This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian talk about the advantages and disadvantages of B2B organizations taking a cost-centered approach to investment.  

While there are certainly benefits of focusing on cost (risk reduction, for example), when we polled our community 83% said that a cost-focused approach negatively impacted competitiveness. 

With all the changes in how marketers track their digital marketing spend, we wanted to know how B2B marketers are dealing with this issue. In this episode, we speak with Dan Stepchew, the Digital Marketing Director at Zest Dental Solutions, about how he's shifting his digital spend and how he's changed how he tracks the efficacy of his campaigns.

This week on the Friday 15 podcast, Andy & Brian talk about how much channel conflict fears should impact your distribution strategy (in short, it shouldn't.)

They dig into 7 ways to sell direct while managing the conflicts:

- MAP and sales channel agreements

- Public vs private pricing (pricing exposed behind logins or inside custom catalogs)

- Assortment variations by channel

- Being mindful of who is selling

- Taking control in marketplace channels

- Provide digital assets and analytics to channel partners

- Channel monitoring and enforcement.

This week on the Friday 15 podcast...

That said, we hear from one practitioner who says that they've tried holiday promotions to no avail.

This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian talk about the marketing challenge B2B companies have with attracting younger workers, and some of the strategies that have worked.

“The issue is a messaging problem, it’s not a reality problem.  B2B offers many of the things that Gen Z is looking for - B2C talks about it, but B2B actually offers what this generation wants.”

They discuss how companies have tried advertising with NASCAR, building relationships with local colleges, winning "best place to work" awards and more...

On the Friday 15 Podcast, Andy & Brian talk about the challenges B2B companies have hiring junior staff out of college.  

Are B2B companies able to offer the opportunities that Gen Z'ers want?  And if so, why don't members of Gen Z know that?  

This week on the Friday 15...

This week on the Friday 15 - an All-Breaking-News edition.  Andy & Brian take a look at Amazon's decision to have everyone return to the office 5 days a week and what impact this has on employees and on the business more broadly.  

Andy & Brian discuss the challenges of deciding which data to track, and how to use it to make better business decisions.

They offer 6 ways to make analytics more actionable:

1) Collect data in one place and with a holistic view

This week on the Friday 15 podcast, Andy & Brian discuss the reasons why it's challenging for B2B eCommerce businesses to build a great user experience.  A few reasons they dig into:

- Because buyers need to make these purchases for work, the interface may matter less than in B2C.

- B2B businesses aren't willing to make the investments necessary to create a great experience.

- The size of many B2B catalogs are orders of magnitude larger than the catalogs of B2C, which makes it much more difficult to build a great user experience.