Content Quality, Brand Personality, Data Analysis, Creativity and More
During this virtual round table, we discussed different topics related to B2B marketing. It explores insights from experts in the field about the importance of content quality, data analysis, and cultural differences regarding personal data sharing. We also discussed the lack of creativity among decision-makers in this sector, as well as strategies that can help companies improve their ad effectiveness while creating an effective brand personality. Read on to learn more about these topics and how to use them to your advantage in this report.
Thank you Adam Davies, Anne-Catherine Kaiser, Carolina Costa, Claire Lambert and Serena Walker, for your contribution.
Guests
Adam Davies, CMO at Synamedia
Anne-Catherine Kaiser, Head of Marketing Analytics for DarkTrace
Carolina Costa, AMB Specialist for CloudFlare
Serena 7:36
Oh, hi everybody. I'm responsible for marketing at in sono predominantly driving, targeting new new logo, new business and prospects in Soho is an expert technology advisor, and managed service provider. So we can do everything from the cloud to mainframe. We can co manage or totally manage your IT platforms and requirements or come in and do what's needed to be done and then step out so be kind of able to provide managed service and expert consultancy advisory across all stages of your technology roadmap.
Claire 8:23
Brilliant. Thank you, Serena. Claire. Hi, everyone. I'm Claire. I'm the marketing manager for CompuServe. So we are SaaS company software for the designer. So Kitchen Designer bathroom designer, and I'm responsible for growth so everything lead gen.
Tom Gatten 8:38
Brilliant. I think I've been using probably some of your some of your technology recently clear, I imagined good designing a bathroom probably. Awesome. And finally Karolina.
Carolina 8:50
Hello. I am part of the campaign's team demand generation ABM here at Cloudflare. Security cloud company.
Tom Gatten 9:04
We use Cloudflare. Yeah, okay. Okay, brilliant. All right. So I think let's, let's talk about themes. So we're talking about the future of b2b marketing with a particular focus on LinkedIn paid posts, LinkedIn sponsored posts or LinkedIn advertising. b2b digital marketing has grown very quickly in the last few years. So in the US spend in b2b digital marketing was 6 billion in 2019 and 14 billion last year, so that's a very rapid growth as a doubling basic, more than doubling in in just a few years. It's following the same pattern and the same levels as B to C spend in digital marketing was 17 years ago. So this is around the birth of Facebook. So in 2007, Facebook started running their first ad. And at that time, the spend on consumer digital marketing was the same as it is today in b2b digital marketing, but also the pattern of growth. was almost identical sort of, surprisingly, three striking when you look at it. So if b2b Digital Marketing continues to grow at that pace, there should be or there might be, let's discuss in an explosion of technology and skills in the same way that the teens you know, the 2010 up to 2000 and 20s saw in consumer marketing, so between, you know, 2000, especially 2010 Onwards to 2020. The number of roles in digital marketing and consumer space exploded, that the number of skills required by the platform's themselves but also mainly by companies that wanted to deploy digital marketing and consumer explode there was a huge transition away from more traditional channels like TV and towards digital. So will the same thing happened in b2b. If something that happened if there was a continued increase in spend? What would the key changes need to be to make b2b continue to get return on investment or perhaps start to get good return on investment from digital marketing what channels might suffer? What skills do b2b marketers not have today that they might need? Or am I you know, am I barking up totally the wrong tree and is it just an artifact of the pandemic? And what effect will recession have so these these are the themes that I'd love to discuss with you guys.
But actually, I thought I might start on a bit of a tangent, not a tangent, but
something that's a derivation of that big theme, and talk about content. So I'm really interested to get Adam and Catherine talking about talking about content. So and Catherine you and I had a great conversation the other day about,
you know, the best consumer marketing inspires positive feelings that consumers have about themselves, things that they believe about themselves, is what you're selling to them so you're not selling them Coca Cola I mean, Pete, other people come up with better examples than this, but you're selling them. I didn't know the feeling of being young. I don't know. Is that the right thing? The point is, in b2b marketing, some of the most exciting campaigns like we talked about sages, basit ads that probably everyone has seen, are inspiring. A positive feeling about the sort of person that buys accounting software. You don't try and sell accounting software because that's horrendously boring. You try and you try and sell them the vision of themselves as a business owner, that's them against the world, you know, sort of thing.
