Thought Leadership in B2B Marketing: Expert Insights & Strategies

This episode shares insights from digital marketing experts in various industries on strategies and challenges in leveraging platforms like LinkedIn, Meta, and Programmatic for B2B marketing. Key takeaways included the need for precise targeting, balancing brand and lead gen, multi-channel optimization, and solving attribution issues given long sales cycles. Perspectives highlighted contextual differences across verticals and buying groups, emphasizing the need to tailor approaches to thrive amidst rapidly evolving martech.

Guests

Jennifer Johnson, UK/I Marketing Manager at Deel.

James Alliband, Head of Marketing across EMEA for Carbon Black.

Transcript

Joaquin Dominguez - [00:00 - 00:44]
okay everyone, thank you so much for coming. Welcome to another episode of the Future of B2B Digital Marketing Podcast. Today we are with Jennifer and James. We will talk about thought leadership strategy for, for B2B marketing. So we will explore your unique insights and experiences in this field, we will start with a definition of thought leadership. Um, we will talk about your challenges in this topic and, and finally strategies to to overcome these challenges. So let's start with a quick round of introductions. Jennifer do you want to start.

James Alliband - [00:44 - 01:10]
Sure. Thanks, Joaquim, and thanks for having me. It's lovely to to join the podcast today with James a little bit about myself. I'm the marketing manager for the UK and Ireland at Deal, and I'm responsible for brand building and lead generation within that particular region by implementing or by building the strategy as well as implementing it.

Joaquin Dominguez - [01:10 - 01:45]
And thank you so much for having me on as well. And of course, honored to be joined and joining Jennifer today. Um, my name is James Aliban. So I'm the head of marketing for for carbon black across Europe, Middle East and Africa. And really what I do is elevate our brand and really, you know, naturally generate, um, the interest in the brand. But most importantly I think is really generate that point of view across the market and really help, you know, amplify that point of view that we have in the market to help differentiate us.

Joaquin Dominguez - [01:45 - 01:46]
Thank you. And Tom.

Tom Gatten - [01:46 - 02:01]
And my name is Tom Gatton, and I'm the chief executive of Adzact which is a new B2B ad platform that allows you to be extremely accurate in who you target and have access to decision makers wherever they are on the web.

Joaquin Dominguez - [02:01 - 02:33]
And I'm Joaquin Dominguez and I'm the head of marketing of Adzact, and we are hosting this podcast. Okay, so let's start, as I told you, with the definition of thought leadership so everyone can get an idea of what we are talking about today. Um, Jen, maybe if we start with you, um, you, we talk about that you are leveraging deals platform. So how do you integrate thought leadership into your marketing strategy?

James Alliband - [02:33 - 04:21]
So I'd say there's actually a lot of different definitions for thought leadership in B2B marketing. But for myself what it comes down to is helping people. It's not about selling necessarily or introducing the brand right away. And as a byproduct of helping people, you become an expert and authority in that industry. And kind of the key ingredients of how to do that would be sharing valuable insights, actions and helpful data. And essentially, you're helping people solve problems to make better decisions. And one example, actually, I've run into at a previous organization that I worked in, um, for developing a thought leadership piece was around how to develop kickass team members. And so I brought in a thought leader within that particular space and created a webinar around it. And actually, one of our clients ended up listening to the webinar and followed every single one of the five actionable steps in order to do that. And he actually saw his business thrive because of that, so much so that he opened a second location. And so that's one of the really cool for me pieces of thought leadership that was really powerful in order to change someone's business. And because of that first piece of thought leadership and that story behind it, we actually created a case study out of that particular client that we were also able to use to help other people expand and grow their businesses.

Joaquin Dominguez - [04:21 - 04:36]
Amazing. I'm interested to hear like what? What kind of kind of content? You mentioned webinars and also a case study. What kind of other pieces of content you create from a thought leadership?

James Alliband - [04:36 - 05:18]
Yeah. So I would say it really depends on your audience, but popular ones that I've worked on in the past that have worked are webinars just using data within your own organization that you are an expert in, and being able to share that really effectively and using that data in a number of different formats, whether that be in a graphic, whether that be in a live, in-person presentation webinar, just. ET cetera. Once you have that data, I think there's just so many different ways you can share that information, especially video nowadays is really popular.

Tom Gatten - [05:18 - 05:39]
We've been having having some conversations this morning about. Someone who works in a security company called Beyond Encryption Marketing Manager. They was saying that video for them is by far the most powerful channel. And a lot of their focus now goes into because just the amount of consumption, whenever they produce something in video format, it's significantly higher.

Joaquin Dominguez - [05:39 - 05:57]
Yeah, there is definitely a big trend around that. What about you, James? What's your view? Your view about thought leadership. Your business is changing. How? Thought leadership is is is helping you in this transition.

