2022

Does it pass the human test?

Recreating the art of communication in a digital world

Has technology made us lazy in how we communicate? Technological advances mean we can communicate more widely and more quickly over a variety of channels and now algorithms can monitor and predict behavioural patterns to improve understanding of a customer or prospect’s buying habits.

Sounds great, so with all of this new intelligence, why is it that so often B2B communication campaigns fail to hit the mark?

Exploring the hypothesis

Email fatigue and digital noise are often cited as two main reasons why some B2B marketing campaigns flounder. When campaigns fail to deliver, it is invariably marketing that gets the blame as the organisation is “disappointed” in performance.

In an age of hyper-targeted messaging with “persona development” and extensive analysis of the “buyer’s journey”, both driven by data and research, why is it that the message often fails to resonate?

Digital communication is not a silver bullet, but it is a tool to share messages and is essential to modern marketing. To be successful, all communications need to be customer-centric with the audience in mind, be topical, relevant and provide the audience with factual, actionable information or tell them something they may not know or have not thought about. A good example of this is when communications apply current trends or new technologies to pain points to solve specific challenges.

Content is key, yet all too frequently, it is little more than a “sales pitch” which rarely solves real-life challenges and in today’s unsettled world, often can come across as tone deaf.

People are at the heart of communications

In the B2B world, people buy from people, they work for people and with people. With this goes all the human traits, such as happy, sad, angry, stressed, rational and in today’s world – irrational behaviour, too. AI may have revolutionised the way we track behaviour, but technology cannot replicate human emotion. People are not robots.

When developing content, one size rarely fits all. Organisations with business challenges, such as change, digital transformation or cost reduction, also employ people. All too often, whilst automation will alleviate many issues around accuracy, speed, and reduced cost of manual intervention, there is very little mention of the impact on people, other than you can redeploy them to do more productive, creative and interesting work. Appealing in theory, but where is the actionable information that helps them with how that is implemented and how it should be communicated?

People need real and actionable information in communications to help them make informed decisions, manage change, and retain and attract staff – which is a massive global issue. We should also not forget to consider the “what is in it for me?” factor. This applies to all of us. We are human beings.

A final point to bear in mind is to differentiate between an organisation’s buying journey and those “humans” involved at different stages in that process. Those who initiate are not always the same people as those who research and select suppliers, those who validate proposals and those who make the final decision.

As people, they will use a variety of ways to gather information – peers, personal networks, websites, searches, analyst reports, etc. One thing is for sure, most of these “humans” will check out your website. What they want is proof that you understand their challenges, know how to solve them and can ‘walk the talk’. Importantly and often overlooked, it matters if people ‘like’ your organisation, relate to its core values and if they will enjoy working with you. In B2B marketing, customers rarely browse aimlessly, they have an objective to meet and a job to do – they are looking for something specific, so accessibility, brevity and speed are of the essence.

Taking the next steps

Keep it customer-centric: Put people at the centre of your campaigns from start to finish. Do not get side-tracked by pressure to talk only about your organisation’s offerings.

Test, learn, optimise: Validate your content with your personas with a small test pilot and refine accordingly. Taking an agile marketing approach reaps rewards as you can test and fine-tune to understand what comms and channels really drive engagement.

Ask yourself:

Would I read this?
Do I think this is boring?
What is in it for the audience and why would they care?
Is it topical, relevant and actionable?
Do you have the right data to make a difference?
What do I want the audience to do – call to action?
If the audience wants more information, can they find it easily and is it accessible?
Does your website really deliver the right experience?

Use everyday language: Think about how you personally communicate with other people. Does it pass the human test?

Remember data and research are essential in mapping out personas but if your answer to question 1 is no and to question 2 is yes, then think again.

Finally, don’t be lazy: Utilise the intelligence provided by technology to guide you and get your message out, but use your common sense to humanise.

Communication that drives behaviour

Bright is an expert in B2B communication and understands how to balance data-driven insights and human-centric messaging to communicate with the right audience at the right time, in the right place, and with the right tone. Discover how to inspire action and drive change with impactful communications – drop us a note to chat further today.

Learn more about Bright’s content and creative services, guaranteed to get your audience fired up to interact with your brand.

At Bright, we pride ourselves on being B2B marketing experts that drive results through marketing agility. We embed an iterative and data-driven approach, leading the charge to better results and the ability to adapt and change at pace.

Shine a light on your marketing campaigns with Bright.

Get in touch with us today to discuss all things agile.

B2B marketing communications

August 1, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies Marketing Effectiveness

How many times have you, or someone in your team, spent hours crafting a piece of content? Agonising over the right phrases to use, making sure the content looks visually appealing, that the format is seemingly easy to consume, only to find that when it goes live, it doesn’t get the ‘big bang’ results you originally anticipated?

