The past few months have seen focus on account based marketing increase thanks to its ability to focus spend and efforts on sectors that are not cutting back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dave Stephens from the Business Marketing Club sat down with myself, Riaz Kanani, Founder/CEO at Radiate B2B and Head of Business Marketing and CEX at O2, Zoe Hominick to discuss examples of account based marketing that we have seen.
I discussed:
- Scaling account based marketing vs one-to-one account based marketing and why the former is allowing more companies to adopt this strategy.
- Budgeting for an account based marketing programme and approaches we have seen.
- The people required to deliver account based marketing programme both for one-to-one and scaled account based marketing.
- Before looking at the results we have seen from account based programmes over the past few years that have seen companies shift from a pilot to full blown programme.
Today, companies need to do more with less. With companies increasingly staying under the radar till much later in the process, figuring out who to speak to, leads to opportunities entering the pipeline earlier and less time wasted by sales following up with companies that are not in market yet.
After, Ash Coleman-Smith, consultant CMO and Catherine Borowski, Artistic Director of ProduceUK share more examples and lessons they have learned.
See the full transcript below:
00:00:05 Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to the Business Marketing Club podcast for B2B marketing. People who want to get on and stay ahead. In each episode, we’ll be offering insight and inspiration on a key current topic, advice on how to climb the career ladder and top networking tips.
00:00:23 Speaker 1
My name’s Dave Stevens. I’m a B2B marketer and I’m chair of the Business Marketing Club network. In this episode, I’ll be speaking to the head of Business Marketing and Customer Experience at 02, Zoe Hominick and also CEO and founder at Radiate B2B. We ask Riaz Kanani for their best case studies of account based marketing.
00:00:44 Speaker 1
And CMO consultant Ash Coleman Smith will share some great B2B at marketing examples, and what he’s learned from them. Ready. Then let’s begin.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
Lots of B2B marketers talk about account-based marketing or ABM, but few practise it and few are still practise it well. My two guests today are true ABM practitioners. First up, I’m joined by Zoe Homanik, who’s head of business marketing and customer experience at O2.
00:01:16 Speaker 1
Thanks for joining us.
00:01:18 Speaker 2
No, you’re welcome. Delighted to be here.
00:01:20 Speaker 1
So, and perhaps first of all, you can tell us a little bit about what’s on your agenda at 02 right now?
00:01:27 Speaker 2
Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I head up marketing at the business division at 02 and for us really the agenda as ever is always led by our customers. So really understanding the huge change in transformation that customers are going through and how then as 02 we can play a real role in helping.
00:01:45 Speaker 2
Transform and meet those challenges that they see in the the business environment today.
00:01:49 Speaker 1
And how important is account based marketing to do that?
00:01:54 Speaker 2
For us, it’s really a key tenant of our strategy and it has been to be honest for probably the last five years.
00:01:59 Speaker 1
Right. And so so in terms of stages that you’re at with your ABM programme, you’re quite advanced.
00:02:07 Speaker 2
I think it’s an ongoing journey and for us I don’t. I don’t think by any means we’ve mastered it, but we’ve certainly learned a huge amount over the last five years and we’ve really continued to develop, iterate and evolve our approach to ABM over the course of that time.
00:02:24 Speaker 1
And and and. What does that mean in terms of investment?
00:02:28 Speaker 2
So ABM from an investment point of view, it does represent a, you know, financially a significant proportion of our our marketing spend. But actually when we talk about investment, it’s also a huge commitment in terms of.
00:02:42 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:02:42 Speaker 2
For us within marketing, but also interestingly from a sales point of view. So it’s not something that should be taken lightly or or done half heartedly.
00:02:50 Speaker 1
I mean not wanting to to be Privy to to any of the of the kind of commercial insight that the of of how you run your business. But can you can you help us get some kind of sense of how much maybe time you invest in this sort of thing?
00:03:05 Speaker 2
Yeah. So I think I think ABM, as I say is something that that really requires not just the marketing individuals within the team. So I’d say in terms of proportion, probably at least 20% of my marketing team are focused on on ABM.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
In all its guises, and we can perhaps talk a little bit about what actually do we mean by ABM, because it’s banded around quite a lot within the industry.
00:03:23 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:03:26 Speaker 2
Term, but also actually, as I say, the commitment from the business and most notably probably senior management, certainly in the way that we’ve deployed ABM and we’ve continued to evolve it the time and the commitment from senior management and all the way up to the board actually.
00:03:43 Speaker 2
You know, it’s something that’s been, I think, critical to our success.
00:03:47 Speaker 1
So you quite rightly picked me up then. So what’s the what’s the 02 definition of ABM so?
00:03:53 Speaker 2
So I think for me that the the secret in many ways of account based marketing.
00:03:59 Speaker 2
Can be, you know, it’s just great marketing.
00:04:03 Speaker 2
But actually in the way that we deploy it in the way that we define it at 02, it’s very much about being account based. So we look at both 1 to one and one to few cluster based marketing in the way that we define that within our organisation.