James Alliband - [05:57 - 07:46]
Now it's a it's a really good point. And for me thought leadership again I completely agree with what Jennifer said. It comes in all different shapes and sizes in many ways. But for me, um, you know, I think it's the trendsetters, the trailblazers, the people who are willing to put their neck on the line, have opinions and ultimately want to want to make change. Um, and when we look at that and we think about those kind of influencer marketing, if you will, that I really believe sits at the kind of top of thought leadership and people are willing to be vocal, elevate, change, say that maybe something we're doing right now needs to be done differently in a certain way to to accelerate growth or reduce risk, whatever it may be. Um, it really, you know, that that audience and gaining that following for me is is critical naturally. But when I look at like the definition of thought leadership and from from that point of view, you know, I look at maybe a good example is kind of the the change of the role of the CSO over, over a period of time and how, you know, the CSO is seen as almost like a a role that owns security, not necessarily a business leader, not necessarily a person that was in the business who had even held a budget at one point in time and only look over the last 5 to 10 years to see how that role has significantly changed through many, many channels of thought leadership, many channels of of influencers and businesses realizing, um, the impact that having somebody at the board who can talk and have a conversation about security somewhat, um, actually benefits the business. It is a huge impact to the business. James Alliband - [07:46 - 09:28]
Um, just from, you know, now we've got a different angle, we've got a different viewing point. And naturally, also, when you think about the communities that you know, of course, I have a, you know, much of an access to, um, see a lot of thought leaders in those in those markets. And of course, when I look at them from, you know, from my point of view as well, um, I look at, you know, again, a good example from my side is just how we we were fortunate a few weeks ago to sit around a table with 20 different CSOs, and we basically went through the day in the life of a ransomware attack, you know, very prevalent, very topical for people. And we gave them three options, which is go and find a technical solution. The ransomware attacks happen. You don't know the damage. You don't know anything that's happened. Um, so go and find a technical solution and report it to the regulatory bodies, or ring the CEO. And it was really interesting to see different responses. And you certainly saw that people had different responses depending on their kind of influence, what they wanted to do. But one thing that was really powerful was the power, the power of communication that came out of that particular conversation, because many people realized as we were going through the conversation that actually the first step should be to communicate in the business. Why wouldn't it be? Because if you're not communicating, you're not preparing every other side of the business. So again, that thought leadership in that particular scenario was a few people that are really willing to raise their voice and say, actually, I'm ringing the CEO. That's what I'm doing here. And, you know, of course, you can only imagine what you can do with that, with that particular strain of thought. James Alliband - [09:28 - 09:46]
There is that that's, you know, continuing to elevate that voice can ultimately help businesses, because I look at the negative consequences of not communicating with the with the business and then getting into the media organizations, not being prepared, etcetera, etcetera can happen very quickly. So we want to prepare our business.

Tom Gatten - [09:46 - 10:17]
Like the way it's interactive. And I'm sure that some of the best thought leadership content is interactive, even if that is engaging your prospects and the intended audience in the preparation of the document. Um, but you know, even better. In that case, you're actually wargaming with people. Their experience of your content is actually co-created by themselves and their reactions to it. So it's going to be an extremely rich I can imagine that was a very, very rich experience for those people. And they're learning a heck of a lot more than reading a white paper.

James Alliband - [10:17 - 10:50]
And for me as well. Like I came home with a notepad full of notes, which is incredible from that point of view. But absolutely, you know, like I and I think it's again, from kind of maybe from, from, from Jennifer and I's point of view, that's knowing our audience as well, which, you know, no doubt we'll talk to. But it's. I know that we were around 20, quite rightly opinionated business leaders. We want them to be. We want them to share opinions. So if we don't give them a voice and we don't let them co-create that with us, we kind of taking them on a journey, but not necessarily the journey they want to go on.

Tom Gatten - [10:50 - 12:49]
You really came across an interesting ranking of different orders of thought leadership that goes from from Edwin Abel, who's a very, very good B2B SaaS marketer based in, in the US now. But he is British and he wrote down first level is consumption, which is just consuming content, very sophisticated curation where you start to put together good articles, you know, and distribute them to your community, then obvious connections. So that is the level of, you know, saying no, here's someone saying this, I don't know, the age of the CRM is over. And then here's someone talking about marketing automation platforms and how is that going to change marketing automation platforms. And then this is the level at which I think it becomes thought leadership, where you start to create non-obvious connections because those are the ones that most people won't make. And then you know, where you're starting to actually summarize things and make them simpler for people. So say, drawing analogies between different fields of practice or. We'll just we'll just summarizing something, saying yes. You know, people think there's all this jargon about there's 3000 different ways of, you know, 3000 different acronyms. But actually here's a way of thinking about it that is not obvious, that you haven't heard before, that has actually been created by the writer. And then the fifth level is category creation, which I suppose is the most expensive, most difficult thing to do because you're you're starting with zero SEO, where nobody is searching for this thing at all, and you have to draw people in through non-obvious, interesting connections. I'm doing a, um, some someone I know through actually the podcast their son is applying to Oxford to do the degree that I did, and I'm speaking with him this afternoon to talk about the interview. Tom Gatten - [12:49 - 13:41]
And this is precisely what that there's a trick to Oxford and Cambridge interviews, which is purely finding the non-obvious connection. They'll give you a chart of you know, lung cancer cases over the years and kind of spikes upwards. And the A level answer is to say, oh, well, that's because, you know, more people are smoking over time. And therefore but the non-obvious answer is, well, they're just diagnosing it because they're more aware of the past. People just died. And then there's obviously other layers of sophistication. So if you can go up the levels, it just shows your more intelligent to the interviewer, I suppose. And it's a bit similar with thought leadership in that if you are drawing obvious conclusions, not very useful to your audience. But if you're starting to summarize things and make things simpler, you're demonstrating that you're able to, you know, demonstrating a higher level of thought that's much more useful to people.

