B2B Nation

For B2B organizations, determining the right targeting, messaging, and channel for their marketing often requires a great deal of research and testing. And that’s true whether you’re working with paid or organic media.

In this episode of B2B Nation we’re talking to Naira Perez, who runs Springhill Digital, a boutique agency that manages paid social and search channels for its clients. According to Naira, paid social and search face many of the same challenges as other B2B marketing channels. They struggle to reach audiences in a sea of messages. They tend to be more effective for branding than for converting sales. And perhaps unique to paid social, the audience moves from platform to platform when it grows bored.

Episode Guide

2:01: What are the strengths and misconceptions around the paid social channel?

4:14: How paid social performance has changed in the past three years (and why).

6:43: What are the strengths and misconceptions around paid search?

8:34: What are the common mistakes marketers make with their paid social and search?

13:14: How do you align paid media with demand gen and other marketing efforts?

16:24: How does the current state of social media, “big tech” and regulation affect marketers?

21:19: How do marketers keep up with the transient nature of social media users?

27:00: What is the one tool Naira cannot work without?

Today’s technology vendors talk a lot about agility, and few teams need to be more agile than the B2B marketers trying to sell emerging technologies. Take, for example, Relative Insight, a language analysis vendor that started out helping protect children online.

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to James Cuthbertson, CRO at Relative Insight, about how the killer application, target market, messaging, and demand generation plans of the company continue to evolve in this emerging space.

Episode Guide

1:46: How businesses (and marketers) are using language analysis tools.

3:11: Why saving time is not the killer application of language analysis.

4:49: What does the buying process look like for Relative Insight’s prospects?

7:01: The importance of setting up your customer for post-sale success.

8:05: How does demand gen change as a business narrows down its audience?

9:30: How does marketing change for emerging technologies when compared to established tech?

11:11: Where buyers and sellers get frustrated with today’s B2B process.

14:26: Where will language analysis be a year from now?

15:54: Is differentiation more challenging with emerging technologies?

16:39: What is James’ favorite tool?

Not only is public relations changing alongside marketing, but the two seem to be converging. The KPIs for PR activities increasingly include SEO metrics, inbound traffic, qualified leads, and conversations.

In this episode, we talk to Dmitry Dragilev, an entrepreneur, do-it-yourself PR advocate, and founder of JustReachOut.io, about the challenges of getting noticed in a noisy market, tips for getting recurring press mentions, and what Dmitry thinks many PR agencies and past approaches to press outreach were getting wrong.

Episode Guide

2:00: How has PR changed in the last 10 to 15 years?

3:15: Dmitry’s first encounter with Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal.

5:19: How has the balance of power shifted in PR?

8:07: Tips for companies having trouble getting noticed in the press.

11:52: Has the importance of the PR pitch changed in today’s world?

14:40: The convergence of PR, content marketing and SEO.

17:15: Are SEO rankings becoming the metric of choice for PR?

19:30: The lure of getting mentioned in the big publications.

23:20: What is the one tool Dmitry can’t work without?

Agencies have been a part of the B2B marketing and advertising landscape for years. As the marketing landscape shifts, first from print to digital, and now into a data-driven and analytical mindset, it got us wondering: “Where do agencies fit in this new B2B reality?”

To get some answers, we turned to Keith Booton, founder and CEO of Ivor Andrew, an integrated agency located in the Chicago area that specializes in the B2B industrial market.

According to Keith, full-service integrated agencies can help businesses diagnose problems with their marketing, offer a strategic approach to building markets, and also execute the tactics used to reach B2B buyers.

Episode Guide

2:18: What is the value proposition for agencies today?

5:49: How has the value proposition for agencies changed in the last 10 to 15 years?

8:22: How are businesses judging their relationships with agencies in a data-obsessed world?

10:10: Misconceptions about working with an agency.

11:21: How does Ivor Andrew market itself to B2B marketing organizations?

13:34: How will agencies need to evolve in the next 10 to 15 years?

17:15: What is Keith’s favorite tool, the one he cannot work without?

Jason Reichl is CFO of Breadcrumbs and the former CEO of GoNimbly, and he is a long-time supporter of RevOps. For Jason, the RevOps methodology is a way for companies to focus on one thing: increasing revenue.

In his view, RevOps changes the organizational structure by introducing the role of revenue operators, but it also changes tactical components of sales and marketing, such as how leads are scored, which data helps drive revenue, measuring the right KPIs, and more.

Episode Guide

2:37: What’s wrong with the way most companies are scoring their leads?

5:08: How many companies are doing little to no lead scoring?

7:13: B2B marketers are awash in data. What is the data that really matters?

11:44: Indicators and KPIs that lead to revenue.

15:20: Growth from existing customers vs. new customer acquisition.

22:23: What does it look like when revenue operations is done well?

29:30: The importance of customer experience in B2B.