00:04:19 Speaker 1
And that’s so 1 to one, one to few but but not one to many.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
No, no, not for us. We we do segmented marketing. We do broader campaign marketing as as part of our mix. But for me that isn’t account based marketing account based marketing is about taking a very personalised approach to the execution of your marketing, really driven by.
00:04:42 Speaker 2
A tight kind of insight into the customer behaviours, trends and needs for us to be able to truly kind of execute upon that in a.
00:04:54 Speaker 2
Greater level and to a greater value to the customer and to our business than we perhaps would do in a one to many scenario as you described there.
00:05:04 Speaker 1
And so going back to my question about investment of time and how do you break up that investment of time between, well, I guess first of all, one to one and one to few.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
It’s something that we’re continually evolving actually, right. So I think we we’ve been on a journey where we started with ABM, with actually a very small trial to really test and learn it. And that was through a A sales challenger methodology.
00:05:31 Speaker 2
We move from that into more of a programme where actually we were very closely focused on one to one accounts and actually now as we’ve started to that develop that greater level of insight, we’re now starting to expand that into more of a cluster approach.
00:05:45 Speaker 1
OK. And then there’s the the.
00:05:48 Speaker 1
Investment question, but if you if you look at the at the kind of different functional elements that you iterated about ABM. So you you talked about.
00:05:56 Speaker 1
Getting insight and looking at trends and then going all the way through to execution again, where do you invest the most time?
00:06:04 Speaker 2
I think it’s an evolving journey and as the nature would suggest, it varies by account, right? So so it depends where we’re starting on.
00:06:13 Speaker 2
So we will actually, before any account is allowed into the programme, and we do have a very strong criteria to get into the programme.
00:06:22 Speaker 2
Then you know depending on that level of insight as to say that we have in the starting point.
00:06:27 Speaker 2
Account will then invest time in really getting under the skin.
00:06:30 Speaker 2
Of that. But then as our maturity evolves, probably there’s less focus on the inside and more and actually the execution, understanding the behaviour, the reactions that we’re seeing within the account and constantly working hand in glove to understand what are the challenges, how are they evolving.
00:06:47 Speaker 2
Actually, as we’re progressing with customers, we’re moving them through that journey. We look at things like an advocacy scale in some of our accounts actually, how are we progressing with some of those key stakeholders that will then evolve? How?
00:06:55 Speaker 1
OK.
00:07:01 Speaker 2
Our insight needs to, you know.
00:07:05 Speaker 2
Look at those stakeholders. What’s next and what’s the next best step and execution within that account. So I think there’s definitely a huge amount of insight up front before we get started, but it’s constant throughout the programme.
00:07:07 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:18 Speaker 1
OK. And and and what sort of results do you?
00:07:23 Speaker 2
So so interestingly, Abmi would say has been our most commercially successful.
00:07:29 Speaker 2
Programme that we’ve we’ve run within the the B2B marketing team.
00:07:34 Speaker 2
It’s very much that commercial focus that really started our journey on ABM and need to be able to demonstrate greater impact from our activities. So the the results vary. As I say we we look at both return financially our revenues level.
00:07:54 Speaker 2
But it we also look at the relationship and the reputation that we’re building and those are really the three key metrics that we’re constantly measuring.
00:08:03 Speaker 1
And I wonder if perhaps you can you can give us a couple of examples of how you apply ABM at Telefonica O2.
00:08:13 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So, so one example has been through a sales challenger methodology. So this has been really looking at building out a commercial proposition for either a on a one to one or A1 to few basis.
00:08:27 Speaker 2
This understanding very much the customer where they were financially and what the areas in which actually are offering across our the full breadth of our portfolio could help deliver a commercial return to their business. So quite a.
00:08:43 Speaker 2
Bold approach to take. You know, we did have some nervousness around the business with that as you can imagine.
00:08:48
I believe.
00:08:48
But.
00:08:49 Speaker 2
Actually, what that facilitated and where we saw the great win out of that was really opening doors. So we saw a multitude of different reactions from customers that were very challenging in, in perhaps in our numbers. But actually what that resulted in was customers asking us to come in and talk through the numbers with them.
00:09:09 Speaker 2
So straight away, actually, you know, as marketers, that’s what we’re always trying to do to get our sales people in front of our customers to create conversations, to create a dialogue.
00:09:16 Speaker 2
And that’s exactly what it did. It it might not have been that a +1 in the initial outset, but actually being able to work through the model with the customer bringing in actually greater specificity of data allowed us to demonstrate the value in what we were doing to the customer.
00:09:31 Speaker 1
So it’s kind of a risk that paid off, yeah.
00:09:33 Speaker 2
It was, yeah. And and and we saw all sorts of different reactions. Some customers that perhaps felt threatened by what we were delivering actually others were.
00:09:42 Speaker 2
In senior management, this is very much a, you know, a senior and C-Suite targeted campaign. We saw great response from senior managers saying actually this is exactly the sort of insight that I would like to see from from my team. And you know welcoming it in with with open arms.
00:09:58 Speaker 2
To again work through the.
