Purpose centric B2B Marketing, New channels, Adtech and more
Over the past four years, B2B digital advertising spending has followed a similar trajectory as that of B2C during the beginning of its rise to prominence. Which enabled tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter to become some of today's most influential companies worldwide.
Will this trend continue? If so, US spending on B2B digital marketing could reach $42 billion by 2030 – creating an entire industry from scratch. A range of new jobs and skill sets will be generated; alongside numerous emerging technologies & trade patterns - who knows what major players will dominate the market by 2031?
The world of b2b marketing is ever-changing, and businesses must stay ahead of the curve to remain successful. To discuss strategies and insights into the key skills and technologies required to ensure success, the Growth Intelligence team recently convened a roundtable of leading B2B marketers. Maximize your rewards by optimizing your marketing strategy with their recommendations. Read the full report here.
Thank you Sarah Mackenzie, Kieran Flanagan, Chris Ponting, Matthew McGillicuddy, Joe Edge and Leanne Bevan, for your contribution.
Guests
Kieran Flanagan, CMO at Zapier
Chris Ponting, Client Partner for PHD
Joe Edge, Client Partner for MediaWorks
Sarah Mackenzie, Creative Director for FT
Matthew McGuillicuddy, Head of Growth for Infinity
All right. Well, let's get going with them with introductions then. Matt, can I can I can I start with you. Just a sentence on yourself.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 2:56
Yeah, sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Matt. McGillicuddy, the Head of Brand infinity, who were a global call intelligence and speech analytics platform. So my focus really is sort of long term growth, making sure the comms sort of resonate hit the spark recording in progress. How it was you know, optimize our ad spend
Tom Gatten 3:18
ultimately. Thanks, Matt. Chris, would you give us a sentence on yourself?
Chris Ponting 3:27
Me Hi, everyone. My name is Chris Ponting. So I'm a client partner at PhD, which is a media agency in the Omnicom Media Group and so I work across a range of both b2b and b2c clients. And yet I'm really interested in the mix between the two and the sort of growth of b2b at the moment. Fabulous working Hey everyone. I can Dominguez Head of Marketing for Growth Intelligence as Joel
Tom Gatten 3:58
has has has Joe edge co opted you into this Joel? Is that how it's
Joel Bransfield 4:03
so? He hasn't No, this was through a LinkedIn us that you got me really it was a complete coincidence. It is. Yeah. So I'll see Joe tomorrow. I'm hoping our UCaaS lockless actually tomorrow. I'm a grip Director of Media Works essentially in the same row rollers Joe. So kind of looking at clients that their business and kind of goals and then obviously kind of coming up with a strategy to do a lot in b2b I think we've seen a massive sort of shift within b2b and kind of the digital side of things. So there's more going on and just understanding a bit more and what's hopefully take away a few bits to kind of go back to our guys with as well as Thanks Joel flora. Dermot, sorry. Sorry,
Flora 4:51
um, hello, I'm Flora. I'm one of the customer success managers here. I support our clients in essentially driving efficiency with their marketing and hopefully getting better quality leads rather than just a big pile that the sales teams have to work through. So I'm looking forward to hearing how you guys have hopefully the teeth that
Leanne Beavan 5:08
fabulously so so yeah, I'm Leon Bethan. I'm a vendor Marketing Manager at gray matter and gray matter is a software reseller and IT service provider providing software basically to businesses, anything from Adobe, Microsoft cybersecurity developer tools, that sort of stuff. Have a team of about five or six on our marketing team and I look after kind of a lot of our medium and small vendors and then we have like another person that looks after mapping and another one and looks after Microsoft. So I'm just here to kind of learn a b2b tips, really, any insights that might be useful, and we do for scale campaigns from events to digital, various digital activities.
Tom Gatten 5:55
Great, fantastic. All right. Thank you, Karen.
Kieran Flanagan 6:03
Everyone, I'm Karen, I'm previously worked at HubSpot on the marketing team and about to join Zapier as the Zoom cmo and next week,
Tom Gatten 6:15
congratulations, Ken. Thanks, Sarah.
Sarah Mackenzie 6:19
Hi, everyone. I'm Sara I, Head of Marketing for alpha grid, who are the Financial Times is Content Studio. So we create content campaigns and content strategy for both ft clients when its partner content on the ft.com and also for clients directly for their own channels.
Tom Gatten 6:40
Fabulous. Thank you, Sara. And Hi, Joe. Good to have you with us. Just a sentence on yourself.
Joe Edge 6:46
Hi. Oh, nice to meet you. I'm Joe. I'm growth partner here at media works with the business the last six years keeping me on a lot of our enterprise projects over the next year.
Tom Gatten 6:56
Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you all so much for being here. Matt. Can I can I start by asking you could you tell us all why you hate b2b marketing?
Matt Mcguilicuddy 7:07
Yes, yes, I can. So I mean talking about a rant about this in the past in fairness. So I think sort of generally speaking, we all get way too hung up on b2b versus b2c and completely missed the point that we should all be thinking more about the people at the other end of the columns and be more human focused. So I sort of tried to drill in to our team that like it doesn't matter if we're trying to engage one consumer or 12 people that make up a decision making unit. You know, at the end of the day, everybody is still human and susceptible to emotion and that's one of my big criticisms. And as someone who's quite passionate about advertising that sort of makes your blood boil really when you look at a lot of advertising in the space. Really good at sort of honing in and focusing on sort of pushing features and benefits, but there's, you know, it's really, really rare for a b2b brand to start leveraging emotion in the advertising. And especially when we think that prospects have got like a boatload of choice on who to pick who to partner with. I do think a lot of b2b marketers sort of missed the mark when it comes to making sure we're focusing on making our audience want what we're selling. And we're tapping into the that that subconscious decision making that goes on and really presented a solid, why and making sure that we do that consistently across columns and, you know, not for one minute saying that we don't need to back all this stuff up with logical arguments. But if we're going to cut through the noise and we're going to hook people in, we need to really sort of show them that we get them and that we can solve the biggest pains for them in like a click of a finger.