So obviously, we've seen some positive really exciting b2b ads of that kind. But at the same time, we talked Adam, you and I about how quite a lot of b2b ads are pretty dull and dry. So is there being or has there been a will there be a growth in the creativity of b2b ads? And then Adam, I think you've got something interesting to talk about in terms of a very unusual strategy that you've used, hijacking pop culture in the moments to get really good spikes of click through rate and interest.
So um, yeah, I'm Katherine. Adam. Perhaps you could have talked to me about how you see b2b Creative these days and how that might change or how you think it should change.
Anne-Katherine (Darktrace) 13:40
And I started besuchen. And to hear more about some of your brilliant like campaign or idea what that was. And I just so if I just go back to maybe that sage example, which I've seen because I think that was such a good idea. They haven't followed through with it a lot more this year, but
Tom Gatten 14:04
what was basically involved at the beginning and Catherine Yeah, yeah.
Anne-Katherine (Darktrace) 14:10
That whole idea was, I mean, why are they selling accounting software to small businesses mainly, so quite rightly identify sort of the decision maker that the buyer which is quite often back to the owner of that small business, and probably you've got a bit of the finance team involved, that the actual user or whether there's an HR person already so little bit of that, but ultimately, like the whole, like, just a motivation being a small business is because you've got that dream to make something happen, right? You've got that that will that thing, like which drives you no matter what it is. So now, accounting software is a bit of a necessity. It doesn't excite you because all you care about is I don't know getting the bakery up and running or doing whatever it is that you love. And I think that was sort of that inside right is where we then got to like, boss it, because that totally plays into you know, the whole point of, of that person in business is that they love doing they're doing and they're working, quite frankly, really hard to make that dream happen. And then secondly, we want to be a cheerleader of that right? Because that's what someone's going to remember. And that's what creates that emotional connection. If you're a cheerleader, rather than someone who holds it up work or someone who Yeah, and then how can we be that right? One is by and that's there was a lot of like really, sort of top of funnel messaging involved and like how you're bossing it and examples of people not bossing it and and then sort of really, really far down to nine is, you know, what, how can we actually make your life easier because we know you don't want to sit there spending ages in the accounting software because that's boring and dull and not what you want to do. Right? We do that for you. And we are here to help you adapt sort of bringing that to life. In a creative is then we're I think that border very much with b2c Right? Because there wasn't a single white paper anywhere. There wasn't a single Oh, click here to do a trial with us. It was all about you know what? People like you we know you're that's your dream. This is where you want to go, you're bossing this right now. It's an that I wasn't involved so much with it, creative itself, but that whole messaging and then along further down to nine whenever you saw someone engaging with that, you then like, oh, you know, like, how about have you thought about that? That feature is going to make your life so much easier. And then I think also bringing that in then to your point about sort of looking through the year what are these moments in the year that matter at the end of the financial year a bit of a nightmare for everyone who's in finance and probably also the business owner because that's when they actually have to engage with it. Right? And then being there like, Okay, again, like that's the time when you really want to be there and we're like, we're here for you. We're off you. Come and talk to us. You know, having sort of two months out of be like you don't want to be sitting here at the end of the financial year being stressed about your finances. Come and talk to us today. And that
Tom Gatten 17:25
was one of the one of the key things and Catherine might have been the emotional connection because I think we spend quite a lot of time talking about poking emotions, and how can how can a b2b campaign appeal to someone's values or emotions but Adam and Catherine and Karolina, you will work in the security industry, broadly speaking. Quite a lot of security based ads have people in balaclavas free dark lighting fear based, so that is absolutely poking people's emotions. But what I think it's probably not doing is building an emotional connection which of course, the best consumer advertising like, you know, Coca Cola to use shorthand does and the bosses did because they were putting up pictures of people identified with sage. Like the thing that stuck in my memory was the the lady who was a mechanic who was smearing her face with with engine grease or brake fluid or something.
Probably ng binaries. But yeah, if there was therefore creating a connection between someone identified with sage and someone identified with you, which putting a picture of someone in a balaclava and terrifying someone they're going to get hacked. Although that fits one of the criteria it does poke someone's emotions. doesn't create an emotional connection maybe.