James Alliband - [13:41 - 14:21]
I absolutely agree with that. And I think it's, um, I think the I kind of mentioned it earlier, the willingness to the willingness for change or the willingness to put your neck on the line and have a, have a, have an opinion in that sense, you know, have an opinion. And that's where, you know, we look, I think with any with any B2B marketing. And the categoryrecreation, by the way, is rarely achieved, rarely achieved. Um, you know, as you know, but that configuration, you have to put your neck on the line, you have to have willingness for change, and you have to take people on that journey. If you're ever going to achieve a category creation, if you don't do any of those fundamental points, you just don't get there.

Tom Gatten - [14:21 - 14:40]
Yeah. And generally it is a often it can be a really stupid thing to try and do, to try and create a category. And lots of people come into this thinking that they want to create a category. And actually the right thing to do is to piggyback on trends that will make life easier for you. But yeah. Because it is so hard.

Joaquin Dominguez - [14:40 - 15:11]
Yeah. And I think the chalenge is, is how, how you make people talk about what they are experts in and not pretend that they know about something and write about something because it's a trendy topic, I don't know, AI. Everyone wants to be a category leader today because it's trendy, but at the end they don't know anything about it. And you can notice that very easily. Unless that I don't know, it's a CTO talking about AI. Yeah, that it makes a difference, I think.

James Alliband - [15:11 - 16:09]
Yeah. Just to add to that, I really like there's a framework with four pillars for assessing kind of thought leadership. And it is along the lines of is that person like credible. For example, like as you mentioned earlier, like they create original material, they are of a certain like profile working for a big company or have a big title. And do they have that kind of celebrity in like a topic area. And then it's kind of followed by more of like their thoughts. So how prolific is their content? Is it in multiple forms, long form, short form in multiple channels? And then finally, like the depth of your ideas, like as you were saying, Thomas, like, are they pioneering like new methods or, and or like redefining like concepts with, for example, like metaphors, similes, etcetera. Yeah.

Joaquin Dominguez - [16:09 - 16:45]
We've talked a lot about employee advocacy in, in, in our podcast. And, and I think it's so powerful. We had someone from BCG saying to us like it is like seven times more likely for someone to read a piece of paper or whatever, a document, if it's written by by an employee instead of the corporate report, and it's because you are sharing your opinion with your own voice. As you mentioned, drawing analysis analogies. ET cetera.

James Alliband - [16:45 - 18:04]
Yeah, I agree with that. And I always I look at it in the sense, especially from a piece of content point of view. And we have, you know, naturally many organizations have like employee advocacy channels and many different ways that their, their employees can, can, can obviously gain share of voice. But I look at it as well from kind of two elements. Is is first and foremost, how willing is that employee to put their neck on the line for for you. And you know, and it's if you're writing content that they don't necessarily believe in or don't necessarily see as stuff that they can get behind, they're probably not going to share it on their own personal LinkedIn because they don't feel like it resonates with them. But if they do resonate with it and they get behind that brand and what you're doing, your point of view and ultimately what you're talking about, then. From a kind of technical perspective. They also become a thought leader in their own right, even though they're only really sharing your content. They're really getting behind it. It's the same with customers. I always say with customers as well, like the customer's voice is powerful, and if you can get a customer to share your point of view on behalf of you, it's so powerful. They're the thought leader that's really recreating your your work, but it's from a more powerful voice than maybe yours is at that particular moment for many different reasons.

Joaquin Dominguez - [18:04 - 18:40]
Well, we will dive in into the techniques and best practices in a minute. Let's talk about the challenges in thought leadership. Jenn you you are transitioning your focus to a broader enterprise, right? In the past you used to to to target CEOs more specifically now a bit broader. Tell us a little bit a little bit about this this challenge around your shift in your audience and how you are navigating this shift with thought leadership.

James Alliband - [18:40 - 20:42]
For sure. I'm not really want to dub it as a challenge. I'd rather if I'd always change the word challenge to opportunity, if I'm ever looking at something of that nature. And historically my background was more enterprise level. So that is something I also have experience in at Dell. Specifically, it originated marketing or its target audience was SMB, as the solution was for that type of persona. And over time, as the solution grew, as most SaaS solutions do, do they grow more robust and are able to accommodate more needs from clients who have more needs of that kind of nature? And with that, obviously the strategy behind the thought leadership needs to change because the buyer journey changes. For example, between like an SMB, like co-founder or CEO of a 1 to 50 person company, their buyer journey will look very different from an enterprise level organization that has over 2000 employees. And so it's important to really take into consideration what is that person, or what are those influencers and people involved in the decision making process? What do they need at each stage in their awareness, consideration and decision making? And so that's something that I've worked on in the past in organizations as I am currently as well, and I quite enjoy it. It allows me to be very creative and brings just like new opportunities, and I can do things in a different way within my marketing to make sure it's valuable and being well received.