Tom Gatten 8:54
Thanks, Matt. Kieran and Joe, you both talk to me a lot. About the variety the explosion of different marketing routes and channels these days. So Joe, you were talking about one of your clients, will economy skip hire, obviously there's a b2c element to that. There's also a b2b element. And you were talking about the crossover between these. I think I wrote down Instagram and you know, pushing softer stuff these kind of more emotional kind of, you know, perhaps not emotional but you know, non super pragmatic stuff via via Instagram, but I wasn't sure whether you were kind of talking about doing the b2b side of of that on Instagram.
Joe Edge 9:37
Yeah, I think I think I think one of the key points for us is always within within that b2b marketplace. What we've got to understand is the people who are marketing to Mr. Human, and they still have lives outside of the computer, laptop and the desktop and, you know, as we're trying to build brand advocacy, within from certainly from our aspect from from a lot of our partners aspects. We want to make sure that building trust doesn't just stop within that professional environment. So it might be slightly softer columns that actually start to encourage the recruitment policies, the ego policies, the other things that we know are important to our audience, but we need to understand what their preferred channel of choices in order to push that content in front of them and I think it's really important to do that, within their within their safe spaces as well as purely the areas where they would expect to be marketed to as a business. We need to make sure that for the few people who have matters, and fewer people who we actually want to engage with. We are we are everywhere. For those for those few people.
Tom Gatten 10:39
Thank you, Karen. Where do you think the bulk of b2b digital marketing spend goes these days? Where are b2b marketers spending their money on what channels
Kieran Flanagan 10:54
think it's a mixture of paid advertising, like it really depends on your product and brand is I think it's a mixture of paid advertising brand events, content headcount? It really depends on I think the type of company but I suspect those buckets cover most brands core spends,
Tom Gatten 11:15
do you think digital advertising the channels within digital advertising are changing? You were talking to me about you know, the huge disaggregation or kind of explosion of different channels, things like, you know, Arab, the backs of seats on airplanes and Uber and
Kieran Flanagan 11:32
I think that there's potentially D bundling of paid advertising platforms. And so Google and Facebook for the most part, have been Where you've had to advertise because that's where the audience is. For the first time ever, their actual percentage of paid spend has dropped to about 44%. So on average, b2b companies spend about 40% 44% of its money with Facebook or Google in terms of paid advertising. And you're definitely starting to see like more networks pop up. That are much more niche but give people opportunities to reach an audience in different ways. So DoorDash DoorDash, launched in network Uber, Uber launched in network, there's places there's a network just launched that actually connects a lot of era Air flight advertising together, so that gives you a different place to reach audience. So I do think that over time, we may see more niche networks spring up that may may be impactful for brands, especially
Tom Gatten 12:36
how does Uber work? Do you get a little card in with your chips or something when they handed over the door?
Kieran Flanagan 12:43
Or do they have a both of those have an advertising network so Uber have an advertising network for cars DoorDash never advertised network and so I don't know how that works. I'm much more suited for b2c. But I do think that even in b2b, you do have options. I don't think there is. There is like LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Reddit, these kinds of things. None of them work as good as Google or Facebook, but I think that over time, when you start to see privacy laws and problems that Facebook has, I start I suspect you'll start to see much more of that get deep bundled in more interesting ways.
Tom Gatten 13:24
And why is that is that just because it is more difficult for these people to accurately target sub audiences because they can't use things like third party cookies and
Kieran Flanagan 13:32
yeah, serving less less like Google and Facebook are already trying to move away from the metrics they've taught marketers to use, which is direct response and they want to start teaching people to think of the benefits of advertising aggregate they use can't remember the name they use, but it's a different name they're using to describe the metric they want to create. And that is really to try to aggregate direct, measurable benefits and indirect influence into a singular metric. And it's doing that because it sees that if you measure the impact of your budget on direct response, only over time, it's going to get worse. And so it needs to teach you they need to teach you that there's more benefits to advertising with their platforms and just the dollar value. You see directly back on the pen spends or dollar spins or euros spend that you have and I think then changing that metric to be much more. To be to be to include both direct and indirect measurements is going to teach marketing and marketeers to maybe think more thoughtfully about how they measure where they spend their budget and how they measure the return on that budget.
Tom Gatten 14:49
Sarah, you, I would, yes. are at the cutting edge of some of these more
forward thinking, channels and media such as your videos, your partner led content that you create that goes along with the Financial Times publications of which there are many I know, this is perhaps non traditional, but presumably, increasingly attractive. Medium Can you tell us a little bit about your your videos and partner content. In the old days it used to be like a pullout of the newspaper where it's sponsored by whatever it is and you know, all about quantum computing sponsored by Microsoft or something.