We’ve all been there, trying to uncover why it isn’t landing, maybe a shorter headline will help? Maybe a different graphic on the front cover? Is it cutting through the noise? Unfortunately, there is not just one right answer, it could be a whole host of reasons.

It may sound simple, but the way to create truly compelling content is by understanding your target audience, through this understanding you’re able to create something that is truly of value to them.

Where do you start when writing compelling content?

Something that is often overlooked when it comes to creating compelling content is relevancy. To get the traction you were looking for, your content should be timely and speak directly to your target audience and their pain points, regardless of if you’re creating a compelling case study or short social media content.

Understanding your target audience through developing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Persona(s), you can collate unique characteristics which can help uncover average revenue, number of employees, number of customers, budget, industry, geography, and purchase process but it should include other information such as pain points around their role and industry, but also personal fears, aspirations and needs.

Once compiled, you can then tailor your content to specifically address these points – without this level of information, you can end up speaking about a subject matter that has very little relevancy or is of little interest. For instance, if your ICP includes HR businesses with 10 people that only operate within the UK, it is probably best to steer away from trends in the US…

Have you kept your audience in mind?

Now you’ve established your ICP, it’s pivotal to consider how you’re already communicating with your prospects, and at which stage they are within the buying cycle. For instance, if you’ve only recently started to communicate with them, it’s likely that they’ll still be in the awareness phase, so creating compelling content that keeps you front of mind for them will be key.

Considering what stage they’re at within their buying cycle isn’t the only thing to keep in mind, going back to your ICP and based on the information you collected, you should also have an understanding of what makes them tick and what motivates them day to day. Knowing this information will inform which format the content should be presented – for example, you should probably steer away from creating a whitepaper for time-sensitive individuals, and instead may want to opt for more snackable pieces of content that they can get value from in short doses.

Pinpointing how they typically like to consume content will also have an impact on how you leverage this and the channels you utilise. For instance, if through your ICP development you know you’re your audience typically spends a lot of time on Facebook, then you may want to target them there.

Are aesthetics important?

So now you’ve established your ICP and done your research about what makes them tick and considered how and where they typically like to spend their time, we should now shift our attention to the content itself. How many times have you read something that was completely lacklustre and switched off after the first paragraph? Well, you’re not alone…

The human element to your content shouldn’t be understated, in B2B it’s easy to forget you’re talking to another human behind their screen, so don’t forget to show some personality, sometimes being a little controversial or incorporating a light-hearted joke can help to attract attention in the saturated B2B market and become memorable, keeping your business front of mind.

Finally, don’t forget about your content’s curb appeal, your copy may be elegantly written, and personalised to each individual business but if it visually doesn’t look great – you may see that your audience hits the exit button quicker than you’d like. Ensure that the format and layout of your content flows and is easy to follow, include relevant imagery and eye-catching visuals, and sometimes it pays to think outside of the box, it’s not just B2C that can be fun!

How do you measure your content?

Now your piece of content has gone live, how do you know if it’s compelling? At this stage, it’s important to separate feelings from the facts and resist making educated guesses.

The data and insights from your website content will help you identify if the content is compelling in the eyes of your audience. Bounce rates, dwell times, downloads, conversions, and heat maps are a great place to start… but beware of vanity metrics! For instance, if your content has a high bounce rate, this may indicate that the information within the content isn’t providing added value, or if a heat map is showing a cold spot on your eBook, it may be a sign to switch up the format of the page.

It’s important to continually test and learn, further optimising to hit the sweet spot and leveraging that data-driven insight moving forward.

Learn more about Bright’s content and creative services, guaranteed to get your audience fired up to interact with your brand.

Shine a light on your marketing campaigns with Bright.

Get in touch with us today to discuss all things agile.

July 4, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies Marketing Effectiveness

Performance marketing: Just another buzzword?

We explore the fusion of agile and performance marketing for B2B marketers.

What is performance marketing?

You’ve probably heard the term performance marketing used a lot recently, and you may be wondering is this a methodology? A collection of channels? Or just another buzzword that’s being used in the industry? Simply put, performance marketing is an umbrella term for online marketing and advertising programs where you pay when a specific action occurs, these typically include generating a lead, sale, click or a download.

Performance marketing directly relates to sponsored advertising, social media advertising and search engine marketing. Depending on which platform you’re using, you will pay for an action, for instance, a cost per impression (CPM), cost per click (CPC) and cost per lead (CPL).

Although performance marketing is defined as such when an action is complete, setting up a performance-driven campaign will vary depending on which platforms you use, and what actions you want your audience to make.

What are the benefits of performance marketing?

There are many benefits to performance marketing in comparison to traditional marketing. Due to the nature of performance marketing, regardless of the channel you’re operating from, it’s easy to track performance, which means that if there is any indication that the campaign isn’t performing as expected, this can be identified early on and optimised in line with the data, ultimately resulting in a low risk, high impact activity.

