Personalisation in B2B Marketing
In this riveting episode, we explore the ever-changing world of B2B marketing through the lens of personalization. Join us as we talk with industry experts Maria José Lemos Pare (Toluna), Avishek Chowdhury (Disciple Media), Hannah Jarret (Cooper Consultancy) and Firat Alyagut (Apadmi) to uncover how personalization is becoming the cornerstone of successful B2B marketing strategies. From the blurring lines between B2B and B2C to the role of data and community insights, this episode is a treasure trove of actionable insights.
Guests
Maria José Lemos Pare, Marketing Manager at Toluna
Avishek Chowdhury, Head of Growth at Disciple Media
Hannah Jarrett, Digital and Social Media Manager at Copper Consultancy
Firat Alyagut, Digital Marketing Executive at Apadmi
Welcome to today's episode in In the Future of B2B Digital Marketing podcast, we are diving deep into the transformative world of personalization in B2B marketing. In today's digital age, customers are inundated with content, and personalization has emerged as a guide for businesses to create meaningful connections. So today we will explore the evolution of B2B marketing, the pivotal role of data in crafting tailored experiences and the nuances of community engagement in a B2B context. So we are joined here by a panel of experts who will share their insights, challenges and strategies in personalization to drive B2B success. So let's start with a quick round of introduction for us. Please so my name is Tara. I'm based in Manchester. I'm working in a part as digital marketing executive. Just recently starting the company. So it's a B2B software company and I'm looking forward to it.
Hi, I'm Hannah. So I work in social and digital marketing for Copper Consultancy, the consultancy firm that focus on kind of construction infrastructure, economic development and strategic communication. So quite interesting projects that we're working on.
I am Abhishek. I'm the head of growth at Disciple Media. Disciple Media, which is a community building platform which helps small to large size businesses to build their communities on apps as well as websites and how they can leverage that. Thank you.
I'm Maria. I'm based in London and I work for Toluna, which is a market research and consumer insights company. So I've been working with them for two and a half years, and it's a really great place to be because we can basically do our a lot of research market research and produce our own content. So our own reports and we can do really mean for a marketer, it's really, uh, an interesting, uh. Job to have when you can actually have access to content as easily as this. So, yeah, really happy to be here.
My name is Tom. I'm the founder and chief executive of Ads Act, which is a B2B ad platform.
And I'm Joaquin Dominguez. I'm head of marketing also at Sect, and we are hosting this podcast. So let's start with the first theme is the evolution and the complexities of B2B marketing. So B2B marketing is constantly under transformation. So gone are the days with that, that B2B marketing where rationale targeting just a specific pain point without delving into into emotions. So B2C for the longest time held the monopoly on leveraging emotions in communications. But today the distinction between B2B and B2C is very nebulous. And because at the end of the day, we are targeting individuals right? So. Because this continuous blur, we have unique challenges and opportunities and of course personalization has become vital in this landscape. So I will give you an open question. So how do you believe personalization is reshaping the way businesses communicate in in B2B?
Go for it, Mario. Yeah.
So let me I will start. So I think, um, obviously when you talk about personalization, um, we assume that we know, uh, we, we know in terms of funnel where people are because we can see more or less how they are evolving through sales funnels. And the implications would be that we can deliver the right content personalized to, I don't know, can be persona can be sector. However, we also know that a lot of the research that people do is done on social is done on dark social, and you can't really tell. So on the one hand, the theory says that, yes, we have a funnel, we have people going through the funnel like seamlessly and evolving from consideration through the different stages. But in practice, what we see is that people make decisions more randomly. They consult their peers. They follow, like you had recently mentioned, you know, the people we follow on social sorry. And then they come up with a clear idea of of, of who they they want to consider and they might go straight into a website and fill in a form and ask for a demo. So these are the two things. And so. You need to personalize the content by knowing your actual customer, I think. And maybe you won't be able to target that customer at the different stages and seeing, you know, like delivering neatly the, the, the content that you think they might want through ebooks or blog posts or whatever. And you might need to be much more active on social and build your brand and build a relationship with the community. And then that's your. That's your personalization. That's you're targeting a certain type of of of persona. It's a person. Ultimately, they might be a part of a collective decision in the future, and you need to consider all these things, in my opinion.