Sarah Mackenzie 15:33
It's it's it has evolved significantly, I think in the last 10 years. The partner content piece is an interesting one because it's it's about engaging audiences with content that's actually relevant to them. You know, audiences are saturated with content and they're saturated with adverts. And the the model at the FT is very much to provide content that's, that's useful to that business decision maker audience. We know that that we're much more likely to convert on a brand if they if if there has been a piece of partner content versus a straight ad we do still do straight ads but not very many Yeah, I think the other the other key point here is is about format as well so yes, we do video yes, we do article it's still very article heavy, but it's about engaging the audience with different types of content within an article. So interactive elements infographic, getting the audience to have that opportunity to explore the data themselves rather than just being talked to through straight article. And equally although perhaps not the most popular view when it comes to digital marketing is is looking at format of ad spend in general. So we did a survey study last year in the FT where we actually found that audience are for about four and a half times the light more likely to consider a brand if they are seeing it in print or digital, but they are more likely they're six times more likely to consider a brand if they see it and both so I think the other the other point there is is about format and mix of formats. So not just, you know, print isn't dead, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, we saw an uplift in print. But you know, there's there's a real argument to be had on on a mix of formats for audiences are seeing that content, in video in print in article as well.
Tom Gatten 17:51
So don't want to tell me the most cutting edge or most interesting b2b digital campaign or approach or strategy or something that they've seen recently, something that breaks the mold a bit might kind of show the way to the future.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 18:09
I think for me, it's not relying on one particular sort of format or one set of tactics or even just focusing on your digital it's about how we can sort of be traditional digital channels and tactics to engage people. You know, frequency is really important. That's something that I think a lot of people miss. Certainly when I submit my advertising budget for the year, that's always something that you know, raises a couple of eyebrows like hey, do we really need you know, to be in all of these places? And yes, ultimately, I think is the answer. I think and I think that's a that's a big, big shift in the way we should be measuring stuff as well. You know, there's a big gap between sort of online and offline activity and, you know, really, first to be able to optimize budgets properly and look at what's working. We need that holistic view. You know, purchase journeys are super complex, just because somebody engages with us in the first couple of touch points online, doesn't mean that's how they're going to convert at the bottom of the funnel. You know, people will pick up the phone and convert sort of offline. You know, one of the challenges I guess, is making sure that we're measuring those offline conversions as well to get a truly what is working, you know, how much sort of your return on adspend really is and then then sort of decisions off the back of that?
Flora 19:32
Does anyone remember when Unilever booked out all of Oxford Street to advertise magnums and there were queues down the road and you got a free Magnum and they decorated it for you and they had agreements with timeout magazine has something to do and I say that must have cost an absolute fortune. But how do you recognize that do you just look at total sales, so I thought that was
Tom Gatten 19:58
current to Karen's point, b2c advertising has been a lot more confident confident in submitting budgets for influence for a long time, Matt and Chris, you've both done both.
Chris Ponting 20:10
It's still a really hard part is probably the hardest part of the your investment is how much to invest in those kind of one off ideas that really deliver standout and differentiation. But in the
Tom Gatten 20:21
because they can be they can really fail as well, right? I mean, they can,
Chris Ponting 20:24
it's the riskiest part of the budget. So both being aligned with your brand vision and making it really seeing what you're about but also being mindful of the the amplification and the wider sort of positioning advantage. Maybe it gives you in the market, but Yeah, certainly it's the it's always going to be the hardest thing to to get a return on investment out of them, forecast it and deliver against it. And the easiest thing for the the FD not to sign off.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 20:50
I think like that point because it is tricky to get these things over the line. Sometimes if you've got to be confident and committed. You know, there's a reason that the b2c brands are investing so much in that and you know, I've had lots of tricky conversations in the past when when you come in into any sort of b2b business and there can be a sort of a habit when people will focus very much on cell activation. You know, when when we're planning our sort of tactics, you know, we've got to consider sales activation on brand building as well. You know, ultimately becoming well known in the space for something in becoming trusted will drive sales. And, you know, there can be this laser focus on we've got to do something to get stuff in the pipeline this quarter. And now, ultimately, that that can mean campaigns that are very short lived. And we don't really get the full benefit of if sort of diving in having a bit of courage and the conviction, building out the comms platform that we can sustain and, and start maximizing our investment by sort of occupying a defensible position becoming super familiar super trusted, a desired partner because that that will pipeline in the future and support lungs. It's not just what happens sort of.
Joel Bransfield 22:02
Well, I think you made a really good point around the online offline journey. And I've been in terms of a lot of b2b businesses. I've spoken to don't have a true CRM system don't track that MQL through to an SQL and then what the conversion rates are in between and understanding the values of the different channels. I think a lot of people talk about multi channel as well kind of everyone goes oh, well I'm on Instagram, I'm on paid I'm doing out of home for example. It's about understanding and turn that into an omni channel experience and knowing in the role of each one, multi channel and omni channel were very, very different things. Yeah.
Chris Ponting 22:37
I was gonna actually answer your first question, which was on what you both hate and love about b2b marketing. And for me, it's the complexity and what really differentiates it from b2c. So both in that the complexity of the product, the complexity of the user journey to engage and explain the product, and to the degree the complexity of the decision making within the business because there's more stakeholders and probably traditionally not set up as much to be consumer or audience first. And actually, I think once you start to get a lot of those things aligned, it makes the bigger ideas easy to get to get over the line, because you've you've sort of teed everyone up they know what we stand for what we're trying to do in the market and
Tom Gatten 23:19
I think b2c marketers find it easier to be audience first, find it easier to focus and think about their audiences or maybe in different ways.
Chris Ponting 23:27
I think probably they have been more traditionally in the businesses like if you're Coca Cola, for example, you've got a fairly clean, easy products. Everything has been about the audience first for a long period of time. So I think probably, naturally businesses are more simply sets up in that way. And there's just there's just more more to consider in b2b. I mean, obviously, it varies a lot, either the brand and the business we're talking about in each of their respective areas. But But yeah, just as a general rule, it's been a bit easier.