Another benefit of performance marketing is ROI, depending on your overall objective and only paying for a specific interaction, this means budget isn’t utilised on vanity metrics or performance indicators that isn’t related to your overall objective.

What are the fundamentals of performance marketing and how do you measure it?

Now we’ve unravelled what performance marketing is and the benefits, let’s dive into the fundamentals of performance marketing and where to start when you’re looking to launch activity and how to measure it.

Firstly, setting marketing objectives is key, without clearly defining this at the start of your campaign it can be difficult to optimise and measure. Setting your objective is a crucial first step, are you looking to increase brand awareness? If so impressions and engagement across social channels may be your overall goal, you should then look at what this means in terms of tangible key performance indicators (KPIs), what is your total audience size and what is the number of impressions you’re looking to achieve? Or perhaps this is a click through rate (CTR) above 13%.

Once you’ve set your goal, you need to establish the content you’re planning to leverage. Refer back at your personas and identify what their pain points are and how your product/service can help alleviate their current challenges. Your persona should also include information on how they typically consume information, ensure that your content is aligned to your findings.

Now you’ve established the right-fit content, it’s now time to prepare your campaign and set up activity ready for launch, this will vary depending on the platform you use. Once you’ve set up, aligned and launched your campaign, it’s now time to monitor and optimise, whether you’re embarking on a brand new activity or launching a campaign on a platform that has typically worked for you before, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, this is where performance marketing and agile marketing meet.

The collision of agile and performance marketing

Performance marketing is an umbrella term, agile marketing is a methodology that allows marketers to respond faster and adapt at pace. Using agile marketing practices within your performance campaigns can ensure that you continually drive results.

Once your performance campaigns have been set up, it’s key to revisit, realign and review throughout. Not every marketing tool or social channel will drive results for your overarching goal, it may be that your audience isn’t as present on the platform, or the content you’ve leveraged may not be as impactful on your audience as you had hoped.

Running your performance marketing campaign in sprints will allow you to test new channels, audience groups, visuals, and messaging in a constructive way. Through sprints you can plan review and optimisation sessions, splitting your campaign into shorter periods of time, to reveal results quickly, as opposed to a more rigid traditional marketing methodology. Review your overall goal and drill this down into each sprint, what engagement level do we expect to see within a 3-week period of a particular channel, or perhaps it’s a click-through rate (CTR) above 7% initially to continue running activity for the next sprint.

The agile marketing methodology will ultimately enable you to be dynamic in your performance marketing approach, uncovering patterns and insights quickly to learn and adapt fast.

Don’t be bewildered by buzzwords

Don’t get lost in the language – performance marketing is simply a method of ensuring each action taken on each channel is utilised effectively and is measurable through metrics. Don’t be bewildered by buzzwords, Bright can help decode the detail and shine a light on the latest marketing trends.

Get in touch with us today to chat all things agile.

May 30, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies Marketing Effectiveness

How to make Account Based Marketing successful with agile marketing principles.

How many times have you tried ABM and it’s not quite worked or driven the success you wanted it to? Or even struggled to get everyone internally on the same page?

Some sales teams see ABM as a risk, narrowing your activation to a select group of accounts compared to being out there for all to see. Others see it as talking to those most likely to buy and therefore more efficient use of budget. Both are right.

ABM can be categorised in three ways:

1:1 – is your hyper-personalised, highly targeted campaign, talking to a select group of individuals.
1: Few – is slightly broader, talking to your selected accounts with some commonality. This could be vertical-specific or common pain points.
1: Many – this is your broader approach that will talk to everyone in your target audience with an overarching message.

The following steps apply to all three categories and will guide you to making your ABM campaign, a successful one.

Data

In ABM, data is king. This might sound simple but selecting the right accounts and getting the correct data surrounding them is crucial. Get this step wrong and the rest is significantly less effective.

Starting with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), building your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and then narrowing down your audience and understanding the Decision-Making Unit (DMU) composition. These are the foundations of your campaign. Take your time here and be confident that you’re targeting the best accounts that fit your brand and service offering.

What is ICP?

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a detailed profile of your ideal customer who would benefit the most from your product or service, used to customise marketing and lead generation tactics.

What is TAM?

TAM stands for Total Addressable Market which refers to the total market demand for a product or service. It’s the most amount of revenue a business can generate by selling their product or service in a specific market. Businesses can use TAM to estimate a specific market’s potential for growth.

What is DMU?

The decision-making unit (DMU) is a collection or team of individuals who participate in a buyer decision process. Philip Kotler defines the decision-making unit or DMU as “all individuals and groups that take part in the decision-making process relating to the negotiation of products /services”.

Alignment & metrics

This is a small but crucial step. Make sure that all stakeholders agree with the campaign and its steps, for example, sales & marketing need to be aligned to ensure the successful and seamless delivery of the campaign. This might sound obvious but in the cold light of day, misalignment and internal non-engagement with campaigns will result in missed business opportunities.

