What drives growth in B2B, the convergence of B2B with B2C and more.

The landscape of B2B marketing is evolving rapidly, with multiple factors influencing its growth and direction, such as demand forces and brand investment. In this episode, we explore various perspectives and insights from experts, such as the convergence of B2B and B2C marketing trends, the role of technology, and the importance of building long-term relationships. We also delve into the challenges and opportunities B2B marketers face, adapting to AI, and addressing the click culture in digital advertising. By understanding these factors, businesses and marketers can gain insights to navigate the changing B2B marketing landscape and harness its potential for growth and success.

Guests

Chris Murray, Paid Media Specialist at Adaptivist

Alex Bacon, Marketing Director for CloudDirect

So just quickly on the structure, we're going to run through the theme. We're going to have a conversation which would take up most of our time, and this is being recorded. We're going to produce a document out of this which will run through with both of you to make sure you're perfectly happy with where you're quoted. We're also going to create a podcast episode. We've got a bit of a backlog of the podcast episodes, unfortunately at the moment, but over the next couple of months, that's going to be edited down and then we'll be releasing that in in, you know, in a couple of months, probably alongside a load of other podcasts. Which are being edited as we speak. So yeah, so let's talk about b2b marketing. So the big change that's happened is most obviously, in money, so there's just a huge amount more money being spent on b2b digital advertising than was happening. Three, four years ago, five years ago, in 2019, just before pandemic 6 billion was spent by b2b digital marketers in the US last year was 14 billion. So that really rapid growth, you know, that's serious amounts. Of Money. Six to 14 billion is just over a doubling of sleep, but in such a short period of time at such a large kind of quantum of money. That's a very significant unusual shift in an in an industry. And the the only analog the best analog I could find was b2c digital advertising in the late 2000s. Were in 2004, about 6 billion was spent on b2c digital advertising and by 2007. That got up to about about 14 15 billion of course, these days, it's 150 billion in the US on b2c digital advertising. So the question is, will the same thing happen in b2b, you've got this very similar trend, same quantum. And I think there are some other analogies with the late 2000s. Like for example, I just don't I think the tools that are available to b2b marketers today are about as rudimentary as the tools that were available to B to C digital marketers were in the late 2000s. Will the same things happen if that that change continues and if dramatically more money is continued to spend every year on b2b digital advertising like Will there be huge numbers of new jobs for b2b Digital advertisers? Will there be huge amounts of money spent or creative? Which of course is what happened in the 2000s? In 2000 10s, I suppose in b2c digital advertising, will skills be needed? So anyway, that's that's what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. So we can start kind of anywhere but what's what's been your perspective? Well, why don't you start with Chris you're you're obviously in the agency world. You're not just working for the adaptavist companies are you do some work for external people as well?

Chris 9:17

Yes, I'm external to I think there's a mixed picture. So for me when you talk about the growth, not obviously, the same with the b2c market, that people are putting money where they think there's still opportunity and that's very much you know, true of our clients and of their database business. We're spending more because there's still customers. So as long as there's more customers entering that market, I think you're right, we will see it grow, you know, that would just make sense. The question of whether or not will ever reach the same degree or at least rate of spend growth is in b2c? I'm not so sure because I don't know if the b2b market will grow as fast as you know, the direct consumer market, online shopping, use over that same period within b2c. It would be great if our tooling could catch up you know that b2c have access to a lot more dynamic solutions. And then we do in b2b At the moment, but also, we're, our focus I know internally is shifting, perhaps not from how much we're spending but to how efficiently we're spending it. And I think that that's where the tooling comes comes back into it. Whether that's provided by platforms are a buy your tech stack, and whether or not other businesses are doing the same and whether or not we're going to continue to spend more will be based on whether we can keep that level of efficiency. As we scale it.

Tom Gatten 10:49

What about you, Alex? Like, what's your reaction to what I said? Do you think Does it strike a chord with you or do you think actually, it's just an artifact of COVID? Or what do you think?

Alex 11:01

No, I think I would expect to see that that upward trend and I think as Chris said, whether it's the same volume as b2c Perhaps not but I think proportionately we're will see that increase as the market becomes more mature, so I think there's there's there's greater insight and greater intelligence than ever before, of who those buyers and decision makers are. So I think there's two trends at play here. So one is, it's well documented, the proportion of the sales cycle that is done before someone even engages a salesperson and you know, there's various measures of that but typically sort of anywhere between 60 and 80%. You see a world people booboo people researching online, rather than, you know, before they engage the salesperson. So I think there's there's that obvious trend that has been around for a while. And I think then combined with the amount of data and the value of the data available on those individuals, that actually it becomes very much a merging of the b2c environment because you're no longer just marketing to a business. You're marketing to the individuals within the past business. And we're already seeing that with things like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and then being able to identify who those individual decision makers are. So when you then combine that with some of the technology coming out around remarketing to those individuals and using a crossover some of the other channels so starting to Facebook and look at exactly and we're seeing that and we're doing that already where we will target those individuals Yeah, in Facebook, which might not be necessarily their, their work environment. But they're still individuals who are spending time on the web and looking at looking at things in their in their personal time as well. So I think you'll see a blurring of of that that b2c b2b and b2c advertising