Tom Gatten 23:58
Is that really what does that really mean though, Chris? Oh, and if you would, if there is a difference in being audience first audience lead or being more informed about your audiences in consumer versus business. What's behind that?
Leanne Beavan 24:13
From my side, I did some market research with our customers last year and I asked about like the purchasing processes and like how they go about choosing software and it totally vary there was no like clear winner and how it was processed. Some people it was the finance team that had the final say others it was the IT manager or the CEO, but then there was also influences within that so that people actually using the tools had an influence. Some go through like tender processes and all sorts of different things. So it's very hard. It's key to just speak to your customers to find out if there is a trend within your group. Very,
Chris Ponting 24:54
for b2c First, some brands you can pretty much get together and look at awareness, spontaneous awareness and consideration as general markers and you monitor that throughout the year based on what your advertising budget and what you're doing
Tom Gatten 25:08
is that if you get a group of 1000 people and they say are you aware of this? What's your sentiment towards
Chris Ponting 25:14
tracker through quarterly and you're just looking at how it you know, and you know, pretty much that spontaneous awareness, for example, is very linked to how much you're selling. You know, there's, there's complexities to it as well, but that the simplicity of that relationship is easier, I think in some b2c brands. Do you think
Tom Gatten 25:32
maybe that Sorry, sorry.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 25:36
I think one of the big challenges like you know, every marketing officer should be championing the customer. You know, we should be listening to our customers much more about the practicalities around doing that difficult. You know, even when we consider sort of, okay, we could survey everybody. You know, we're still bound by response rates and ultimately bias that's going to exist there because people that are more likely to submit a survey response without a great experience or if they had a really bad experience. So we never get that full picture. It's also costly to do that sort of stuff. You know, one of the things I guess I've got a little bit of an advantage with this one because obviously worked for speech analytics company. So you know, we've been able to use one of our tools to start drilling into phone conversations. That's what we're all about. And just try and get that unfiltered insight, that stuff that people wouldn't necessarily want to say in a survey or say to your face if you were sitting down and try and tap into a much larger pool of insight than just the 100 or two people that are going to respond to a survey but I do think it's really tricky without sort of leveraging tech to get that.
Flora 26:42
That I mean, on my side when I've spoken with clients and are looking to segment and tailor their messaging to the audience that they're targeting they they've ended up talking to the sales team ago. How would you what are the pain points for legal what are their pain points for people who are maybe in the medical profession so Matt, that actually sounds like a really good way of doing that on a bigger scale?
Matt Mcguilicuddy 27:02
Yeah, like we actually had a really good example of this. It was a b2c client, actually. But they essentially were able to sort of monitor all of the phone conversations that they had that they could identify as sales calls. And sort of uncover some pretty unique pains really, that they weren't addressing in in the messaging so they will give the campaigns a little bit of an overhaul and you know, the results are pretty impressive to be fair, that you know, the the improve the conversion rate by nearly 60% and caught the CPA by a third just by making a tweak and go and actually never considered addressing this pain before. You know, so I think
Tom Gatten 27:39
you need something like that in b2b Partly perhaps because there's just fewer cert potential survey. You know, people who answer so because in consumer if you're selling even if you're selling like haircuts or something you could very easily go into your local area and survey 1000 People in b2b, you know, necessarily, there was obviously 7 billion people in the world or however many there are. And there's like 100 million companies so that there's orders of magnitude difference in the availability of survey respondents, I suppose. And also be b2b budgets. It's just lower. So
Matt Mcguilicuddy 28:14
totally. I think it's a much better algorithm to say, you know, okay, rather than doing this sort of periodically, once a year, or maybe once every three years, if you're lucky, and you've got a good FTE, that's going to let you go and spend the money doing that. Try and find a way to get that insight all the time. Just make it part of the culture, you know, use tools, use tack, develop that relationship with sales. You know, that's something that still amazes me sometimes that like sales and marketing like oil and water and some b2b businesses, that
Tom Gatten 28:42
is annoying that you'd have to rely on sales for that sort of insight but in a consumer world, that marketing team would be able to commission. Yeah, but you for the reasons we've discussed. I guess you do have to rely on sales, which is annoying.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 28:56
It is a bit but you know, we're all pulling in the same direction ultimately, aren't we even with like Customer Success teams? I think sometimes we can we can take a very siloed approach. But you know, we should be best mates with the CS department. We should be fascinated the sales department we should be getting that frontline feedback and making sure we're we're feeding back into improving what we're spending money on ultimately,
Flora 29:18
as a CSM, I very much agree.
Tom Gatten 29:21
It feels like maybe HubSpot would have been particularly good at this. I don't know. I mean, HubSpot was extremely sensitive to producing the right content for the audience, where they also are they also quite good at understanding the the audience and their emotional needs somehow in a lot of that sort of marketing you did was quite consumer like I think it wasn't, it wasn't it was very different from all the other b2b companies that I that I worked with.
Kieran Flanagan 29:52
Yeah, HubSpot. The initial the marketing team for HubSpot was we create careers, not software. And so we had a pretty specific purpose that was to help people not sell them software and I think that for the most part came through in a lot of the market we market and we did not to the point where we didn't try to sell you software. But we try to create value before we asked, you know, asked for something of you. I think that was really that's the shift in most b2b is like, it's just the value exchange where the value exchange used to be, hey, give me something your name or give me your address or you know, do a demo call and now I think the value is exchanged is, hey, we need to do something a value for you, whether that's freemium, whether that's content, whether that's something else and then we kind of earn or earn the exchange of information or whatever else it may be that we, we ask of you. I think that that for the most part is what HubSpot did differently.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 31:01
I do I really like that sort of principle by earning the right to sell. I think that's massively important. I think, I think that's become a lot more difficult sort of certainly over the last sort of five years is price has gone up, basically. Yeah, totally. You know, it still drives me mad, like, you know, there might be an e book that I'm interested in, I go and download it. And then two minutes later, my phone rings. And I'm like, guys hang on a minute. And a lot of the time as well, that the actual content that we get given by b2b brands can be a bit rubbish and I sort of go with this this kind of hasn't hooked me and it's not engaged me. It's not offered anything of any real value. So I think I think that's super important. I certainly champion do less stuff really, really well. And make sure that you're offering something that is super, rather than just thinking that volume is going to solve the problem.