Joaquin Dominguez - [20:42 - 20:51]
And what what what kind of specific strategies did you find most effective in in engaging with this new audience?

James Alliband - [20:51 - 21:58]
Yeah. So I think in general, like short form content, especially over the past, like seven years of being in B2B SaaS marketing, we've seen definitely a shift within B2B from being kind of a stuffy brands to really shifting and learning from B2C consumer trends. And so now within that part of marketing, like we use more video. We use essentially also like data from within our company. So for example, we have a lot of hiring trend information at deal just due to the nature of the business. And so we're able to share and articulate that and I myself. So our organization might produce a global report for that. But then I'll be able to go back into the data in the database and really distill it for the UK and Ireland audience, and then be able to share that in a number of different formats that work for our different audiences.

Joaquin Dominguez - [21:58 - 22:18]
Interesting. And James, you are repositioning carbon black in the market after a period of of minimal marketing. Is that correct? Um, I think that was a huge task, right? Um, so can you delve in this experience?

James Alliband - [22:18 - 24:07]
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, carbon like kind of everything is public knowledge in many ways. So Carbon Black was acquired in 2019. And naturally with many acquisitions, especially of an acquisition of the size by VMware. Um, they have their own core marketing function, core capabilities. And naturally the company kind of gets implemented into those. But of course, like many industries, um, not all technology looks the same. And and we can't you know, I certainly and I'm very passionate about this is certainly, um, feel very strongly about it when it comes to cyber security as well. And that's certainly not to say that any marketer can't put their hand to it. But I do think it takes a, you know, a certain level of, of experience understanding in certain verticals within, within technology, um, to really understand your, you know, very much to, to what Jennifer was talking about, understand your buyer's market, your decision making process, the influencers to those decision making processes and what what resonates, what's what really what's the global, um, what what's the global kind of landscape looking like at this moment in time? And why is why is the relevance there when you put all that together and, and, and you know, openly I think, um, carbon Black's you know, naturally carbon Black wasn't a business anymore. It became a product. So you lose that that kind of brand as such because the brand now was VMware and you've fallen to VMware security. And over a period of time, you know, I think there was a clear, acceptance and understanding that maybe the best way to get the most out of this company was actually for it to have its own marketing function. And that's for carbon black to have its own marketing function. James Alliband - [24:07 - 24:51]
So that happened this year. Um, here I am taking over Europe and Middle East. Um, and that that has been it's been again, I don't look at it as a challenge. I look at it as an opportunity. You know, I look at it in the sense that I've got probably one of the biggest startups that I'm working with, um, with a lot of resource and opportunity behind me to be able to go and reposition a company. And I only look at, you know, the, the smallest of startups trying to reposition or trying to position themselves in the first place. And that's the challenge. You know, from my point of view, I've got brand awareness. I've got a love for the brand. I've got many, many customers I can lean upon. Um, so I see all opportunity there.

Tom Gatten - [24:51 - 25:22]
But what are you what are you thinking about doing differently in terms of thought leadership going forward? Like how would you like to present this brand in comparison to either how it was, how it was been going over the last five years or how other people in your market? We did a we did a podcast episode all about cybersecurity marketing and spent quite a lot of time talking about the cliches in cybersecurity marketing. But people in balaclavas, the fear based stuff. What would happen if this happened tomorrow? Sort of marketing. How's how's your yeah. How are you thinking about your thought leadership? Yeah.

James Alliband - [25:22 - 27:02]
The fear marketing that certainly sits within within cybersecurity. It's certainly an interesting tactic to utilize, I think I think that and it's a really good point as well, Tom, in the sense of like in four years, a lot changes, like an awful amount changes in the market and also as well that the market that we're, we're developing solutions for has also changed. And the way that we, you know, allocate our resources, the problems that we're looking to solve and the use cases are aligning to certainly change as well. So when I look back to four years ago, five, six years ago, I'm really looking at the kind of core foundations to what positioned us and got that brand affection, that love, why we had, you know, nearly 20,000 customers using our solution globally. And you look at that and you say, well, there's clearly things there which haven't changed because there's core principles to why an organization to see. So head of security put their neck on the line and gain budget to buy carbon black because they knew that solution was going to solve particular problems. And they're still a customer today. So they clearly still see that today and still see what, you know, there's a real major benefit, but naturally you need to update that message and you need to start to you start you have to start to test first and foremost. So first, the first thing I did was go out and interview customers and just speak to customers and start to really understand why are you still, you know, very basic questions, but like, why are you still a customer? What's the one? Thing you see from us that you don't see from anybody else in the market. And if there's anything you could, you know, you wish we said what was the what's the thing that you wish that really basic questions. James Alliband - [27:02 - 28:12]
But you start to get that that data in your back pocket to say okay there's like clear consistent lines here that I'm hearing from, from our customers. And, and you start to look at that from a message point of view as well. I think also you have to it goes back to the kind of definition of thought leadership earlier, which again is you have to have that point of view. You have to look at something that's opinionated and different. So one thing that we did as an organization is sat down in the room as you do and go through a messaging exercise, as every organization does from time to time, but really looked at what, you know, why are we different? Why do we why are we still in existence and, and really kind of put our necks on the line a little bit like be vulnerable in those rooms as well? Have opinions because, you know, some of the opinions you'll get from the organization may be be different when you become more vulnerable. And so, you know, kind of where I'm all going with this is you have to take a multitude of different angles to how you're going to reposition yourself back into the market in so many ways, from customer data, your own data, and then that kind of gut wrenching opinion as well. And that's that's.