May agree and that access to content. So do you believe that people should have access to content openly or or do you still believe in the era of of the gated content? No, I think get something.
Yeah. In return.
No, no, because I think it doesn't work like that. You don't. I mean, maybe 15, ten years ago you could create an eBook that was original to your sector. But nowadays, I mean that has to be like a really tricky thing to do unless you're proposing something that's really new, addressing a new, um, a new or fairly new need in the market. But for most companies, they might feel they're new, but I'm sure there are already 20 books about that particular topic and they're coming late to the game. So it's very tricky. I don't believe in gating content.
So I have a slight different opinion on that. So jump on in. Um, so in my experience and perspective, I can say it's kind of like a mixture of between, um, gated content and on gated content. It's kind of works, uh, how you can ask, it's kind of mixing the Legion efforts and also with the dimension, of course, providing value and creating something unique as an kind of like important point. But at the same time it's just kind of like the in the Legion perspective. And you shouldn't like as a company, you shouldn't go if someone has downloaded something and right away just, you know, like reaching out to them and saying that, okay, yeah, you downloaded this and let's have a chat kind of thing. They might be low intent, they might be not interested, they might be researching. So I agree on Maria's point and, you know, having a unique, valuable asset that creating an asset and sharing that with the Ungated format. But at the same time, it's sometimes valuable to capture the attention and the understanding, the real interests of some people and saying that, okay, this this group of people actually sign up for this rather than. Thousands of people visit your website. Then you can actually personalize your ads and kind of like having a different structure of retargeting and kind of going a deeper down of personalization in that area as well. I hope that's clear.
Just as well. I think I agree more with Farah purely because I feel like it all ultimately depends on the value that the content brings and if that content is highly personalized for that, depending on the journey of that particular customer or lead, I think it adds value. And again, agreeing with that, I think if we are able to narrow, that helps to narrow down the total lead volume. And also if you have a structured way of nurturing those content, even if it's a top of funnel or middle of funnel lead, who is not probably going to convert in the next six months, but that helps to build a pipeline further down the line knowing that you are actually building a relationship with that kind of audience who actually fit, somewhat fit your customer personas or IPS, etcetera.
Yeah, just add into that as well. Think it's all about balance. Within reason, as in we can't have everything gated. But similarly to what Maria said in terms of effectively if somebody can find the content from a Google search, then it's probably not worth it being gated because it wouldn't be able to stand out enough. But I know at copper it's something that we invest in is we produce attitude reports and they're basically us generating our own data for areas that don't already exist. So we know that it gives us a unique selling point and we produce the content for the community, but also that is beneficial to us on the projects that we work on. The one thing I'd say is at the moment we don't use gated content, but because it is a unique selling point for us and a way that we differentiate between our competitors, there is a real opportunity there for it to be gated because at the moment everyone could be stealing our ideas thanks to our lovely rapport. And actually part of the reason I'd want it to be gated is not necessarily from a getting customers perspective because we're not actually selling anything. So we don't typically have a sales funnel like the rest of you may do. So it would be about collecting the data and contacts to build out our kind of database system so that we've got other avenues to push marketing when relevant. So again, similar to what Virat said in terms of we wouldn't be reaching out to say, let's have a chat this week or next week and we would be using that to kind of build a bigger picture based on future comms that we did send out. As to they've downloaded this report, they've downloaded this, they've opened this email and we would build the picture bigger that way.
Is is that because you're very very long sales cycles and really massive like contract sizes. So it's like it's not so much selling as just developing longer term relationships where people might come back and back and back or.
Yes, absolutely. So we stand in a little bit of a confusing area. And like you were saying earlier, in terms of B2C and B2B having a bit of a blur I actually argue that maybe we are business to stakeholders and we are pulling together businesses and customers within that . .
. That's obviously the ultimate form of gated content in a way, because it's generally gated and it is, you know, it's kind of very bottom of funnel content, hopefully, but you obviously can't do that. It's more about generating this longer term relationships. So you kind of have to gate something maybe.