Tom Gatten 31:48
I guess, Sarah, that is that is your role in you know, helping someone provide more value. Right, it's gonna be information value, but you know, that's it's obviously very expensive to put together something written by ft. Journalists, you know, a really well produced video full of highly useful information. But of course, you know, if the price is you get a company to sign up for something might be worth 200,000 pounds a year.
And what you're doing is a way for them these businesses to pay the price, I guess.
Sarah Mackenzie 32:18
Yeah, that's it. I mean, we have a very specific audience at the FT we are looking at, you know, C suite individuals and individuals of high net worth. So these individuals are are looking for content that's got a certain level of quality to it
Tom Gatten 32:38
and what we do prices even higher basically, then,
Sarah Mackenzie 32:42
is yes, but then we've tend to find that the brands that are working with us have high price points for their products. So which is why they're targeting that audience. You know, from a data perspective, we have very good data on our on our customer. Base, because we're so we've got a subscriber model. But the bit the great thing about that is that the targeting can be very, very specific in terms of sector and business businesses and also job title and preferences as well. But I think to a previous point, we do always have to have at the forefront of our minds that the audience are human beings and you know, you've got you can have Brilliant Metrics and brilliant data, but the data will only tell you part of the picture. And you can't tell you know, you can't tell when somebody laughs at your content or you know, feels an emotion about your content or remembers your content for for for a human reason. And it doesn't matter how senior your audience they are still sports fans and, you know, and parents and music lovers and so, I think that, you know, content is Is it is it really interesting because it has to it has to add value to your audience, but that doesn't always have to be a business value. And for b2b audiences, I think you know, I actually completely agree with the previous points on actually they're just an audience. It doesn't get b2b or b2c, it we're still talking to human beings. And we need to remember that when we're when we're creating that content, adding that value, I think
Matt Mcguilicuddy 34:29
that's really true sort of one one we're looking at sort of advertising to support you know, mid funnel sort of outreach and bottom funnel outreach as well. Like that. That key thing is like is this is this message helping one differentiate us against everybody else in the market into communicating customer value? I used to do a lot of work in the logistics sector and it used to drive me scattered that you'd go in on day one, and you'd be met with an MD was super proud of that big array of trucks on the homepage and on all the advertising aerials, and it's like, hang on a second, guys, isn't this core, you know, isn't it an expectation that if I'm going to be trusting you to deliver my products that you've got a beat, you
Tom Gatten 35:08
can physically move? And Laurie from here to there? Yeah,
Matt Mcguilicuddy 35:11
totally. You know, and I think I think it's important that when we consider the message in our advertising, we make sure that we're we're honing in on that sort of the key emotions and showing how we offer value by solving the most you know, the most painful pains
Joel Bransfield 35:31
you can take. Talk about taking learnings from b2c Like all you see from b2c Now is personalization. And like companies going the extra mile just like Coke did the whole thing with wrapping the cans a couple of years ago, and I guess from a b2c point of view, it's easy because the sales journey is a lot shorter. So you see that kind of almost like your real time, sort of return or return on investment, but in terms of thinking about things and how you can address change that whole customer experience and things are gonna like fuel in your market structure and everything by data, I guess the whole once you've got them there is the whole user experience side of things. When you were talking then around that middle photo bottom of funnel This is how do you then personalize that wherever that is just by putting someone's name on a piece, kind of outreach or anything like that, but you've got to take the learnings from the b2c side and kind of adapt that as well, because they're at the cutting edge.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 36:20
Yeah, and the thing I think that is a bit more of a challenge in b2b, isn't it? Generally speaking, just because the purchase cycle is much longer, especially if you're dealing with sort of big enterprise level deals, but that that for me that that's the Watch out, isn't it because it only takes one Batoche you know, over you know, 12 months, 18 months and all of the hard work that you put in at the front ends on dawn. And, again, I think I don't think people look past just like sort of, you know, personalization in the respect that it's a name, you know, it's like it's customized. It's stuff like that. I think we've got to go much deeper and show like a proper understanding about we solve the client's pain points. You know, and a lot of that comes down to the data that we've got an understanding, again, getting that feedback from sort of sales who are interacting with the client, and really understanding okay, this is how we now need to start spreading the message and as we move further down the funnel, to keep them engaged and keep showing that value. So, you know, obviously you can't do that for every, every prospect but you know, again, this is why the segmentation exercise is super important. And if we're going to use tactics like ABM, you know, having that that level insight is it's so necessary, otherwise you just can't leverage it. Leverage the tactic
Chris Ponting 37:35
properly. HDInsight is one of the areas as well you have to really justify investment in him is perhaps one of the easiest areas not to sign off as well but in the brands we've done it with recently, particularly in the b2b space, you get some really excellent insight. And I think a lot of b2b solutions are either trying to solve a problem or a pain point within a business that makes it easier and makes everything more efficient and effective or, of course driving commercial value in some way and actually, the more you understand how that sits for the sort of core key decision makers versus the C suite, and actually often they have slightly different ideas of the same problem and slightly different things that will engage them in that way. So the more you understand, take the time and investment to understand that the more you can hit the mark and a lot of your your broader investment activities. Yeah,
Tom Gatten 38:25
yeah, suppose you know what I was saying earlier about? There aren't as many survey respondents but of course, that's nonsense. Because if you know every person involved in the b2b decision is seen as an audience member in their own right. Yeah, it's just
Chris Ponting 38:37
and you do I think you just need a specialist agency with it as well to be fair, and work with different specialists in those areas. I've actually worked with one of Sarah's sister agencies to ft longitude are very good in that kind of area in terms of a they've got access to the audience via the FT but also they are not supposed to be a shout out but a great bit of work there and, Gareth, you've got access to that audience and understanding of the business and the right questions to ask and you can really get under the skin of pain points and organizations and the solutions you can provide and how to position your your your product.