Chris 13:09

which is sort of echo point there. I think that's something else that will be one of the things for me that will steer how quickly the b2b growth happens is how many companies adopt this brand focus on copying while b2c companies have been doing for decades now of really promoting brand. Getting as Alex is referring you know, those people who are future cash flow familiar with you across not just using something like the typical b2b channel of LinkedIn but also speaking to them, or these other touchpoints more budget and needs a more holistic approach and it's easier to scale as well.

Alex 13:49

Yeah. I think there's also a reflection on the market as a whole. So particularly speaking for the for the tech sector, there's there's an awful lot more players within that market, smaller specialist organization. So where in the past a business might have just typically gone to one or two big system integrator conglomerate providers. Actually more and more, they're looking for SAS solutions that are very niche and specific. And again, those echo in terms of experience quite often the experience that they would have in a b2c environment. So the software that they're using, they expect the same level of user experience that they would in the in the b2c environment so with these, these smaller, more niche organizations, is about getting in front of those decision makers. And again, that's where they're going to rely on very specific very targeted, highly valuable digital advertising, rather than paying a load of money into brand recognition, attending trade shows and more traditional channels that that some of those big size could could do and there's almost a kind of element of just throw some money at getting their name out there. And actually, those smaller organizations and those more niche organizations need to be much smarter about what they're doing and where they're where they're putting their their marketing dollars.

Unknown Speaker 15:28

Is that like,

Tom Gatten 15:30

we lacking you subscribe, you use Canva and I don't know whether or not that's painful by the by the company growth intelligence but it's definitely possible that people who are in particular areas like marketers or technical people, whatever might be subscribing to to services that they use in their everyday job, and that kind of becomes their skill set as well. Eventually, of course, they would probably want the company to pay for it but for if you are Canva, or you were one of these niche providers, you could look at it as I am actually marketing to consumers who need me to be paid more for doing their job, if you know what I mean. Do you kind of is that kind of where you were thinking?

Alex 16:24

Yeah, mixture of both. Hmm. So that's a great example actually, and so I was referring more to niche organizations that would that would perhaps provide very specific security solutions, for example, or very sick, specific collaboration tools. That would be adopted by the business strategically. Rather than buy an off the shelf SAS solution rather than try and build something bespoke.

Tom Gatten 16:55

Because it's easier for an individual to just sign up to it, perhaps use the credit card for the first month and

Alex 17:02

yeah, and I think what you're talking about is slightly different. But but as but it's really valid, valid and really interesting, actually. And I find myself do I've signed up to some AI driven software to help design slides, for example, and, and actually we've had it I think, one of the people from cognisant was was going to be on this call, actually, but we we've done something similar in that and that is a really interesting use case because they have something called Casper, which is essentially sort of a lightweight version of communism. So we had a couple of individuals within the team sign up to that, to just support them in terms of their SDR role to to get the data and the insight that they need. Seeing then the value in that we then made the strategic decision to to purchase cognitivism for for the whole business. So actually you're completely right that you're starting to see people dip in with their own credit cards, say, well, I'll put 10,000 a month into this, see if it helps me do my job a bit better. And if it does, then escalating that up and saying to the rest of the team, hey, look, I've been using this tool for a couple of months. There's an enterprise version that the whole team can access and, and and growing it from from there. So that's a really interesting trend, like you say to to move actually not just from targeting the traditional decision makers and the traditional budget holders. But actually to targeting everyone within the team and the boots on the ground and users as well. Yeah.

Chris 18:42

This is working in our conversation earlier. We sort of touched on something similar to this that I think really related to that point of addressing people you know, who are influencing decision makers are going to become decision makers. The window which we're planning, marketing is also longer. So it's not a case of you're going to convert this person from discovery to sale or even opportunity in three months. thinking okay, how are we going to speak to them over the next 612 even longer? And the thing that's really, you know, in the paid side, where we come back to, you know, to speak at Cognizant, you know, the demand gen model, and really thinking more about content rather than just adspend and targeting. The example that we were talking about earlier, the masses of it, you know, em HubSpot, who just give everything away for free as a means of generating interest and referrals and brand loyalty. It doesn't have to cost money. It's more of a content lead approach.