Anne-Katherine (Darktrace) 18:43
Yeah, so what I'm kind of thinking what I would love to hear some thoughts from the group as well as like, that's, like a lot of b2b Right? It's true. We are very driven as the technic from the technology side, from the product side, often also from the sales side. How do you actually sell that in that you know what that emotional connection gets us a long way and if anyone in the room sort of has done that successfully, because there's quite enough push back at some point and maybe also I think, was a clear was it you you're working quite sort of demand gen light. How do you then actually turn that into a proper demand gen campaign as well? So that is not just the fluffy brand new stuff. At the end of the day, because I think there's always that thing like, well, at the end of the day, in b2b marketing, like we all like Oh, let's bring in leads. Let's send stuff right. So me coming on like, Oh, why don't we do a really funky brand campaign isn't probably gonna go very far. Yeah,
Tom Gatten 19:50
so anyone else think there's, there's something there in terms of creating emotional connections or at least being inspired by the best consumer marketing?
Adam Davies 19:59
Yeah, so I'll I'll jump in Tom and talk a little bit about what we've done. I mean, yeah, as you as you referenced, one of the things we do is security. So everything we do is around video. And security and piracy is like a big deal at the moment. So I have as of last year, I implemented the no hoodies rule, which is we are not allowed to show people in hoodies hacking content, because it's just have the cliched wrong. Yeah. You know, it's also incorrect. And he actually led to a campaign around Mythbusters the idea that, you know, stolen or pirated content is is you know, somebody in Starbucks in the hood typing away. It's not it's it's organized crime. You know, these things are our big, shiny data centers. So we, we try to move away from from cliched imagery, and I think, because we're going through this, we're coming to the end of our cloud transformation. We started doing a lot more digital last year. And the problem with LinkedIn is it's the only game in town. You know, it is a very, very full marketplace. And so, our creative looked quite cliche, there was a lot of hoodies and stuff like that. So we kind of, we started looking at what what we did and again, to get into kind of an Catherine's point about, you know, building an emotional response to something because we're selling cloud based software. as excellent as it is, it's, you know, pretty difficult to sell, you know, you can't you can't really draw it, you end up doing lots of lots of architectures and stuff. So, we work in video, so we started leveraging the relationship to video, what are people watching? We put up a campaign with a bunch of imagery. I'd love to say it was marketing genius. It was kind of luck, really. But the imagery was astronauts. It was police officers. It was doctors, nurses, and we threw in some fantasy images as well. So there was a dragon. There was a woman with kind of punky pixie yours with a bow and arrow. And there was there was a third one, which I can't I can't even remember. Anyway, we kind of threw everything else didn't. We're AV testing. This was in late summer, last year, early autumn. And immediately, a couple of images went off the graph. And they were they were the fantasy images. And it was because as we figured out Lord of the Rings prequel was coming out and Game of Thrones prequel is coming out as well. And the imagery kind of by accident, just reflected that it wasn't from the shows, but it was the fact that we we'd hit on that outcome and to build that, that emotional response to the content. And I think the other thing, the other change was a lot of b2b marketing is trying to do a lot of heavy lifting in the ads. You're trying to sell the whole thing in the ad. And we kind of pull back from that and I think again and Catherine your point about hitting that balance between is it brand is a lead or demand gen. You know, all the images are going to do is is said you have to look at it because everybody's running the you know, the black and blue ads on LinkedIn, that we're all telling you the KPIs and metrics telling us to do it. So suddenly is running like a purple app with a dragon on did look a bit weird, but it resonated enough with people in the content industry. But as it turned out, with other people because it's the kind of shows we were watching, so and then from there, we did some also November what do we do football woke up this you know, this isn't genius. This is like this is the b2c manga you know the b2c marketing side of Kelkar running ads with football is on everybody's leveraging it, but we sort of tend not to as much and b2b. And it's easier for us because it's content. It's kind of what we do. So, so where we where we were at yesterday was me watching quite nervously what was going to come out in the Oscars. So right now we've got a campaign running, which is using a lot of NFL imagery, because it's happening in the US and it's the Super Bowl. Again, you know, this isn't genius stuff here. But yeah, you know, I'm watching the Oscars because we do work in content. Oscar movies are very heavily pirated so resonates with us. But yeah, you know, I'm kind of punching there when when Top Gun got nominated, because it's planes and I can get imagery of fighter planes gonna be slightly cautious with some imagery, obviously but you know, Avatar bit trickier blue people tend to be just sort of avid Yeah, but yeah, maybe some nice images of rural Ireland will creep in. I can't remember what else we can do. So again, we can get some kind of imagery around there. Yeah, we're not using the stock photography because that's horrifically expensive, but there's always a copyrighted stuff but you know, there's enough stock out there that you can clever and you dig about enough and if you've got so you know, if you know what you're looking for, we can we can we can reflect what's going on with that.