Leanne Beavan 39:19
One thing we've done as well as our research is that if we've done a survey for existing customers or for face to face, one to ones we've also done it with clones or look alike customers like we've used the local company that go out and find people that aren't our current customers that could be an ask them the same questions and then also compare the to see if there's any trends. Likewise, see what also just see what their brand knowledge is, if they're aware of us, like I found out personally with some of us. Some of the clones weren't aware there was such a thing as a reseller. For software, they just go direct. They weren't aware of all the benefits. So then when it's like, oh, maybe we should push more on this sort of messaging going forward for prospects and yeah, I found it really valuable.
Tom Gatten 40:07
We talked a couple of times about budgets, I'd be really interested to know whether for yourselves or for the clients, you're working with the guys agencies, Chris, John, and Joe, whether you think this, you know, this year is going to be well, if not, I think we've just escaped a recession and we technically not in recession in the UK. So we've got another six months and then we might be again, obviously there's very mixed messages in the FT everyday Sarah, there's, you know, today it was very positive positive messages at Davos, as you know, Europe seems to avoid recession, etc. But it's very mixed at the moment, it's likely that a lot of the world will be in recession this year. But at the same time, this this chart that I shared with Karen, you and I were getting obsessed with the other day and some I've shared with some of you some some of the other guys, which shows the b2b digital advertising is growing super fast, like since 2019. It's gone from something like six to $14 billion and that's just in the US globally, it's more like $25 billion growing 20% year on year. There's very few other disciplines that are growing at that rate. But is that just because of COVID And will it go flat now? Or even into backwards or not? I don't know. What do you guys think do you think it's, I'd be really interested to know what your personal experiences are what you think other people are going to do?
Joe Edge 41:29
Yeah, I think I think from our perspective, we have seen a big growth but I think it's it's mainly down to actually being able to prove the value that the kind of the activity you're running is now having on the business so we talk about long lifetime cycles. I think actually, you know, never before we have a stronger view on data as part of our sales funnel. So if we think you know, if we go back, you look at your legacy businesses, about I think the business you just mentioned that you worked within, ensure that their sales was done from a spreadsheet or a scrap of paper. And this is roughly what we've got coming in these are the this is the order book and this is how it works. I think the pricing Terms of Use CRM systems, etc. They're a lot more accessible now to businesses. And because of a lot more accessible, we've got a lot we've got a much clearer view on the impact that our marketing activities having. I think it's always easier to request more budget to increase marketing spend within a more traditional space, if you can prove the value that it's having. And I think I think as marketers over the last couple of years with access to that data, we've been able to build up much, much stronger business cases, which therefore, within a b2b space rather than b2c Let's be honest, you've got to make a much much greater margin on your marketing activity. And logic should dictate it should be completely the other way around providing you can prove a strategy it's much easier to sell a one to underground contract to one member of society, then it might be to some 2000 products that were far more cost effective. So I think I think access to data as part of that sales pipeline has helped us identify the tactical approaches we need to take to be able to nurture that although to week, 10 week, six month process, but to be able to educate boards and key decision makers internally with foof rather than rather than theory is the big difference we've seen.
Tom Gatten 43:27
So although digital advertising gets a bad rap for attribution being hard, just saying once you've got the data and the CRM and marketing automation platform set up, it is actually possible. It's certainly a lot easier than I mean, in the olden days of just salespeople doing the reach outs themselves and keeping all the information on scrap of paper, as you say, Joe Yeah, impossible attribution totally impossible at that stage.
Joe Edge 43:49
I think it's trying to close that loop between a sales team and a marketing team. And actually, I think if you can close that loop, so you get feedback on the leads that are generated, the leads that come across that are potentially more qualified, actually we can then start to attribute greater value to the even some of the top of the funnel activity that we're doing for building our advocacy and brand loyalty early on within a process. Actually, our leads should be more qualified and we've educated our users as to what we offer and straight away. I think that's what we're seeing in terms of a lot of our client campaigns to where we're seeing a lot of success. At the moment is through using using data to better educator understand that full funnel, not just what's driving leads, what's driving a high quality, qualified lead. And
Tom Gatten 44:35
what about anyone else's perspective on what is what is changing the spend in digital advertising and its prospects and b2b digital advertising and its prospects for the future? There's
Chris Ponting 44:46
definitely an upward trajectory across our clients and I wouldn't say it was just linked to COVID. I think absolutely. The more you can prove it, and it is Harvard b2b, the more investment there'll be, I think, on a very general level, if you just look at the the turnover and profitability of a lot of large b2b companies and the investment currently in marketing, the ratio have been able to affect something here versus the you know, the end the end goal or the potential when it's logical that there is a sort of broader underinvestment and that that was trajectories in the right direction. I would just say, probably a bit different to b2c. There's a lot to do with your, your tech stack and your overall setup and how you join different areas of the business together. Your website, for example, is extremely important. Again, varying depending on different brands, but there's a bit more of an even investment between those areas and just pure marketing spend because especially with some brands because the pool is very small, there's only a there's probably less avenues you can effectively and efficiently target your audience. So how you really make the most of that and all the different elements of the journey is really key.