Thomas Gatten 19:47

I think the impression I get almost is so basic, I sort of feel a bit embarrassed about saying it but like, I think a surprising number of b2b marketers that I speak with are going through a transition which is not yet complete. From thinking of b2b thinking of digital marketing as lead gen forms. It's a surprising number of b2b marketers that I speak to that think about think that digital marketing is putting up an ad saying fill in this form and you'll get a call from a salesperson, obviously it's a minority, I think most people have transitioned on from that think about content. But there's still I think, a transition ongoing there and there's still probably people at the sort of trailing edge of adoption, that still think that's what digital marketing is. But hopefully it is making this transition. You're talking about Chris towards thinking about, in the same way that a consumer marketing brand like Coca Cola would never think about the Coca Cola truck as being something that you will have the advert of John Lewis, something you had to sign up with your email address for, but rather something that is yeah, just thinking about it in a different way.

Unknown Speaker 21:02

I think, I think a lot of the

Chris 21:05

after, you know, going, I was gonna say that I think the challenge that a lot of b2b businesses have with transitioning from that compared to B to C is just the attribution. You know, there's more of a focus on how are you populating the sales pipeline? How many qualified leads do you have month on month? And what does that look like compared to last year, but we know that we have less of that data, we know that the data we do have is no modeled. So for it to be reliable you have to be using your own attribution model or you know, importing your conversions if it's something like Google ads. So I think the that bottom line reporting is one of the biggest things to solve to get the buy in across the whole business, not just the digital marketing team.

Alex 21:54

Yeah, that's which is exactly what I was gonna say. I think it's a lot of it is a cultural thing. And it's the tangible asset of a lead and turning around to to the sales team and the senior leadership team and saying, I've had X number of eyes on on this article and well that's great, but it doesn't pay me pay my commission. But give them give them a lead. And that's something that they they value. So a lot of what we're doing is around educating the wider business to bring their minds kind of up to speed with where the marketers mindset is and driving, making that evidence base. If we can turn around and say, here's here's a typical conversion rate of a lead that has been engaged for a couple of weeks versus a lead that's been engaged for a number of months is the typical conversion rate and value of the deal for a lead that has consumed multiple pieces of content, attended multiple events and had that those touch points in that attribution, versus here's a lead that that's, you know, filled in a form had a cold call and jumped on a call we're able to demonstrate the value both in terms of quality and, well, monetary value and conversion rate value of those leads, then it's starting to change that mind shift from Okay, actually, there needs to be an investment in demand gen. And nurturing and building trust and building that relationship beyond just the lead generation element.

Chris 23:32

Is the just the build on that as well. I think the other area that we've did that so true is also once the person's become a customer, but don't have to find the same but one of the things that, you know, we can find with this apps that we sell, you know, within the Atlassian ecosystem or the monday.com ecosystem is it's all very well getting a tool on boarded by a company, but you also want active users because you need to learn about how people are using that app. We want that feedback. But also, if they're then going to migrate from server to cloud at some point, we want them to retain the app, and we want them to cross sell and buy other ones. So the people who just have spoken to us for a couple of weeks and then purchase a product might never use it after that point. But if they've had months of interactions and have this warm, personable relationship with our sales team or marketing content beforehand, they're also going to go on to be an active and engaged evangelist for the product going forward as well. It's just as this almost unquantifiable value I think people moved

Thomas Gatten 24:39

towards this concept of social capital being valuable with lead scoring back in the HubSpot in a marketing automation platform days. And I think we did theoretically move towards you know, you could have people did I think not as often as they should have done, but they did try and draw a correlation literally a chart between chance of becoming a close deal, and how many how many website pages you visited, how many pieces of content you consume. That's what in theory lead scoring should have been although I think the reality is that it often wasn't really set up or wasn't set up with much thought. But what slightly puzzles me is that people don't do the same because like LinkedIn, for example, or there's loads of tools that allow you to see the accounts on your website. LinkedIn tells you the engagement per account and if you're doing paid, it tells you the engagement with your paid per account, just slightly puzzled me why people don't tend to just try and see if there is a correlation. Because there is like, every time I've looked at this, it's really clear that people that have engaged sorry, not people accounts that have had stronger engagement with your digital ads. are more likely to become close leads when they get into the sales lead stage. And that's that is probably better attribution than anyone in the consumer space has ever had in the history of like humanity. So that's really good and yet people don't seem to do that.

Tom Gatten 26:05

Anyway, because you know, you were talking about attribution being a challenge, but like, how much more of a challenge is for it? Is it for consumer world?