Tom Gatten 25:07
Currently, and I can ask you, you're you're obviously just sticking with this security kind of theme for a moment, because it has had such a
tone people in balaclavas you know, people have, you know, screens, scary kind of emotional prompting for a long time to sell something which is, you know, at the end of the day, probably mostly, you know, software, how have you found is a good way to generate those emotional connections you'll see working in IBM, so, you have considerations for a lot further down the pipeline, then, you know, just just the just images but how what have you found works
Carolina 25:49
yeah, so I call Fleur we do things a bit differently. So we tend to run away from from those images. Because they do we'll use they just scare them, scare people. And that's no fun emotion to be connected with. So that's just not the kind of marketing that we do. In in the media, what we did was to be more attentive to what's going on in the market. So when there's like a big threats in terms off and you bought or a new economic trend or you see trends in the market, right regarding the security of over customers and etc. So we go and get those threads and say, hey, you know, you are worried about this because everyone is worried about this. So we have a solution that you know, helps you not to be scared of those threads. And that's, I think, the best way that we have found so far, to be also like connected with the trends with what's going on in the real world. Right and the news and etc. and connect our our, let's say, positive emotion of like, you'll be safe, you'll be secure. You don't have to worry about it if you're with us. So but this is a new way to do things. So we've done this recently. And it takes a while to get leads from from that. So it's more of a long run kind of effort and it really connects and Catherine with what you said so like, oh, yeah, and the financial year people are worried about that. So we cannot put them at that moment as well. So it basically follows the same kind of thought of being with the people in the current moment with their current worries and say I you don't have to worry you're not going to be attacked. Or if you are tapped, we can quickly mitigate that. Yeah, that's basically what we do specially for free media, right.
Tom Gatten 28:29
I currently and what what have been some good ways you found to use digital marketing to kind of support your ABM work to support that kind of empathetic style of you know, creating that connection. Have you found good ways have you have you seen Have you seen and been able to deploy some effective digital marketing techniques, or have you found that actually ABM for you is it's different and not using digital so much.
Carolina 28:57
No, we use a lot of digital we we are heavy on on LinkedIn ads on email. We are still learning how to use Google search and PPC on Google Search yet because we have a very unique in India very unique relationship with search and how we'd like to like click on ads and where to does those ads take us to the landing page the kind of content where we do mainly is promote content and that brings value to the customer and also help us with lead gen because if you're really interested in learning more about some solution or something specifically, you will give your data to get that information right. So today basically what we do is acquire via LinkedIn. Okay.
Tom Gatten 30:06
So this is a gated something like an information pack, gated behind
Carolina 30:11
white papers. To pagers reports, analysts reports. So all this does kind of b2b enterprise stuff that it's I think bread and butter for everyone. Yeah. I think that when you start to do it really well and the messaging is really focused on problems solution. Especially when you're talking to new new prospects, right people that are just in market but don't know much about you. This is what really makes sense. And also one thing that we're starting to do right now is to get old because all those assets we do usually they are across dangerous industry related, right? They are not sometimes very focused on industry. Problems specific problem, even because when we're talking about cybersecurity, it's pretty much the same issue that we have, across companies across industries and across Cheerios. But now we are personalizing more than messaging to that industry. Specifically for so like financial services, you know, there are some specific jargons and language that they use in his that, you know, help you connect more with them. So that's what we are trying now. So it's so pretty new. Oh, pretty on testing phase. But yeah, we have high hopes and because we use a lot of internal data. So that helps us to have targeted account lists and really focus on accounts that might or have a higher probability to be interested in talking to us.