Tom Gatten - [28:12 - 29:15]
What makes people pay attention in a conversation. You know, if you've known someone a long time, you're getting a bit bored of them and they come out with a new opinion. You're going to, you know, a strong opinion. You pay attention to them. Or if there's a group of people, the person that's most interesting is generally the person that has. Not necessarily. Well, a surprising opinion if not a controversial opinion. And the most boring conversation you could have is just repeating things that someone has just said. And it's probably the same in thought leadership. It's like if you're coming out as carbon black, having been, you know, you need to represent yourself as the future. You need to have an opinion that is that is different. And and actually, it's okay if some of your audience disagree with that opinion yeah, I think that's why your strategy about sharing global a global report but with local data. Um, so going back to the data re sharing that report with your own or with your local thoughts, I think it's effective. Right. Yeah.

James Alliband - [29:15 - 29:59]
And one interesting stat that LinkedIn actually released, just kind of on the flip side is they stated that most decision makers say that less than half of the thought leadership they consume gives them valuable insights. So that's huge. And then when asked why this thought leadership fails to connect 46% of his to focused on selling, 40% said it was unoriginal or lacked new ideas, which we touched on earlier, and then 31% said it was authored by non-experts and 31% said it was too corporate. So I think there's a lot of what not to do when it comes to thought leadership as well.

Joaquin Dominguez - [29:59 - 30:09]
Sure, I agree. Yeah, yeah, we've seen that selfie kind of videos talking about a certain topic are the ones that perform the best in social media.

Tom Gatten - [30:09 - 30:11]
Whether it's.

Joaquin Dominguez - [30:11 - 30:12]
Organic or it's very.

Tom Gatten - [30:12 - 30:28]
Easy for a human being, I think to look at the selfie video and make a quick judgment about whether this person actually knows what they're talking about, whereas in an article, it probably takes you until paragraph three before you realize this person doesn't know what they're doing, which is a big waste after one.

James Alliband - [30:28 - 30:36]
One minute, actually. One minute. Yeah. All it takes for someone to decide if it's if it's worthy thought leadership or not. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Gatten - [30:36 - 31:07]
And I think I'm sorry to talk about AI when I'm not an expert about AI Joaquin, but I'm sure this is going to get, I think probably, you know, like most writing in general, ChatGPT and other large language models will produce mostly not very good writing, not making non-obvious connections, not speaking at a high level. Until people work out how to actually, you know, I mean, sometimes it does come up with very interesting, non-obvious things, but you really have to work at it sometimes.

Tom Gatten - [31:07 - 31:10]
And I agree with you there stuff.

Tom Gatten - [31:10 - 31:10]
Yeah.

James Alliband - [31:10 - 32:20]
Yeah. It's the willingness to it's the willingness of speed versus accuracy and expertise. And I think, you know, we could go down a rabbit hole with AI, but, you know, there's an element to acceptance that we have to accept AI in our careers and in our, our business lines. But you certainly can see the people who have used it to write content, just continuous content, and be very quick at doing that. And you look at it and go, okay, wow, there's a lot of content 50,000 foot in the air. It's great just for content sake, but is it really expertise? Is it really, again, people, you know, within that minute, I guess, as Jennifer said, for me, I'm looking for that gut, gut wrenching opinion when I read a piece of content like, you know, within that minute, I want that AI is not going to give me a gut wrenching opinion, because that comes from the heart. It comes from your gut in that sense. And, you know, you read so many pieces of content that just doesn't have that real starking opinion that's right in front of you. And you go, wow, like this person. Yeah, yeah. They really they really know this. They really got this.