00:09:59 Speaker 1
Which is great to hear. So so for those people who are listening, who are perhaps less advanced than telephonica, O2 has has been in in terms of ABM, can you can you say that, you know, you you took a risk and it was it was successful straight away.
00:09:59 Speaker 2
With them.
00:10:16 Speaker 1
Or. Or was it a a little bit of a a slow start?
00:10:20 Speaker 2
And.
00:10:21 Speaker 2
So I think with the the particular example that we talked about there of the sales challenger methodology, we started small, right. So actually we controlled the risk in the outset. We learnt from that and then we we scaled that in a controlled fashion.
00:10:35 Speaker 1
Right.
00:10:36 Speaker 2
So you know we we controlled that list, we we tested and we learned as we went through and I think that’s really important actually in in all kind of fields of marketing actually. So. So I think that’s one of the key things that we saw but but.
00:10:45 Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely.
00:10:50 Speaker 2
To an extent, we took a risk, but actually it was very much a.
00:10:54 Speaker 2
Underpinned risk in that we were confident in the numbers that we were able to apply. We worked with experts right across the business to underpin those.
00:11:05 Speaker 2
We were bold in our approach, but I think in today’s climate we have to be in order to get that cut.
00:11:11 Speaker 1
Through and and I guess some people could be could be looking at at this and thinking, Oh well, you know, this is this is Telefonica O2. They’ve got lots of resources. They’ll have a great amount of.
00:11:24 Speaker 1
Customer data, of course. Abm is is is going to work.
00:11:28 Speaker 1
Work for them. Do you? Do you think there are any circumstances that make ABM more likely to succeed at at 02 than elsewhere?
00:11:37 Speaker 2
So I think it it’s a really interesting question and it’s one I’ve been giving some thought to actually. And I think there are a couple of ingredients I would probably pull out actually that are key to our success, which by no means are unique.
00:11:50 Speaker 2
I think the first one is absolutely about being customer led. So by its very definition, as we’ve already talked about, account based marketing has to be centred around the the customer, not the product.
00:12:01 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:12:02 Speaker 2
Or or not your your own business and what you’re trying to achieve. So actually if you’ve got that kind of mentality within your business and ABM is definitely something that can work for you.
00:12:11 Speaker 2
You I think the other one that’s been a real secret of our success is our collaboration. We have an incredibly strong relationship.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
Within the sales teams and across the senior management and leadership team and that’s really critical marketing, absolutely you know valued for the role that we deliver and we’re seeing very much as partners in the business to really help us kind of grow and deliver our targets.
00:12:31
Yeah.
00:12:39 Speaker 2
And I think those are a couple of the key things that have been critical.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
The other final thing I would say is it’s about a long term.
00:12:46 Speaker 2
So ABM is about a mindset and a philosophy, not a short term campaign. So we hear a lot about the long and the short of it and some of these, you know, different research papers that’s absolutely critical in ABM. There are examples of things that can deliver overnight.
00:13:01 Speaker 2
But actually for us it’s been about taking a long term strategic approach.
00:13:05 Speaker 2
Do growing developing our customer base?
00:13:08 Speaker 1
And and so the great thing about that really is is I guess that all three of those things are things that could apply to any business around the world right now. So. So try out. Abm is your message.
00:13:16 Speaker 2
Absolutely.
00:13:18 Speaker 2
Definitely, definitely.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
Completely, completely. I think. As I say, it’s been, it’s been hugely successful for us. It’s fundamentally about great marketing about being customer led about really leveraging insight and then really tracking, evolving and iterating your approach, working hand in glove with sales and marketing.
00:13:39 Speaker 1
Zoe Homenik, head of business marketing and customer experience at OT Telefonica UK. Thank you very much.
00:13:45
Thank you.
00:13:48 Speaker 1
My next guest is Riaz Kanani, who is CEO and founder of Radiate B2B. Welcome to the podcast.
00:13:56 Speaker 3
Really good to be here.
00:13:57 Speaker 1
So Radiate B2B. What’s that then?
00:14:00 Speaker 3
Well, we are an ABM platform. We are focused primarily on targeting specific companies with advertising across the funnel, Whether that’s net new customers or increasing the velocity of your existing pipeline or expanding within your your current customer base?
00:14:19 Speaker 1
So then you must have lots of clients who are at different stages. I guess with the ABM programmes they have.
00:14:26 Speaker 3
That’s right. And actually it’s been interesting over the last probably the last three months. So we’ve been around for just over three years now. And if we look at the last couple of years, almost all, I mean it’s like 99% of them were doing pilots with ABM.
00:14:44 Speaker 3
Our our market is predominantly UK, Europe, but we do campaigns across the world.
00:14:50 Speaker 3
But that’s no surprise. But in the last three months, what we’ve seen is an increasing number of companies coming to us who have done their ABM pilots and they’re starting to think about how do we scale their ABM programmes.
00:15:07 Speaker 1
And would you say that’s where the the majority of businesses you interact with are, you know that say that, that, that kind of in that in that stage of I guess maturing but not mature?