Tom Gatten 46:05
About Julianne has don't ask you explicitly whether your marketing budget is going up or down this year, but it's recession affecting you particularly Are you is that something that's going to change the way you mark it or make it less ambitious?
Leanne Beavan 46:20
Um, it has kind of the way our funds work that are kind of a bit strange. Like we have our own kind of set budget which has increased slightly because we've kind of put forward our core team of kind of sets a higher up management we need more money to like, make an effect and do what we want to do but then also with a lot of the vendors that I am promoting, they give us marketing funds as well. So it just varies and each of them have very different processes on how they allocate funding. You have the sunlight proof of what you've done, and then the ROI and everything. Some of them have massive budget pots other others have very, very small ones. So you've just it's just all about maximizing what we've got with those and trying to be clever and creative and like what's been said today like trying to do more with what value we can provide. I've been on some training recently and the key things from that training I went on just general marketing like cold email, it said value was key and personalization. Were like the two main things that kind of came out of that. And other thing as well. We're looking more into is using budget to buy data, as well as also looking at cleaning up our own existing data and also using the bought data to kind of tidy up our existing data. So I'd be interesting cards to see what how everyone finds the whole bought data side of things and how effective it is for everyone else and
Tom Gatten 47:55
basically lists of companies that might purchase a particular product.
Leanne Beavan 47:59
Yeah, we've just started using a company called Slin tail and you can search companies based on various criteria like technology they're using or location, all sorts of different criteria. So for instance, I could do a cross sell campaigns. So if I know people are using X software, and I want to promote why I can search for customers that are using or people that are using that software. Obviously not not every customer bought platform has massively the best data but it's just working out which ones like we've tried out a couple now and I think we're quite happy with the one that we've got at the moment. Because obviously the quality of the data is important and obviously since locked down I think there's a lot of people that keep shifting and moving companies so the quality of the data keeps changing a lot more rapidly than it did pre COVID as well. So yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, just going back to the budget. It varies, I think. But we've also just been caught up by an American company as well so we might have a bit more budget going forward. Which is handy. Yeah. But yeah, I think I think it's the ROI or like just knowing exactly what's, what the money is going to be spent on is kind of what our managers care about really and what value they don't want us to spend money on doing silly things like some of us, we've got like a proven track record or we've got research or other things that have proven that.
Tom Gatten 49:37
It's like do they kind of get the concept of branding and Matt was talking earlier about b2c companies have no problem signing off, brand and long term. brand development projects, but b2b companies sometimes do
Leanne Beavan 49:50
Yeah, I think yeah, I think it is the case really,
Tom Gatten 49:56
with some of your vendors, I guess they're so massive. Microsoft, Dell, you know, they're, they really understand brand and they
Leanne Beavan 50:03
Yeah, so some of our products, they kind of sell themselves, essentially, it's just promoting more the fact of why buy from us than direct or channels, where it's like some of the other products that we sell, they're very, very niche and like hardly anybody's heard of them or they're very new, they might be startups. So it's about helping them to build a brand and we're kind of there to support them and not just because we've already got the target in order space for them. So they're kind of using us in a way so
Tom Gatten 50:33
what do you think Sarah? Or even Joel or Chris or Joe like your your customers, Sarah, are you I mean, clearly being embedded in the ft. You're the person to answer this question. Do you think that there's going to be a big crunch in b2b advertising spend this year? And if so, will that recover? Or maybe not? Or what do you think?
Sarah Mackenzie 50:53
Honestly, we're not seeing a crunch right now. I think that what we are seeing is that there's there was a lot of kind of rash decision making in the last recession and and during COVID and almost our clients have learned from that and as as a result of sort of not making any rash quick decisions on when it comes to budgets. And instead, you know, that waiting for evidence why they shouldn't spend rather than waiting for, you know, a downturn in results. So I think we're at the moment we're not if I'm completely honest seeing differences in budgets, we're seeing definite caution in messaging when it when it comes to what they're putting out, but there's definitely not a there's not I wouldn't say there's increases on last year's budgets, but there's not decreases either. So perhaps it that you know that that graph isn't still continuing to climb but it is plateauing. And I And unless something significantly shifts, I can't see that it will, it will go down.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 52:00
I think that was a really interesting point about people being a bit more aware of like knee jerk response is not the right thing to do. Like I remember at the start of the pandemic, you know, the first thing I was doing was picking up the phone and going no, we have to carry on. You know, there are always going to be winners and losers we have to carry on. Otherwise we'll get left behind. And I think as marketers, we've all got a duty to do that and to remind people and going back to your point, Joe, like, you know that there is no excuse for not having a handle on measurement and not being able to join this stuff up. It's It's hard work. It's painful. A lot of the time it can be a change in process and a change in sort of mentality and culture when you go into a proper old school b2b business but you got to get eight because ultimately they're the metrics that are going to, you know, make the difference when it comes to I need x percent more budget or you know, no, you can't cut it by that much because otherwise we're not going to achieve x y Zed.
