19 CMOs/CEOs Reveal Big Changes in B2B Marketing
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The document summarizes responses from 19 B2B marketing leaders on how consumerization has changed their behaviors. Key insights include: focusing more on individual buyers and end users rather than just decision makers; simplifying marketing messages; increasing use of social media, mobile, and digital channels; emphasizing useful, shareable content; and shifting to more "pull" marketing approaches. Many noted the need to relate to customers on a human level and optimize experiences for consumer technologies.
19 CMOs/CEOs Reveal Big Changes in B2B Marketing
- 1. 1 19 B2B Marketers: One Question, Many Insights
- 2. The ongoing “consumerization of B2B” has long been a passionate conversation topic among marketers. As a B2B marketer myself, I wanted to better understand how B2B marketers were perceiving this trend. I reached out to the marketers in my network with a simple question: “How has the trend in consumerization of B2B changed your behaviors?” Here’s what they had to say… Margaret Molloy Global CMO Siegel+Gale
- 3. “Consumerization of B2B means that purpose matters and requires that we engage customers in a dialog to turn them into brand advocates.” Nick Besbeas VP, Marketing and Customer Support LinkedIn @nickbesbeas Purpose Matters
- 4. “B2B marketers need to remember that big glass buildings don’t buy software, people do. We created an initiative called ‘Humanize the Brand’ that encourages and enables SAP to communicate more consistently, more simply, and in ways that are more empathetic to our customers.” Jonathan Becher CMO SAP @jbecher Humanizing Brands
- 5. “The trend in consumerization has guided us toward taking a new lens on how we create content—always asking ourselves ‘is this piece providing something valuable and actionable for the reader?’ We’re continuously striving to produce content that is informative, educational, or provides our audiences with tips and tools that make their jobs easier.” Margaret Molloy Global CMO Siegel+Gale @MargaretMolloy Provide Professional Value
- 7. “The biggest changes are simplifying the message, a better adherence to messaging and positioning across the company, and a broader use of social media to communicate the message.” Mark Wilson SVP, Marketing Blackberry Simple, Integrated Marketing
- 8. “The biggest change is the use of measurement tools like attribution modeling, which connect individual person-level exposure to CRM conversions to better understand the ROI of advertising and communications touchpoints.” Randall Beard Global Head of Advertising Solutions Nielsen @beardrs Measurement Tools
- 9. “Terms like B2B and B2C are no longer relevant—it is all about B2C. Whether you are a CEO or a CPA, you can be a consumer anywhere and at anytime. And when you go back to being a CEO or CPA, you want the same always-on, simple experience in your "B2B" world since there is no longer a distinction between what hat you are wearing.” Marty Homlish EVP and CXO HP Consumer Behavior
- 10. “Consumerization is changing the tone and voice of ADP's brand in multiple ways. It has not only changed what we say, but whom we talk to as we increasingly reach end users and not just decision makers through mobile and social channels.” Steven Hardy VP, NAS and MNC Strategy and Marketing ADP @steevh Tone + Voice
- 11. Marketing is optimizing for the technology of the consumer
- 12. “My view of what’s ‘good enough’ for the user experience has dramatically changed. Products must be intuitively designed, requiring an iterative design approach. As well, 60% of the buyers journey happens before sales team engagement, so we need to focus on answering buyers’ questions early on in their journey. Overall, there’s been a radical shift in emphasis from push to pull marketing.” Richard Campione President, Cloud and Data Services ServiceSource @campione UX + Pull Marketing
- 13. “We strive to get closer to the final end user. Avoid jargon. Forge the relationship. Create huge value for the customer.” Fred Niemeier President, Energy and Fuels Marketing Group IDEX Corporation Forge Relationships
- 14. “As marketers, we don’t focus on B2C or B2B—it’s about leveraging technology to provide tailored information and interacting individually with customers and prospects throughout their buyer journey—that’s critical for consumer purchases and for complex technology decisions.” Debbie Murphy VP, Global Marketing Zebra Technologies @dhmurphy Tailored Interactions
- 15. Produce helpful content that makes your customer’s job easier
- 16. “The consumerization of IT contributed to the convergence of B2B and B2C to a path of B2i; the i stands for an increasing number of critical individuals that IT B2B marketers have to market to with B2C simplicity in order to gain and sustain relationship permission.” Eric-Jan Schmidt VP, Global and Digital Marketing Hitachi Data Systems @EricJanSchmidt Individuals
- 17. “The biggest impact of consumerization of enterprise technology has been on product design and development, as well as the advent of bottoms-up business models. Inevitably, it has impacted how we market our products with increasing use of subscription- based pricing and greater focus on end user (vs. buyer) marketing to drive adoption and usage.” Rahul Sachdev President and CEO Get Satisfaction @rahul_sachdev End User Marketing
- 18. “B2B buyers are already ‘consuming’ information, just like consumers. We’re embracing their active role in the buying process by developing shareable content and stories.” Steven Handmaker CMO Assurance @handmaker Sharable Content
- 19. Brands must relate to their customers on a human level
- 20. “The consumerization of B2B has enabled Kofax to adopt a consumer-driven positioning. We have shifted budgets, embraced customer versus product focused messaging, and shaped our brand voice to be more conversational and provocative.” Grant Johnson CMO Kofax @grantejohnson1 Shifted Budgets
- 21. “The ubiquity and transparency of information and data has made the B2B consumer more informed and in control. Marketing must adapt to shorter buying cycles, faster reaction times and increased non-traditional competition. Influencing customers along multiple channels in real time is critical. In short B2B consumerization has required marketing organizations to move from push to pull centric.” John Dragoon EVP and CMO Houghton Mifflin Harcourt @jkdragoon More Pull, Less Push
- 22. “We are seeing the selling motion move from a sales rep meeting customers to a digitally driven environment where customers’ preferences are already influenced by online information prior to their first encounter with a sales person. This inflection requires our marketing team to rely more heavily on outside vendors with the latest in technology and expertise to help drive our marketing mix.” Bob Braham SVP and CMO SGI @bobbraham_sgi Digital Drivers
- 23. Information and data have empowered the B2B consumer
- 24. “B2B marketing is finally recognizing the relevancy of B2C consumerism. For example, B2B’s growing emphasis on personalization, search optimization and sentiment analysis.” Gary Damiano VP, Marketing Veeva Systems @GEDamiano Personalization
- 25. “It has made marketing engage more fully with the individual buyer, versus the company persona. Marketers are trying to appeal more overtly to the people involved in the buying cycle, leading marketing to optimize for mobile devices and the technology of the consumer, rather than the traditional desktop.” Chris Boorman Chief Marketing and Customer Success Officer Huddle @CHBoorman Digital Drivers
- 26. “What do people exactly mean by ‘consumerization of B2B’? It's one of those terms we invent or reinvent. I'd say it was always there, it's just that most B2B marketers were previously focused on a lot of the wrong things or not focused enough on the right things.” Shane Lennon VP and CMO Epiq Systems @virtualCMO Consumerization Isn’t New
- 27. 27 Thanks to the 19 B2B marketing leaders Now over to you… “How has the consumerization of B2B changed your behaviors?” We’d love to hear from you. Tweet me @MargaretMolloy Margaret Molloy Global CMO Siegel+Gale
Editor's Notes
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