00:15:21 Speaker 1
That’s it.
00:15:21
Fine.
00:15:21 Speaker 3
Yeah, that’s completely right.
00:15:24 Speaker 3
It’s very much still the the beginnings of scaling ABM rather than a mature player.
00:15:29 Speaker 1
And if you look at a business at that stage with their ABM programme, what what sort of investment are they making into it?
00:15:38 Speaker 3
So.
00:15:40 Speaker 3
It varies quite significantly. We’ve got clients that are investing as little as you know 5 or 10K annually with us, which is very difficult.
00:15:49 Speaker 3
To do on its own within an ABM programme, most of our clients are investing 40K 50K plus annually to get that pilot programme working and then scaling it after that.
00:15:52
Hmm.
00:16:02 Speaker 1
And would you say those are kind of fixed numbers or would should we be looking at it as I don’t know a percentage of the marketing budget or a percentage of revenue?
00:16:13 Speaker 3
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t think the numbers are fixed. I think it really varies down to each company. I mean, ABM is very much a strategy that is designed to be flexible to the company itself’s needs and so therefore the size of the the contracts that you’re trying to win has a direct impact really on how much investment you can make as a business and so.
00:16:39 Speaker 3
I like to think of things as, as you know, to start with, it’s 10% of your budget. If you can get to that.
00:16:47 Speaker 1
10% of your marketing budget, yeah.
00:16:48 Speaker 3
Of your marketing budget to go into the ABM. Now, that’s obviously very difficult to pull off when you’re just starting out with ABM, but.
00:16:55 Speaker 3
Do see over time.
00:16:56 Speaker 3
Time with our customers that as they see the success from ABM, those budgets do start to to build.
00:17:04 Speaker 1
And so that’s the money bit. What about if we look at the people?
00:17:08 Speaker 1
It lots of people being thrown at this particular problem.
00:17:14 Speaker 3
No, I think if you look at ABM, Traditional ABM (1-to-1 ABM), really you need people alongside the sales teams and etc to actually deliver these campaigns for the most part.
And this is why I think actually ABM is taking off today, whereas it hadn’t taken off as much 10 years ago. It’s that we are looking at ways to scale the capabilities of ABM whilst delivering the same level of experience on the on the recipient. And so you don’t therefore need as many people and of course outside of the big enterprise enterprise.
00:17:48 Speaker 1
OK.
00:17:56 Speaker 3
Most companies don’t actually have lots of people that they can invest in in marketing.
00:18:01 Speaker 1
So if if you’re a business who’s has kind of come out of pilot and is now looking at at scale up, that kind of infers that the pilot has been.
00:18:12 Speaker 1
Successful. So what? What does that mean in terms of results? What will what will the business have seen that is persuading them to move to the next stage?
00:18:17
Yeah.
00:18:21 Speaker 3
Yeah. One of the unusual things I think that we see.
00:18:25 Speaker 3
Often get involved in the pilots. A lot of the technology ABM technology that’s out there often gets dismissed in the pilot stage and it becomes very.
00:18:35 Speaker 3
People orientated or manual and and trying to test the different techniques. One of the beauties of of the advertising platform that we have is that we can we know now because of the number of campaigns we’ve done that you know within three months we’re going to see.
00:18:50 Speaker 3
Interaction from 20 to 30% of the companies that we’re we’re talking to or targeting.
00:18:53 Speaker 1
OK.
00:18:56 Speaker 3
And so if you know that in advance of the pilot, then that’s a pretty good start in terms of knowing what the success criteria is going to look like.
00:19:05 Speaker 1
OK, I and I wonder if so we’ve talked in kind of general terms so far, so so maybe there’s one or two examples you can give us about about businesses that are are at this particular stage.
00:19:17 Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s no surprise that some of our more most innovative clients are in the SaaS technology world. That’s not a surprise I guess.
00:19:28 Speaker 3
In in that in one of those cases, what we saw with a campaign, actually, you know, I talk about 20 to 30% of companies. This particular campaign drove 78% of the companies they targeted over the course of 2 1/2 months.
00:19:40 Speaker 1
My goodness.
00:19:44 Speaker 3
Which was way beyond expectation.
00:19:48 Speaker 3
And what was interesting in that case was obviously and and this is something we see quite a lot is is you can’t treat the advertising messages in the same way as you would do.
00:19:58 Speaker 3
A search campaign the the type of content that you need to be putting in front of people is obviously different and likewise.
00:19:59 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:20:06 Speaker 3
You know, and let, especially if you’re targeting people that are are new to you, so new to the pipeline, they’re at the beginning of the sales process. And so you have to offer something of of much more value than White paper today.
00:20:21 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:20:21 Speaker 3
To actually get engagement and that’s what we saw with that campaign.
00:20:26 Speaker 1
So that sounds like, I mean they were hugely successful, but but I’m wondering how much this is kind of contextual. Are there circumstances that make a camp based marketing more likely to succeed in some places rather than others?