Alex 26:18

Yeah, and we, we, we work on that attribution model, as I say, so trying to evidence where that engagement has has led to better quality and being able to demonstrate it to shift that that mindset and that and that has to be data driven. But it also as you say it allows us to focus our efforts on the accounts that are most likely to convert. So we absolutely use third party propensity data to see okay, which which accounts are surging, but being able to overlay that with our own insight and our own data, again, will help us see which accounts are most likely to convert, and where do we focus our our efforts then, as a business in terms of developing and nurturing those organizations?

Chris 27:18

It is really need it's it's one of those things I think sounds so obvious, but is the endurance for a lot of clients and accounts is that our businesses, just like coordination with sales, as you've all got to be reading off the same hymn sheet and I think that's becoming even more apparent. I was not sure if I'm developing, you know, I'm sure in developing your attribution models the same way as we were speaking to say it was, you know, it's not just marketing that they're sort of boxtops worth for this. We need them to be involved and we need the data.

Thomas Gatten 27:52

Sometimes describe to marketers I wouldn't say this to a sales team, or sometimes describe the SDR activity or the kind of front edge of the sales activity as human retargeting. I think it is quite useful to think of it like that rather than being a separate, completely isolated activity. It's just like any other kind of retargeting is just over the phone. No one wants to be doing selling without it being retargeting of something but you don't want to just do cold calling. So if you think of it as a bit more like human retargeting, and as you talked about Alex, there's all sorts of other retargeting. You could do like Facebook and Tik Tok and YouTube and whatever in someone's human social life, but you could also have a human being doing that. And I think thinking of it that also encourages us to think about sales activity more like just extending a conversation that's already happening over digital, rather than being a separate category to activity because if you can get a salesperson in a conversation with a prospect, if they're if you have really high confidence, they're a really good prospect.

Tom Gatten 29:03

You don't need them to be talking about your product. You can have them talking about anything. But if they are in the same room, and they're breaking down kind of social barriers, any salesperson was their soul finds it very easy to at the right time transition into Oh, would you have liked to have a look at our product and by then of course, they say yes, but rather than having this kind of hard division between right I have generated a lead. Now you go into sales mode, which often puts people off. Just think of it as retargeting with another form of content.

Alex 29:41

Yeah, we use a couple of phrases here.

Selling won't help but helping will sell and teach don't sell. And it very much feeds into that. So the the Teach don't sell is something that permeates really across our business and from how we actually engage and how we upskill and transfer knowledge as part of our projects, but it very much starts with some of those first engagements. So as you say, actually, if we're able to use the insight that we've got from those online and digital touchpoints to understand what a customer is actually looking for then we can have those relevant conversations. We can understand where they are on that on that research and buying process and support them and nurture them through it. So you kind of got one end of the spectrum, as you say, of just cold calling and we do a lot of different things. And you end up cold calling someone who doesn't know who you are, and you have a very irrelevant conversation with them. versus actually feeding in the intel that you have, through demand gen activities to be able to say okay, you're at this stage of the buying cycle, and you're interested in solving this particular problem or challenge then we can have a much more valuable conversation and add value to them to support them through that. So if that means actually they need some more information or they need to make sense of the different options within the market or they need to build a business case for others within the organization. We can lean in and we can help that with that that human into intervention through the through the STR team.

Chris 31:37

think there's a relation there as well to the times you touched on earlier you know the need for how things like creative and messaging are gonna change and that understanding of not just that we've got a lead, but who is that lead? What pinpoint is it we're trying to address? There's more of a need now to focus on specific user stories and tailor their nurture around those, probably with, you know, third party tools to give us back some of the control that we've lost on ad platforms. But also having decreed that speaks to those, I think is is a real differentiator no because that's something that a lot of the perhaps in Euro competition don't have access to. Although generative AI is you know, got something to say about that. But being able to not just create an ad or you know, create like I just want to eat this generic, but speak to specific user stories specific function. And then when the sales team get in that conversation they know who they're speaking to, as well. And you've got this sort of ad sent going all the way through. Yeah,

Tom Gatten 32:51

secession lots I'd like to pick up on there, but what do you when you said the control we've lost on our platforms? What do you mean I think that is really interesting. But

Unknown Speaker 32:59

what do you mean by that? Think

Chris 33:02

it's the most straightforward form just the removal of targeting options. You know, this lack of the improved, improved and developed privacy measures just mean that we have less to go on, and especially on these channels, we're touching on for which I've primarily been to see something updates and those relatively recent changes, just pull back the detail the you might have had before we work within quite specific tools, apps that adapt to this builder for so it's really key to us to be able to address people who are not just using third party intent or interest signals, but people who are specifically users of specific technologies or exactly so being able to make that jump from what is essentially guesswork based on

Tom Gatten 33:54

like a skill. This is my skill, it is CRM or whatever.

