:40: What kind of experience makes someone a good fit for RevOps?
14:47: What would we be discussing about RevOps one year from now?
18:00: What is Asia’s favorite tool?
How to Market Your Tech to Software Developers
Software developers are the builders in their organizations, and like a lot of builders, they feel strongly about their tools. You can’t market to software developers the way you market to senior business leaders.
Developers are more hands-on. They like to try before they buy. And marketing to software developers often means taking a bottom-up approach to selling your tech. Get your tools in the hands of the builders, and they will show their leaders what’s possible.
On this episode of 2B Nation, we’re talking to Yonatan Shelach of JFrog about how to market to software developers, what some marketers fail to understand about developers, and the outsized role developers play in the decision-making process in many organizations.
Episode Guide
2:26: The challenges of targeting software developers
4:05: What does Yonatan think businesses fail to understand about developers?
5:34: What’s been Yonatan’s most effective strategy for generating demand over the past two years?
6:43: What is the most important skill in B2B marketing today?
8:27: What is Yonatan’s favorite tool?
How to Set Women Up For Success in Revenue Roles
How are we going to develop the next generation of female revenue leaders? It’s a complicated question because the lack of women in revenue leadership roles today makes it hard to develop leaders for tomorrow.
Women are sorely underrepresented in leadership roles. And that’s as true of revenue teams as it is elsewhere in many organizations. Women in Sales Everywhere (WISE) developed out of a passion project at CloserIQ with the goal of developing female revenue leaders through mentoring, networking, and professional development opportunities.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Cassie Yettru, general manager of WISE, about supporting women so they can move into leadership roles on revenue teams, what women value most in career opportunities and the importance of clearly defined development opportunities.
WISE's individual membership program allows women in sales or sales-related roles to network with peers, find mentors, and attend exclusive member-only events. WISE is offering 10% off membership to all B2B Nation listeners using the code B2BNATION10 — learn more and apply here. Apply the discount code during checkout.
Episode Guide
2:19: Where was Cassie given support and encouragement in her career?
4:00: What are some of the aspects of a job women value compared to men?
5:19: Who is most likely to pursue professional development? And who should?
6:34: Why are younger professionals less likely to explore professional development?
8:45: Where is the market for HR tech, training, and professional development headed?
11:02: What is Cassie’s favorite tool?
How to Make the Transition from Lead Gen to Demand Gen
How to Make the Transition from Lead Gen to Demand Gen
Moving your marketing from a lead generation strategy built on MQLs to a demand generation strategy built on revenue and pipeline is often discussed in B2B marketing circles. But if you’re making the transition, it needs to go deeper than the label.
Among the challenges you’ll face in the process are communicating the benefits of demand gen to a leadership team that likely favored the concrete results of lead gen over the abstract nature of branding. You may need to take a look at your martech stack and see how it needs to be updated with your strategy. And let’s not forget: you need to show results.
In this episode of B2B Nation, Adam Holmgren from GetAccept joins us to discuss his transition from lead gen to demand gen and how he helps other marketers in the EMEA region make the pivot. Among the topics we’ll discuss are the state of demand gen in Europe, how demand gen differs from lead gen and branding, and whether martech is too often guiding the strategy in B2B marketing.
RELATED EPISODE: 5 Ways Lead Gen Has Changed in the Past Decade
Episode Guide
2:00: “The current state of demand gen in Europe is traditional lead gen confused as demand gen.”
3:20: What are some distinctions between lead gen and demand gen?
4:55: Does Adam make a distinction between brand awareness and demand gen?
6:54: What is a relatively easy change SaaS marketers could make with a big ROI?
8:32: How much is martech leading the strategy in B2B?
11:50: What is Adam’s favorite tool?
How Organic Marketing Brings You Closer to Your Customers
Whether you call it organic marketing or inbound marketing, strategies that bring prospects to your brand in search of a solution to their problem stand in contrast to outbound strategies that are usually more costly.
As B2B marketers pivot from lead generation to demand generation, organic and inbound tactics are gaining traction once again. Creating content that demonstrates your company’s expertise and increases your brand awareness are commonplace across B2B.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Vicki Frost, global director of content and campaigns at Vertiv, about organic marketing in the B2B space, content development, the role of analytics, and – of course – the age-old questions about whether you should be gating your content.
Episode Guide
1:57: What does Vicki think is the biggest, most positive change in B2B marketing?
2:37: What are some of the most common mistakes B2B marketers are making today?
4:10: Which content formats are having the biggest impact for Vicki’s programs today?
5:24: Is there a B2B content format that marketers or the audience wouldn’t miss if it disappeared?
7:14: Where does Vicki stand on gating content?
10:04: What is Vicki’s favorite tool?