At the same time, we all must agree on what success looks like for this campaign. Success for marketing and success for sales can have different success metrics, so defining KPIs is key for everyone to get the most out of every campaign.

Speaking to your audience

Now you have settled on who you want to target, and everyone is aligned internally, the next step is understanding how you’re going to talk to them. Persona research, common pain point analysis, industry trends and value proposition development are all elements, that when combined, will help to form your messaging hierarchy.

Now you need to define which elements will resonate with the targeted individuals? Why your business? What problem do you solve? Why risk change? So many questions we will need to answer to move targets into and through your pipeline.

Fearless creative

Earlier, we said that data is king, and it is, however, a campaign creative is a very close second. With the marketing world becoming increasingly competitive and the cost of acquisition going up, standing out in a saturated marketplace is business critical. Creativity – conceptual and visual – can become the difference between winning and losing the attention of ICP’s in competitive business landscapes. Take a stand with your creative – be brave, be different and most importantly, be memorable.

One of our goals in marketing is to create memorable and actionable campaigns. This translates into business when you become one of your target audiences’ top three options when considering a change. That, in itself, is a success and will translate into pipeline opportunities.

Channels & execution

“Marketing is just LinkedIn ads, right?” This was an opening line from a sales director in a recent presentation. To a degree, he’s right and to a great degree, he couldn’t be more wrong. Whilst LinkedIn is a critical channel and one that has grown significantly during the last three years, it isn’t the only viable option available to reach your ICP. Direct mail, content syndication, sales development rep outreach, display ads, email nurture sequences, and many more options may be more appropriate, or impactful to get the right results your campaign.

This is where we go back to knowing our personas. Where do they spend their time? What do they value? Where and how can you get their attention? For some it is a direct mail landing on their desk and getting physically in front of them, for some it’s a catchy subject line from an email nurture sequence. Ultimately, no one channel will be the silver bullet. It will be a combination of tactics which all build towards moving you into their top three. Oh, and yes, LinkedIn ads are usually part of most campaigns nowadays. Music to the ears of the lovely Sales Director I mentioned earlier.

Data lead optimisation

Now, this is where we make the difference. Data allows us to see what is truly working and what needs more work. Which message is getting the most attention? Which image is driving the most clicks?

The crucial part of this is to not only review the data but to act on it. Make every touchpoint work harder. At Bright, we apply a test, learn and iterate approach to every marketing activity. This agile methodology gives us regular opportunities to review, assess and adapt to make sure your campaign is as effective and efficient as possible.

ABM is a great tool in the armoury of every marketer. Whether that is 1:1, 1: few, 1: many or a combination. Getting to the right people and propelling your business into their consideration options and ideally into that magical top three.

In summary; Be methodical with your data. Seek alignment, Speak to your audience. Be brave with your creative. Be agile, test, learn, iterate and follow the data.

At Bright, we pride ourselves on being world-leading B2B marketing experts, driving results through marketing agility. We embed an iterative and data-driven approach, leading the charge to better results, faster time to market, sustainable growth, and the ability to adapt and change at pace. Everything you need to have a successful ABM campaign and much more.

Shine the light on your marketing campaigns with Bright.

Get in touch with us today to chat all things agile.

May 13, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies Marketing Effectiveness

Four trends in the future of FinTech marketing

Insights from marketers on the ground, discussed at the annual FinTech B2B marketing conference.

As with many other sectors, the financial services industry is going through a continued period of disruption. Digital-first services are changing the way customers interact with brands as the move towards digital has increased customer’s expectation on service.

When I was asked to join the FinTech B2B Marketing Conference as a guest panellist, I was keen to share insights and experiences of agile marketing in the FinTech market, however the real value was found in the conversations had with my marketing peers about the immediate and undeniable factors that are influencing the marketing landscape for FinTech marketers today.

Navigating this ever-changing environment is tough at the best of times but navigating it post-pandemic brings its own host of disruptions. Here are four trends that I think will be influencing the industry over the coming months.

The role of critical thinking in data analytics

The goal of collecting and analysing data is to turn information into valuable insights and to create valuable insights, we must ask valuable questions. Our attention has too long been focussed on the hard skills in data – coding, visualisation, modelling etc. What seems to be far lower down the totem pole are the soft skills for making data useful, accessible, and valuable. Most importantly, the ability to critically think and analyse.

Critical thinking is a manner of thinking that employs curiosity, creativity, scepticism, analysis, and logic – the good news is, that critical thinking can be learned and upskilled. Finding the balance between trusting the data and our gut feeling is the key to discovering insights that add value.

The pandemic and the marketeer

I’m sure like me, you’re fed up with talking about the pandemic and how it has affected business over the past two years, but inevitably, it’s still impacting channel performance and creative a skills gap in the market.