Yeah, definitely. And I think as well, especially with attitude reports, those are kind of our key things that we should be gating. But there's other pieces that obviously we put out that are kind of more thought leadership based, which everyone has got their own kind of stance on. So there will be people putting things out there and it's just from a different angle. So that's that's kind of more opinionated thought leadership style rather than kind of hard facts and data that we've gone out of the way to kind of curate. So yeah, definitely kind of where we stand.
Yeah, definitely interesting that the gating content. But let's move on on the agenda and Hannah you you have a passion for for creativity. And so please tell us how do you bring or how do you see the role of creativity in, in, in B2B marketing and in personalization?
Yeah. So when it comes to creative, I think when you work in marketing and especially from a social media angle, it's probably the biggest bugbear that we all have and we're always fighting to kind of get creative, um, aspects pushed out there and getting signed off for them. So, um, yeah, definitely an interesting one from a B2B side, but I would say creative is really the driver for a successful campaign because in order to get somebody to read the report that you've written, that's kind of data heavy and maybe thought leadership focused, you have to have something to get them there in the first place. So whilst a catchy header might do that, I think the creative plays like a massive part in that. So I think as well, obviously noisy kind of world of social media, but digital in general and there's so much choice out there for people is that users are looking for more unique and engaging experiences. So it's a bit similar to kind of how we've all evolved over the last few years from like corporate office attire into more casual clothing or from kind of five days a week in the office into hybrid working or remote working. And I think that's kind of the same in the marketing world as in people are ready for something refreshing in the world of business. People are kind of becoming bored and they're gaining fatigue over corporate reports that don't have infographics, don't make the content easy to digest. So yeah, animations is something that we're kind of investing a bit more time in, but just finding new ways to present things. Because I think another thing that often happens with creative is we create kind of templates and then we stick to it because we've got this cool template and it looks good and it makes life easier. Um, and it's more efficient, but actually maintaining that creativity and making sure that there's something different each time is really important. So whilst we use data driven strategies and we won't ever forget the data, I think it is really important to have that two prong approach in terms of creativity on the one side and data on the other and making sure you kind of using them through all avenues. And then obviously the point of creativity is to one, capture attention, to evoke emotions, but also give us the opportunity to differentiate amongst our competitors. And so, yeah, hopefully that answers.
Yeah, definitely. And and Maria, you mentioned before the importance of understanding your audience. So how do you tailor your content and how do you to be creative and resonate with because your company has different audiences, regional audiences, you are present in LatAm.
In Europe.
Etcetera.
Yeah. So I cover LatAm, Middle East and Africa and Spain and Italy. So it's it's very different types of audiences. And also, um, we have been in these markets for different amounts of time. For instance, in Italy, we've been there for quite a long time. So we have a, you know, a different type of relationship with our clients. And then in other markets we are prospecting and, and um.
Exploring B2C and B2B advertising, right?
Uh, no, no. We just need to be, just be to be so obviously in these different markets and to the point of gated content because in my previous answer was quite kind of category, because the question was yes or no and I didn't, uh, uh, balance my, my, my answer because the question was, what do you believe? And that's what I believe. But for instance, in the Middle East, uh, we, uh, gated content works well from for our content because there's, uh, more of a lack of content specific to that region. And we, because we do a market research, we can touch on countries and markets that, that are relevant. And we kind of know what people want to know about. So we can use reports that are quite relevant. And in those cases, uh, we might gate that content. And for a month, for instance, while the data is very new and then we might engage. So obviously we have different approaches. Um, in Europe, for instance, in Spain, gated content doesn't work that well, maybe because there's just too much and it's really hard regardless of creative, to get the attention, you know, to capture the attention. So sometimes our campaigns don't deliver in in, in that area as well as in other parts of the world. So it's very, very different. And we try to tailor our reports, obviously, not just visually, but in terms of the actual content. So for instance, we have, um, global barometer, a global consumer barometer that we do every quarter in 18 countries. And so for instance, the data we collect for, um, the Middle East or for LatAm, what stands out might be very different from what stands out for the US or the UK or Germany. So then obviously the creative that goes into into those that those highlights report because we have the global report and then the regional report. So it's it's a it's a really like we and especially from for my team that we cover different countries it's we really have to kind of tailor everything not just because we would in terms of, let's say, imagery etcetera, but also because the content ultimately it's slightly different, although coming from the same overall global initiative.