00:20:43 Speaker 3
Yes, I mean I I think for me ABM success of ABM is really it’s success of any marketing is really down to the ability to close that prospect and actually win obviously some revenue.
00:20:56 Speaker 3
And certainly companies, I’m not a big believer in companies that have got low average contract values adopting ABM today. I think the the return you know adopting an ABM strategy is more.
00:21:12 Speaker 3
Than than the other strategies, and if you’ve got lower average contract values, investing ABM into that is not really sensible.
00:21:20 Speaker 1
OK, Riaz Kanani, CEO and founder of Radiate B2B. Thank you very much.
00:21:26 Speaker 3
Thank you.
00:21:31 Speaker 1
B2B marketing is amazing and it’s time to celebrate it. Celebrate it because it’s the toughest profession in business. Our profession is younger than FM CG, so it’s still got to prove itself.
00:21:44 Speaker 1
And you’ve got to prove yourself in a sceptical environment because business doesn’t get to be modelled.
00:21:49 Speaker 1
Pocketing, you’ve got to persuade. You’ve got to explain. You’ve got to lead the way. And if you add to the multiple internal stakeholders, you’ve got the multiple external customer groups. There’s no longer just one buyer, there’s many with different needs and opinions and expectations. And what’s more, there’s no one to help you or the marketing professional.
00:22:10 Speaker 1
Bodies add their focus on FMCG rather than B to B. You’re on your.
00:22:16 Speaker 1
Own. So given all of that, it’s amazing that there’s some brilliant B to B marketing out there, and I’m delighted to be joined by managing partner at Pathfinders, Ash Coleman Smith to look at some of it. Ash, welcome to the podcast.
00:22:29 Speaker 4
Thank you very much.
00:22:31 Speaker 1
So first of all, what’s pathfinders then?
00:22:33 Speaker 4
Yeah. So, so I I spent 20 years working in the PR and advertising agency world 10 years as a marketing director.
00:22:38 Speaker 1
OK.
00:22:42 Speaker 4
Left a year ago and set up Pathfinders, which is me enjoying the freedom and the creativity of the agency world on my own all over again.
00:22:50 Speaker 1
And is there a specific focus that you? Yes.
00:22:53 Speaker 4
Thank you for prompting that.
00:22:54 Speaker 4
One so specific focus is professional services. B2B marketing with an overlap into some financial services, but that that’s the sweet spot for me.
00:23:04 Speaker 1
So that means that you will have both over your the experience that you’ve had before Pathfinders and app Pathfinders have seen some great B2B marketing I’m imagining. So. So what’s caught your eye?
00:23:17 Speaker 4
Yeah, and. And and I like your intro, Dave, because you you, you talk a little bit about you know it’s B to B, marketing is fairly new. I think you know actually the reality for me is that way back in 1980.
00:23:24 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:23:29 Speaker 4
85 which is when I came into this rofession I was doing quite a lot of B2B marketing. So your your question is a good one, but it was a tough one for me because I didn’t want to give you lots of examples from so far back that you know people, people going, what on Earth is he talking about? But.
00:23:40 Speaker 1
OK.
00:23:47 Speaker 4
I suppose they were when I think about the reverse of your question, which is the three big things that I’ve learned.
00:23:53 Speaker 4
And from some of the brilliant examples that that are out there, it’s number one. If you’re going to really put together a fantastic B to B programme, you’ve got to have great insights and I’ll come back to what I mean by that. And I’ve got a good example in some work that Phillips have done recently.
00:24:13 Speaker 4
The second big lesson which which has stuck with me over the years in which which applied more recently at Brian Cave, Leighton Paisner where I was CMO.
00:24:23 Speaker 4
Is is that you’ve got to have a level of bravery and creativity and you’re spot on because you know you you’ve mentioned the fact that it is tough. It’s a tough environment out there for, for, for B to B marketeers in, in what’s often a risk at risk averse environment.
00:24:38 Speaker 4
So I’ve got another couple of examples there. 1 is State Street and and the other is IBM. So I’ll I’ll talk to you about those in a second.
00:24:41 Speaker 1
OK.
00:24:47 Speaker 4
And then the final massive thing I think is as anyone in B to B learns, if they’re managing A-Team, you’ve got to have the space to operate and you’ve got to give your team the space to operate. And I am going to shamelessly plug.
00:25:02 Speaker 4
Some work that that I did with a with another business marketing club member, Brian McCready at Brian Cave Leason Pazner.
00:25:08 Speaker 1
OK.
00:25:12 Speaker 4
So let let let’s let’s look at the first one, Phillips.
00:25:16 Speaker 1
And this is your for.
00:25:17 Speaker 4
This is.
00:25:18 Speaker 4
Insight that example and and you know that lots of people I’m sure, who listens to this will be familiar with behavioural economics, et cetera. But you know it’s it’s it’s such an easy trap to assume that because we’re B to B marketers, we’re all about the rational. We’re all about the left side of the brain.
00:25:37 Speaker 4
And yet, you know, when asked regularly at BLP by the board, you know what, what, what, what are we going to lead on? I always wanted to push them to think about the emotion of the right side because for me.