Chris 33:59

So we're moving from, you know, reliance on sort of unreliable third party data correlated by an advertising platform to a first party, you know, approach which is obviously best practice, but it's also still the thing that gives you that closes that gap.

Unknown Speaker 34:18

Yep, really interesting.

Tom Gatten 34:24

So what do you think about skills so how do you think b2b marketers skills will change if we were to look back three years and then look forward five years or something? What do you think are the biggest changes that are happening now? Or you know, roundabout now we'll about be about to happen in the skills that a b2b marketer is expected to have or that you'll be hiring in your into your teams, you know,

Unknown Speaker 34:52

that you don't have today

Alex 34:58

so, again, there's there's a lot to unpack there is a question. I mean, I think there's obviously the big the big thing at the moment is is AI and understanding the role that that's going to have and what what skills it's going to support and how it changes things because actually it becomes then around individuals who are not necessarily replaced by AI but actually know how to use it and how to get the most.

Tom Gatten 35:30

Does anyone tried to make an add on Dolly? I did. It didn't it didn't do great. I know there are tools that make it easier.

Chris 35:39

I think it's one of those things I've I have tried to make an add on dolly and I've taken a few of our ads and tried to make variations of them. You know, credit to the creative team. It's it's not there yet, especially when it comes to anything to do with you know, people. It's quite good at illustration but not people. You can, you can tell. But I have to agree with Alex that I think they'll also be a case of needing to understand where your workflow can be assisted by them. And when the agency perspective, whether or not we can deliver a lot more with that tooling. Than an agency that isn't using it. Even bad accents. You know from inspiring the design team or getting a plain piece of content together that then an expert or the brand team can go in and and tweak as they need. Hopefully doing a lot more of that sort of legwork. That at the moment, cost us time and cost the client money.

Alex 36:40

I think it's bringing in the science element of it more, more and more. So when you look at design,

you gonna be able to access insight and data not just from your organization, but from a much larger pool and actually have those those creative

decisions be at design or be a copy or email subject, whatever it might be. That's driven by the science of which is going to get the most engagement and the most interaction from the audience that you desire to engage with. And that's going to substantially increase the bar because sooner or later everyone will have access to that to that same level of intelligence.

Thomas Gatten 37:29

Another thing that is possible although probably a bit cutting edge and not certainly not easy, is to use Chris you guys use Zoom info and I think Alex, you use communism, guys, but what you could in theory do is export all the information from LinkedIn about how accounts, how accounts are engaged over time, and match that up with something like key signals from zoominfo like certain technologies, then in theory, you'd be able to see that people rather accounts that had that were using a certain sort of technology were engaging more over the last three months than they did over the previous nine months or something and therefore create bespoke messaging just for them because that's hot right now. Although there's quite cutting quite tricky, but yeah,

Chris 38:18

those are the conversations that we're having sort of late Friday afternoons when you know, it's just the brain fog is there and anything goes but I think in terms of a place we'd like to get to that is coming, you know, this being able to enable high degrees of personalization all across the nurture and that relates back to I think mostly what we're seeing about CEOs and from from that very first touch point, if you can personalize that message right through to the to retarget someone who seems to have identified as as surging or as close to becoming a one opportunity, great messaging that speaks directly to them. You know, you you've got an advantage there for sure. Well,

Tom Gatten 39:02

it's something that these marketing and sales teams have done forever. It's just it tends to work by osmosis word of mouth. The salespeople are seeing this this surge right now as companies like this, it's not doctors. It's not nurses, I always hate surgery, whatever. And it's this is the sort of thing that's really working when I was I remember sitting with a sales team in Miami, and they were like in American Express selling credit cards. And they were like, right now it's funeral homes. Like everyone loves funeral homes right now because they have to buy coffins from Costco, who knew you could do that? And they have to buy like transport from the minibus company and they're buying lots of credit cards right now. And then, and then eventually that will filter up to a marketing team. That's like, right, okay. This is how we're going to spend a million pound budget over the next six months. But if that's wrong, then there's wasted that million pounds. But if you could, as you're saying, Chris, like try and put some science to it.

Chris 39:58

I think yeah, as Alex mentioned, you know, as soon as you start taking the ability to create the meet these decisions more based on a science and then also iterate on them much faster with the support of AI, then the police is is way further forward. And as you say, you know, it's not based on osmosis. It's, these are the results. And really importantly, I think in terms of the skills that we need, the communication element of being able to share that information. across both the design teams and the sales teams from marketing will be more important than ever.

