Ask the Experts! Panel Discussion: Modeling a Modern Marketing Organization

INTERACTIVE! ASK THE EXPERTS!
Panel Discussion: Modeling a Modern Marketing Organization

PRESENTER
Lance Kinerk, Global Director of Digital, Ingersoll Rand





PANELISTS
Mathew Donoghue, Head of Marketing, North America, Intel Security Group
Scott Gardner, Senior Vice President, Digital Marketing, Bank of America
Mike McCalley, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management, Flowserve
MattPreschern, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, HCL Technologies

SESSION ABSTRACT
Ever had someone outside of the marketing department describe it as "glorified event planners" or "the team to get them golf balls to bring to their next client visit"? Too often marketing is misunderstood, under-appreciated and misrepresented within the highest levels of the company because of an inability to fully internalize what we do and why.

Today's business environment mandates a strategic contribution from marketing, but are we organized to deliver against that need and to dissolve the marketing myth most executives have?

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

• Insight and examples of best-in-class Marketing Organization models across multiple industries
• Best practices to quantify and articulate the value of marketing outside of the function
• Success factors on talent recruitment, development and retention

INTRODUCTION
How can we innovate and model a modern marketing organization to add value to our companies? Panelists from a variety of industries explored some of the ways modern marketing can be approached and provided insights today’s marketers can use to succeed in the current, connected business environment. Throughout, they shared their experiences in digital marketing and some of the partnerships they have created. Multiple methods for success were covered.

KEY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
How do you break silos?

• Partner with professionals who meet needs in the technology realm for applications/revenue
• Marketing is a team sport – It’s important to build relationships with human resources, sales,  and IT
• Start with a business objective – or a problem to be solved

Do you have conflicts with shadow IT projects?

• Yes – but it often varies in degree and depends on the give and take of that relationship
• Yes – projects are often inter-connected and teams must make special efforts to speak the same language and serve as models for collaboration

What are core strategies with your firm?

• Be careful when you decide who you partner with – be sure they share your values (especially when thinking globally)
• Center of excellence should transcend business units, partnerships, across geographies

How do you show proof of marketing success?

• Traffic to digital marketing sites
• Customer engagement with marketing campaigns
• Tell the story in trend analysis for causes of errors in traffic tracking
• Show when marketing objectives are met
• Show how marketing metrics match sales reports

How can I get my marketing team into the planning conversation?

• Don’t set this as an imperative. Match to audience and the work to change the conversation
• Find partners to work with your team
• Determine the value added by including a marketing team – view sales and other functions as partners, not clients

What are necessary traits/skill sets for hiring?

• Adaptive, left/right brain equal, experienced, willing to take risks
• Be willing and able to tell the company story
• “There has never been a better time to be in marketing/digital communications” – hire people who feel the same
• This is a culture of experimentation – workers must be comfortable with change, ambiguity, disability, instability
• Employers must realize how often employees change marketing professions

How do you keep creative teams working in collaboration with other groups?

• Get people who understand and “fit” into the company
• Realize that most people join a company because of who they interview with and who their boss will be
• Don’t fail to recognize the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards offered in the position
• Don’t outsource insight – don’t drive best workers to other areas of the company

What is the biggest challenge of digital marketing today?

• Speed of change – one must be willing and able to rely on other experts
• Attracting and retaining necessary talent
• Choosing where to start and what projects are possible
• Keeping pace with the entire customer journey

TAKE-AWAY

• Use agile collaboration and weave recommendations into the web IT is building
• When successful, show IT how they moved the needle in revenue or traffic
• 53% of companies have the CIO sitting with the CEO; CIOs have more impact than previously
• Meet your audience where they are, then change that conversation. If we start out with “buy from me,” we lose our customers. First elicit interest, make them aware of a need, then bring them on a journey
• If we aren’t contributing to growth, then what story am I telling the CEO? Most CEOs don’t particularly care what your click through rates or attributions are
• Focus on a culture of experimentation; be comfortable being uncomfortable
• Public recognition goes a long way. Peer recognition goes a long way, too. Put real money into it, not just a plaque. Find it in the budget to provide a real reward for good employees

ACTION ITEM

• Create a centralized operation, a series of projects led by a group that can prioritize
• Use standardized reporting, regardless of where intelligence is coming from; make sure everyone is speaking the same language
• Be an evangelist, shifting with user behavior and technology that is available
• There has never been a better time for big marketing and communication; be super creative
• Ask: What is the value-add we can bring? Marketing shouldn’t be considered a cost center

BEST PRACTICE

• Utilize hybrid models to create an integrated business. Create a concentration of hardcore experts
• Deciding what the core strategy is in your organization is very important. Then, decide who to work with that will support your strategy
• Don’t outsource insight. Don’t have a 3rd party do your content
• CEO’s should have a core task and mission. Do work across a set of business units. Develop once, then customize
• Don’t just do as you are being told, define yourself
• Take calculated risks and seek to influence. Tell your story, don’t let sales dictate

KEY INSIGHT
Biggest challenges in the marketing space we live in:

• Speed of change; you can’t be an expert as an individual, need to rely on team
• Building structures that are agile enough
• Attracting and retaining the talent you need to do so
• You can’t run a global or regional organization on your own; you will not succeed without a good team

FINAL THOUGHT
Work with the mentality that marketing is a team sport. Look for partnerships, create common goals and strategies, and include other departments. Look for future employees who are passionate and not afraid to be uncomfortable or experiment.