Tom Gatten 32:13
Thanks, Karolina. Yeah, we've we've got a podcast next week all about intent data and various different technologies related to intent data. So that's that's that's really interesting. Thank you,
Claire, Josie and Serena, do you guys use what Karolina described as the bread and butter of capturing people on LinkedIn, you know, behind kind of forms putting some sort of one page or two pager, information packs behind forms on LinkedIn. And if so, have you seen any changes in the dynamics returns or complexity or difficulty around running that sort of process in the last year or so companies?
Serena 32:56
I use a lot of the digital tools available and platforms. LinkedIn is definitely, you know, in the top tier of connecting with b2b decision makers and influencers. I think what we're doing a lot more here is actually providing ungated content so that we can give educational, valuable information because data consistently data shows that decision makers and influencers they go, they're going out to find information themselves before they speak to you so we I do use gated content, definitely, but only if it's really really high value. So as an example, I did a research project so it was owned, first party research. And once you get all the data you can make, you know, tons of content, one being white paper, which is quite meaty, and everybody's short on time. So a way to kind of lead people to that journey was to do like an executive summary all for free, but if you want more you can then go and do the next step of handing over your personalized information, so the more that they can get for free. The idea is that eventually you will come and sign up to a webinar where you hand over your details. You will you know, maybe hit the subscribe button for regular communication to spend start going through. So I think that's probably one of the most notable shifts. And maybe we can all attest to going back seven, eight years, maybe less five, where leads, leads, leads, leads, leads we've needed leads, how many leads have you got? And that's always the question from sales. And it's about the quality of leads. So maybe, you know a narrower funnel probably could give you better results versus a very, very wide funnel with huge volumes and then you have a lot of attrition. intent data is really, really useful as well. So there's a lot more integration, which I think is really fantastic for us as marketers and working much closer with sales, because you can see the two areas where we're connecting with target audience whether that's an existing client or prospects and we can have indicators to say, hey, they're doing X, Y and Zed. So maybe we should serve up this petite particular piece of content to that audience, as well.
Tom Gatten 35:38
So I like the principle of you know, it's to be valuable enough. It has to be primary content, as in content you couldn't get anywhere else because only we have done this research. And if it's secondary content, as in something that's commenting on something else, it's not valuable enough to put behind a paywall a form Sorry, I'm Katherine. Yeah,
Anne-Katherine (Darktrace) 36:00
do you mind if I just jump in because that's sort of our primary contest really interesting. And I, we might be able to sort of collect some more ideas, but I don't know if you guys had seen and so Google, probably like three months ago for yourself. They did a really fantastic YouTube series which was Netflix production level. And where they talked about like Google being hacked I can't remember that exact name but it's it's a serious on their YouTube on how it's a story of how Goulding has been hacked and I mean, that was I think the actual incident happened probably three or four years ago. But so it's a really interesting approach and were they but it was it was that storytelling approach which made that content so amazing, I think, and say it just made me think you know, what, we're still thinking a lot about, oh, we have this record and we have this webinar. But actually if we're saying look, the industry or we need to move on a bit from that and like, you know, that your ad spend is going up like the actual like content value needs to go up as well. Right. Yeah. So I thought that was a really interesting example if you guys hadn't seen it yet. Yeah.
Tom Gatten 37:22
I think that's really interesting. We might get back to the kind of relationship between the quality of content and spend. But Claire and Joseph just wanted to give you an opportunity to it'd be really great to hear from you. Have you used this as currently in a call it these kind of bread and butter techniques? Have you changed the way you use them?
Claire 37:40
So it's the same for companies with great big white papers, especially for design and trends. However, what we find is like as I mean, I think I'm going to try that to do like a small version and then proceed without look at content because every time especially for some, for some countries like Germany, we are always struggling with Germany, and if it's okay for the other people in the team, but there but we are always struggling with German struggle to give all the information
Tom Gatten 38:05
they don't want to give away their personal even just
Claire 38:13
always trying to find to show like a big amount of like a massive piece of content and then once you're going to put it together, and then they might not even try to see because you it's open to everyone like we are gonna need your content then you read it and then you think, oh, what does that give my email address? It's a bit. Yeah, it's not as good as they should have been.