Tom Gatten 40:37

Has anyone tried to Facebook AI system that that modifies and molds your ad automatically promotes the ones that are as a super weird thing for a marketer to think I'm actually no longer in Korea in control of my creative or the words that are used to describe my product. Facebook's AI will just modify it and go with the highest click through rate and whatever.

Chris 41:04

I think our brand team would be too delighted.

Unknown Speaker 41:08

No, I can't imagine like I can't imagine any brand team.

Chris 41:13

They've just about gotten over responsive search ads, so are sorry responsive display ads. I don't know if they're letting the AI do everything is is on the cards. just yet.

Tom Gatten 41:24

When you say sorry. Sorry. Go on. Let's just say when you say responsive display ads when you mean

Chris 41:32

the the ads that Google uses a selection of different assets to create combinations. The drawback of those is that you don't have the complete branding control. Sorry, it's a very specific reference to a

Tom Gatten 41:45

Google I just didn't know existed. So it'll like choose the right title and the right subtitle and then the right link or something based on

Chris 41:52

the professor in the different banner spaces. Oh, I see. Got it. Yeah. The alternative is to just create your own HTML which have a fixed that you lose that ability to optimize.

Alex 42:07

Yeah, to your point, Thomas, I think it's how, how much trust a brand is willing to put within that AI so if you've got some parameters that then that actually it's really just a step up from the more traditional AV testing and email subject line. But if you if you remove those parameters and you just let it entirely be driven by what is going to get the most conversion based on global data, then there is a danger that what will get what gets the most clicks is not actually what you want to reflect. You're

Thomas Gatten 42:43

absolutely right. And actually that's one of the worst one I've always been one of the flaws with an ad platform is that their interests are not aligned with yours. Even in the even in the consumer space. They're looking for the highest number of clicks. And famously, if that means 1000 Chinese students or robots or something, then that's what they'll bloody do because that's what they get paid for. And LinkedIn does this all the time. Like if you go and put whatever you put on LinkedIn, whatever set of accounts you want to target and you specifically named them. When you describe them. It I guarantee you I always serve a billion ads to Ernst and Young national rail and I as someone I said, I'll be showing this to the other month. The US Air Force has a lot of people on LinkedIn. sitting around doing nothing but browsing around LinkedIn all the time. And so if you're not careful, you'll get a billion clicks or impressions or whatever you're paying for. From these click Hoover's like Ernst and Young they just have a lot of people that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. And that's not necessarily them. Being a good fit for your product. That LinkedIn incentive is to get a lot of clicks because that's what they get paid for. But it's been a problem with Facebook for years, of course.

Alex 44:00

So yeah, and I think that you know, that goes back to the start of the conversation. Ultimately about the the advancements and the level of insight that we can see around b2b marketing. So actually, it's not just about targeting anybody from an organization it's about targeting a set number of of individuals based on

specific criteria, which you can you can do today within LinkedIn, but I think it's only going to get smarter and more accurate to make sure that your ad is being surfaced. To the right people at the right time.

Tom Gatten 44:44

What would have been recent changes, what have you seen Chris? That's changed in the last 18 months, two years in this in this space? what were people doing two years ago? I don't know whether you were actually at Prudential and serving b2b marketers or other brands two years ago, but

Chris 45:02

not every digital but a definite agency. Yeah, things change fast. I think the biggest change for me that's at least come to get and gotten a lot more popular is the demand gen CD. Saves. And that is become sort of standard best practice. I think, more recently, you know, looking at points from the last maybe six months even is a shift, a step beyond that to know thinking about online communities, and how we can reach groups in create groups and from the paid side work better with our organic social colleagues to make that engagements there and speak to the product teams to make sure that the engagement is also across the product and

Thomas Gatten 45:47

product lead growth. So this is kind of what we were talking about earlier, right. If you can get one or two people starting to use the product. You've got a conversation going there between the user and the product. You've also got the organic conversation going in a community of people that are talking about the product or

Chris 46:03

Yeah, and I think the priority is increasingly shifting to recognizing the importance of those online of those communities. That as you know, to take it back. Alex mentioned you know, earlier in the conversation, the shift for a lot of businesses away from expensive traditional methods. If you can get a smaller group of loyalists to then advocate for your product. You can grow quite quickly without needing to be at a trade sure or something similar.

Tom Gatten 46:34

Yeah. What about you, Alex, have you what are the changes within your own organization or in other people's b2b apps? That you've

Alex 46:47

various actually so I think, certainly, there's a bit of a change in trend around content marketing. So again, touching on what Chris said around sort of the demand gen approach, but also I think, the quality and the quantity of content so content marketing is certainly not a new thing. But I think the the level of expectation and competition and value that's needed in content is ever increasing to to cut through that noise. So there's certainly

more importance I think, in terms of the value that you're offering, and more and more organizations are giving what is quite valuable content away for free as part of that demand gen approach. And I think that will continue to be the case and I think related to that, then is actually the quality and the accuracy of intent data as well. So my one of my previous companies, we were quite an early adopter of, of intent data and it was a waste of time to be honest, it just it didn't really deliver insight or value.