Success Story: Content Marketing that Truly Engages the Customer

PRESENTER
Donna Bedford, Global Digital Lead, Lenovo

SESSION ABSTRACT
Understanding the need for change and testing in your content marketing strategy. What works now may not work in six months' time. In order to be successful at content marketing engagement, it is important to keep ahead of how people consume content and consider how device types, time of day, etc. affects consumption.


 KEY TAKE-AWAYS

• Examples of some of Lenovo‘s content marketing over the last 5 years
• Case studies of how some varied tactics worked
• Insight on how to how to spot a content marketing trend

INTRODUCTION
Speaker Donna Bedford began by highlighting the key concept that content marketing is the art of creating content that people want to read. Of utmost importance is how you choose to tell your story – and that story can go a long way in digital marketing. As she also shared, asking the right questions and understanding your research, strategies, and the reasoning behind content creation will lead to more engaging and shared content marketing.

Key Question: What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the art of creating content that people want to read, engage with, and share. Science is crucial to get to that point.  Content marketing has been around for thousands of years, but how we present it has changed. It is how you tell your story.

TAKE AWAY

• The speaker began by highlighting the fact that content marketing is the art of creating content that people want to read. Of key importance is how you choose to tell your story – and that story can go a long way in digital marketing
• Before you define your KPI‘s, have you defined your strategy? If you don‘t get your strategy right, everything else starts to crumble
• Who are you targeting? The new user, returning using, or people who are comparing products? Build out profiles for every type of visitor. What are their interests, how do they connect, how to they view content?
• Do you understand the customer journey?
• What are you trying to accomplish? New customers, conversions, followers
• Content should always be created for a reason. It should always have a call to action
• What does the user want? What is the user‘s intent?

ACTION ITEM

• Do your research
• AdWords is a great tool to find keywords. Look at what is trending
• Put in hashtags that you would like to use and see what people are using those hashtags for currently
• Read consumer complaint reviews to get insight
• People who are buying technology may not understand terms your company is using. Write in a language that a normal consumer would understand
• Define your strategy
• Content doesn‘t have to go on your own property. Try branded stuff on
• other sites to bring users back to your site
• Get employees to be your brand ambassadors (on LinkedIn posts for example)
• How do you determine the type of content you should be using? This depends on what you find in your research. Learn to create the content to fit user‘s needs and where they belong:
• Infographics
• Social platforms
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• White papers
• Webinars
• Learn where and how to share your content
• Takes testing
• Takes research
• Don‘t be afraid of trying new methods, such as:
• On site
• Communities
• Paid media
• Organic social
• Social influence marketing is the most successful, all can be done throug  influences. Find people who are passionate. They don‘t have to be celebs, just  passionate people who keep posting and sharing your information
• Don‘t put everything into traditional marketing. Be adventurous. Look for people who are blogging or tweeting about your product and invite them in!
• Don‘t expect to be successful right from the beginning

BEST PRACTICE

• Always start with a strategy; a strong strategy can give you a blueprint first
• Content should always be created for a reason and it should always have a call to action; but avoid being sales-y
• Create content with reason, not fluff!
• Gently put the call to action around the edges

ACTION ITEM

• Find social influencers to use for your product. Search for people who are passionate and already talking about your product
• Test and research to find the best places and ways to share your content

FINAL THOUGHT

The speaker offered a number of suggestions for further action such as finding connections and providing the right style of content and marketing that research indicates is best for your audience. Learn to create content that fits your user‘s needs and market it where the user hangs out digitally. It‘s not how good your creative is, it‘s how good you match it to your target!

VIRTUAL DEMO: Successful Content Marketing Execution

A Sample from the MARKETING WORLD 2015 Executive MindXchange Chronicles:

MODERATOR
Katherine Burns
Senior Director
Frost & Sullivan

PRESENTERS

Lisa Goldson Armstrong
Vice President
Global Marketing & Sales Excellence
Pentair

Galyn Burke
Product Marketing Manager
Pinterest

SESSION

Today's marketers have their eye on content marketing as a vehicle to deepen customer engagement. What makes it a success? This session enabled participants to experience the content marketing strategy of two progressive organizations-Pentair and Pinterest—and to experience the journey as if you were a real world customer. Audience participation was encouraged as part of the presentation.