And Firat, you also you also had some challenges focusing on specific regions, different tones of of voice.
So, yeah, I'm actually curious as well. I want to ask my first if if you are creating kind of like a master report and distributing or localizing that to the different regions or you're creating something like almost like new unique reports in different regions. Just curious to understand as well on on top of your point, because it's really interesting actually, that different regions have different kind of like hooks and attractions and interest points and, and so yeah, and I can also mention a little bit on my experience. So I'm originally from Turkey and I lived and worked in Turkey for a while and um, also in the UK and Germany. And I'm actually doing a little bit work with Netherlands at the moment. So in general, you know, Europe and the UK and also while I was working in Turkey, that was the 40 plus regions across the world. So definitely different tone of voices for lots of reasons, even even when you when you think about it. For example, if you are distributing a content to China and Taiwan, it's quite unique and quite different. Like people assume that they're speaking the same language or they're like really close to each other. It's not like it's not like that.
And how did you how did you come up with that decision? How did you get to know what the tones of voice should be for each region? Did you test out various different tones of voice and work out which one worked best? And it just happened to be different in different regions or.
Good question actually. So we had our regional marketers in my previous company, so they were based in the regional locations and they were kind of like guiding us in terms of like the general outline of how the content or the campaigns should be. But other than that, it's definitely test and learn because there's too much elements, there's too much variables in one report or one campaign that you can actually change and test it out. And um, to, to the one point, actually, Maria had a great point where my experience in Turkey as well was similar in terms of content and creating content was similarly working quite well even so well, I mean kind of in Stripe, but um, I think it might be a reason with the cultural differences as well and kind of like different regions, as she said, like Turkey is kind of transcontinental country. It's between Middle East and Europe, but also in the Middle Eastern region. People sometimes think as well those gate contents create more value or provides more value than the ungated content, which is quite available to all all the people. And they feel like they're unique to actually receive those kind of contents. So that might be one reason, that one cultural reason behind it. And there's like tons of different reasons and kind of like language points as well in terms of how to actually attract the audience in different regions. Whereas for example, in Turkey, people don't really like reading lots of long, long stuff. At the first end, they want to they want to see the key facts and the summary and they want to understand if that topic is like worth reading almost. And if not, they just like skip it. Otherwise, if you put the content just like all the way across the page directly, that might not work for lots of B2B companies. But in the UK, whereas we we are actually testing and seeing like different content strategy in terms of like the length of the content or the positioning of that content or how to actually talk about the tone of voice. Because about me is where I'm working at the moment is kind of like premium brand and we're developing and working with developing softwares and mobile apps for companies that are huge in the market. So that's why decision makers and the target audience is kind of like speaking that language as well. Uh, whereas our sub company, TMC in the Netherlands have a medium to small size of companies in their hand, and they're kind of like working with different tone of voice and different hook points for actually attracting their ISPs as well. So yeah. But I'm really curious to hear from Maya as well. About my question.
Should I answer now?
Yes, please. Please.
