B2B Nation

An increasing number of technology vendors are making artificial intelligence (AI) central to their products and their messaging. For B2B marketers that like to talk about ROI and value, AI presents a conundrum: How do you balance the use of AI with business outcomes?

AI is a foundational technology that is incredibly complex to explain, especially to business buyers without a deep technical background. That means marketers need to know their audience – their role, their industry, and the challenges they’re looking to solve.  

On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Stephen Gold, the CMO of SparkCognition. His company makes tools built on AI to help businesses better predict outcomes and improve processes for everything from manufacturing and transportation to cybersecurity.

RELATED EPISODE: How Your Target Market Changes When Everyone is a Tech Buyer

Our discussion covers the challenges and opportunities that face marketers when everyone seems to be talking about AI today, whether AI even matters to business users looking for better outcomes, and what gets Stephen excited about what’s ahead in 2023.

Episode Guide

2:28: How does SparkCognition make its message stand out when AI is such a hot topic?

5:28: How do you find the balance of talking AI tech vs talking business outcomes?

7:00: How does SparkCognition handle the challenge of targeting diverse industries?

9:18: “You’ve got to present technology in a way that resonates with the way that industry thinks, acts, and operates.”

12:04: How does SparkCognition develop the subject matter expertise across the industries it targets?

13:44: What gets Stephen excited and nervous about 2023?

18:11: What is Stephen’s favorite tool?

B2B marketers that want to put their brand where the conversations are taking place need to understand how to use social media. That might sound obvious given the dominance of social media today across B2B and B2C audiences, but all social media platforms are not created alike.

LinkedIn is the first platform that comes to mind when most people think about B2B social media, but video content on TikTok has broad appeal. There might also be less noise for your B2B offer on Facebook. You can’t forget about Twitter either. 

On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re joined by Cat Anderson, head of marketing EMEA at Sprout Social, to talk about why social media remains such a challenge for so many B2B organizations. 

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Among the topics we’re going to cover are how to choose the right platforms for your social media efforts, the right KPIs to help track performance, and Cat’s thoughts on marketing in a down economy.

Episode Guide

2:45: Why do B2B organizations struggle with their social media strategy?

6:25: What’s the relationship between company size and social media strategy?

9:39: Which social media platform is right for your brand?

13:35: What are the most important KPIs to consider in your B2B social media?

16:00: How does social media fit into marketing’s plans when the economy slows?

18:43: What is Cat's favorite tool?

The great promise of digital advertising was the ability to measure performance and optimize programs. And unlike traditional forms of media, marketers using digital ads would have detailed visibility into attribution.

Digital advertising has helped brands big and small reach their target audience using a number of platforms and networks. Self-service tools and reporting allow even part-time marketers to launch campaigns and track their progress. 

But digital advertising hasn’t always lived up to its potential. There are a number of platforms where businesses can buy ads, including giant media companies like Google and Meta. Each has its own reporting tools, which makes cross-channel measurement a challenge for many marketers. 

The ever-changing privacy landscape has also made it more difficult for marketers to get accurate attribution data and will likely get more restrictive moving forward.

RELATED EPISODE: Which B2C Tactics Will Help Improve Your B2B Marketing?

In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk to Clay Cohen of Measured. His company helps marketers make more-informed marketing decisions around their media spend with a special focus on incremental media contributions. 

Join us as we discuss the importance of unified measurement of media, how privacy regulations and vendor moves to protect data impact digital media, and how marketers should approach an economic slowdown. 

Episode Guide

2:30: Are marketers properly understanding and using the vast amount of data generated by their media?

5:33: Why are marketers reliant on last-touch attribution despite all of the tools and data at their disposal?

9:16: What is the impact of privacy regulations and data privacy policies on media tracking?

15:17: How will a down economy impact how Clay and his colleagues market their tools?

19:22: What is Clay’s favorite tool?

Account-based marketing is such an integral part of the strategy for so many B2B marketing teams that it is hard to understand how marketing worked before ABM burst onto the scene.