15:30: What would we be talking about if we had this conversation one year from now?
How to Succeed in the Age of the Anonymous Buyer
Maura Rivera is the CMO of Qualified, a conversational marketing vendor that infuses Salesforce data into chat to give the sales team a better idea of who is visiting their website. In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Maura about marketing in a space with a dominant brand, B2B marketing tactics she’s re-examined over the past two years, and why conversational marketing goes beyond chatbots.
How Customer Advocacy is Evolving in B2B Marketing
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Michael Sciano, Sr. Customer Marketing Manager at Airship, about how customer marketing is evolving from formulaic PDF case studies to a customer advocacy strategy that creates fans and eventually a community around your product.
How to Launch Influencer Marketing in B2B
On this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Patrick Quinn of BigCommerce about how to design and launch an influencer marketing campaign for your brand.
For decades, businesses hired famous people like actors and athletes to work as the face of their brand and influence their target markets. It was largely a one-way relationship because that’s how the media worked at the time.
Influencer marketing is a new twist on the idea for a new medium. Online influencers aren’t famous in the same way that Ronald Reagan was when he was the face of General Electric. If you’re over a certain age, you probably have no idea who most of today’s influencers even are.
But influencer marketing is quite common in B2C circles, and now it’s coming to B2B.
How to Generate Value from Online B2B Communities
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Dana Freker Doody about growing online communities, measuring their effectiveness, and what her journey from journalism to B2B marketing taught her along the way.
Dana Freker Doody is the VP, Marketing and Communications, at Juno, an online platform that helps turn an audience into a community.
How B2B Firms Can Improve Customer Retention with Loyalty Program
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Valerie Smyk, chief revenue officer of Kangaroo Rewards, about how businesses of all sizes and industries can use loyalty and rewards to grow their business.
We’ll be discussing how loyalty programs can help your business improve brand affinity, increase average deal size, incentivize customer referrals, and more.
Episode Guide
2:00: How difficult is it to start and maintain a loyalty program?
6:28: What don’t most people know about loyalty programs?
10:50: The messages that resonate with companies exploring loyalty programs.
13:07: “You can reward spending behaviors and also behaviors that are intrinsic to your brand values.”
14:20: Using loyalty programs to increase customer referrals.
15:46: “Advertising will help you bring in a customer, and a loyalty program will help you keep them.”
16:43: Loyalty programs for any industry.
19:06: “Everything that is loyalty and rewards comes back to psychology.”
21:50: What is Valerie’s favorite tool?
Fintech Creates Innovation in Finance and B2B Marketing
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Tucker Stoffers of Divvy about how his team markets its fintech solutions and how B2B marketing for people in finance roles differs from tech roles.
Episode Guide
2:40: The challenges and opportunities of marketing in the B2B space.
3:51: “People just don’t bank the way they did 10 or 20 years ago.”
5:36: Which channels, tactics, and messages are resonating in fintech?
8:46: How fintech reduces friction for finance roles.
9:50: What’s the biggest change in Tucker’s 10 years in B2B marketing?
12:50: The role of the dark funnel and dark social in the future of B2B marketing.
13:46: What is Tucker’s favorite tool?
What Are the Essential Skills Required in B2B Marketing?
The “Great Resignation” has everyone talking about career goals, skills development, and job opportunities. With so many people moving around within industries or moving from one career path to another, there’s a lot of demand for skills training, which, like everything else these days, is increasingly taking place online.
Brian Finnerty is the VP of Marketing at Udacity, a company that focuses on skills development and talent transformation. We talked to Brian about what he thinks are the essential skills required to succeed in B2B marketing today. The transformation of marketing over the past decade means today the discipline includes roles for soft skills like creativity, hard skills like data analytics, and people skills.
We’re also going to discuss the pros and cons of marketing in a space that has everyone talking right now, the marketing lessons of the past year, and his view of in-person and virtual events moving forward.
Episode Guide
2:30: Does the worldwide focus on the job market and careers create challenges for Brian’s team to cut through the noise?
4:51: What are the essential skills required to succeed in B2B marketing today?
9:17: The most underrated skill in marketing today is…
11:56: How long does Brian think “The Great Resignation” lasts?
15:30: What happens next with in-person and virtual events?
19:50: What marketing lesson did Brian learn in the past year?
20:42: “It’s the story, not the channel that determines your success.”
21:14: What is the tool Brian can’t live without?
5 Ways Lead Gen Has Changed in the Past Decade
In this episode of B2B Nation, Nathan Burke, CMO of cybersecurity vendor Axonius, shares with us the five ways he thinks B2B lead generation has changed in the past decade, what his company is doing to keep pace with the changes, his marketing challenges, and more.
