Here are my takeaways on the latest conference put on by Demand Gen Report, B2BMX in Scottsdale.
Are they new/exhilarating/“aha’ takeaways? For the most part, no.
Are they important for us as marketers to be aware of in a sea of constant change? Yes.
Personally, I go to these things to ensure that as a B2B Demand/Growth leader, especially in an agency setting where we are expected to be on top of all trends, there’s nothing my team is severely missing. Where something new catches my eye, you better believe it’s on my immediate to do list post-conference to explore and test.
With that….
GTM
It’s the new iOT acronym. It gets thrown around far too much. One of the biggest misses here when organizations are developing their own go to market strategy is forgetting that everything must be HUMAN FIRST. Buyers and prospects are not robots, don’t treat them as such.
Narratives
We need more data translators, not scientists. Question the role – and people behind the role(s) – of “data analytics”; are your SMEs telling stories or are they simply pulling numbers? Challenge your teams to not just pull the data, and not just understand the data, but to provide the narrative that allows you to take ACTION on that data.
Data Enrichment
Marketing challenges are at an all-time high; profitability and growth, marketing’s impact on revenue (let’s not get started on this!), budgets under attack. Couple this with siloed tools and data disparity, you have incomplete and bad data = governance issues, privacy risks, and an inherent and unavoidable gap in strategy. Don’t be that company.
Partner Marketing
It’s everywhere and for good reason. On avg., deals sizes are 200% higher with partners, close rates are 18% better, and sales cycles are 40% faster. Don’t have a partner strategy yet? Check out Crossbeam and Reveal to identify partner solution overlaps.
Not-so-b2b
Lastly, in the spirit of MOI Global ’s battle cry – #notsoB2B – remember, innovation doesn’t always mean brand new and starting from scratch. In simplest form, it can mean doing old things in new ways. Whether that’s applying intent to your programmatic platforms to better prioritize delivery of dollars, to using a DMP such as Funnel to streamline data vs. housing in spreadsheets, to working with ABM tools or partners such as INFUSE to help identify priority accounts vs. using only qualitative/gut feeling feedback, there is ALWAYS an opportunity to test, learn, and evolve with efficiency.