And we didn't see really any any return on it. We've We've kind of revisited it recently, same tool, the same tool, different different tool. sets, so about five years on. So is that through communism as well, which I think is is might be run by Bombora. I'm not sure. I can't remember now. But But yeah, the the level of insight that that provides, and I think there's still a way to go for it, but it's certainly a marked improvement on what we were seeing. Going back probably seven years, seven years or so.

Tom Gatten 48:57

Yeah, on the community thing. I think, Chris, you're absolutely right about that. We've considered kind of changing the name of our SDR team as rather than STRS but rather community managers to reflect that their role is to just to create conversations and to nurture conversations between prospects and clients and prospects and clients and clients and, and us and, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Chris.

Chris 49:26

This is gonna say Joaquin again, we touched on this earlier that I think this this podcast is actually quite a good example of how you're obviously changing your corona as well that your process is focused on people. It's personable. It's an invitation, not a sales call. I think even the fact that we're having this conversation is pretty representative of that and yeah, makes a lot of sense. We've definitely taken some ideas away from it. I have to say,

Tom Gatten 49:59

Yeah, I think we've just found it's just so much more effective than anything else we've ever done. Yeah.

Alex 50:08

It'll be interesting to see what how much of that is driven by by cultural change as well because, again, going back sort of seven or so years, I did quite a lot of work around communities and found it was very effective. In in local government, and in charities, because they were much more collaborative. So we had a local government leaders forum where we would all get together, discuss various different topics and, and challenges and have it as a as an IT working group, both virtually and in person and something very similar for charity, charity leaders. And, and that always worked really well. In the way that we're discussing here. People would speak very openly and they'd be very collaborative and there was a lot of movement of individuals from one counsel to another, for example, or from one charity to another.

And, and it's interesting to then see, I think, we're in a more open environment. Now. I think just everything whether it's it's driven by data and content is more open. And people being able to collaborate and share on the commercial side that perhaps weren't, weren't before.

Tom Gatten 51:31

Yeah, I'm sure you're right about that. I think probably the pandemic. I know this is a cliche thing to say, but it probably encourage people to think about choosing their own communities rather than just not even thinking about it ever and just kind of,

Thomas Gatten 51:44

you know, your community being the people that you're in physical contact with. Suddenly that didn't have to be the case you had, you know your neighbors. Whatsapp group and the kind of squash club Whatsapp group and their marketers, very Whatsapp group. But I also think that possibly in b2b, the reason that our this podcast and this kind of community creation thing has been so successful is because because of this very rapid change, which has destabilized the b2b marketers, and they don't really often people really, really want to know what other people are doing. Whereas if we were trying to do this in like consumer world, it's so mature and so like, advanced and so saturated, that they might just be super, super competitive, and it's more about getting like a 1% over Coca Cola or whatever is Pepsi, whereas in the b2b world, it's just the ground is shifting under your feet. So it's like, I'm not necessarily competing with my competitors. I'm competing with like you know, just not being able to do in a really mild collapsing.

Alex 52:53

It comes back to more more tools available to the individual again, so again, if you go back to that example where if you were reliant on more physical events and getting a number of local government leaders around the table to discuss a topic I think as as as a leader justifying the the travel and the expense and the day out to go and do that is quite easy to do as someone who's earlier in their career, so take sales development reps as an example. Being able to perhaps justify the budget and the time out of the business to go and sit with a load of other STRS is a bit more challenging whereas now actually, if that's the case of just collaborating online with other STRS, sharing best practice, seeing what's working, again, talking around the tools that they're using, and then those SDRs going and saying, Okay, actually I'm going to purchase a subscription off my own back for this tool to help me do my job better. There's much more empowerment to those individuals and it's much more accessible than perhaps it has been in the past and that's that's only going to drive that that community and that engagement more and I think, again, this is where the blur from sort of personal social media be to see expectations and the way in which they interact with companies and interact with technology spills very much into the b2b environment and why can't I access the same level of insight tools collaboration in my work environment that I would to go and do some form of personal project? Yep.