00:25:49
None.
00:25:52 Speaker 4
Making a really big B to B purchase is more emotional than buying a house or a car because it’s your job. It’s your personal reputation, and if you’re a professional, it’s your status. It’s.
00:26:03 Speaker 1
Interesting though, I mean just to kind of intrude though, because it’s kind of not what?
00:26:08 Speaker 1
I I think B to B mocking is traditionally seen itself as being about. It’s all about the rational right?
00:26:12 Speaker 4
Absolutely. Totally. Yeah. And that’s why I love my first example, which is Philips. And there’s a video out there which which everyone can find on YouTube called the longest night.
00:26:25 Speaker 4
And you know if if you watch that video, it’s a beautiful storytelling.
00:26:31 Speaker 4
It’s quite dark. It’s set in Iceland. It’s a story of the.
00:26:34 Speaker 4
Human and it’s all about sleep apnea, which is which is a health problem that he’s he’s got as a result of of fishing seven days a night and not getting any sleep. And it’s just a brilliant, emotional way of Phillips reaching an audience and saying.
00:26:51 Speaker 4
That together we can help you know people with this with this challenge. But do it cost effectively. How easy would it have been to go the?
00:26:58 Speaker 4
Route.
00:26:58 Speaker 4
That the rational route and just said, you know we’re we’re a brilliant business partner and we can save you.
00:26:59 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:27:04 Speaker 4
And millions of pounds in all sorts of solutions for this, you know, and do.
00:27:09 Speaker 1
Hmm.
00:27:12 Speaker 4
Rational thought leadership, whatever it is. But the moment you see that video, you understand that they they’ve understood a key insight into the audience, which is everybody they talk to in healthcare wants to help people.
00:27:24 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:27:25 Speaker 4
Fantastic. So, so, you know, I think that big insights piece up front is, is, is massively important. And when I think about other great examples that that support that.
00:27:39 Speaker 4
You don’t get fired.
00:27:41 Speaker 4
For hiring IBM.
00:27:42 Speaker 1
No.
00:27:42 Speaker 4
Yeah. Now that’s actually not. It’s it’s not. I thought I’d do some research. It’s not. It’s not advertising line.
00:27:49 Speaker 4
It’s a line that came out of a sales team interesting, but it goes to the heart of the emotional driver in B2B, which is people are risk averse that whatever they do, they don’t want to be the person that gets blamed because if you get blamed.
00:27:51 Speaker 1
Right. OK.
00:28:05 Speaker 4
Your jobs at risk, your status is at risk, so that understanding of the emotional driver.
00:28:11 Speaker 4
Combined with the benefits and your key messages and everything.
00:28:14 Speaker 4
Of course.
00:28:15 Speaker 4
It can really can really elevate great thinking.
00:28:18 Speaker 1
How much pushback do you get when you try to introduce that concept of emotional insight into the businesses?
00:28:26 Speaker 4
That you quit? Yeah, and that.
00:28:26 Speaker 1
Work with.
00:28:29 Speaker 4
That’s why my third big lesson space is.
00:28:33 Speaker 4
So important so, but yeah.
00:28:33 Speaker 1
OK, alright. I I will bide my time. Let’s let’s let’s carry on with the flow as you you suggested it in that case and and maybe go to a .2.
00:28:39 Speaker 4
OK, good. So that’s yeah, let’s come back to that. But but it’s a question that that the preoccupies me as well constantly.
00:28:45
Mm.
00:28:46 Speaker 4
So yeah, I think you know that that if you, if you buy into the fact that the first thing you need to have is, is, is those big insights?
00:28:57 Speaker 4
That the next is that you need to be brave and.
00:28:59 Speaker 4
With.
00:28:59 Speaker 4
Yeah, and and I think you know, there’s there’s something in there and and this is perhaps another thread that that we can explore as we go through this. But it’s the the current danger which which Roy Sutherland to everyone will be familiar with is highlighted which is.
00:29:14 Speaker 4
In a word of digital, if you spend too much time thinking about thinking about the.
00:29:17 Speaker 4
Plumbing your insight becomes so banal, so much like everybody else, is that it’s very hard to make a creative leap off it. So you know, that’s why the emotional piece is so important. Now, when I think about bravery and creativity and B, to be in a couple of examples that, that that have inspired me.
00:29:24 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:29:37 Speaker 4
Ibms Smarter Planets was was a brilliant campaign. It was, it was.
00:29:44 Speaker 4
It was a very, very big thought which which was capable.
00:29:47 Speaker 4
Encompassing both the opportunity to bridge into what they knew were their end, target audiences concerns and sell the benefits.
00:29:58 Speaker 4
As well as big enough to it to wrap around the breadth of what IBM wants to achieve and where they wanted to move the business.
00:30:06 Speaker 4
And and so for me, you know, thinking big is massively important.
00:30:12 Speaker 4
And we’ll come back to it. But how on Earth did whoever sold that in manage to sell that in?
00:30:20 Speaker 1
And so successfully as well, because it’s it’s quite a long lasting campaign.
