Today on the 5 Questions Interview Series we have Andrew Spoeth. Andrew is part of the powerhouse marketing team at Marketo, provider of industry leading B2B marketing automation software.
At Marketo, he leads the company’s social media core group, webinar programs, and manages the PPC and SEO vendor relationships. Together with the rest of the demand gen team, he helps drive demand generation for a company that is innovative and very metrics driven.
Previous to Marketo, Andrew worked as the marketing director at Enquiro, a leading search marketing agency. While there, he played a key role in a research initiative called The Buyersphere Project, a seminal piece of B2B marketing research that was sponsored by Google, Marketo,Demandbase, Covario and Business.com.
He can be found on Twitter at @andrewspoeth, where he co-moderates the weekly #B2B chat series. He has also written for Search Marketing Standard magazine, the Beyond Web AnalyticsBlog, Business.com, and is a regular contributor for Marketo’s Modern B2B Marketing blog. We’re excited to have Andrew join us, now onto the questions!
#1. One of the biggest differences between B2C and B2B marketing is its longer lead times. The purchasing cycle with B2B is typically longer given the amount of consideration and budget involved. Given this scenario, how does internet marketing fit into the marketing plan of a B2B company? (i.e. do you only use it for lead generation, brand marketing, cultivating prospects, etc.)
The longer lead times in B2B purchases means there will be a lot more touch points between you and your prospect, and there will likely be several people involved in the purchasing process.
Today, buyers are more in control than they were, say, 20 years ago. They can navigate your site, look up product reviews, even ask their social networks online way before they ever speak to one of your sales reps.
As a marketer, we have to ensure our content reaches the places where prospects will be active. Internet marketing plays a role throughout, from awareness, to branding, lead gen, lead nurturing, and even customer satisfaction.
#2. How important is an online content strategy for B2B marketing?
We talk about online touch points, and the need to reach buyers wherever they may be when researching solutions to their challenges. By producing valuable content, we can help educate potential buyers and built trust in our brand even before they consider buying.
Because buyers have so many channels at their disposal, it’s up to marketers to have a diverse content portfolio. There are dozens of tactics which are encompassed by content marketing, including social media. B2B marketers are, on average, investing more than a quarter of their overall marketing budgets in content. And the trend is increasing.
#3. How does social media and social networks fit into B2B marketing? LinkedIn seems like the obvious social network, but is Facebook a viable platform for B2B providers?
Social media can be seen as part of your overall content marketing strategy. But it is also much more than that. Social channels are used for communications, lead gen, lead nurturing, and even customer support.
LinkedIn has often been referred to as the Facebook of B2B marketing. But the most successful B2B marketers use several channels in concert, with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and SlideShare being amongst the favorites. As a B2B marketer, I wouldn’t discount any of these.
Each channel does require a unique strategy. Facebook, by its nature, allows you to portray a more human side of your business. I think prospects are genuinely interested in the culture of a vendor they may be doing business with. This is where Facebook can shine.
#4. Attribution is a challenge for any online marketing team in order to determine which marketing effort is “working”. How do you measure which channel works best and how do you avoid falsely discounting channels that may be supporting your marketing efforts in other ways?
Attribution is merely an agreed-upon mechanism to help with marketing’s decision making. B2B buying decisions are made by people, which makes them very complex and sometimes unpredictable.
Regardless, there are ways we can use measurement to improve our marketing efforts. For demand generation metrics, we need to start with a set definition of a ‘qualified lead’. This is best done together with sales, and should be based on data from previous sales success. Based on this definition, we can then measure how many new qualified leads a marketing program can generate, and at which cost. The marketing programs which are scalable, and which can generate qualified leads at a low cost per lead, will be drivers of top line revenue growth.
When it comes to social media, it gets messy. But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands in despair.
To begin, marketers should measure explicit metrics such as number of followers, share of voice, mentions, reach, etc. After that, start looking at engagement metrics and watch things like sentiment and influence. From a B2B demand gen perspective, there are a couple of ways to measure our social media efforts. For example, when sharing links within social networks, append the links with unique tracking parameters to mark the source. This will allow you to attribute new leads in your CRM to that link. The challenge here is that links will often become truncated when they are shared, thus leading to an under-counting of leads generated through social media.
#5. What’s your advice for businesses looking to leverage internet marketing to grow their client base?
This is a huge question! There are endless resources available to learn more about Internet marketing, but to start, I would consider the following simple tips:
Ask your customers. Build individual case studies that look at how your customers became customers, and how your website, your blog, and social channels played a role in the process.
Study your toughest competitors. They are likely doing some of the things that will lead to you success.
Experiment, and measure the results of your efforts. The Internet is still evolving at a rapid pace and innovators will be rewarded. Experiment while being true to your brand and your message.
Many thanks again to Andrew for this insightful interview.
On the topic of social media. If you’re a B2B marketer, how are you leveraging emerging media such as social networks to further your marketing?