Okay, So, um, we have this. We have. We produce content at global level. And then each territory, each each region also because we have research teams and offices in, in, in different countries. So for instance, an example, this global consumer barometer is launched in 18 different countries around the world. And then we the global barometer, kind of, uh, you know, uh. Analyzes the data for the 18 countries. And it might say, okay, this is the trend. So we have since 2020, 22 waves of the barometer. It's not always the same blocks of questions. Obviously it started in the pandemic. So there at the beginning it was very much about understanding where consumers were and the changes of that time. That seems like ages ago. And so we would. Have an analysis that's global. And for instance, you might have a specific topic. Let's say people are. Choosing to. I don't know, change brands in in in CPG products, for instance, we identify this trend and there might be a group of countries where this is more pronounced. So we can say, hey, this is the global trend driven by this group of countries, might be US UK for instance. So this would be the global analysis and there's a global report and it's launched, let's say, and shared with all our clients, etcetera. And it's it's, it's also gated. But then for each of the countries let's say um, our research team in in Dubai will look at the countries that are regional countries within those 18, which is KSA and UAE, and they will produce a local report for the Middle East. That's just. Just includes this data and might have, for instance, the global totals for comparison. So for instance, if we have a specific a specific topic that's of interest to the Middle East, we might want to know where the Middle East stands, for instance, on sustainability because of of of. Of cop being in November and being in Dubai. This sustainability has gained a lot of traction. So we see that in the region. People are. Surprisingly more concerned about sustainability than in other parts of the world. So it's things like this that, um, but then we might launch a report that's specific to the Middle East, a survey about, uh, shopping behavior around Ramadan and, and what people are planning to do. So we might do that a couple of months before Ramadan and then share that with our clients. And, and that's always the the, the goal. You know, our content is not just for, for, um, you know, lead generation. It's also for engaging our clients and saying, hey, you're with us and every now and then we give you something of good value.
Yeah, well, I think that.
Gives us, I think, to, to, to another topic that I wanted to discuss with you, Abhishek, that is very interesting, which is giving content for your community and of course you have a lot to tell us about community with the rise of community driven marketing. So it would be great to listen how disciples see the role of community platforms and the role of content in community platforms and how this is evolving in B2B marketing.
Yeah, definitely. For us, I think communities play a very important role. First of all, for research, obviously you need to reach a certain volume of community members for you to really leverage the data and the audience that you have to in terms of research, but also you also communities also help not only our customers. I think it's if you are adopting a full funnel strategy, right, from awareness all the way down to the retention, there is a place within our community for each of those sections. So what that does is we have clear segmentation of our audiences. We know, okay, these are potential customers, not now, but let's say ten, six months or ten months down the line. So one of the problems that I particularly faced when I joined Disciple was we had let's say we were generating 2000 odd leads and these were not just content leads, etcetera. 16, 1700 of them were high intent leads. So people coming in, filling out their forms for demos or taking a free trial and so on and so forth. So out of them, let's say even if we were converting 50 of them into customers, there was still a good 17, 1800 people who were not qualified to buy at this point in time. But what that does not mean is that there is no intent to buy. So that's why we many cases I went and we researched and saw what were those reasons. So some of them were not ready to buy immediately. Some of them did not have the budget. Some of them did not have the need. And at the same time, because our product has 3 or 4 tiers within it, so the more successful your community is, the bigger it gets, which means you need to move on to the next tier. So that's why I think from an upselling point of view as well, communities play a very important role. So how we utilize our audiences, we bring try and invite all of all of our leads into our community. Let's say if you are not ready, you don't have, let's say, 500 members in your community. We tell you, okay, you can join our community, we will help you. We run regular webinars courses, so on and so forth, which will help you to understand how you can build that audience for your community success. Similarly, if I am a very small community and let's say my lifetime value is 5000, I want you to succeed. Because when you succeed, your community succeeds, your members volume go up. That means that you can actually go and get into the next tier. So how do you for those audiences, we actually provide specific courses into whatever pain points that is at that stage of the funnel and so on and so forth. Even when you are our highest tier customers, you still have something to grow. How can you monetize more? How can you generate more revenue and so forth? So that really gives us a very clear picture of not only that group of people who are within our, let's say, HubSpot or Salesforce, etcetera, but it also gives us a very clear indication as to what people like them are going through their entire journey. At the same time, if we have a customer base of, let's say, 5000 because we have such a huge volume where we know what their stage they are in, we can actually go and interview them, survey them to ask them, okay, what kind of content resonates with you, what kind of pain points you are facing? And that gives us a indication as to what the general market is looking for. Obviously, we need to analyze that. Okay, this is what they're saying. If you go ahead and look at search volume on Google, Google Trends, etcetera, does that actually resonate with that? We also do external research as well to further validate that, but that sets a very customer centric or a user journey centric based approach.
It's almost like a collaborative marketing automation platform or something. It's like they're participating in their own. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. So they all there's two elements to communities. One is 1 to 1, one to all. Basically what our community managers are going, they're distributing, but they are also interacting with each other through threads. So if we want to go there and let's say do a search of let's say I want to talk about this particular problem, I can see all the threads that those people are discussing. What it further enables us to do is speak the language that our customers speak. For me, I think that is one of the key areas of personalization where you actually, if something resonates more, something that I agree with all the other panelists here that you need to speak, not only their language, their tone, but if you can actually talk about their problems and provide a solution within how they talk about things that sets you apart from, let's say, a generic content. And that is where I feel like with all the automation. ET cetera. ET cetera. Coming in, that is where genuinely good content will set you apart from just another Google blog post and so on and so forth.
And interesting how the two concepts of regional nuances and also community marketing there are everything is linked on on data and and data for personalization. Hannah Do you also use and leverage data to to craft content that resonates with with your audience? Tell us a little bit about how you use data.
Yeah. So I would say when it comes to utilizing data, it's important to be able to turn that data into information first, to be able to provide any value to the data that you have. And then from there you can obviously analyze and provide any insights. The key thing for us is data allows us to kind of build a deeper understanding of the target audience, which then allows us to communicate effectively with them. So our our approach is normally that strategies require a unique approach depending on the project, but then we would look to kind of take that data and information and making sure that our messaging is one that kind of mirrors the needs and desires of that audience. So to give that a little bit of context, because I understand that that might be slightly confusing. So for example, as I was saying, we work on major infrastructure projects. So if we were to take something like a new road or highway, then the instant thought is okay, those people who drive on the road are the people we need to worry about. But then you then have the secondary layer of that, that actually there's the bus users who no longer can use their their route to get to work. Um, and then you'll have the kind of the people who think that this does not affect them until the work actually begins and they realize how frustrating this road closure actually is and who believe that that road is not going to affect them because they're not a cyclist, they're not a bus user, and they're not a road user. However, they are a small business and now all of a sudden they can't get their deliveries for their local groceries to make their smoothies or whatever it may be, and they're impacted. But they didn't think about that because as far as they were aware, they weren't going to be driving up that road that day. So they thought that they were kind of away with that. And then the same with, um, kind of individual users. So within the community we have a lot of stakeholder engagement with residents for a lot of our projects. So again, similar type of thing. They may not be road users, but they may have deliveries coming their way that are then delayed a day or two or potentially a week, depending on how long the project is kind of going on for. So we try to use um, data as many pinch points as possible. So we obviously deal with the consultation period ahead of large projects. Then we'll have kind of we'll use that data. So there is going to people going to be people who are frustrated. There is going to be people who know already what is going to annoy them. Um, and we use that information to be able to kind of tailor the messaging and make sure that we're as clear as we possibly can be. Because at the end of the day, in a lot of instances the project is going to go ahead. But it's about how do we mitigate and control that risk and keep stakeholders as happy as we possibly can. And so, yeah, definitely utilizing data every given opportunity, but making sure that we're making sense of that data and that it's representative of the audience. So not just looking at the obvious audience, but kind of digging a little bit deeper and figuring out.
How do you know what data you should gather? Like, I mean, you've done it lots of times, but.
Yeah, so it is quite a difficult one in terms of it depends on the project. Our projects are so vastly different and I was going to mention it a little bit later on, but we actually have a tool called Communify that we use at Copa, which is something that's fairly unique. Um, but it's more than just a data platform. It's actually the process that we use at copper and it allows us to kind of understand audiences have that competitive advantage and then be able to produce better strategies. So it's about taking that data to think about the hard to reach audiences. So it's a lot of stuff that will come out of kind of council related reports and data and um, you know, when you just go to say something and you completely forget what it's called, um, the. Somebody's gonna have to help me out here, and then I'll stop. You know, this survey that goes out and it's like national.