The data we have on channel performance from the last two years is skewing our predictions – what worked in 2020 to deliver on demand gen seems to be shifting again. LinkedIn for example is currently working better for small businesses than it is for larger organisations – something that has changed dramatically over the past year and a half.

The great resignation, influenced by the pandemic means that the quality of contact data has become an issue as many people have left roles, challenging marketers to maintain and clean databases to ensure campaigns remain successful.

When one succeeds, we all succeed – the value in partnerships

Budget allocations have shifted over the past few years, with more money being invested into digital marketing and less on live events. Now that events have resumed and audiences are keen to attend, where will the money come from to satisfy both needs?

Brands need revenue and growth and have little appetite for further risk. Partnership marketing is a perfect antidote, brands can partner up on complimentary services and solutions to share resources and create value led events without having to risk the costs. The current circumstances highlight the virtues of creative, direct teamwork, so my advice is to find innovate ways to create long lasting relationships and partnerships that work for everyone.

Brand vs. Demand Generation

An age-old debate which every marketeer has had to negotiate, the truth is both are just as important, and one does not work without the other. A business with amazing brand presence but no leads will struggle to sustain itself. Whereas businesses that prioritise demand gen, tend to get a lot of prospects interested in a solution but will evidently lose out to competitors that have a stronger brand identity and clear values that cut through an already overpopulated market.

The financial services sector has always been considered as agile, with the requisite to adjust to ever-changing external factors. This inherent dynamism makes it an exciting and cutting-edge marketplace with scope for disruptive marketing tactics and experimentation at every turn, from brand to local and central levels. How can you enable experimentation approach, with a growth mindset and agile marketing approach to how your team execute.

Discover how Bright can inject agility into your business to maintain an edge on competition. Get in touch with us today to chat all things agile.

May 11, 2022 Lydia Kirby Marketing Effectiveness

Deep dive into agile marketing for FinTech

Bright injects agility into cutting-edge FinTech’s digital transformation journey

Bright’s client, a leading financial industry operating system, set out on a digital transformation journey to pivot their focus from brand marketing to demand gen. Requiring an agile approach, we helped transform their marketing strategy and achieve their business objectives. Vice President and Global Head of Marketing of the FinTech client, Mitra Roknabadi, joins our Client Delivery Director, Lydia Kirby, to be interviewed by John Cass and share their experience of putting agile marketing into action…

1. Move fast, break nothing

In a digital world time is of the essence – Mitra highlights the importance to “move fast but don’t rush”. The qualities of an agile marketing approach align perfectly with the FinTech client’s company motto: ‘move fast, break nothing’. By beginning to work in a series of iterations, we developed a safe foundation to learn more about their digital audience through listening, testing, and optimising. Bright empowered the FinTech client team to “work at pace and learn, iterate, shift and deliver quickly.”

2. Experts, assemble!

There’s more to agile marketing than the methodology. Mitra recalls how her experience with Bright helped her to see “the full extent of what agile means”. As the campaign developed, both Mitra and Lydia as agile aficionados adapted the team’s approach and toolkit to suit the FinTech client’s needs. Demonstrating the ability to onboard and offboard expertise where needed was paramount to the FinTech client, enabling them to identify how and where they wanted to grow as a business.

3. Planning, doing, and reviewing

Keen to shirk the assumption an agile marketing approach is an impulsive one, Lydia emphasises the “planning, doing, and reviewing” that goes into a project. Bright often work in three-week Sprints to allow ample “time for learning, understanding the subject and iteration”. Project management and instant messaging platforms are key tools to unite siloed teams and enable them to collaborate and respond at pace. It’s the way in which we respond that sets agile marketers apart; having an open mind that something may work better than predicted. The review process of continuous self-reflection allows for iteration, optimisation and ultimately, the best of results.

Lydia described her experience with the FinTech client as a “dream, not because they’re simply new to agile marketing”… but because “their scale-up mentality embraced the agile methodology”. Mitra is also confident the campaign experience “will influence what we do as a company” going forward.

As Bright continues to work with innovative FinTech companies, we look forward to delivering fresh, iterative, and data-driven agile marketing approaches, leading the charge to better results, faster time to market, sustainable growth, and the ability to adapt and change at pace.

April 29, 2022 Lydia Kirby Agile Marketing In Practice

Earth Day 2022: Agility in climate action planning and why we’ll fail without it

Net-Zero targets are rightfully ambitious, but they’re doomed to fail if strategies aren’t agile. Our agile guide to help #InvestInOurPlanet

Last year, the UK Government released plans on how it will deliver its Net Zero emissions targets by 2050 including a 78% reduction from 1990 to 2035. Whilst their strategy is ‘ambitious and comprehensive’ if their plans aren’t agile, measured and take an iterative approach, they’re doomed to fail.