TAKE-AWAY

• Blueprint of a successful content marketing strategy
• What works, and what doesn’t, drawn from real world experience
• New insight and creative ideas

BEST PRACTICES

ROI-what's your philosophy? Data can be easy to drown in it, how do you use metrics?

Galyn Burke: There’s tons of data out there. You can test things and you will see data move quickly.

The most effective approach to measuring ROI is to have a baseline understanding of what marketing impacts are affecting your business. Know where sales are, average CPA, etc.

• Develop a baseline metric, and from that measure the incremental value of the platform and its lifetime value
• Use database marketing and marketing automation to test small groups, and measure their behaviors based of different campaigns
• Filter content, internally, through a central team to maintain consistency of message and optimize its value
• Continually evaluate content delivery based on technological advances and market variables
• To maintain engagement, modify content based on where individual customers are in the cycle.
• Best marketers will decide if building creative is worth it and determine lifetime value of customers

Content is different based on length of purchase cycle. How is content marketing different when you need to engage with a customer for an extended period of time?

Lisa Armstrong: Used to traditionally spend a lot of time at trade shows, but 70% of content is online now. Find ways to modify the type of content in front of purchaser. Cater to where they are in the buying/research process.

ACTION ITEM

• Brainstorm creative ideas on what content would benefit your customers
• Encourage enthusiastic employees to get involved with content creation

TAKE-AWAY FROM GALYN:
With built-in marketing tools, you need to have reciprocal capability; unless you make it as easy as possible to evaluate platform, you won't get customers to invest. Always think about it from the perspective of the marketer: how do I draw interest and how do I convert?

• Pinterest looks forward, Pinterest users are about planning for the future-- it's what you want to do some day
• Pinning is personal, the difference is you connect with people you admire and have things in common with
• 96% of pinners say they research and gather information on the platform = search is huge on Pinterest
• 73% of pinners agree Pinterest helps them discover new things = search is working
• Your brand is welcome & essential -- 2/3 of content comes from brands and products
• 87% of active pinners say they've actually purchased something with the help of Pinterest
• Back to the full funnel--how to connect the right pinners with the right content and drive business
• The full funnel aligns partner solutions to pinner activity

Put into three buckets: Awareness, Intent, Action

Bank of America--One of their most successful clients

• Focused on awareness
• They said, figure out what type of savings pinners want, what they're planning to save for
• They beat all the competition with engagement
• Used creative best practices, like vertical image, long descriptions are fine

Petplan Insurance

• Focused on intent
• Researched all pet topics on Pinterest and realized they had the content people were looking for (what kind of dog should I buy, how do I know my pet has cancer, etc.)

Adore Me--A jewelry company

• Focused on action
• When they implemented pins they had promoted on Pinterest, they saw that Pinterest referred new customers and high value customers
• Took methodical approach in testing a platform and scaling it after confirming success
• A great idea can come from anywhere and people close to customers, don't kill the excitement. Let everyone know where the central marketing team is to relay content to. Use central team to optimize distribution of content and value.

TAKE-AWAY FROM LISA:
B2B customers are people
So what does this mean for content? You can’t build a content base on B2B segmentation alone - that is not built around the people. Articulating your value proposition isn't enough, we need to connect our value proposition to the personal side of our customers

From her experience, Lisa has developed a set of common B2B overall customer archetypes: Each of these archetypes have varying content needs

• The status quo: Buyers who prefer not to switch, may have regulations to follow, they need content that explains “why” they should switch
• The risk averse: Even more of a challenge, because they want to see value proposition, testimonials, research,  this means more work on content creation
• The innovative/early adopter: This user is more about the placement and timing of your content, these are also potential partner to develop shared content with (helps both brands)
• The follower: They'll find your content through organic search
• Environmentalist capitalist: These people want to do something good for company but also good for the environment, third party content and references from non-corporate partners help

Connecting our brand and developing content foundation

• We wanted to focus on brand message of “inspired solutions for a changing world” which provides the world with safe water, abundant energy, and affordable food

Focus is on the archetype: ”Environmentalist capitalist” and therefore content is built around showing how our solutions impact and help our customers. “Profit, people and the planet.”  Compile a base set of foundational content that is approved by legal and then cascaded and shared with all marketing personnel as a basis to build additional content from.

Shared vision & shared content

• Showed videos as an example of client's impact on environment For example, https://vimeo.com/117178639 Content framed as endorsement of a cause and focus on impact
• You need to make sure to know where all your content is and know it exists. Ownership of content is difficult and so is getting people to share ownership

FINAL THOUGHT
Give your customers the information they want, and encourage anyone looking to contribute within your company to do so.