Learn more about TechnologyAdvice: solutions.technologyadvice.com/solutions-overview/
Sign up for our newsletter: solutions.technologyadvice.com/subscribe/
Follow us: www.linkedin.com/showcase/technol…and-gen-insights
How Can We Better Support Women Working in the Tech Sector?
In this episode of B2B Nation, we explore the experiences of women in the technology industry with Jamie Porter, senior director of marketing at MNJ Technologies. We’ll discuss Jamie’s experience in the tech sector and how she works to help other women achieve success as well.
Among the topics we cover are coaching and mentorship as well as the roles women in tech seem to actively seek out versus the roles they are guided into taking.
Learn more about TechnologyAdvice: solutions.technologyadvice.com/solutions-overview/
Sign up for our newsletter: solutions.technologyadvice.com/subscribe/
Follow us: www.linkedin.com/showcase/technol…and-gen-insights
How the Dark Funnel and Dark Social Impact Your B2B Marketing
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Eric Dates, Director of Growth Marketing at Ncontracts, about how marketers can influence the dark funnel and dark social conversations, coming to grips with not being able to see and measure everything we do, the impact of LinkedIn on the B2B marketing community, and more.
Episode Guide
1:26: Messaging for complex topics in a world of text skimmers and soundbites.
3:18: The obstacles that the dark funnel and dark social create for buyers.
7:00: What have the last two years taught Eric about marketing?
11:30: Why Eric thinks B2B marketers and their community are the biggest advancement in marketing in the last 10 years.
14:45: Does martech give marketers more space to think creatively?
18:35: What gets Eric excited about the next two years?
22:28: What is Eric’s favorite tool?
Learn more about TechnologyAdvice: solutions.technologyadvice.com/solutions-overview/
Sign up for our newsletter: solutions.technologyadvice.com/subscribe/
Follow us: www.linkedin.com/showcase/technol…and-gen-insights
Moving Beyond the MQL? What Comes Next?
James Stanton is the Vice President of Marketing at Empyrean, an HR tech vendor. For James, moving beyond the MQL means looking at prospects through the lens of “opportunities,” which sounds a lot more aligned with how B2B works but does present some challenges of its own.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to James about MQLs, his company’s experience outsourcing practically all of its digital marketing functions, and more.
Episode Guide
3:09: Is this the year marketers drop MQLs, and what’s the replacement?
4:17: “In this humble marketer's opinion, the MQL is dead. It’s done.”
4:41: What metric will James be watching if not the MQL?
8:30: Tips for explaining plans to ditch the MQL to your leadership.
11:45: The challenges of moving from MQLs to demand units and opportunities.
14:52: How and why James is outsourcing Empyrean’s digital marketing functions.
22:40: What is James excited about in the business world in 2022?
27:00: What is James’ take on in-person events?
29:15: What is James’ favorite tool?
An Insider’s View of AMD’s Turnaround Story
In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to David Melendrez, an account manager at AMD, who manages the relationship between AMD and one of its biggest and most strategic partners: Dell. David’s job at AMD is to make sure the Dell team has all of the knowledge and tools it needs to grow market share and nurture the relationship between the companies.
In our discussion, we talked about the unique nature of working with a single client, how two very large organizations cooperate to market and sell their products, and David’s journey to a front-row seat for one of the biggest turnarounds in tech history.
Episode Guide
3:20: Even with one customer, making new contacts is critical to success.
5:00: What types of conversations does David lead with his customers at Dell?
9:10: David’s unorthodox journey to his role at AMD.
11:44: What is the most important skill for managing a large, complex relationship like the one between AMD and Dell?
13:31: How do AMD and Dell work together to market Dell products with AMD technology?
17:31: What is David’s favorite tool?
How Centers of Excellence Can Help Your B2B Marketing Strategy
In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Wayne Bulsiewicz of Simplus, an Infosys company that helps its customers get more out of their Salesforce deployments. Wayne and the Simplus team are growing their content strategy by creating marketing Centers of Excellence around the specific industries that Simplus targets.
Episode Guide
2:03: How do you define “experiential marketing,” and how does Simplus use it?
4:30: How does Simplus measure the results of its content marketing experience?
8:45: What Simplus does to help customers maximize their Salesforce investment.
11:05: How the “centers of excellence” approach helps Simplus overcome its marketing challenges.
13:59: What should companies look for when staffing a center of excellence?
16:15: How does the Simplus sales team align with its centers of excellence?
17:10: What gets Wayne excited about marketing and business in 2022?
21:20: Why is Wayne so high on email and newsletters?
Learn more about TechnologyAdvice: https://solutions.technologyadvice.com/solutions-overview/
Sign up for our newsletter: https://solutions.technologyadvice.com/subscribe/
Follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/technologyadvice-demand-gen-insights