This year’s Earth Day, falling on 22 April annually, is themed around nature in the race to net zero with the hashtag #InvestInOurPlanet. At Bright, we believe the best way for governments to plan for climate change is to use an agile approach.

13 going on 35

2035 seems miles away from where we are now, 13 years is a long time in project planning terms, however targets and goals as ambitious as climate action ones, demand special attention. Cities across the globe are setting targets and measuring for the years ahead, however, without monitoring, how are they going to track progress?

Agile methodology manages projects by breaking it up into several phases or sprints. Involving continuous collaboration with stakeholders and constant learning and improvement at every stage. Once the project begins, teams’ cycle through a process of planning, executing, and evaluating thus teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly. Do you see where we’re going with this yet?

Seize the data

Climate targets need to be data driven; however, the data needs to be monitored and used correctly. Agile emphasises the freedom to be daring in concept and tactics whilst also highlighting the importance of data driven insights. The most important aspect of an agile approach is to turn your data into actionable insights.

Try, Fail, Try something different, Succeed

Collecting climate data is all well and good, but if that data suggests or even shows that transition targets have been missed by a large margin then more measures will need to be implemented behind this goal. Equally, if target measures seem to be particularly effective, more ambitious targets could be set to reach goals faster.

This kind of flexibility is important as climate strategies need to be adaptable based on actual results and external shifts that are not yet known. Agile ways of working promote this type of flexibility and retrospective outlook which allows for prioritisation on demand – providing teams with the knowledge of what is most important to work on next.

Some cities around the world are already adapting their climate strategies to make them more agile. Mannheim in Germany, for example will digitise its new ‘Climate Action Plan 2030’ to track measurable data close to real-time via a digital twin. Meaning the city can be more flexible in adjusting milestones to reach targets faster and more efficiently.

Limit risks without risking your limits

Agile methodology is based on the concepts of flexibility, transparency, quality, and continuous improvement. Visibility in project management plays a key role in ensuring targets are achievable and that teams have the resources necessary to attain them. It’s easy for governments to set ambitious targets that make headlines and line manifestos, but if the delivery is deficient due to lack of transparency, the strategies will fail.

The Committee on Climate Change – a group of experts that advise the UK government – called the governments net zero strategy “ambitious and comprehensive” but says the UK government needs to “strengthen delivery” and agree tougher policies. With increased visibility, predicting risks, and coming up with effective mitigation plans become simpler. When working within an agile framework, there are countless ways to identify and predict risks faster meaning it’s easier to plan to ensure that the project runs smoothly, targets are met, and goals are achieved.

So, there you have it, our challenge to #InvestInOurPlanet. While there may be plenty of obstacles in climate change planning, the benefits of agile ways of working, both to governments as well as the planet, are abundant. As the planet continues to evolve and change, strategies on climate change planning need to be agile enough to evolve with it.

If you would like to introduce agile marketing into your project planning, please contact us about our Agile Marketing training or marketing support.

April 21, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies Agile Marketing In Practice

Agile: Marketing at the speed of FinTech

The buzz surrounding FinTech companies keeps growing louder as these cutting-edge businesses introduce innovative ideas to disrupt the financial services industry.

From P2P lending and digital currency to online payments, internet insurance, and self-serve brokerages, FinTech solutions can offer customers more efficiency, convenience, and security than traditional solutions.

Business Insider expects the FinTech industry to grow with a CAGR of 20 percent over the next few years.

Despite growth, FinTech companies face steep challenges

Financial institutions and customers appear eager to embrace new tools. Still, even the best new financial technology must gain visibility in a crowded, shifting marketplace.

Very often, FinTech enterprises need to introduce their brands and ideas to a marketplace that barely understands the problem that needs solving. At the same time as innovators offer new solutions, they also face rapid shifts in their business environments because of changing regulations, competitors, and customer expectations.

FinTech companies don’t just need to produce innovative solutions to help customers. They must also employ their own creative, responsive, and adept marketing processes to remain ahead of a rapidly changing business environment. This demands an approach to marketing strategy and project management that uses agile methodologies.

Why agile marketing perfectly suits FinTech companies

Successful FinTech companies use rapid, data-driven methodologies to develop and test their ideas to offer the best products and services in this dynamic business environment. Startups and established tech companies must remain agile to cope with rapid and often unexpected changes. Many technical companies rely on Agile development tools to swiftly gather information, test ideas, validate theories, and optimise processes.

Thus, Agile marketing tactics fit the culture and business model of FinTech companies precisely the same way that Agile development tactics do. Developers working within an Agile framework will recognise the core principles of Agile marketing, such as rapid sprints, using an iterative process to develop and test, relying on data-driven ideas and techniques, and a holistic, interdisciplinary approach.