Tom Gatten 38:31
I think it's a really good point. I wouldn't be surprised if because so much advice for marketers comes out of the US. Yes, like cultural biases like the Americans. I totally get it. But perhaps they're more willing to give away their personal data than the British and then the British probably more willing to give it away than the Dutch and the Germans. Exactly. Maybe there's yeah, sometimes we're a bit misled by that perhaps. But
Claire 38:54
yeah, content. We use a lot of white paper about trends as what we do most of the time. That works pretty well. But then it's like well, then the funnel and then sales people always say oh, these are not warm enough because I just read this white paper. I didn't read anything else. It's always finding the right balance into like warming up the leads with good contents, and producing something that you can be translated because we're working with so many markets as well. Right. And then emotionally is very important as well, especially with like kitchen and bathroom because so much money is as people are investing. And the software solution is both SEO as well. But yeah, we do a lot of content and we're trying to do more and more or less takes time obviously and how to be to be like nailing it. That's the most important one. I think I was struggling we've had some moments.
Serena 39:40
I just would like to just add to what Claire just mentioned. So when I used to work at Oracle and I did a lot of campaigns in multiple languages. So I totally understand and actually from Asia, Europe, and then even within you know those regions, the cultural nuances and behaviors are very interesting. So I can understand that Kesko challenge. So some of the things that I have done and even now we've not having to do translation or anything is thinking about who else to partner with to get the credibility and to reach out to that market and to be in front of those decision makers. So just for example, if you if you've collaborated with Gartner in your organization was doing somebody got I mean, they're very expensive. So I know depending on your budgets, it's probably not going to be data but just for the purpose of an example that will attract more people to your name, your organization and you know what you're doing and by by default, it will create the perception of Oh, right. Okay, so you know what you're talking about because Gartner or Forrester or whoever it is IDC is well respected. And, like you can you can do that for like white papers or webinars or just things where people actually if it's if it's a webinar, you have to give you need to register so you can get you know, the the link and the times and the reminders and then get it get it on demand and even if you don't watch it live up there like the value is you'll get it on register anyway you get it. It's almost
Tom Gatten 41:23
better if they don't attend in some ways, because then you have an excuse to go back to them and say, oh, you know, yeah, have a chat about these five other events you might want to come to
Serena 41:32
Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a way to kind of get the needs in because they are subscribing. Everything's GDR, P compliant, and then you're partnering with them as well. And I do a lot of content syndication against target account list. So it's, well who are we going after whether it's your clients because you want to, you know, get deeper. If it's a big client, maybe you're in only one line of business so you need to try and get a footprint wide or if it's a prospect then we all know what that's like. trying to you know, make a friend is what I call it let's make a friend and to to Catherine's point around the story, so you've got to make a friend but you have to do really nice story not just jumped to the end. That's a bit of a rush. And then, and then yeah, like just high value, or just useful information. But I tried to, as I mentioned before, NOT gate everything and then look at what's going on in the account with the intent data as best as you can find it through the various
Tom Gatten 42:37
serving kind of pull some of the intent data that might tell you who's reading your website, which accounts are reading your website, and then you do the content syndication, which is always good, isn't it? But anyway, and then, but it's not you that's doing the gating, it's someone else. And then you can see someone's downloaded that and then
Serena 42:54
yeah, and then you can say to your sales team. Hey, I think these accounts are probably needed. You know, they need something because it might not be the same person but you can see there's high volume of activity in the account. So there's different people in different divisions is got responsibility for different things of that aligned to the services that you know, this group can provide to organizations and help them solve a problem or challenge or where they've got a gap. And then then that's, that's where maybe the relationship with sales and marketing starts to get more friendlier.
Tom Gatten 43:32
This chap called Tim Caron who came along to the last event from Zapier and he was talking about something as simple as splitting a white paper in to then basically you you get some very, very simple form. Extremely simple just asking for an email address. Get them to get a popular product it widely get a lot of people to download it but don't send those leads to sales just retarget that same audience with a follow up white paper that might ask for one or two more details like a phone number. And as soon as someone has downloaded to events, or to white papers, the kind of value of that lead from a sales perspective is exponentially higher. Because you can say well, they've engaged in a conversation with us it's not it's probably not a mistake. You know, they've they've looked at two different aspects of this problem. And from the sellers point of view is much much higher quality than I thought was a simple
Serena 44:28
tip to save profile, sorry, progressive profiling. And is that and then then it's all about your lead scoring right? When do you when do you have it as a MQL or SQL? At what point how many things does one person do before you say to your accounting? Yeah, yeah, sorry.