00:30:24 Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And and and. And, you know, back back to another thread.
00:30:31 Speaker 4
One that encompasses mark on.
00:30:34 Speaker 4
Business development, sales and and relationship management, you know it’s it’s stitches the the path that that that consumer customer path together. So you know that that that’s a great big one. The other one which I just I just love because it’s a different sort of leap.
00:30:35 Speaker 1
It’s a very good piece of integration work.
00:30:43 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:51 Speaker 4
Is State Street. You know, there were. Here we are a a Wall Street bank set set up in 1725.
00:30:59 Speaker 4
Pretty conservative organisation you can imagine.
00:31:04 Speaker 4
They wanted to talk a little bit more about gender diversity. So what did they do? They didn’t do a, you know, the classic route, thought leadership or whatever it is they they put out a statue of little girl.
00:31:07 Speaker 1
Right.
00:31:20 Speaker 4
That huge bull that everyone knows in that Bronze Bull that that sits in Wall Street, you know, they call her fearless girl and their objective was to was to start a debate about gender diversity and also the, the, the the pay gap.
00:31:35 Speaker 4
What a brilliantly simple, not cheap but brilliantly simple leap.
00:31:40 Speaker 3
To.
00:31:40 Speaker 4
Make you know that they’re not an expert in that subject. How do you sustain debate? Who? How would you be taking credibly as a bank? You know, what do they know about it? But there they are. They just put that out there.
00:31:51 Speaker 4
And then use that as a way of triggering discussion and it’s still going on. So you know, I love that.
00:31:58 Speaker 4
I think that the the I’ve I’ve got one other little example which I think is a good one against bravery and creativity which are thrown into the the mix, which is Maersk, the ship containers.
00:32:03 Speaker 1
Against bravery.
00:32:14 Speaker 4
It it you know, that’s a tough topic. You know, it’s a utilitarian as you can. It is a tad. Yeah. Yeah. And. But, you know, when you look at what they’ve done with their employer brand to bring that to life and what you what you when you look at what they’re doing on things like Instagram and quite a lot of the.
00:32:19 Speaker 1
It’s a bit dry, isn’t it?
00:32:30 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:32:32 Speaker 4
The different social platform platform.
00:32:35 Speaker 4
The head of social has done a great job. He’s he’s realised they’re sitting on a on a whole bank, 14,000 odd images and he’s just using them to bring to life messaging and stories and it’s there’s a, you know, that’s that’s another.
00:32:49 Speaker 4
Just a brilliantly done small leap to trade off existing existing yeah, stuff that they’ve got so that the the final one I think you know you need to have the space in the organisation. So this is me finally getting back to answering that other question.
00:32:53 Speaker 1
That is a really, really good example.
00:33:04 Speaker 4
Which is.
00:33:08 Speaker 4
Look.
00:33:08 Speaker 4
It it.
00:33:11 Speaker 4
Having worked in consumer FMCG and in B to B.
00:33:16 Speaker 4
That there is within large FMCG businesses.
00:33:20 Speaker 4
Hunger and an appetite and a bored understanding that creativity and differentiation are part of their brand value and indeed part of how.
00:33:30 Speaker 4
They’re valued by by the markets.
00:33:33 Speaker 4
It lots of business to business organisations believe that they’re they’re valued, but by sales figures, by the innovation. But the brand is perceived as much less important the the board understanding and appetite for it is much less so it’s a, you know, I think.
00:33:38 Speaker 1
Hmm.
00:33:45 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:33:52 Speaker 4
You know all power to B to B.
00:33:54 Speaker 4
Is.
00:33:54 Speaker 4
If if you can succeed in this environment, you need you need high degrees of influence. But the biggest lesson I learned.
00:34:02 Speaker 4
As as someone who came from the agency world and then became acmo was, if I can’t create the space, if I can’t have those battles at the board level, if I can’t earn permission to operate and and create the space for for my team.
00:34:15
Hmm.
00:34:18 Speaker 4
We’ll we’ll never get there and that was my biggest responsibility. And yet, how Lucky was I to have people like Brian in the team, who then filled that space with great, great stuff? But if but if if you.
00:34:27 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:34:29 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. But you’ve got to enable that in the first place.
00:34:30 Speaker 4
Create that space.
00:34:33 Speaker 4
Safely, and that that was a very interesting moment for me personally.
00:34:36 Speaker 4
As someone who who as a as a consultant, spent most of my time selling into a space already created, and I’ve taken it for granted, it existed as suddenly as as a CMO. I I you know, you come up against questions like you know, we want to be.
00:34:43 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:34:45 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:34:53 Speaker 4
We we we want to be pushing our real estate real estate disputes practise and I’m looking at them and I’m thinking.
00:35:00 Speaker 4
I I sort of have to get into conversation here about, you know what, what are the benefits? What are clients really buying the emotional drivers with lawyers and you know, you have to find a way into that conversation and you know that that’s that.
00:35:15 Speaker 4
Ability to use influence because there’s there’s not many B to B marketers have huge amounts of power in these organisations. I think is you know.