Sensors. Sensors?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we use the census data as well. Um, but within communify, it breaks down communities and kind of geographical areas into much finer detail. So if you took, um, a county as a whole, you may get that the majority of people in that area are, um, potentially affluent or have high disposable income. So then if you were to tailor your communications based on that, then you would be missing out on a lot of your audience. So for example, if we've got a solar wind, a solar project or a wind farm, um, they'll obviously be the connection routes. But we really need to think about exactly how that affects every individual in that area. So whilst we may have pockets of really affluent individuals who maybe don't care that the bus route is being switched off for three weeks or diversion or adding to the route, we need to consider the the communities that are also close by who may be of a smaller size, but they're really going to be affected by whatever the work is that's being carried out. So I think for us it's about kind of getting into the granular detail of data rather than going at what we do a lot as marketers, which is stereotyping from kind of an overview because that messaging is just not enough for us. Um, based on the types of projects that we work with, it's.
Really interesting that this is like your, your whole business, whereas for, for lots of other B2B marketers doing that sort of research is something that we sort of fit in, in the margins. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting just to think whether there's any analogs or learnings that a B2B marketer could take from that, because when you're selling into a business, you often have hidden communities that you don't think are going to be affected, like the CFO or the CTO or the head of CRM or, you know, someone, you're implementing a piece of software that is about this area. And then there's five other people that you discover actually have a really big influence on this. Maybe there are even people that could stop the project, but we just didn't know that they were going to be affected. So I think you often see.
That kind of approach as well when you come to kind of implementing new software in a business where you think it only affects you, but it's actually about how it integrates with all the other software that's already in existence. But actually, could this piece of software overtake other areas? So if if your sales platform doesn't speak to your CRM database, what's the point? And it's a lot more clear cut in those B2B industries that are kind of sales or service focused where there is kind of a tangible, um, funnel of customers, whereas we don't have it quite as straightforward as that, I would say.
But I think it's interesting that your, your work in the community as part of a project to understand that could be, you know, that could be, you know, in a perfect world, a marketer would have infinite budget and would be able to kind of do that sort of project. But for their prospects to understand what are the hidden communities or hidden groups of people, hidden roles that would be affected by me trying to sell in might be in a place to stop it, or at least veer off course or maybe cause churn in two years time. And it's just interesting to think whether any of the kind of expert, you know, extreme levels of of expertise that you have in that area could be used by marketers to try. And how do you do that?
An ABM.
Such.
An ABM approach definitely allows you to allows you to get some light on the nuances of of of the accounts for you. You're using an ABM approach. Why don't you tell us your your reflection on that.
Well, yeah, in terms of approach, I think it's kind of different than what Hannah has in terms of, you know, like as you said, Hannah, like we have sales funnel and kind of like a 1 to 1 personalization opportunity in terms of that, you know, communication, whether that comes from client services or whether that comes from sales, business development. So, um, apart from all the digital data has been collected, has been collected, I think it's, it's important to use kind of like those 1 to 1 interactions and any, any available information using that into your strategy is important and especially if you are targeting, you know, couple different industries and if you're actually focusing on, um, you know, several industries and trying to get customers, trying to earn customer and build trust with those customers prospects, not customers, Sorry. So yeah, in terms of that aspect, using an APM strategy could work with the of course, like if you're creating that content resonates with them because you know internally we have kind of like a discussion going on with marketing and business development and talking about, you know, okay, these companies are actually interested with developing a mobile app, whereas some companies have already have their apps and kind of more on focusing on optimizing them or focusing on personalization, utilizing data in some areas, kind of like optimizing the app, what they what they have at the moment. So that really gives you the idea of actually creating a campaign and targeting different industries and different companies and their resonated perspective rather than just going with the general content of, you know, okay, I'm publishing this report, hope, hope that interests you kind of approach and you can go in further deep down, whether that's a loyalty or whether that's a specific version of loyalty inside that subheader as well. So that we use that alignment on the ABM strategy and using those status to in order to actually convert into valuable content and marketing assets and creating campaigns accordingly. Yeah.
And well, let's.
Go into into the final topic, which is about the the community engagement and the and how we choose the right platform to to this to the success of our digital engagement. Um, Abhishek, you mentioned in our briefing call that mobile is crucial for community engagement. Why?