Adam Davies 44:54
No, no. But to Thomas was, was saying we we had a very big PDF, and I've kind of developing a reaction to big PDFs now. Because we're putting a lot of work in them. We're not leveraging them. So we're, we're cutting the content to be more more breakable. So so on security. Going back to what I said at the head, that there's a lot of myths around security. So we now have this kind of big mythbuster PDF, the five myths around security, which was gating we did bread and butter me to marketing and weren't particularly successful. So we've now taken that we've broken it into five myths and the five myths all available separately. So if you're engaged enough, you can get the whole thing for free. But you've got to go through like a number of click throughs to get it or if you download one of those. There's a link to the whole thing at the end. And there's like Yeah, but yeah, so it's where we're giving more away, which isn't something that we used to do or the foundation of our business is in video security. We've kind of branched out into other things, but it's kind of where we come from. So the idea of giving content away was pretty alien to us two years ago. And actually for most of us, it's a soft gate. Yeah, it's well, I mean, there's, there's, there's no gate to start with, but then it becomes softer, and the value becomes obvious if you've downloaded one and you'd like it, why not get the other full on all you've got to do is you know, give us your email address and you know, a couple other details. So it's it's more subtle than than a heavy gate. But again, it's but as he said, then it's as you're running the school journey, and what we're finding is there was scorings becoming more complex and more granular. I think we're we are in danger of maybe going of analyzing too much. That's that I think is the downside of when you make that switch to digital. Suddenly you've got all of this data and you can, you can kind of disappear into it sometimes and now we're kind of on a pullback, the amount of the amount of
Tom Gatten 46:59
work to keep it in order is just so high that most people don't do it properly and then end up like contacting someone that has just shouldn't be contacted and is a huge amount of work, isn't it?
Adam Davies 47:12
I'm working with sample sizes that aren't that aren't really representative. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Gatten 47:20
Josie, let me ask you. Have you seen a change in the quality of b2b content over the last three years? There's definitely be a really the stats show there's been a huge increase in spend on b2b digital advertising. Have you seen a similar dramatic increase in the quality of b2b content? Or do you think that's still to come?
Jossie 47:45
I I would say it's difficult because to convert three years because I've been in like different industries for three years. So for me, sometimes I get a lot of stuff. I guess if anything that I've seen that be targeted to me has been targeted marketing, but it does seem like very low quality will be like, stuff that I know and stuff that anyone who's worked in marketing or even the you know, in turn, I'm trying to compare it to consume, you know, consumer content as well. I feel like the problem with b2b is this is kind of relate to everything is that you as a marketer, you're saying okay, let's get creative. And let's do it like this. And this and then the people sort of higher up are saying, yes, but we're directing this to, you know, decision makers, and everything's serious and you know, you can't have fun with it. Well, with consumer stuff. It's all very fun and saying, you know, let's, let's look at like if you think about BuzzFeed 10 years ago, like 10 outfits that ruined the red carpet or something like that. You have that kind of fun with it, that would make you click on it, but I feel like the b2b content is more just like boring. Give an example. is interesting, just as well. We weave our best b2b as we run LinkedIn have been affiliated. We do pay a lot of money for Gartner. And that's our best our best results come from that. And that that's all gated. Basically, they will say, we'll give you a copy of this report, just come on to our website and download it. So that's, you know, people will do that because it's high value and it's Garner and it's that kind of trust signal like this other like really prestigious company. But it's so funny, as marketers, we know that you could just pay for that. Like it's it costs 30 grand Yeah, yeah. It's like it's not really it's not really like Gartner has approached you'd be like you are really good. It's more just like that companies decided to pay a lot of money to go on it. I think that's quite funny, but I definitely think the problem is, you as a marketer know what works and, you know, gating everything isn't going to every you know, I've clicked on things. I thought this is interesting. And then they asked for email and I'm like, It's not that interesting enough, as you were saying you can get it somewhere else easily. I'm not going to, I'm not going to sign up for it. But for example, sales, we work quite closely with sales and they're just always going on about leads, and they don't understand the sort of brand awareness side of it. And they will say, Well, why are we giving away this for free and it's like because why would you give your, you know, as soon as you put your email in, you're gonna get like 10 emails every day saying, like, Hey, do you want to talk about this? And it's like, no, I don't want to talk about this. And it's just really annoying, and they sometimes forget to think about it as if it was them. I think that's what a lot of times they think about I want this customer to do this, but they don't think about, well, if I was that person, would I want that? So I feel like I rambled a bit. But I think the problem is, is convincing other people. This is a good idea. Let's do it like this. And they're thinking oh, yes, but we're talking to these really serious IT directors. It's like these IT directors, they like to have fun.