Tom Gatten - [32:20 - 33:36]
Yeah. There is some there is some sort of disintegration that happens with conversation about a topic over time, you know, whether it's ABM or or whatever, just from the fact that a lot of, a lot of writing is self-referential, referential, referencing other things that are being written about it. And, you know, in the beginning it might be super interesting, a new concept. People can, you know, there's an SEO thing that people can actually focus on. You see an increasing amount of writing about it, and lots of the writing is new. And then past a certain point, if you're writing about a topic, everything is referring to something else. There's very little new that's there, and the quality drops off quite rapidly. And of course, a large language models are trained on what's already there, so are likely, unless you really work on them, to be on the tail end of most conversations. So there's just entropy that sets in in any topic or any. I keep talking about that for some reason, but I don't know, even I ChatGPT or whatever. There will be a point at which you know, all the conversation is very, very boring. It's all just referring to what else has been been written, unless obviously the the field evolves. So yeah, staying on the front of that curve is important.

Joaquin Dominguez - [33:36 - 34:08]
Yeah. James, I wanted to ask you because you mentioned something about the importance of getting ideas from from your team, right. We've been talking about the importance of bringing the expertise from your team to create good thought leadership programs. So what kind of attributes do you look in your team to drive a good thought leadership strategy, or what kind of techniques you use to foster a culture of innovation.

James Alliband - [34:08 - 35:52]
I think first and foremost, it's and this is important for any marketer, but certainly something I've always looked at is the and and Jennifer has mentioned a couple of times around creativity. It's their willingness and want for creativity. So we all have um corporate messaging guides and messaging blocks and etcetera, etcetera. But we have to allow our teams to have, um, opinions and be creative and test messaging. Um, if we don't do that, we never adapt, grow and, and refine that messaging and find certain messages that work. And, you know, a really good example I certainly had at a previous company was a product marketer came to me and said, I've got this. Really, I've had this idea, just really simple idea about a new kind of pitch that we could do at the start of our deck, and I really want to test it. I said, go ahead, do it. Like, just do it like use a pick a couple of people out of sales, look at a few conversations, speak to a few customers. And that actually ended up becoming the kind of spearhead of our corporate pitch deck at that point over a period of time because, um, you know, fundamentally and it wasn't necessarily me enabling, it was the allowing the creativity and the ideas and then the ability to go and test it. But you need buy in, not just from me. That's a business buying. That's a buy in from the sales team. That's a buy in from sometimes the CEO, that's a buy in from any go to market function, sales enablement, etcetera, etcetera. Everyone has to have that buy in to creativity. Um, and I and I don't just look at that within marketing. I also look at that within sales as well. James Alliband - [35:52 - 36:39]
And you look at, you know, sales teams should be marketers in some capacity or salespeople should, I say should be marketers in some capacity. And whether they think of themselves as or not, they should be. And I really like watching, you know, certain salespeople who get creative with messages, get creative with content, get creative with things, um, find data. This is the one thing that I think is so simple but so powerful, like, oh, I've got this message and I know this customer has, um, has improved their ROI over three years as an example, 60%. I'm going to blend that message into my pitch. And it's a really simple thing that you can do, which, you know, okay, we've just given you customer data and.

Tom Gatten - [36:39 - 37:56]
It's really rare, obviously, in general, that purity of thought, that creativity with a little group of people that come together to create a new message or a new concept, and it is there's a reason for that. Of course, it's dangerous. If you have your, you know, there is risk. There's obviously sales salespeople being creative. Sometimes the customer success people might not be or the implementation people might not be be super happy with that. But when it yeah, when it when it works, that's great because you create something new. If you can find people with passion, it can really drive you like. I mean, like Joaquin. Not to get too personal here, but, you know, Joaquin with his podcast. You know, it's such a a passion coming from a very different industry, the wine industry. But because you had a lot of passion about bringing these people together, it's made everything. All the other obstacles have fallen away because I think people felt that your passion for for putting it together. So yeah, there are these occasions where you have a group of people within your team that you can tell have enough passion about something, that it stands a pretty high chance of working, even if it's not perfect, because it's going to be on the front edge of something. They're not just copying something that's come before because no one's passionate about that.

James Alliband - [37:56 - 38:13]
I agree with you, Thomas. And I think the first time you try anything, it's not going to be the the best. So I think, um, yeah. As James mentioned too, it's always as a marketer, you're always testing, monitoring and then optimizing to see what what works best.

James Alliband - [38:13 - 39:11]
And it's the all I was going to add is kind of the, the one, the one a few men kind of unteachable skills, if you will, his passion and drive. And you can't necessarily teach that to somebody. You've got to, you know, certainly enable but can't necessarily teach. And I think if you if you have a forum where people have that within a business, there's really powerful things that can happen. And I think we all, you know, will accept that bigger companies or companies that grow, it can slow down over time, naturally. Um, but, you know, again, I've seen some really big companies that allow that forum of creativity ideas and some of the best ideas that I certainly look at and go, wow, like they're again, they're trailblazers. They're influencers and and thought leaders in a in a space. For me personally, when I look at it and go, you know, wow. Like their their ideas, their are really cutting edge and edgy and risky. Um, but.

Tom Gatten - [39:11 - 39:29]
That's when it stops being content, right? Which of course is a pejorative term. And, you know, lots of ways it's sort of filler. You know, the word content is really depressing and it starts becoming actually something more like media, something more interesting, something that's well thought leadership. Yeah.