Yeah, I think mobile first of all, people are more spend more hours, longer time on mobile phones than on desktops. So it's it's if you send someone an email, the good open rates would be around 2,025%. Whereas if you send a mobile notification a general open rate for that or click through and do that is 4,045%, which just goes on to show that how how much more engaging a mobile app is. So at the same time, it really I think that's one of the factors. Other than that, yeah people like to engage and if it's mobile friendly, even on our website and majority of our websites, we do see better engagement on our mobile websites than on our desktop websites. So those two things usually give you an advantage in terms of having a better, especially if you have an app. People these days until and unless it's a super B2B app. People usually spend more time on mobile apps, let's say, even for Google ads. Even HubSpot, they are also available on mobile these days. So there's a reason for that. So it's much more easier to use and you have more options to engage them on a regular basis with push notifications and stuff like that to really engage them. So yeah, you have a better chance of attracting attention at the right time based Again, personalization is very important. You don't want to bombard them with push notifications for every small little thing you need to understand. Okay, this audience within our community, this is what they're looking for and this is a piece of content that would resonate with them or this is a contest or this is something that would resonate with them. And that's when you send those notifications. And what we have seen is, again, if you're able to build, build, hyper targeted push notifications as well, then you are more likely to get more clicks from those push notifications as well. So we have seen a very clear we just bombard them with money. Then you won't see a higher click through rate as well. So yeah, those are some of the things that I have seen.
Brilliant.
And Maria, please tell us about your approach using LinkedIn primarily for short term campaigns.
How do you think.
That fit in a in a sustained community engagement?
Um, well, yes. So because of our global reach, LinkedIn tends to be our go to platform for advertising and also because of the people we try to, to target. Uh, we see mixed results. Um, it really depends on what we are sharing, what we are, uh, kind of promoting. So certain types of content work relatively well. Other, other things more, let's say. Short term focused or when we are talking about specific methodologies that we are introducing in our platform because we we so we are a market research company, but we have our own platform for launching market research projects and our own panel. Um, so it really depends. And sometimes it's hard for us to actually, um, understand where a campaign stood if it worked or not because of, of, um, you know, of the visibility of, of, of some of the data. And this goes to, you know, legacy tech issues. We, we, we are trying to solve at, at this very moment. So um, yeah, I mean we, we, we rely on LinkedIn quite a bit. Um, but on, let's say so this is the, the, let's say uh, digital platforms, but I consider in-person events to be the other platform. So it's, it's, it's, it connects with LinkedIn because it's, it's also a small community, temporary small community that you generate an in-person event. And we do like events. We sponsor events that attract us where our clients or potential clients might be. We sometimes partner with clients to present data. For instance, let's say last year there was a. An event about gaming and we partnered with Sega to present a comprehensive study about the gaming landscape in the US and UK. So this is a type of thing we do a lot. You connect with other brands in the same space by joining up with with, with one of them and, and presenting data that's very relevant to the topic of the event in LatAm. And sometimes obviously these events are expensive to sponsor and there's a certain level of involvement from our team in terms of producing these, these high level type of report. Um, another way of doing it, and we've tried this in, uh, in Brazil. Um, Sao Paulo is a really, really huge city, so it's like a country in its, in its size. Um, and so we, we have like a really good business community there. And what we decided to do is to try to create our own event, our own series of events in person events. We choose a topic, we invite speakers like, like you've done here. Um, and we have an in-person event that's for, let's say, 50 people with a really high level panel of speakers with brands like, I don't know, Spotify, Google, Nike, Heineken, you know, like different sectors. And, and we have like a a chat and we invite, uh, our clients and prospects and it works really well and it's our own event. So it's.
That's.
A very good example of personalized session, 1 to 1 face to face. Yeah. What could be more personalized than that? Well, thank you so much. We are coming to an end. Um, and I think I would like to say, well if you want to say something as well, you're very welcome. But one thing that that stands clear, I think that personalization is not a strategy. It's the future of B2B marketing. And data is definitely the key thing to to engage with, engage with your community and create those meaningful connections. Thank you so much. I don't know if you want to say something, please. You're very welcome.
Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us.