Highlights of why Agile marketing flawlessly suits FinTech companies include:

Responsive to the economic and market context: In the complex and rapidly evolving FinTech market, agile marketing can pivot quickly and relies on data, not assumptions. The interdisciplinary nature of this marketing framework also offers better insights into the broader economic and competitive context.
Complementary to FinTech company culture: Typical FinTech businesses tend to be agile, and very often, use Agile development tools. Employees readily understand and adapt to this adaptable, sprint-based, diversity-inclusive, and engaging style. An agile marketing team already speaks the language of every other team member, including marketing leaders and business decision makers.
Able to scale: Agile marketing’s focus on automation and efficiency helps clients scale as businesses evolve and grow. Agile marketing tactics don’t just scale quickly. They also encourage business growth, making scaling more possible, finding new ways to reach potential customers.
Suitable for the unique demands of FinTech: FinTech businesses constantly upgrade and improve products with new or improved features. Agile marketing can keep up with this level of dynamism. Besides offering insights about the best way to communicate changes to customers, these marketing approaches can help developers learn what to change or leave alone.

As B2B FinTech grows to catch up and keep pace B2C FinTech, B2B FinTech companies will need to reach B2B Companies. This needs an approach to B2B marketing that continuously improves their digital marketing and that guides modern B2B buyers towards a purchase decision

Agile Marketing: FinTech can’t wait

Santander provides a great case study of how even established financial services firms can implement agile marketing approaches. Santander shortened campaign cycles into ‘sprints’ and used daily ‘huddles’ to dynamically adjust priorities based on performance. This allowed Santander to create more adaptable campaigns that make better use of budget. Besides taking inspiration from best practice in Silicon Valley, Santander’s agile marketing approach has aligned the marketing part of their business with IT development methodologies.

Fintech companies cannot afford to wait for weeks to adjust or broadcast their marketing messages. They need tangible results fast, together with the capacity to learn from experience. Zaptino – working with Bright – used data-driven audience insight and a rapid, iterative approach to optimise key messages. In just six weeks, they were able nurture investors towards conversion that delivered over £125,000 in investment, as well as building a pipeline of longer-term opportunities.

Agile marketing relies on continuous streams of data analytics, automated processes, rapid tests, frequent evaluations, and a series of iterations. Here at Bright, we’re excited about the future of FinTech and understand the challenges our clients face. Our unique marketing methodology and technical capabilities help FinTech companies enjoy rapid growth and profits because they employ the same agile tactics that our clients use to produce new solutions.

Discover more about the intersection between agile marketing and FinTech as Bright’s client delivery director, Lydia Kirby, will be appearing as a guest panellist at this years Fintech B2B Marketing Conference on the 27th of April. Lydia will be sharing her FinTech industry insights and agile marketing expertise on the topic of ‘Winning B2B data-driven marketing strategy is the next new normal’.

April 12, 2022 Lydia Kirby Agile Marketing In Practice

Four ways agile marketing can help overcome bias

Bright explores how agility, curiosity, empowerment and spirit can #Breakthebias

Beyond hashtags, inspirational videos and moving quotes, celebrating International Women’s Day should serve as a reminder of the ongoing effort and change that is still needed to bring true equality and equity to women in society. As a female led business Bright place diversity at the heart of our business. Zoe Merchant, Bright, Managing Director comments “We, as marketers, whose profession it is to create awareness, drive change and make an impact, have the power to tackle biases and discrimination that permeate our much evolved yet still opinionated society.”

Unconscious bias and systemic prejudices are innate traits of the human being which affects opinions, decision-making and actions. But we believe that by challenging the status quo and testing preconceptions we can disrupt mindsets and create positive change in the workplace, our society and in culture, day after day.

“None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years,” Global Gender Gap Report 2020.

As pioneers of agile marketing, we apply the same methods we use for our strategies to our approach to diversity and equality within the work we do. We’re focused on proving how an agile approach to all areas of business, combined with a culture of empowerment and a diverse workforce fuels operational capability as a business and helps us remove the limitations of bias in marketing both for Bright and for our clients.

Our business values of agility, curiosity, empowerment, spirit, encompass our commitment to breaking the bias.

Break the bias with Agility

As a collective of agile marketing practitioners, the discipline of research, test and validate; learning and improving goes beyond our approach to marketing strategy. We know that diverse talent and influences contributes to a richer pool of experience where positive friction allows us to challenge the norm to embed new ways of working and test new methods to achieve results.

At Bright, we pride ourselves on embracing flexibility to attract and, most importantly, keep a diverse and talented team. Zoe Merchant comments, “At Bright, we respect, challenge and nurture each other to ensure our marketing and campaign strategies are creative, innovative, and rooted in validated concepts.”

Break the bias with Curiosity

As part of our agile approach at Bright, we’re to always examine the bigger picture and understand its origin and trajectory with a methodical approach. The environment we find ourselves in shouldn’t mould us into accepting facts at face value. Scrutiny and curiosity should challenge and fuel our perspectives, we should continue to ask ‘why’ to understand the details that will allow for improvements. Interrogating the data will help to set us free from legacy and unconscious bias. Marketers need to move away from vanity metrics and set robust KPI through measuring what matters. Only then can we drive change by making more educated and insightful decisions.