The early promises of ABM included increased efficiency and better alignment between marketing and sales. When marketing knows exactly which accounts it needs to target, there’s less wasted effort. And when sales and marketing collaborate to identify those accounts, they are (in theory) on the same page.

Today, B2B marketing is in a new phase of ABM. Beyond identifying accounts to target, marketers are combining account names with other forms of data, such as intent, to fine-tune their list even more.

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On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk to Randi Barshack, CMO of ABM platform vendor Rollworks, about the evolution of ABM, how her team works to stand out in the very crowded market for marketing technology, and how marketers should approach their work in a weak economy.

Episode Guide

1:52: Have we reached the point where ABM is now the standard for B2B marketing?

5:13: Does Randi think ABM has helped align marketing and sales?

8:33: How does Randi help her brand break through the noise in the crowded martech space?

12:13: Randi’s advice for maintaining and growing demand in a down economy.

15:58: What is Randi’s favorite tool?

Product-led growth is a go-to-market strategy that relies on your organization’s products to acquire and retain customers. With the demand for digital products and experiences at an all-time high, it’s not surprising to see product-led growth gaining popularity.

Digital products and the experiences they deliver are significant differentiators for many organizations. Today’s consumers expect seamless experiences across channels that make it easy to accomplish their goals and get what they need without delay.

This emphasis on product as an engine for growth puts roles like product management and product marketing in the spotlight for many businesses. It also requires businesses to maintain the resources required to continually create and improve products that deliver even when market demands shift.

Product development agencies help businesses create products from conception to go-to-market strategy. They are, in many ways, the next generation of development shops that did the coding and testing to bring digital products to life. 

RELATED EPISODE: How to Market Your Tech to Software Developers

On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Margarita Mangino, Chief Growth Officer at product development agency Uruit, talks about the rise of digital products and product-specific roles in organizations, the challenges of transforming your go-to-market message, and how marketers should approach economic instability.

Episode Guide

2:01: What’s the difference between marketing services and capabilities and marketing products?

5:00: What’s the biggest challenge Margarita and her team face in their marketing today?

7:57: How does marketing to product teams differ from marketing to IT roles?

10:40: What is Margarita’s advice for marketers with economic stability on the horizon?

13:44: The advantages of offshoring work to Latin America.

17:19: What is Margarita’s favorite tool?

There has been a lot of attention on the healthcare industry over the past two and a half years, and it hasn’t all come from consumers and the news media.

Healthcare is more complicated than it was 20 or 30 years ago. There are more specialists involved in care, more facilities, and more data. That’s one reason why healthcare is a popular area for technology companies that want to help the market innovate. It’s still widely seen as a sector where the information isn’t always widely shared, the data isn’t easily converted into decisions, and manual processes remain in place.

Tech companies looking to market solutions to healthcare providers are also finding complexity and a high number of influencers behind purchase decisions. Roles like Chief Medical Information Officer and Chief Nursing Information Officer simply did not exist in years past.

On this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Wendy White, CMO of healthcare collaboration platform TigerConnect. We discuss how the pandemic played a role in Wendy’s move to healthcare tech marketing, what’s working in marketing for healthcare tech, and the role of virtual and in-person events in TigerConnect’s strategy.

Episode Guide

2:15: What was it like to move into the healthcare industry during the COVID pandemic?

3:46: Why collaboration and communication present such a challenge in healthcare.

5:13: What makes marketing to healthcare organizations different from other verticals?

6:46: What’s the biggest marketing challenge for TigerConnect?

7:58: What is the one tool Wendy cannot work without?

10:35: How much are in-person events contributing to TigerConnect’s marketing?

12:03: “We’re all about having quality conversations.”

People don’t remove their B2C hats when they’re researching products in their business life. That’s why B2B marketers are often reminded that some of the tactics and platforms that have the “B2C” label deserve a look in B2B marketing. It’s all marketing to people, after all. 

But B2B purchases are still made by a committee of people, each with their own preferences around content and their own needs to be met. And that’s why B2B marketers are asking questions.

Can one-to-one strategies work in B2B where no single person has purchase authority? Can personalization, which is a cornerstone of many digital experiences for consumers, work in B2B? Do social platforms other than LinkedIn influence members of the B2B buying committee? 