Sarah Mackenzie 52:59
But I think mostly what we're seeing is that brands have learned from that they've learned that you when you put some free spend on or you cut your marketing budgets, you have that short term financial gain, but long term it can be quite damaging. And actually if anything that the pandemic has helped marketers with that because we've now got that learning experience to say well you know what, when you down tools and didn't do anything, look at how damaging that was to your brand. So actually, it's really important that we don't repeat that cycle
Chris Ponting 53:34
that I was gonna say just as a proof point to that as well. We've got central team within Omnicom that look at the media market and do forecasts every year. And across b2c and the media market as a whole. Since the beginning of time almost. advertising spend has pretty much been correlated exactly with GDP and with how well the economy is. And the main what are the main sort of insights that's come out since the pandemic is that those two have decoupled? Both because of the level of disruption but also, exactly for the points that Matt and Sarah were just making that brands across the board have learned and have to be a bit more optimistic. We've had a long period of uncertainty and sort of potentially negative outlook. So you need to get on debt at some point.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 54:20
It's a tall order, though, like in fairness in it because you know what, this is why sales activation gets a lot more focus and then sort of long term brand building, I think, because what we're essentially asking people to do is take a bit of a leap of faith and go, do you know what all of this work that we're putting in and all of this resource that we're committing to this isn't going to make a difference this year? You know, it's a very long process two to five years, you know, really giving it some gusto to build a super strong brand. But I think this is what you've got to use the metrics that you're generating the positive results that you're generating from sort of more short term in quarter activities, to build up that confidence in to show that look, we've we're a good custodian of this budget. We know what the name of the game is, have a little bit more faith and when you get those quick wins, it becomes much easier to have them conversations where we go Do you know what we know? We're not going to get where we need to be, unless we keep pushing with this for for two to three years. But please have the faith to you know to keep committing the resource to it.
Tom Gatten 55:24
What do you think if if b2b digital ad spent does continue to increase? Maybe it plateaus for a year or something and then continues to grow in the way that b2c digital advertising did during the 2008 recession? That was a slight dip, but then it just continued even faster than before.
What skills and technologies do you think are just missing from b2b that will evolve or have to develop? And what skills do b2b marketers not have today that people in B to C digital advertising developed 10 years ago or whatever? I b2b Well, yeah.
Matt Mcguilicuddy 55:59
I think there's a lot of opportunity, certainly around sort of creative and sort of that that sort of creative thinking again, you know, you can spot a b2b and b2c ad a mile off, and I don't think that should be the case. You know, I think I think all of the same principles that we apply to coming up with b2c concept making sure they resonate, making sure they stand out. And I think that that could potentially be a shift that we only look at in house teams, and in house creative teams. You know, there's always been, there's a mold of that that sort of fits into and I think breaking the mold will be a key thing. Agency support and really sort of invested in the creative function in the business will be important. To cut through the noise because if you have to, if it's if it's more crowded, we've got to work much harder to stand out.
Joe Edge 56:51
Yeah, I think I'd agree with that. I think it's a personalization piece that we see across a b2c marketplace, but actually if we think about that buying process, there's been I think, again, there's probably been a big shift over the last five years, which is, you know, big decision making processes you make as a consumer, buying a call buying a house, etc, holidays, you probably spend more time researching that than you would a b2b partner, because I don't know about everybody else on the call, but it's not your money. So there's always an element where it's not a it's not a personal decision that you might take as seriously as you would do. If you're going through money. It's kind of coming out of your pocket.
Tom Gatten 57:28
You're just relying on someone else to have done the research or something.
Joe Edge 57:32
There's a bigger there's a bigger process there. It doesn't it doesn't necessarily stop with you, if you were the b2b Marketing Manager, but I think I think yeah, I completely agree with that. Design and personalization piece, moving forward will will be really invaluable. Otherwise, I mean, if you if you go on LinkedIn now, I bet you'd scroll through your feed and you'll be able to point out exactly the adverts Before looking at the sponsor tab. They're very, very obvious, and not necessarily part of your your kind of social media experience or a marketing experience. It's very pointed.
Tom Gatten 58:06
What do you think? So you obviously had you've worked for two companies with really big marketing budgets HubSpot, now Zapier massive upcoming very fast growing company things Zapier do do a lot more on LinkedIn and HubSpot do in terms of paid paid ads, but what are things that you kind of expect to see in b2b that you know in two years time, that's just not common today?
Kieran Flanagan 58:33
In two years time, like in general,
Tom Gatten 58:36
in b2b digital advertising in b2b, what are the things that maybe happens in b2c? Or maybe you just think it's gonna go in a different direction, but you just if the spend continues to increase? What do you expect b2b marketing to be like in two years time compared to what it is today?
Kieran Flanagan 58:50
Yeah, I'll give a I also have 130. So I can give a 32nd. And then I'll need to jump. Apologies. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the big thing is that most things will eventually go much more pop culture. I think Fintech is a really good example of a sector that has got more pop pop culture. If anyone spends any time online on Twitter and things like that. Fintech is actually one of the best places like most entertaining, fun, large influencers. And I think business is no different because Gen Z, millennials, they just engage with content in a very different way. They expect very different brands. And so I suspect a lot of b2b companies will have to get much better at creating content that plugs into internet culture and to create content that becomes much more part of the things that people enjoy consuming each and every day. And that, to me is like media. And I think media is going to be bundled in the same way education was the bundle. So that to me is the big thing I think we will see over the next couple of years. And I think we've kind of already seen in some ways.
Tom Gatten 59:59
All right, well, look I've read so much time. So thank you so much, everyone for being part of this. We really appreciate it. And we look forward to speaking to you
Kieran Flanagan 1:00:05
all very soon. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Bye,
Tom Gatten 1:00:09
guys. Bye. Thanks. So bye bye
Leanne Beavan 1:00:17
Record.