Thomas Gatten 54:43

Yeah, I'm going to be very interested. We were doing a project with a recruitment company, and we're going to traditional, all we do is b2b But of course, one of the big things that they spend money on b2b platforms like LinkedIn is recruitment. And so we're going to just test out whether we can predict which companies are going to give them candidates and we're also there was a person that I think it's coming along to an event soon who works for a luxury bathroom brand. They spend a lot of money apparently on LinkedIn, because it have super high end luxury. And they're targeting people based on where they work because they can predict they've got spend. They've got disposable income, job titles and companies where they work. So I'd be really interested to see again, there's just this kind of blurring the boundaries the other way, becoming consumer brands trying to use

Tom Gatten 55:33

the job that someone has to predict what they're going to be spending money on for themselves. Anyway, I am interested to see how that goes.

Unknown Speaker 55:44

All right. Well, it'll be interesting

Alex 55:45

on that one as well, just as a slight aside, not ready to do the topic, but be interesting on that one as well to see where that goes to actually if they're targeting an individual based on where they work. Then they spill into that more b2c targeted advertising do they then understand who that person's partner is and and start following their partner with those same ads

Thomas Gatten 56:10

which, which you can write Yeah, which you could do on something like Facebook, because you could start with here the email address of the people that have engaged with me on LinkedIn and then yeah. Interesting. All right. Well, we're just we're just coming to the end only got a few minutes left. So I wanted to say thank you so much, Chris and Alex, for being with us today. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting conversation. I think we've got a lot to write up. So what we will do now is whack in. You're gonna write write this up

Unknown Speaker 56:46

into a document

Thomas Gatten 56:48

and we're keen or Sondra, a colleague will reach out to you guys and find some time next week to go through the document to make sure you're happy with where you're quoted. Obviously, it gets boiled down hugely. We've covered a lot of topics. The document is in here and various plus cheering on LinkedIn. So it's like really, really compressed. And then we'll immediately start editing this into a podcast episode, which as I said, we have a bit of a backlog in but will likely come out in the next month or so. And when you get those things we'd be delighted if you share them on your own LinkedIn Of course. I think that's that's it the guys have any questions or anything else you'd like to share? No, just say

Alex 57:31

thank thanks for the invite. And it's been a really interesting and valuable conversations. So thank you.

Chris 57:38

Yeah, over there. call that a really nice way to spend that hour on a Wednesday afternoons. Thank you all for your time.

Unknown Speaker 57:44

Fabulous. Thank you. Thanks, Kay.

Unknown Speaker 57:48

Thanks for working.

Unknown Speaker 57:49

Thanks, Tom.

Speaker 2 57:50

Thank you guys. Yeah. Interesting. Thank you

Unknown Speaker 58:00

sounds good. recording stopped. Yeah, really good.

Tom Gatten 58:05

That's a really good stuff. But yeah, it's a shame. We only got two people we got to

Unknown Speaker 58:09

Yeah, I think we're about this. Probably.

Speaker 2 58:12

I need to consider if we start doing sponsoring the events, again, maybe. I think we have enough data to make a conclusion that when people enroll on the on the events on LinkedIn, they don't show up. I think when they go to our landing page, they qualify them out the thing that we have been discussing. So if we decide again to spend on but maybe we don't need to sponsor events in the short term, because we think we are doing well

Tom Gatten 58:45

with there's no reason to do so. If phantom Buster and K and yourself can can do it.

Speaker 2 58:50

Exactly. We are saving Yeah, more than two grand a month if we if we use phantom Buster properly, and it's more targeted as well. We can select with people we want so

Unknown Speaker 59:02

yeah, yeah.

Joaquin Dominguez 59:05

Yeah. But in the future, maybe we should consider coming back to answering that. Yeah. running ads. Yeah, exactly. If we ran ads again, maybe we should get back to the previous model maybe with a lower click through rate but finally with with leads that will actual people that show up exactly. That's what we need. We don't need click through rate. Yeah.

Tom Gatten 59:27

Weird. Okay, cool. All right. Well, let's have a chat about that. Then.

Speaker 2 59:32

Yeah. You told me that you wanted to discuss the the event on funding as soon as possible. They want to do you want to do it now? Or?

Speaker 1 59:42

Yeah, so I'll do a couple of things. So I'm gonna share

Unknown Speaker 59:50

with you see.

Tom Gatten 59:56

So basically, I'll share with you the investment deck so I can't I can't launch this yet. Because the transaction you know the restructuring of the business has not completed so we don't actually have

Speaker 6 1:00:12

exactly doesn't have the recording in progress. Do you mind if I record this for my future?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:18

Do you mind if you don't actually sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:22

Let me miss the recording stopped.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:24

Sorry. Just a bit sensitive about it. Yeah. No,

Speaker 2 1:00:27

don't worry. Yes. That's totally fine. And also let me stop auteur AI because it is recording anyway.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:45

Actually, let's start a new meeting.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:47

I think it's faster. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:49

All right. Okay. Cool.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:50

Cool.