00:35:21 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:35:24 Speaker 4
So that’s possibly the biggest lesson I’ve learned most recently in the last 10 years.
00:35:27 Speaker 1
OK.
00:35:30 Speaker 1
And and and so give us one or two tips then how? How do you create that influence or or even just, you know, create the opportunity to to to use it?
00:35:39 Speaker 4
Yeah. So I think the the language and the methodology needs to change in in every organisation and and everyone listening will understand in their organisation.
00:35:52 Speaker 4
Where? Who they’re selling to, where that person’s understanding a level of competence is in in terms of knowing how marketing BD sales, CRM fits and the role.
00:36:07 Speaker 4
For me, you know, I took. I took a look at the organisation as CMO.
00:36:13 Speaker 4
And it became obvious that.
00:36:17 Speaker 4
Salespeople were talking about BD and sales.
00:36:21 Speaker 4
Marketing people and and a lot of partners in that instance were talking about brand and public relations and reputation and noise and awareness. And then there was there was talk about CRM, but people meant the system, not client relationship management. It was a confused difficult environment to sell into.
00:36:38 Speaker 4
So the only way we were going to create that space was to create enough understanding across the right influencers.
00:36:45 Speaker 4
Of what our agenda was as a marketing BD in CRM team and that was an integrated agenda. So it was about.
00:36:56 Speaker 4
What is the path that our individual audiences are going to be treading and normally almost always?
00:37:00 Speaker 1
OK.
00:37:04 Speaker 4
In any world, that path is I want to know who you.
00:37:07 Speaker 4
You are what you do. I want to know that you do it best in the competition. And now that I understand that and I think you’re relevant, I want to understand it a little bit more now that that can’t that simple starting point conversation which which is about marketing communication.
00:37:18
Yes.
00:37:25 Speaker 4
Awareness, relevance, et cetera.
00:37:28 Speaker 4
It that’s the one that you have when you walk into a cocktail party and I introduce myself as the.
00:37:34 Speaker 4
The grand you know, managing part of Pathfinders.
00:37:40 Speaker 4
Or or. It’s what you do as a business when you’re selling into a sector or into a whole.
00:37:45 Speaker 4
Now, once you’ve got to the point at which you’ve you’ve people understand you’re relevant, and that cocktail party, they haven’t walked away, you start to talk about them, you talk about their needs, you start to sell into that opportunity. You get that you identify the opportunities.
00:37:56 Speaker 1
But that’s got your in effective.
00:37:58 Speaker 4
Yeah, now that now that next stage that that stage from talking about needs in inter closing the sale is.
00:38:06 Speaker 4
Development sales.
00:38:08 Speaker 4
But it’s part of that path and and that for me, you know that that that is a very concentrated specific thing that leads naturally from all the work that’s been done at the beginning, sure straight into.
00:38:09
Mm.
00:38:22 Speaker 4
Right now your clients let let’s talk about how I can add value. That’s the thing I can do. What once as a business to business supplier, we’ve delivered what you expected and we’ve earned permissions to it. But then I can add value and I can up sell and cross sell and I can begin to think about driving loyalty in that promoted schools and all that stuff.
00:38:41 Speaker 4
That passed the pathway is client relationship management or whatever you want to call it. You know it’s that top end now that.
00:38:50 Speaker 4
Understanding that helps internal audiences think about what different tactics might be useful for, so you can go back to a business and this this is the magic moment for me. It’s if I can talk to someone and say.
00:39:04 Speaker 4
Where’s your revenue coming from next year? Is it coming from people that that are already clients? Is it coming from people that are, you know, in some sort of sales pipeline or is it coming from audiences that either don’t know you or don’t understand you or don’t know that you’re relevant? It’s the moment they answer that question, I can hit them with a really strong rationale for the the mix and the strategy.
00:39:09 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:39:26 Speaker 4
And then you can get into conversations about where, where they’re at rational and emotional drivers are given where they are and that, that, that.
00:39:34 Speaker 1
Path. That’s the question Ash Coleman Smith. Thank you very much.
00:39:40 Speaker 1
And that’s it. That’s all for this episode of the Business Marketing Club podcast. Thanks to my guests Zoe Homenick, Riyaz Kanani and Ash Coleman Smith and thanks to you for listening, please do let us know what you thought of today’s podcast.
00:39:56 Speaker 1
Give us a rating or review or drop a line of business marketingclub.org.uk, and if you’ve got something interesting, practical and visionary to share with our listeners, why not volunteer to be a guest on a future podcast?
00:40:10 Speaker 1
But no sales pitches, product demos, creds, presentations, and theoretical nonsense. Please, that’s not for this pod pod pod.
00:40:18 Speaker 1
You might also want to join the business marketing club through events, mentoring and thought leadership for the B to B marketing community. You can do that right now by pressing that big yellow join button at the top of our website, businessmarketingclub.org.uk. So go on, what’s stopping you?
00:40:37 Speaker 1
My name’s Dave Stevens. Thanks very much for listening and I hope you have a great day.