From the Industry Leaders
Lucio Furlani, Vice President, Marketing, EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, pointed out that we need to understand that the buyer’s journey is no longer linear but iterative and that we need to plan our content for each of the points of iteration in the journey.
Lucio, in addressing the topic of why B2Bs should sit up and take notice of consumer trends, also made the point that he does not do B2B or B2C but B2P – Business To People.
Francesco Federico
Acer’s Global Digital Marketing Director - Francesco Federico - suggested that we should build personas from an individual customer upwards, finding similar audiences to individuals rather than aggregating from the top down starting with the macro – we only have ‘n’ customers in this predetermined segment.
From our Day 1 panel session came the point that Digital, and, by implication, Digital Marketing, does not fit in boxes. It traverses many parts of the organization – it drives the e-commerce and IT agenda, touches operations, customer service and back office functions as well as that of marketing. That means digital marketers have to collaborate with many different parts of the organization that, traditionally, they have had little or no relationship with. Building relationships across the organization is now a priority.
As one of the panelists pointed out, digital isn’t free as some C- level managers would like to think. Doing it well involves considerable investment.
A key concept that echoed through many of the presentations and discussions was the importance of marketing digital marketing to our own organization. Aligning individuals and departments, selling the concepts, processes and the investment needed to our C-level colleagues should form a key part of the digital marketing leader’s work. Especially as almost all C-level managers are not from the digital generation.
Monika Schulze
On Day 2 our keynote speaker - Monika Schulze, Global Head of Marketing at Zurich Insurance Group, reminded us that most people make decisions based on emotion. She pointed out that we can use story-telling techniques to tell longer and powerfully emotional stories in the digital space. As long as the story connects to the brand and is a positive one, this approach can be highly persuasive.
Giuseppe Caltabiano
Giuseppe Caltabiano, Vice President, Marketing Integration at Schneider Electric noted that in most organizations, there are too many ‘digital publishers’ and too much unplanned and unconnected content origination. It is therefore key to have a comprehensively developed content strategy and that strategy should define the channels to be used – the channel strategy, rather than letting the channel define the content.
Simon Hall
Our keynote speaker on Day 1 – Simon Hall – former Chief Marketing Officer of Dell UK, noted that 50 to 70% of the purchaser’s decision is complete before they ever engage the vendor. The funnel of Awareness, Consideration, Preference Formation and Purchase is no longer controlled by sales. This means that our communications have to be influencing the decision everywhere before any inter-mediation takes place.
Luisella Giani
Finally, Luisella Giani, Head of Digital Strategy, Axalta Coating Systems, made the point that we must understand that the world of digital marketing is fast changing. We need organizations that can see these changes and are willing to rapidly adapt to them in order to keep up.
Ricky Coussins career in marketing began in the early 1970s when he worked for the multinational conglomerate Litton Industries. He later joined Xerox where he worked in sales and then marketing with a responsibility for exploring the potential of new products. In the early 1980’s he moved to BT where he was Head of Packaged Software Products in their Systems House Business. He later moved into the Mobile Communications division as a Networks Marketing Manager. Ricky started his marketing consultancy, Coussins Associates, in 1989. They supply outsourced marketing services across the whole spectrum of the strategic and tactical marketing mix, including digital marketing communications.
About the author of this Turtl:
I have been working with Frost & Sullivan for the past 17 years, mostly delivering growth-focused solutions to marketers and executives in market research and competitive intelligence. As a Chartered Marketer working in the industry, I have seen a dramatic change in the way that the discipline has evolved in the past decade. Today, the sheer number of marketing tools, solutions and widgets is mind boggling. 323 marketing tech startups fetched over $11B from VCs in 2015 alone. However, many of the basics always seem to wash up on the shore. In the many client engagements that I have been involved in, the following questions come up time and time again:
If your answer to all of the above questions is yes, then with the power of your brand and today's content marketing and demand generation tools, you are going to be on to a winner.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this story that I created with the great guys from Turtl.
Good luck!
Noel https://uk.linkedin.com/in/noelbanderson
Life's a beach!