The Changing Face of B2B Marketing
Q&A with Chris Angell, VP of Marketing and Demand Generation, Wiser.com
Over the last 10 years, B2B Marketing has become more rote and with less soul. Meaning, the science of marketing is consuming disproportionate Mindshare of B2B Marketers.
“Because everything is measurable, there’s an intense focus on demand gen models and the related financial outcomes rather than on the customer and the softer side of marketing,” says Chris Angell, Vice President of Marketing and Demand Generation at Wiser.com.
So what are B2B marketers doing to change the narrative while still driving their businesses?
They have an intense focus on the customer that drives both financial outcomes and authentic brand conversations.
“When you start with the customer, you start with value and authenticity that informs your strategy and your tactics.”
Here Chris shares his perspective on brand, authenticity, and innovation in B2B Marketing.
What is Wiser.com and how do you support the retail industry?
Brands and retailers use Wiser’s Commerce Execution Suite to capture intelligence and take action on market and revenue-related operational pillars like competitive pricing intel, dynamic pricing, assortment management, in-store compliance issues related to OOS, Shelf-Health, and end-cap/promotional programs.
A lot of people would say B2B marketing is all about lead generation. But you disagree. Why?
The current machination of Lead or “Demand” generation programs are often mistaken for the strategic process of commercializing a product-market fit.
The model for capturing a meeting (a la “demand”) has become more important for those hiring marketing functions than the ability to inspire action through thought leadership and, above all, the story of how the whole of an offering (product) will unlock value (time, money or human connection).
I’ve witnessed investors, over-valuing lead-gen models because they are the easiest to understand and quantity. Put $1 in and get $2 out, by tactic, by region, by product, by, by, by, etc.
These programs are easily replicated across any organization, are not unique, and are transactional by design. Said differently, demand does not create a brand or identity. Lead programs capture in-the-moment interest, critically important but I think we marketers think “this is our brand”.
You’re a big fan of Rory Sutherland and the B2B Institute. What are they teaching B2B marketers that is so compelling?
Rory is reminding Marketers to get back to being authentic, to find the personality in your brand, and to be remembered. Which, on its face, sounds patently inauthentic given that social media is all about being remembered, although not always for the right things.
For me, it sounds like a calling to unlock value for our prospects and customers, and “value” is inextricably and tangibly linked to authenticity.
During the past ten years, the culture and tactical elements in B2B Marketing (and Sales) have been unduly influenced from the inside out. Meaning, in our zeal to impress investors, we unnaturally compress market timelines using spreadsheets that dictate the time to value, time to break even, and time to profitability.
Often these models are built prior to having a single prospective customer interview. So now we have spreadsheets that are based completely on the hypothetical that pre-defined our tactics to approach the market.
In short, our arsenal is aimed at proving a spreadsheet or “model” correct versus finding the authentic connections addressing a prospective customer’s need.
How has B2B marketing changed in the current environment?
In some ways, the pandemic exposed the investments we once thought we couldn’t live without as almost entirely unnecessary. Take trade or proprietary events, just 18 short months ago.
These were must-have tactics. Less obvious is the intense focus on SEO as a critically important tactic. If you hadn’t been working on a proper SEO strategy in the months leading up to the pandemic, you likely lost opportunities to competitors who were prepared.
How are you innovating in B2B marketing?
Innovation for me is about incremental changes or placing many small bets as opposed to relying on fewer, longer-term, more complex but static programs.
One example, because we operate a B2B and B2C business, we have a hypothesis that our B2B prospects engage with our consumer blog from time to time. We set aside a budget to build content and site code that will trigger our B2B content when we think those prospects are on our consumer site.
We’re then able to compare that “path to identified interest” with the more traditional path and allocate more resources/content as needed.
The results of these small but intricate tests allow us to explicitly and precisely state where our net new incremental revenue began the journey.
Said differently, the path from a web search to confirming a meeting is anything but linear, being in as many places as possible, with the level of investment, optimizes our chances for success.
https://www.wiser.com Follow Chris Angell on LinkedIn
Rapid Fire: Get to know Chris Angell
What song/music is most played on your playlist?
I’m always changing tastes but I’ve recently been into a modern blues playlist named “Nu-Blu” on Spotify.
What book(s) are you reading right now?
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. It won’t end! Moving to Boston has awakened my inner-historian.
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports by Jeff Passan. Both of my boys are obsessed with baseball and they both pitch. So I wanted a deeper look at the ‘industry’ of pitching.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I need to maintain my fiction to nonfiction ratio
Who is your favorite person to follow on social media and why?
I use YouTube most often. The algorithms tend to serve comedians and sketch shows. I also subscribe to Lex Fridman, Sam the Cooking Guy, Key and Peele, and lately Andrew Hubermann of Stanford.
What is the first website/app you access every morning?
I just deleted Flipboard in favor of GoogleNews on Chrome App
Three people living or dead you’d like to have over for dinner
- George Washington. I want to know if he really is as boring as the historians say.
- Dave Chappelle. Can I make him laugh!?
- My wife’s brother John, who left us before we could meet.