The Executive MindXchange Chronicles provide summaries and valuable take-aways on all sessions post-event. Other insightful sessions from MARKETING WORLD 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange include: Rising to Brand Experience Excellence, Social 20120, Savvy Marketing: A New Way to Think About and Drive Value via Adaptive Analytics and many more.

A Sample from the MARKETING WORLD 2014 Executive MindXchange Chronicles:  ASK THE EXPERTS! PANEL DISCUSSION



Where Worlds Collide: The Evolution of the B2B Consumer

Consumer forces like mobile, 24/7 connectivity, customer empowerment, virtual communities and collaboration are spilling into the enterprise. In this interactive discussion, panelists explored the expectations of the new B2B consumer and looked at how marketing executives can creatively and strategically navigate the changing dynamics in the B2B and B2C consumer paradigms.

MODERATOR

Barbara Glasser,
Senior Vice President, Head of Marketing, Corporate

Communications and Product Management,
Astoria Bank

PANELISTS

Christa Carone,
Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Communications &

Events,
Fidelity Investments

Lisa Connolly,
Senior Brand Manager,
INVISTA

James Gross,
Vice President, Global Marketing,
Brady Corporation

Roseann Harrington,
Vice President, Marketing, Communication & Community

Relations,
Orlando Utilities Commission

Kevin Murphy,
Global Hair Care Industry Leader, Xiameter at
Dow Corning

Jamie Womack,
Vice President, Marketing & Branding,
CareerBuilder.com

TAKE-AWAY

In a lot of ways, B2C marketing is influencing how business is done on the B2B side.For example, there’s a greater push in B2B marketing to become more personalized. The panelists talked about some of the things they have learned from B2C marketing:

B2B customers now expect the same features the B2C customers get, said James Gross of the Brady Corporation. That includes ratings, reviews, personalization, selector tools, and advanced searches. All these things are blurring the line. Amazon is the fastest growing B2B company, or as Gross called it, B2E (business to everything). In this new environment, the key is having the right info at the right time and keeping messages consistent. B2B customers are trying to collect as much information prior to buying as they can, so you need to make sure they’re thinking of you.

A lot of it comes down to dialogue, said INVISTA’s Lisa Connolly. What’s the personal value in a B2B situation? You need to be able to have that dialogue to discuss problems and solutions.

Another key is the greater need for transparency in purchasing journeys, said Christa Carone of Fidelity Investments. After the economic meltdown in 2008, Fidelity’s phones were ringing off the hook. Customers were looking for help and asking for the company’s point of view about the situation. Customers put a lot of trust in Fidelity, and the company has built a whole division for planning and guidance for clients. Everything is based on transparency to earn the trust and confidence of customers.

BEST PRACTICES

According to an Ad Age survey of B2B marketing decision-makers, 52% of marketing budgets will increase in the next year. The top three channels companies that will focus on are digital, events, and direct mail.

Panelists agreed that content is king today. Companies need to have great content geared toward the audience and medium. The average buyer looks at 10 pieces of content before making a decision, so companies need to make sure they’re offering content that potential customers find helpful during that process.

B2B marketers are using all social media platforms to publish content. The group ranked the platforms in order of effectiveness:

1. LinkedIn

2. Twitter

3. YouTube

4. Slideshare

5. Vimeo

To use those tools effectively, messages must be short and sweet, panelists said. Mobile doesn’t seem to be part of marketers’ plans yet, but is shifting. One-third (33%) were using mobile marketing in 2013, while the number will increase to 49% in 2014.

One recommendation from the panel: Learn the language your customers’ companies use to communicate with their customers, and make sure you communicate with them in a similar way.

TAKE-AWAY

Many of the audience members said that their companies use customer personas as part of their marketing efforts. Panelists discussed their approach to personas: There are different viewpoints on what personas are for, said CareerBuilder’s Jamie Womack. Her team uses personas to humanize their efforts and keep the customer at the center. They’ve looked at what B2C marketers have done well to determine how to adapt that to the B2B world. The key is figuring out who the buyers are and what motivates them to buy.

The idea of the customer journey is also becoming commonplace in B2B, said Dow Corning’s Kevin Murphy. As his team maps the customer journey, they define it in two distinct phases. At every step, the company has an opportunity to be impressive or not.

BEST PRACTICES

Today, there’s a high-tech, high-touch paradigm; it’s easy to become overwhelmed by technology. However, it’s critical not to lose sight of the personal side of marketing. How can companies personalize their outreach in this landscape? Hosting and participating in events is one example cited.

In addition, create content that speaks to different personas. One big area to focus on now is finding messages that resonate with cross-generational audiences. Marketers must also make sure there is alignment between what the companies say and what they do. Content can be the bridge between the two.