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In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Chuck Moxley, CMO of digital experience vendor Blue Triangle and co-author of An Audience of One. We’ll look for the answers to these questions and more.

Episode Guide

2:04: Chuck discusses his book and the idea of personalized marketing vs. mass marketing

3:53: The three major shifts in the way people consume media and choose brands today.

4:54: How B2C concepts like personalization apply to the B2B world.

7:53: What do B2B marketers get wrong about personalization and 1:1 marketing?

12:18: “You’ve got to stop thinking ‘B2B and all the rules that used to be…’”

12:40: How does buying by committee work with personalization efforts?

15:28: What is Chuck’s favorite tool?

Content marketing is more than distributing thought leadership and offering eBook downloads to attract leads. Your organization’s content can continue to serve your revenue organization (and your customers) as they interact with your sales and customer success teams.

But your content can’t serve anyone if your team doesn’t know where to find it or can’t be reasonably sure it’s up to date and on-brand.

Sales enablement plays a pivotal role in making sure the entire revenue organization has the tools and content it needs, And when it’s working, the right content, at the right time, for the right customer or prospect helps create those “these people get me” feeling we all aim to achieve.

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In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Nikki Dawson, head of EMEA marketing for sales enablement platform Highspot. Nikki discusses how it is that as much as 70 percent of the content organizations create goes to waste, what’s working in demand gen for Nikki and her colleagues around the world, and how marketing, sales, and sales enablement can better work together in an effective revenue organization.

Episode Guide

2:17: Investing in and creating content is just the first challenge

5:14: How is Highspot helping its customers solve sales enablement challenges?

7:58: What’s working for Nikki’s team in their demand gen efforts?

9:00: How do different marketing tactics perform in different global regions?

10:40: What is Nikki’s favorite tool (other than Highspot)?

Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective marketing tactics in B2B, but has the content evolved to keep up with the audiences?

Experiences and interactivity are more commonly found in B2C marketing efforts where the audience is large and the resources are often more plentiful than in the B2B space. It’s simply difficult to justify the cost of the developers and designers needed to create interactive experiences.

Juan Rubio is the CEO and co-founder at Genially, a platform that allows users to create interactive experiences without the need to code or have a deep understanding of design. The idea for Genially came from Juan’s background as a biologist, where he longed for affordable tools that made complex topics like climate change and green energy easier to understand.

RELATED EPISODE: Zero-Party Data and the Future of Interactive Content

In this episode of B2B Nation, we are talking to Juan about the opportunity for interactive content creation, where interactive experiences go from here, and what Juan loves about what he does.

Episode Guide

2:58: Why don’t we see more interactive content in B2B marketing?

7:03: “When we are talking about communication, we’re talking about marketing and learning.”

7:40: Where do interactive content and experiences go from here?

8:55: What does Juan think is the best part of what he does?

10:08: What is Juan’s favorite tool?

Online quizzes and product builders seemed to find a home on the Internet the week after it was invented. And while you might joke about the answer you received when you took that quiz about the type of superhero you would be or the pet dinosaur you should own, you’re generating real data when you answer those questions.

Data generated on a company’s website and then used by that company is called zero-party data, and it’s valuable because no one else has it. That makes zero-party data a goldmine for marketers.

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Saksam Sharda, creative director and CIO at Outgrow.co, about zero-party data and the future of interactive content. While quizzes and product selection tools are almost as old as the Internet itself, the future of interactive content could someday include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and personalization at scale.

RELATED EPISODE: How to Build a Content Strategy Across the Buyers’ Journey

Imagine combining the power of AI technology with an easy-to-use, low-code, or no-code platform everyone can use. That makes generating third-party data at scale possible and drives business outcomes. What kind of superhero are you then?

Episode Guide

2:23: What is the killer application for interactive content? Is it zero-party data generation?

4:30: What is Outgrow.co’s approach to interactive content?

6:00: Where does interactive content go from here? 

8:18: What has the Internet forgotten about the way people choose products?

10:25: What did Saksham learn about marketing over the past two years?

13:30: What is Saksham’s favorite tool?