Joaquin Dominguez - [39:29 - 40:34]
Yeah, I think you need to start with from the assumption that everyone is doing what they like to do, whatever. If it's marketing or sales or customer success, they like what they do. So when when you then you need to to work on remove the barriers so they can share their knowledge. And and one of that is I think you mentioned that James is the fear of, of saying something that that is not great. And there are different, different techniques to to do that. I studied this in, in, in my masters. One is for example, um, talking everything in negative, let's say, what are the worst examples that you could do to, to, to improve this. And people, they don't care. So they can, they can say whatever they want. And then you translate that to the to, to, to, to the positive way or what a superhero would do in, in my situation. So they, they remove immediately. All this is about.

Tom Gatten - [40:34 - 40:52]
Getting the experts to speak, which is often a problem, right? The people that are most willing to speak are often the people that actually have least to say. So if you find the people in your organization who are the genuine experts and then somehow manage to unblock them so they can actually, you know, provide that insight. Yeah.

Joaquin Dominguez - [40:52 - 41:13]
Yeah, yeah. And it's not easy if you want to help, I don't know the product managers how to improve the of course they are better in what they do than, than you. So giving them advice or ideas is not easy. But if you do it in in a friendly way, I don't know, becomes easier, I think, yeah.

James Alliband - [41:13 - 42:43]
This is my, my, my first tenure at Carbon Black. But we did a, um, a it became a podcast video series, but it really just started from a series of blogs, which was a day in the life of an engineer. And it's kind of like really kind of mundane, like many people have done it. But what we did is we really dug into, um, what their life was and the particular problems they were focusing on. So and what we were really trying to do there is just bring our customers really close to where the sausage is made, if you will like, really bring it close, but remove some barriers, remove like and start to not just talk about the positive things, not just talk about, oh, you know, this is what I do and it's really good. And I do this like really talk about challenges, talk about, you know, oh I was doing this. And then a cyber attack happened globally. And I had to reposition my focus is and looking at like actually, um, peeling back how complex that job is. And there's natural benefits both ways because you create this real openness as an organization, but you also create empathy because when that support ticket comes in and people are like, why is my problem not fixed, blah, blah, blah, and you've taken a back the curtain and you've really given a life into, okay, what it's really like there's a bit of empathy of actually. Yeah, like there was a big cyber attack last week. So I understand why you may have not been able to respond to this, this support ticket. So we certainly found we certainly found customers who responded to that blog series with more empathy. I can't remember the exact it was a few years ago. James Alliband - [42:43 - 42:51]
I can't remember the exact data, but there was certainly I certainly do remember the the empathy factor was heightened. And because you've taken a bath.

Tom Gatten - [42:51 - 43:25]
That's really interesting, I'm sure. I mean, remember like teachers at school that felt sometimes like they were working stuff out alongside you or often the very best teachers. And I think also a lot of lot of thought leadership is very preachy and preachy. Stuff is super boring. Like if you can actually try and start to talk about, yeah, we're trying to work out some of this stuff too, and we're on a journey as well, and this is what we know. And actually, this stuff is, you know, people I'm sure will listen to you better and will therefore learn from you better.

James Alliband - [43:25 - 44:29]
Because then, you know, on that note, Tom, there's a sales leader, an influencer in my career who turned around to me and said, and kind of really brought it back to simplest form. And he said, for me, as a sales leader, there's two kinds of buyers. There's the buyers that follow the status quo, and they go for safe spaces. So you may be buying like the biggest brand in a particular industry or whatever. And then there's the buyers that want to go on a journey. There's the buyers that go and buy the startup that nobody has within their vertical, and they can't go and speak to any other CSO in cybersecurity and say, you know, and they're, you know, when you look at many start ups like those are that's your buying market, of course. But, um, you know, I look at, as you just said, like many people want to go on that journey with you. They want to figure it out together. They want to be part of your customer advisory board, whatever it might be. And again, they're thought leaders for you. And you look when you really bring it back, it's they're powerful. You put it into the voice etcetera, etcetera. But yeah, that was one thing that always resonated with me is like, there's really just two. To buyers. That's all there is.

Tom Gatten - [44:29 - 44:31]
Yeah.

James Alliband - [44:31 - 45:13]
And I think that really speaks to how important it is for brands to be vulnerable as well. So for example, in past presentations or speaker presentations will present like what went wrong on the journey of like X company and how did they get to their their future state. And so I think no one really learns when everything goes perfectly right. But people learn when something goes wrong and how like that organization, for example, pivoted or changed. But you can really use those in your own business as well, so you don't repeat them.

Joaquin Dominguez - [45:13 - 45:26]
What about the the content creation process in your roleo Jen? Because of course it's super important. And so how do you do you develop content that resonates with with your audience?

James Alliband - [45:26 - 46:21]
Yeah, that's a good question. Again, it goes back to like what is valuable and what will prospects find useful, helpful or insightful. So it really depends on for example for 2024. Like what trends are we seeing. What obstacles do we feel like our customers will be having? One thing I like to do is I like to talk to team members that are in contact with prospects like day in and day out, and really get a feeling for what's happening with prospects today. And are their business priorities changing or staying the same. And so I can get a really immediate and kind of real time understanding of what content needs to be produced today for those business leaders tomorrow.