Tom Gatten 51:23
The human beings. Well, that's why that's why I like the Catherine's example of saying, if you can connect with something that they believe positively about themselves, the equivalent would be stop talking about sage for a moment, but you know, think of another example that you couldn't be like, you know, promotional material talking about I'm a cyber or I'm a cloud engineer. And what is it about cloud engineers that they love about themselves? I have no idea. You know, if you could find something, then you could kind of just talk about that. In the context of your brand. And that might be enough to form that emotional connection. I mean, obviously, you still need to create a lead at some point, but you could maybe do that with some of the more kind of
ABM intense stuff Carolyn was talking about. So you can say well, look yeah, yes, Mr. salesperson, you know, I don't know the precise person at this company. But I know it must be one of these four job titles because those are the only job titles I'm advertising to on LinkedIn. And there's a lot of engagement and that's the company phone number.
is probably the you might need to support that with more ABM of the kind Karolina you know all about but perhaps that's better than the high volume low quality approach of yesterday.
Carolina 52:41
One example sorry, Jesse just to give two cents because I have to go. One of the things that I hear from all of you is like no your personas, right? Know the people that you're targeting, know what they like what they dislike in terms of not just business right? The way that they do business, but personally. So what do developers like, you know, in particular in that industry is probably different. Finances probably different from developers in the gaming industry, right? They have different profiles as people, right human beings. And that's one of the things that I really believe that we should, we should be doing most b2b. So it's boring because we think the way that people do business is boring, right? Because when we are targeted with more fun or I don't know, like, different kind of language or visuals, we also be like, Oh, okay, it wasn't expecting that. You you get used to expecting something more serious, professional, you know, whatever that you know is, but when you saw to okay, this is what I like. I like to watch YouTube videos of I don't know, whatever you like. So why don't you on the business side as a marketeer target people on those YouTube ads, whether the language that resonates with the visual that resonates with that particular person's likes or dislikes. That's when you really create that, you know, okay, this person, you know, this company really gets me they know where I am. They know like, what, what really triggers me to say, hey, this might look cool as different channels require different languages, right? Different way to speak visually, and copies and etc. So yeah, I
Tom Gatten 55:03
think I think it can be done very badly as well currently. And like sometimes I've seen b2b content that I guess is striving to be more human. But just comes across as disrespectful. And of course, if you don't account for that in, you know, I don't know like people holding up pictures with your name and all that kind of horrendous rubbish. But you know, you don't think like high quality b2c advertising is still highly respectful. I would guess. You know, it doesn't stoop to those kind of levels. And but it's still kind of human because it understands you and it can be subtle about it rather than being unsettled. I think, Carolyn, you're you're you've got to be right about understanding your audience in detail and not guessing.
Carolina 55:48
Yeah, exactly. Sorry guys. I have to drop off I have another call. But thank you so
Tom Gatten 55:54
much, Karolina. I think we're coming to the end anyway. So I really wanted to thank you all so much for being here today. We will of course write up this this session today into a set of three or four or five tips or so and all of you will have a chance to speak to again to make sure you're happy with with what we've come up with there. And the recording the podcast and everything. If anyone has any final thoughts, please, please say them now. Otherwise, I'm so grateful to all of you for being here and I'm really looking forward to speaking with you again. Thanks, Don. Thanks. Bye Bye