It seems like our voices are being recorded all the time, by phones, collaboration tools, smart speakers and more. The “voice of the customer” (VoC) isn’t a new idea for marketing and customer success professionals, but better technology is changing the game. It’s now easier for marketers to search for and share the important parts of calls, for example.

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Mike Adams, CEO and cofounder of Grain, which is one of the tools helping businesses capture customer voices and unlock their value.

Episode Guide

2:33 How much did technology limit the way businesses used the voice of the customer in the past?

8:30: How are companies capitalizing on their voice of the customer strategy?

10:08: Better customer service and support with modern voice of the customer tech

12:07: Which teams and roles are making the best use of voice of the customer data?

18:30: What is up next for the voice of the customer space?

22:02: What’s the future of video calls?

26:10: What’s the one tool Mike Adams can’t work without?

In this episode of B2B Nation we take a look at the B2B marketing playbook as it existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and ask the question, “Is it time to re-think any of this moving forward?”

Our search for a guest who could help us answer that question led us to none other than Gaetano DiNardi, head of growth and demand generation at business communications provider Nextiva. If you’re familiar with Gaetano’s social media posts, you know he’s not afraid to speak his mind and to share thoughts that run counter to the conventional wisdom on B2B marketing.

The B2B marketing essentials we re-evaluate in this episode include martech applications, content marketing, influencer marketing, in-person events and more. If you’re thinking about how your B2B marketing might change in a post-pandemic world, give this episode a listen.

Episode Guide

4:11: Are all of these investments in martech paying off for B2B marketers?

9:20: Is the proliferation of technology and data distracting marketers from the fundamentals?

11:28: What’s wrong with a lot of the content marketing strategies being used in B2B today?

16:40: Is there a place for influencer marketing in B2B?

25:50: What will be shaping conversations about B2B marketing in the next 12 months?

27:00: Thoughts on the future of in-person events.

32:27: What is Gaetano DiNardi’s favorite marketing tool?

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Kristjan Mar Hauksson, digital marketer, SEO and inbound marketing expert and the co-author of Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine-Tuning Your International Search Engine Results.

Today’s B2B marketers put a lot of emphasis on being found by prospects using organic search. But they can’t stop there. Not all inbound traffic should be treated equally, which means marketers have to look for intent signals in the data they capture to understand who is a lead, who is a browser and who is a job seeker.

Among the topics we discuss in this episode are lead qualification, the under-utilized and over-utilized channels in digital marketing and whether we’ve hit the point where there’s too much data involved in online marketing.

Episode Guide

2:45: Advice on understanding the intent of your website visitors

5:06: What can you learn from visitors to your About Us and Contact Us pages?

7:56: Preferred methods for qualifying leads from inbound visitors

11:26: Is there an ideal organizational structure for marketing and sales?

14:19: How customers owning the buying journey changes marketing -- and doesn’t

16:14: Do B2B marketers under-value Google and social media platforms?

19:04: How well do B2B marketers understand the nuances of cross-cultural marketing?

24:37: Kristjan’s under-utilized B2B marketing tactics

28:52: Is the influx of martech tools and data responsible for over-complication?

30:41: Kristjan’s favorite apps and tools

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Paul Cowan, CMO of Freshbooks, about marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to small businesses. SaaS marketers tend to move more quickly than other B2B tech marketers, and that’s especially true of those targeting SMBs.

Small businesses move fast, make decisions more quickly and look for ways to easily research and compare technology solutions before making a purchase decision. They lean heavily on experiences, from the buying experience to the product experience, when evaluating vendors. And small businesses tend to grow, which means some SaaS vendors have a built-in level of churn, as their customers sometimes outgrow their platform.

Episode Guide

2:08: How do SaaS marketers think differently about tech marketing?

5:00: The connection between your product experience and your marketing

8:17: How can SaaS vendors protect against customer churn?

12:59: Are your SaaS users aware of all of the features available in your product?

15:23: What happens when your SMB customers outgrow your SaaS application?

17:41: How much does brand value still matter in the modern buyer’s journey?

21:27: Which business strategy is right for your SaaS application?

24:00: Where do you think is the next disruption SaaS marketers need to prepare for?

In this episode of B2B Nation, we are discussing how to create memorable content for B2B audiences with Dr. Carmen Simon, Chief Science Officer of Corporate Visions, and the author of Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions.

Dr. Simon is a neuroscientist who studies how people react to and remember content. We’re going to discuss the role of imagery and images in your content, tips for business storytelling, thoughts on creating more memorable audio content, and more.

Episode Guide

2:46: What triggers audiences to remember the content they consume?

6:24: What are the common mistakes people make in their presentations?

10:27: Balancing imagery and text in presentations.

16:44: Best practices for storytelling for business.

23:16: What would be updated or changed if Impossible to Ignore were written today?

28:32: Tips for creating compelling audio and social audio content.

34:29: What is the one tool Dr. Simon can’t work without?