Joaquin Dominguez - [46:21 - 47:24]
That's a great idea. Today was having a conversation with someone from a thought leadership agency, actually. And and she mentioned that when they were planning thought leadership for their clients, they were using secondary research. Then they were incorporating primary research as long as the project goes and. She mentioned something similar of what you mentioned, which is taking insights like, you don't need to wait until the primary research is completed to start bringing those insights into into your into your thought leadership program. And sometimes you can. You can use, for example, surveys on social media, as well as surveys that are very well implemented and more formal. So experimentation, I think it's it's really interesting to, to to have like real life examples all the time and that resonate with, with your audience.

Tom Gatten - [47:24 - 47:43]
Yeah, you can let the audience be grown ups and judge for themselves. And they weren't always immediately implement everything you say. So if you say this is what we found using this method, it doesn't necessarily have to say this is the truth. It's just here's a data point and there are others.

James Alliband - [47:43 - 48:06]
This is what people or your peers are finding within this industry is really helpful. I find for for prospects, because they often want to feel like they're not alone going through a lot of their journeys. And so how can you help them kind of build their community and knowledge base, essentially?

Joaquin Dominguez - [48:06 - 48:37]
Feeling of not being alone, I think, is many people value that. Last week we had two, two marketers that were using a stack adapt and and because they were talking at the same episode, oh yes, I'm using that. I'm solving that problem in this way, or I'm also solving that problem in that way. And they thought, oh yes, I don't feel alone now. I'm not the only one that is experimenting with this. And yeah, that that gives a a feeling of relief, I think.

Tom Gatten - [48:37 - 49:05]
Yeah, we've, we've just done a report on the most experienced, you know what what are the most experienced LinkedIn advertisers do with their ad creative on LinkedIn. So they're not we're not necessarily saying that these are the best performing ads because we can't know that from the outside. But just showing that people that do it a lot do it like this, and people that are just starting out tend to do it like that, allows people to draw their own conclusions about what's going to be most successful for them.

Joaquin Dominguez - [49:05 - 49:19]
All right. We are coming to an end. I would like to give you, if you want some time to, to reflect on what you have learned today and if you want to share your thoughts. James Alliband - [49:19 - 49:19]
James Alliband - [49:19 - 50:48]
I think I just wanted to touch on as well. Um, the impacts of storytelling. And for me personally, when I was just starting out in my career, one of my supervisors once told me that in marketing, you're in the business of creating memories, which was a super powerful quote that's actually stayed with me my entire career. And it's one of the reasons why I'm still in marketing today. And so I feel like with that in mind, thought leadership is a lot of the time about creating memories and within that context. And so I think as a marketer, we're we are storytellers and always trying to share the best value with our prospects. So that they can really grow their business or make whatever improvements that they need to to see. And so with that said, um, yeah, I just wanted to say that thought leadership really, it's not just like a fad. It's definitely here to stay and growing within the industry. And I love that it's always changing as well from one minute to the next. And we're only going to see it as something more prolific over time. And yeah, I think that's about it. But I wanted to say thank you so much for having me today.

Joaquin Dominguez - [50:48 - 50:48]
James Alliband - [50:48 - 52:00]
For me. Complex situations, issues. Scenarios can be told in just the most simplest of ways, and I think in certain in certain industries. And I can I can spend a very long time in cybersecurity. So I can certainly talk on it from there is um, for me, we have to remember that and we have to tell stories which are simple and not complex for overly complex ways. And we don't make ourselves sound more intelligent just because they sound more complex. And, and that's, that's something that I, I feel, you know, not only extremely passionate about, but something I think we really have to we have to keep in mind and, and even when we, you know, put the most, um, of smartest person in the business, the biggest of expert in front of people, we can we can certainly bring our conversations down a level and, and really help those resonate to a, to a wider audience. Because, you know, I always say, and maybe I'm slightly biased here because I have to do it every night, but we all love we all love children's books from now and again. You know, a a children's book is is fun and engaging and slightly, slightly naive in certain ways. And and that.

Tom Gatten - [52:00 - 52:01]
Repetition.

James Alliband - [52:01 - 52:02]
Repetition.

Tom Gatten - [52:02 - 52:17]
Yeah, we all we all need to get comfortable with in marketing is that you need to like a children's book, repeat the same phrase, the same concept, 50 different times in different ways before your audience has a chance of it actually sinking in because.

Tom Gatten - [52:17 - 52:20]
To them, you are one of the things they're doing today.

James Alliband - [52:20 - 52:35]
Absolutely. Among many, many different things. Yeah. And of course, you know, thank you for having me again on the podcast. It's, uh, you know, a real privilege to be invited every time. So, yeah, a huge a huge honor.

Joaquin Dominguez - [52:35 - 52:46]
Yeah. And we would love to have you again and again. So thank you so much, Jan and James. Tom was a great conversation. So see you soon.

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