Break the bias with Empowerment

Remaining data and insight driven is how marketers have comprehensive knowledge of the state of the market and the audience mindset before planning any strategy. We believe that acquiring an agile, innovative, and creative mindset can help us connect with a more diverse audience and offer more far-reaching solutions. It’s also important to ensure unbiased segmentation as well as considering any unconscious or conscious bias in market & brand positioning. At Bright, we believe that empowering our team to interrogate the status-quo and ask difficult questions helps us to discover new opportunities, tackle market or brand stagnation and achieve faster growth.

“Gender-diverse companies are 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability and boost productivity.”
– McKinsey

Break the bias with Spirit

We’re continually aiming to expand our team’s demographic diversity – diversity of experience and opinion is valuable and helps overcome stale assumptions and challenge conventional thinking. Working as a team towards common goals, we strive to maximise outcomes through innovative solutions, never letting preconceptions and ideologies hold us back. Zoe Merchant comments, “Liberating ourselves from bias helps Bright craft agile marketing strategies and campaigns that better connect with target audiences and deliver a positive impact.”

“Diverse teams are more innovative—stronger at anticipating shifts in consumer needs and consumption patterns that make new products and services possible, potentially generating a competitive edge”
– McKinsey

The Brighter Way

As a female-led business, we celebrate diversity not only within Bright, but also by partnering with likeminded organisations who advocate for minority groups to have equal opportunities and celebrate the success of women and minorities across the business and leadership landscape. Bright is an active member of WEConnect, a global network that connects women-owned businesses to corporate buyers around the world who are committed to diversity and inclusion. Being a member of WEConnect allows us to tap into the talent of creative and entrepreneurial women and access business opportunities from organisations who are aligned with our values. At Bright, we celebrate diversity across all intersections, not limited to gender. Zoe Merchant has been selected for two years running as a member of the 40 over Forty List, celebrating the talent and experience of over 40’s in the advertising, marketing and media industry.

All marketers benefit from creating an inclusive environment around agility, empowerment, curiosity, and spirit resulting in creating better, more effective marketing. We enjoy challenging the status quo, testing to validate new, diverse approaches and measuring performance through audience response. Through iterating to continually improve we achieve viable and impactful agile marketing, endorse our talented team, and break the bias.

March 4, 2022 Zoe Merchant Agile Marketing In Practice

Bright enlists corporate advisory consultancy, Cactus, to help navigate expansion

During these changeable times, businesses are increasingly seeking ways in which they can adapt and transform with a more agile approach. Due to the increased requirement for marketing agility, driven by the unpredictability caused by the pandemic, world-leading B2B agile marketing consultancy, Bright, has experienced more demand than ever.

Founded in 2013 by Zoë Merchant, Bright’s goal was to accelerate business growth for its clients and push their marketing forward through greater agility to achieve better results. Nine years later, Bright’s goal remains the same, now with a team of 21 agile marketing specialists and a roster of market-leading, technology, publishing and engineering clients.

To navigate the next phase of growth, driven by a collective passion for evolution, Bright has teamed up with Cactus – Europe’s leading corporate advisory and growth consultancy for agencies.

Cactus is uniquely positioned to supply corporate commercial development support, operational guidance and expert financial advice, having worked with over 2,500 agencies globally and some of the fastest growing agencies in their territories. With these credentials, 2022 is set to be a landmark year for Bright’s growth.

“It’s an exciting time for Bright, agile marketing has moved beyond nascent and we’re seeing clear benefits to those businesses that change their way of working to fuel business growth, through greater adaptability, client centricity and a data driven approach.
Bright’s on a mission to drive marketing agility forward and we continue to expand how we deliver our services and work alongside clients to co-create, coach and train marketers to become more agile.”
Zoë Merchant, Managing Director of Bright

“Bright is a remarkable business, one with huge potential to be a leader in the industry and one we’re thrilled to be working so closely with. They have such an interesting proposition and a truly unique service offering for their clients”.
Danny Turnbull, Managing Partner for Consulting at Cactus

Discover how Bright’s approach to agile marketing can equip teams with the expertise to adapt to a fast-paced, changeable business environment, take advantage of opportunities for growth and transform your business.

Bright is a world-leading B2B agile marketing consultancy, providing strategic marketing services, supporting transformation through co-creation and training for tech & professional services firms.

Bright’s team of expert B2B agile marketing practitioners inspire businesses to think and act differently; embrace curiosity and use data-driven insights to drive continuous learning, improvement and transformation, always putting the customer at the heart of activity.

February 14, 2022 Zoe Merchant Marketing Effectiveness