APAC's B2B Growth Podcast

Host Shahin Hoda chats with Julia Merrick, Head of Brand and Content at Employment Hero, about how marketers, either in the startup world or the enterprise space, should change their approach to PR and also establish and communicate its ROI to the rest of the business.

Before Employment Hero, Julia worked in a number of different industries spanning technology, professional services and travel.

A graphic designer in a previous life, Julia consolidated these skills with her keen passion for strategy, brand storytelling and communication to become the creative marketer she is today. 

Day-to-day, Julia oversees a team of exceptional people who help drive the creative beating heart of Employment Hero. When she’s not wearing her manager hat, Julia leads the global content and communications efforts of the company. She is also known internally as the webinar queen and is said to throw a great event, both online and offline.

ABM in APAC survey: https://www.xgrowth.com.au/survey

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In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services, about how marketers should approach their martech strategy to drive revenue and higher ROI on their investments.

Darrell starts by advising marketers to begin with their objectives and work backwards to discover the martech they need to create a great customer experience. He also talks about why marketers should take the education provided by martech vendors with a pinch of salt and that listening to sales might not always be the right way to go.

During the conversation, Darrell drops many golden nuggets about customer experience, managing data and ways to prioritise marketing projects. He concludes by advising marketers to practice writing content as much as possible to achieve clarity of thought and vision.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/aws-martech/

ABM in APAC survey: https://www.xgrowth.com.au/survey

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

GET THE FINISHED REPORT: https://abm.xgrowth.com.au/report/

We’ve commissioned a research piece with Shift Research to unpack the state of account-based marketing in APAC.

The finished report will give B2B marketers across APAC a better understanding of how top firms are leveraging ABM and the results they’re getting in the region. We have a short survey, which allows you to participate in this research.

As a thank you for participating, we’ll provide you with a pre-release copy and an exclusive invite to an expert Q&A webinar, giving you early insight into the outlook, trends and opportunities that lie ahead when it comes to ABM in the APAC region.

Your contribution is super important even if you’re not actively working on your ABM strategy right now.

Shahin Hoda chats with Anthony Lieu, Head of Marketing & Partnerships at LegalVision, about generating high-quality content at scale. Anthony, began his career at LegalVision as a newly minted lawyer, before seizing on the more interesting challenge to turn legal marketing on its head.

Anthony leads a team that brings together lawyers, growth marketers, and developers. They are tasked with breaking down barriers to legal services by transforming the way businesses engage lawyers.

LegalVision’s marketing strategy has received national and international recognition for its innovative approach in combining content, data and marketing automation to deliver exceptional client experiences and promote access to legal services. LegalVision was recently named the fastest-growing law firm in the Asia-Pacific by the Financial Times as well as Law Firm of the Year.

State of ABM in APAC Survey: https://xgrowth.com.au/survey

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Shahin Hoda chats with Matthew Hunt, Founder at Automation Wolf, about the importance of building communities. Most available advice is high level, ambiguous and lacks practicality. Matthew joins us to explain how to practically approach building B2B communities.

Matthew Hunt is a serial entrepreneur, B2B sales and marketing expert, and coach to company CEOs, marketing directors, and entrepreneurs. His extensive experience of over a decade of helping B2B companies succeed in sales and marketing has driven him to create several 7-figure businesses and he’s just getting started.

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Shahin Hoda chats with Su-Ren Neo, Senior Director, Marketing for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Twilio, about how marketers can improve their approach to customer engagement.

Su-Ren starts with her definition of customer engagement. She talks about the fascinating nature of APAC from a marketing perspective and emphasises the role of data in creating a competitive advantage for any company in the region.

During the conversation, Su-Ren also discusses some industry examples of companies acing the customer engagement game! She then concludes by mentioning some mistakes that companies can avoid.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/customer-engagement/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Neil Berry, Head of Global Account & Deal Based Marketing Centre of Excellence at Atos, about how and why marketers need to build a theme for their ABM campaigns.

During the conversation, Neil defines the purpose of a theme and what it is supposed to achieve. 

He recommends starting with the priorities of the target accounts and building the campaign theme around them. He advises marketers to be thorough with their research, encourages them to take intelligent risks with messaging and go all out in getting buy-in from sales and the C-level executives before starting an ABM campaign.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/abm-campaign-theme/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Host Shahin Hoda talks with Lidia Lal, Head of Marketing (APAC) at Udemy, about how to build an APAC marketing team from scratch as a regional office.

Lidia Lal is currently the Head of Marketing for the Asia Pacific at Udemy. Prior to this, she has held senior marketing management roles with some of the world’s leading technology brands including Experian, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services, Rightnow Technologies, SAS, Oracle and Westcon Group. She also ran her own marketing consultancy for over 10 years servicing small to medium businesses.

A senior marketing and communications leader with over 20 years of experience, Lidia’s broad expertise spans both B2B, B2C2B areas and has successfully led marketing teams across a diverse range of marketing disciplines.

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Boden Westover, CMO at Vivi, about how foreign companies can grow their presence in the United States of America.

With more than 10+ years of experience leading US expansion initiatives for organisations such as Vivi and Catapult, Boden shares a lot of valuable guidance. During the conversation, he talks about the increased need for clear positioning and the importance of managing potential cultural differences.

Boden also shares his input on GTM and hiring strategy. He recommends having segment-specific campaigns and onboarding as much local talent as possible.

He concludes by emphasising the critical role of a US-based senior leadership and strategic investment, in accelerating any company’s growth in the region.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/us-expansion/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Shahin Hoda chats with Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent Commerce about how to set up a partner-led strategy for your organisation.

Jamie has spent the last 20+ years collaborating with partners to take new solutions into new markets, within start-up scale businesses like TimesTen and Arantech and global software organisations such as Tektronix and Oracle, where he was responsible for the Retail Solutions portfolio in APAC immediately prior to joining Fluent Commerce in 2015. In his current role at Fluent Commerce he is responsible for business and product strategy; having previously led both the Sales and Channel & Alliances business units.

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack