Marketing operations are the powerhouse behind every successful marketing strategy. Our dynamic panel discussion features experts Lisa Sutton, CRO and marketing operations specialist and Amanda Green, experienced marketing operations leader.
During the session we explored how agile marketing drives operational improvement, creates a culture of continual learning, and boosts overall marketing effectiveness.
Watch the vide to gain insights and advice on:
Boosting effectiveness: Real examples of how a test-and-learn mindset drives results
Agile marketing in action: Quick wins to boost operational flow and remove bottlenecks
Measure what matters: The key metrics driving high-performance marketing ops
Culture hacks: Break silos and get your team collaborating and adapting to change
Future-proof ops: AI, automation, and adopting what’s next in marketing innovation.
Lisa is an experienced leader with a proven track record in growing businesses across multiple industries. She always focuses on a customer-centric approach and has a talent for identifying opportunities, removing barriers, and leading teams with strong adaptability and resilience.
Amanda Green
Director of Marketing Operations and Analytics, Stenn
Accomplished Operations senior leader with 22 years’ experience working with Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, legal and IT teams cross Media, SaaS and Event industries.
Zoë Merchant
Managing Director, Bright
Zoë is an agile marketing aficionado — a passionate believer in staying ahead of the competition with resilience, adaptability, and pace. After 20 years of delivering B2B marketing strategies. Using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Zoë leads the team in delivering results through continual and focused improvements to support clients’ business goals.
Welcome to a curated collection of inspiring and insightful reads and podcasts to help you boost the effectiveness of the marketing operations within your organisation.
Why it is useful: Emphasises the value of small, incremental changes that compound over time. It is ideal for those looking to build high-performing teams by embedding productive, habit-based routines into daily workflows. Key Takeaways: Readers will learn how to foster a culture of continuous improvement through habit formation, helping their teams to stay consistent, disciplined, and focused on meaningful goals that support sustained growth.
Why it is useful: Perfect for marketers focused on data-driven strategies, this book dives into growth hacking, a method of rapid experimentation across marketing channels. It is ideal for companies wanting to drive quick, scalable growth through continuous testing. Key Takeaways: Readers will learn how to implement growth hacking tactics within their marketing teams, focusing on optimisation, customer acquisition, and scaling results.
Why it is useful: This book offers offers a new way of thinking that accommodates the many nuances in B2B buyer behaviour. It provides a step-by-step guide to mapping the buyer journey, aligning channels, metrics and tactics according to their needs at each stage.The framework shows how to get more value out of brand investments, choosing and using technology and how to gauge return on investment. It also shows how to develop marketing as a real lever for business growth and how to reengineer marketing’s relationship with sales.
Why it is useful: This book provides a roadmap for integrating AI into marketing operations, including how to use AI to streamline workflows and personalise marketing efforts at scale.
This resource discusses how data can be leveraged to make marketing strategies more effective. It explains how businesses can gather insights from customer behaviour, optimise campaigns, and continuously improve performance through data-driven decisions.
Why it is useful: In an age of big data, this guide is essential for businesses looking to make informed marketing decisions that directly impact ROI.
The Future of Marketing Automation by Smart Insights – Link
Why it is useful: Discusses emerging trends in marketing automation and how businesses can leverage AI and machine learning to create more efficient and future-proof marketing strategies.
Why it is useful:This podcast dives into various agile marketing tactics, including practical steps that can remove roadblocks and improve efficiency. It is a go-to for marketing professionals seeking quick wins.
Building High-Performing Teams by The Modern Manager Podcast
Why it is useful: This episode discusses strategies to build cross-functional teams that collaborate effectively, breaking silos and improving marketing operations in the process.
Why it is useful: This video explains how AI is being used to personalize marketing efforts, automate workflows, and predict customer behaviour, making it crucial for businesses looking to future-proof their operations.
The Bright B2B Marketing Leaders Dinner served as a platform for senior marketing professionals to explore AI adoption in complex B2B environments. Discussions took place under Chatham House Rules, fostering open dialogue about the opportunities and challenges AI presents to agile marketing teams. This briefing summarises the core themes from the event.
Key themes and insights:
Embedding AI into agile marketing and ways of working
AI adoption in B2B marketing requires more than just technology; it must be woven into the organisation’s agile marketing processes and ways of working. Marketing teams with agile frameworks are better positioned to test, learn, and adapt AI tools quickly, allowing them to unlock the full potential of AI in their strategies. Successful AI adoption hinges on integrating it into competency frameworks, success metrics, and daily operations. Agile methodologies provide the flexibility required to experiment and scale AI across marketing functions.
Key takeaway: AI should be seen as a tool that provides opportunities across the function to help deliver marketing outcomes. From in-depth data analysis and insights, to developing strategic plans and creative campaigns, the role of AI in marketing will grow exponentially in the coming years. And, while currently most marketers are just dabbling with AI for content creation, having a robust process for AI tool selection, testing and implementation is what will set apart the AI innovators from the laggards.
Testing, guardrails, and demonstrating value
While AI offers exciting possibilities, it’s crucial to establish clear frameworks and guardrails for responsible experimentation. Marketing teams need the freedom to test AI tools, but with safeguards to mitigate risks and ensure that AI applications align with business goals. KPIs should be built into testing processes to measure the tangible impact of AI on marketing operations. Demonstrating early results will help build a business case for wider AI adoption across the organisation.
Key takeaway: Structured testing and clear metrics are essential to showcase AI’s value and ensure responsible usage in marketing campaigns.
Creativity and efficiency gains: Unlocking potential
AI has the potential to free up creativity within marketing teams by automating routine tasks like design resizing, video production, and data analysis. This shift allows marketers to focus on high-value, strategic activities, such as campaign innovation and targeting. However, efficiency gains have been limited to specific tasks rather than widespread across all operations. Time saved through AI automation is often redirected to other critical areas, reflecting the workload complexity typical of B2B marketing.
Key takeaway: AI can enhance creativity and optimise certain tasks, but its broader impact on efficiency will take time to materialise as B2B teams explore more use cases.
Prioritising AI use cases for maximum impact
To ensure the most effective AI adoption, there needs to be top – down consideration of company-wide objectives around areas such as efficiency, productivity, improving customer experience etc as well as marketing teams prioritising use cases based on key criteria such as impact, scalability, and alignment with the business wide objectives. AI tools should be deployed where they can deliver the greatest value to marketing efforts, especially in areas like campaign optimisation and data analysis. Scoring use cases can help determine where to focus resources and ensure maximum return on investment.
Key takeaway: Focusing on high-impact, scalable AI use cases will enable B2B marketing teams to derive more value from their AI investments.
Addressing leadership expectations and adoption challenges
A common challenge is the misconception from senior leadership that AI will immediately reduce headcount or replace marketing teams. In reality, AI in B2B marketing is still in its early stages, and the focus should be on enhancing capabilities rather than replacing staff. It’s important to manage expectations and communicate the strategic benefits of AI, particularly in driving smarter automation and providing actionable insights. Bring transparent with AI experimentation and its results will help those at all levels understand the role of AI in the business, and it can also help to reduce ‘Shadow AI’, the unsanctioned use of AI with an organisations.
Key takeaway: Leaders must focus on AI’s potential to enhance marketing efforts rather than seeing it as a tool for reducing workforce costs.
Training and skills development for marketing teams
AI adoption requires not only the right tools but also consideration of training to equip marketing teams with the skills needed to maximise AI’s potential. Attendees discussed the need for formal training programmes to ensure that teams can fully leverage AI tools and integrate them into their agile marketing workflows. Teams should be encouraged to take a test and learn approach and use experimentation to try things out openly and share the result, this would also reduce the risk of shadow AI use.
Key takeaway: Structured training is essential to ensure marketing teams have the skills to harness AI effectively within agile marketing environments.
Data analysis as a key AI use case
AI’s ability to streamline data analysis was highlighted as one of the most promising use cases in B2B marketing. Tools like Copilot allow marketers to efficiently interrogate complex datasets, providing insights that can drive more informed decisions and targeted campaigns. This enables marketing teams to focus on higher-level strategic analysis rather than manual data handling.
Key takeaway: AI-driven data analysis is a critical area where AI can deliver immediate value to B2B marketing teams by simplifying complex tasks and enabling data-driven decisions.
The importance of the “human AI” sandwich
Near misses, like incorrect translations or missing key details in technical content, show the importance of a “human-AI-human” sandwich approach. First, human input guides the process, setting the context. Then, AI works to quickly create and process the content. Finally, a human checks the output to catch any subtle errors or missed nuances. This layered approach ensures both speed and accuracy, especially when dealing with complex topics where AI might miss the finer details.
Key takeaway: A human-AI-human workflow combines the best of both worlds, ensuring efficient and accurate results.
Conclusion
Mark Breslin, AI expert and dinner guest shares his thoughts…
“Humans are creatures of habit and changing working practices is hard. To help drive sustained adoption of AI inside an organisation, once you’ve landed on high impact use cases that you’ve got the data for and you can measure, think through how the workflows need to change, and make it as seamless as possible.
For example, you want to avoid having colleagues copying and pasting in and out of ChatGPT into multiple tools, you want GenAI integrated with your tooling and your company’s data because that’s how you will achieve ROI. Foster a culture of innovation and experimentation, define the guardrails so controlled failure is okay”.
It is clear that agile ways of working are foundational and provide a framework that allows for the adoption and scaling of AI within marketing and beyond. This dinner revealed valuable insights into how AI can be integrated into B2B marketing by adopting agile marketing, prioritising high-impact use cases, and ensuring that teams are well-trained. As AI continues to evolve, agile marketing environments will enable B2B marketers to experiment, learn, and scale AI initiatives effectively. While efficiency gains are still developing, the potential for AI to drive creativity, enhance data analysis, and support smarter marketing operations is clear.
Adopting agile marketing can revolutionise your team’s efficiency and creativity, but the road to getting there isn’t always smooth. Many companies face hurdles that hinder the full potential of agile practices. In this article, we’ll break down five common barriers that could stand in your way when embracing agile—and how to successfully navigate them.
Cultural resistance to change
Agile marketing requires a shift in mindset. For teams used to traditional marketing methods, this shift can be intimidating. Employees might resist breaking free from the hierarchical decision-making and long-term planning that they’re accustomed to. Without fostering an open, collaborative environment that embraces learning, agile can feel like an alien system.
How to overcome:Build a strong agile marketing team by starting small, introducing agile concepts gradually. Emphasise the benefits—like faster delivery times and more flexibility—and create a culture of experimentation where failures are seen as learning opportunities.
2. Lack of leadership buy-in
Even if a marketing team is eager to adopt agile, without leadership support, the initiative can fall flat. Leaders may be skeptical, concerned about the potential disruption to established workflows, or unclear on how agile aligns with the broader business strategy.
How to overcome: Ensure leaders understand the value of agile. Communicate clear benefits, such as greater adaptability in competitive markets. Offer pilot programs or workshops to demonstrate how agile can fit within the organisation’s goals.
3. Unclear roles and responsibilities
Agile marketing thrives on cross-functional collaboration, but without clear roles, things can quickly get messy. Teams might not know who is responsible for what, leading to confusion, missed deadlines, or overlapping tasks.
How to overcome: Define roles clearly at the outset of adopting agile practices. For example, appoint a Product Owner or Marketing Lead to oversee priorities while ensuring that every team member understands their function within the agile framework. Clear communication is key to keeping everyone aligned. At Bright we always develop a RASCI. This framework identifies those who are Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted and Informed, this helps the whole team know who needs, and who delivers, relevant information.
4. Overloaded teams
One of the greatest risks to agile marketing is overwhelming your team with too many projects. When there is constant pressure to deliver quickly, teams can burn out. This can create a vicious cycle of decreased productivity, ultimately derailing the very agility the process aims to improve.
How to overcome: Set realistic expectations for your sprints and ensure that workloads are manageable. Focus on prioritising tasks that drive the most value. It’s also essential to encourage a work-life balance to prevent burnout and maintain the team’s enthusiasm for agile.
5. Inconsistent feedback loops
Agile thrives on feedback, whether it’s from customers, stakeholders, or internal team members. Without consistent feedback, teams can end up iterating on the wrong ideas or moving too far away from customer needs.
How to overcome: Set up regular review sessions with key stakeholders and use tools like surveys or customer feedback platforms to gather insights. Make feedback a central part of your sprint reviews and planning, ensuring the team has a clear direction for improvement.
Adopting agile marketing can offer tremendous rewards, but it’s important to acknowledge the potential challenges along the way. By addressing these common barriers head-on, your team can unlock the full potential of agility and move towards more efficient, creative, and customer-centric ways of working.
If you need some support to get your agile marketing back on track, our team of agile experts can help you review and re-establish your ways of working, and even help create the vital leadership buy-in to need to ensure your agile aspirations are fully realised. Contact us.
Let’s face it, the B2B world is a rollercoaster. One minute, you’re riding high on a new tech trend; the next, you’re bracing for an economic downturn. It’s like trying to hit a moving target in a fog, and to make things even more interesting, there’s the constant noise of new competitors and a sea of content that’s drowning out your message. Cutting through the noise and being able to relate directly to your prospects and customers is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ but a necessity.
At Bright, we believe the key to success lies in continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making. That’s where A/B testing comes in – the best unkept secret for optimising your B2B marketing efforts in this dynamic environment. It isn’t just about why you apply A/B testing but also how you apply the methodology to make it work.
To test or not to test? That really is the question.
A/B testing, also called split testing, pits two variations of a marketing element against each other to see which one performs better. This could be anything from a landing page headline to a call-to-action button in an email. By statistically analysing the results, you gain valuable insights into what resonates with your target audience.
Here’s why A/B testing is a perfect fit for agile B2B marketing:
Fast iteration: The agile methodology thrives on quick cycles of experimentation and learning. A/B testing allows you to test hypotheses, gather data quickly, and refine your approach based on real-world results.
Data-driven decisions: Forget gut feelings. A/B testing removes guesswork from the equation. You’ll see concrete evidence of what works and what doesn’t, empowering you to make data-backed decisions for better ROI.
Continuous improvement: A/B testing is an ongoing process. As you learn what resonates with your audience, you can keep iterating and optimising your marketing tactics for maximum impact.
A/B testing for B2B marketers
While A/B testing offers a powerful tool for any marketing campaign, the B2B landscape presents unique opportunities and challenges. To truly optimise your B2B marketing efforts, you need to tailor your A/B testing strategy to address the specific needs of complex customers. Here are some A/B testing ideas specifically for B2B marketing:
Landing page optimisation:Test different headlines, CTAs, images, and layouts to see which ones drive higher conversion rates e.g. eBook downloads, demo requests.
Email marketing:A/B test subject lines, email copy, sender names, and send times to improve open rates and click-through rates.
Website Calls to Action:Experiment with different CTA button text, colour, and placement to see which ones get the most clicks.
Social media ads:Test different ad creatives, headline variations, and targeting parameters to optimise your ad spend and reach the right audience.
Test. Process. Learn. Repeat
So, how can you take this one step further and implement the A/B Testing Process into your own marketing efforts? By using the principles and practices of agile marketing, you can take a structured approach to your experimentation, ensuring continuous improvement and positively impact your effectiveness.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of the A/B testing process, designed to operate within an agile framework:
Identify a goal: Start with a specific goal you want to achieve,like increasing leads from a particular campaign.
Formulate a hypothesis: What element do you think will impact that goal?(e.g., a stronger headline will increase website sign-ups)
Create variations: Develop two versions of the element you’re testing (e.g.,Headline A vs. Headline B)
Run the test: Split your target audience and expose them to each variation.
Analyse results: After a statistically significant amount of data is collected,analyse the results to see which variation performed better.
Iterate & improve: Based on your findings,refine your marketing strategy and implement the winning variation.
The Bright way
At Bright, we’re passionate about leveraging data-driven insights to optimise marketing strategies. By conducting controlled experiments, we can identify which elements of a campaign are most effective and make data-backed decisions to improve performance.
A recent case study: Social media ad formats
Recently, we had the opportunity to work with a client to determine the optimal ad format for their social media campaign. The client’s goal was to increase engagement and drive conversions.
Hypothesis: Video adverts vs. static image ads
Our hypothesis was that video adverts would outperform static image ads in terms of engagement. We reasoned that the dynamic nature of video would capture attention more effectively and lead to higher click-through rates (CTRs) and conversions.
The experiment
To test our hypothesis, we created two versions of the ad: one with a static image and the other with a short video. Both ads featured the same messaging and call to action. We then split the target audience into two groups and randomly assigned each group to see one of the ad variations.
Outcome: Video adverts triumph
The results were conclusive. The video ads significantly outperformed the static image ads in terms of engagement and CTR. Users were more likely to click on the video ads, watch them, and take the desired action.
Key Insights
Video is a powerful tool: Video content can capture attention, tell a story, and evoke emotions in a way that static images cannot.
Engagement matters: Higher engagement rates can lead to increased brand awareness, trust, and conversions.
A/B testing is essential: By conducting controlled experiments, we can identify the most effective elements of a campaign and make data-driven decisions to improve performance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this case study underscores the value of A/B testing as a strategic tool for optimising social media campaigns. By carefully experimenting with different ad formats, we were able to identify the most effective approach for our client and deliver tangible results.
The data-driven insights gleaned from this experiment not only inform future campaigns but also provide valuable benchmarks for industry standards. As social media platforms continue to evolve, A/B testing remains a cornerstone of successful marketing strategies. By pioneering innovative approaches and harnessing the potential of data, businesses can redefine their industry and achieve remarkable marketing success.
So, what are you waiting for?
Being a B2B marketer today demands constant adaptation and improvement. By embracing A/B testing as an ongoing process, you can transform your marketing efforts from a guessing game into a data-driven science. This iterative approach empowers you to refine your messaging, optimise your creative assets, and ultimately achieve superior marketing effectiveness. So, don’t be afraid to experiment, embrace the learnings from each A/B test, and watch your B2B marketing efforts soar to new heights.
Ready to take your B2B marketing to the next level? Contact us today and let’s unlock the full potential of your marketing efforts through the power of agile marketing!
Successful marketing operations hinge on creating a solid Target Operating Model (TOM) that aligns day-to-day activities with strategic goals, providing a flexible framework that links business vision to objectives and supports adaptability. At Bright, we help organisations through this process, collaborating with leading B2B companies to build Agile Target Operating Models (ATOMs).
In our latest white paper, we’ve distilled our knowledge into a practical guide on how to develop your own ATOM. It focuses on customer-centricity, improving your ways of working (and thinking), and building in continuous improvement to achieve marketing excellence.
With this ebook you gain:
a deep understanding of a Marketing ATOM
a blueprint to create your own Marketing ATOM
advice on creating your business case
tips to measure the effectiveness of your Marketing ATOM
Download the whitepaper today to start transforming your ways of working and drive better results!
Complete the form below to download the whitepaper
In the dynamic landscape of B2B marketing, securing investment from the C-suite hinges on effectively communicating the value of marketing efforts. Senior marketers in mid to large firms must demonstrate a balance between short-term demand generation and long-term brand building while showcasing resilience and adaptability.
The balanced approach: Brand building and demand generation
To gain C-suite buy-in, illustrate a strategy that balances immediate needs with sustainable growth. Short-term demand generation drives sales and meets targets, whereas brand building enhances market positioning and fosters customer loyalty. This dual approach is akin to a balanced diet: quick fixes might offer immediate energy, but long-term vitality requires a sustainable approach.
Effective communication strategies
To communicate marketing value effectively, marketers should:
Align with business objectives: Ensure marketing strategies are directly linked to business goals. This alignment helps the C-suite see how marketing initiatives drive company success.
Utilise data-driven insights: Present concrete data that highlights the impact of marketing campaigns on lead generation, conversion rates, and ROI. Data-driven insights lend credibility and demonstrate tangible benefits.
Showcase success stories: Highlight real-life examples where marketing efforts have led to significant business outcomes. These success stories resonate with executives and illustrate practical benefits.
Focus on KPI: Track and present key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate both short-term and long-term value. These include customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), brand awareness, and engagement rates.
Understanding stakeholder needs
Different stakeholders in the C-suite have varying requirements and priorities. Tailor your communication to address these needs effectively:
Chief Financial Officer (CFO): The CFO is focused on financial efficiency and return on investment. Highlight metrics like CAC, ROI, and LTV to demonstrate the financial impact of marketing activities. Show how marketing investments contribute to cost savings and revenue growth and establish agile budgeting to allow for adaptability.
Chief Revenue Officer (CRO): The CRO prioritises revenue generation and sales performance. Emphasise metrics such as lead quality, conversion rates, and sales pipeline growth. Take a RevOps approach and showcase how marketing efforts drive high-quality leads and support the sales team’s objectives.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO): The CEO looks at the overall strategic vision and long-term growth. Present a balanced view of short-term results and long-term brand building. Highlight how marketing aligns with the company’s strategic goals and supports sustainable growth.
Demonstrating value over time
Understanding and tracking the right KPIs is essential for demonstrating marketing value over time. Essential KPIs include:
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Measures the cost of acquiring a new customer. A lower CAC indicates more efficient marketing.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account. A higher LTV signifies greater long-term value and is influenced by retention and expansion metrics.
Brand awareness: Metrics such as brand recognition, and social media engagement gauge the effectiveness of brand-building activities.
Funnel metrics: Track performance at each stage of the buyer journey: a) Awareness stage: Impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and engagement rates. b) Consideration stage: Lead generation, cost per lead (CPL), and lead quality scores. c) Decision stage: Conversion rates, sales-qualified leads (SQLs), and win rates and value.
Retention and expansion metrics: Key for understanding customer loyalty and growth potential: a) Retention rate: Measures the percentage of customers retained over a period. b) Churn rate: Indicates the percentage of customers lost over a period. c) Customer expansion: Tracks upsell and cross-sell success rates. d) Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer satisfaction and loyalty, reflecting the long-term impact of brand-building efforts.
6. Avoiding vanity metrics: Vanity metrics, such as social media likes and website traffic, can be misleading as they do not necessarily correlate with business growth. Focus on actionable metrics that provide insights into customer behaviour and business impact.
Addressing budget cuts and resource reduction
Budget cuts and headcount reductions can significantly impact marketing effectiveness. To manage these challenges:
Show consequences with data: Use data to project the business impact of budget cuts, illustrating how reductions might lead to fewer high-quality leads, lower brand engagement, and ultimately affect revenue.
Leverage agile budgeting: Adopt agile budgeting practices that allow for rapid scaling up or down based on market conditions. This approach ensures flexibility without compromising long-term goals.
Avoid tactical short-termism: Balance short-term needs with long-term brand-building activities to avoid focusing solely on immediate results.
Building resilience in marketing teams
In today’s ever-changing business environment, resilience is key. Resilient marketing teams adapt to shifts and support evolving objectives, reflecting positively in performance. Strategies include:
Embrace change: Foster a culture open to change and quick to adapt. Agile marketing practices, such as regular sprint reviews and iterative planning, help teams stay flexible and responsive.
Invest in your team: Continuous professional development ensures your team has the skills needed to navigate new challenges and leverage emerging opportunities.
Foster collaboration: Promote cross-functional teamwork to drive more effective and innovative marketing solutions.
Agile marketing practices
Embed agile marketing practices that are data-driven and focused on continuous improvement because the way your teams work underpins the results you achieve:
Experimentation and learning: Implement a test-and-learn approach to discover what works best and iterate based on findings.
Data-driven decision making: Use data from experiments to refine strategies and demonstrate business impact.
Collaborative cuts: Work with the C-suite to make informed, collaborative decisions about budget cuts, ensuring they are strategic and support long-term goals.
And finally, lead by example
Demonstrate a growth mindset, take the feedback given and work with it. B2B marketers must adopt a strategic approach to effectively communicate their value to the C-suite. By aligning marketing initiatives with business objectives, leveraging data-driven insights, focusing on meaningful KPIs, and adopting agile practices, marketers can secure the necessary investment for success. Understanding the specific needs of different stakeholders, avoiding vanity metrics, and demonstrating the tangible impact of marketing activities will ensure the C-suite recognises marketing as a critical driver of business growth.
For more insights and agile marketing strategies, explore Bright’s Bright Ideas. By showcasing the strategic value of marketing, senior marketers can elevate their role and drive enduring success.
You’ve got a solid strategy, and your team has put significant effort into executing it, but now you’re stuck. If that sounds familiar, this blog post might be just what you need to reignite your marketing strategy. Whether your strategy isn’t delivering the desired results, you’re struggling to make informed data-driven decisions, or finding it difficult to adapt to constant changes in the marketing landscape, we’ve compiled a list of models, tips, and tools to help you and your team improve your marketing effectiveness.
The power of SWOT analysis to understand your blockers
When feeling stuck, it’s often beneficial to step back and reflect. A SWOT analysis can uncover strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, providing a solid foundation to reassess your current strategy.
How to conduct an effective SWOT analysis:
Strengths: Identify what your team excels at, what’s working well, the resources you have, and what sets your brand apart
Weaknesses: Be brutally honest about what’s not working. Identify skill or resource gaps, underperforming aspects of your strategy, and ineffective tools
Opportunities: Look for trends or new technologies to leverage, untapped markets or audience segments, and process improvements to boost team productivity
Threats: Consider internal and external factors that could impact your strategy, competitor activities, and potential market or economic shifts.
Next steps:
After conducting your SWOT analysis, prioritise the areas needing immediate attention. Develop action plans to address weaknesses and threats while capitalising on strengths and opportunities.
Optimising your customer journey through better use of MarTech
Focusing on the buyer journey allows you to make targeted improvements without undergoing a wholesale MarTech review. By enhancing specific stages of the journey and demonstrating results, you can build a strong case for more extensive updates later.
Next Steps:
Identify gaps or silos in your current toolset that hinder a seamless customer experience. Invest in tools that provide a unified view of the customer for a consistent and personalised approach across all touchpoints.
Leveraging Gen AI and existing features
Ensure your team fully understands the features of your current tools, including how to leverage generative AI to enhance your strategy. Gen AI can automate content creation, personalise customer interactions, and provide predictive analytics.
Next Steps:
Educate your team: Provide training opportunities on the full feature set of your current tools, focusing on how to effectively use Gen AI
Set clear guardrails: Establish guidelines for AI activation to ensure responsible and effective use. Define parameters for testing, learning, and scaling AI-driven initiatives
Pilot projects: Start with small-scale AI projects to demonstrate value. For example, use AI to personalise email campaigns or create dynamic content for social media
Measure impact: Track the performance of AI-driven projects using relevant metrics. Analyse results to refine your approach and expand successful strategies.
Staying agile: Adapting to market changes
Technology, customer behaviour and business priorities are evolving rapidly. Your team needs to be resilient to roll with the changes needed to make sure your marketing remains effective. Taking an agile marketing approach helps you pivot quickly and maintain relevance – the way your work underpins the results you can deliver.
Here’s how you can stay agile:
Focus on customer value and business outcomes
Deliver value early and often
Learn through experiments and data
Foster cross-functional collaboration
Respond to change over following a static plan.
Next steps: Embrace a growth mindset within your team and establish agile marketing principals. Encourage continuous improvement using up-to-date information and cultivate an environment of creativity and flexibility. Consider Bright’s agile marketing training to empower your team with the knowledge and tools to kick-start their agile marketing journey.
Finally, stay motivated, keep learning and measure success
To reignite your marketing strategy and ensure long-term success, remain flexible and open to new ideas. Use Bright’s reframe cards to encourage conversations and spark new thinking, challenging the status quo.
Celebrate small wins to keep your team motivated. Foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation, and view setbacks as opportunities to learn. By staying motivated and committed to continuous adaptation, you can navigate the dynamic marketing landscape and sustain marketing outcomes that drive your business goals. The key to a thriving marketing strategy lies in your ability to adapt, evolve and grow with the ever-changing market.
Developing a name for a new product or solution is a big responsibility. A good name will help entice your ideal customer, convey the product’s value and increase brand awareness.
Here’s our steps for getting it right.
At Bright, we’ve supported many B2B marketers to craft a new name for their solution. It can be an expensive mistake if you get it wrong, so if you’d like an expert to support you throughout the process, please get in touch.
The Bright B2B Marketing Leaders Dinner served as a vibrant forum for senior marketing professionals from the tech and consulting sectors to delve into discussions under Chatham House Rules. The event united leaders to share their priorities, successes, challenges, and insights, fostering a rich exchange of ideas over fine dining. The primary focus of the discussions was on the increasing necessity for agility and effectiveness within senior B2B marketing roles, highlighting key challenges and emerging trends across several critical areas.
This briefing note encapsulates the discussions, offering deeper insights into the challenges faced and the strategic approaches that have proven effective, both from the experiences shared by the leaders and the solutions provided by Bright to enhance marketing and business outcomes.
Key discussion themes and strategies for success:
Adapting to constant change and building resilience:
Leaders are grappling with an environment where market conditions, business requirements, and operational targets are perpetually evolving. Transparency about the constant nature of change is vital for fostering a resilient mindset within marketing teams and the wider business. Change fatigue, too much change and poorly communicated change is an issue in terms of realising the value of major business transformation programmes.
The conversation underscored that managing change isn’t just about responding reactively but proactively establishing agile ways of working that can adapt to change and shaping organisational culture to anticipate and embrace change as an ongoing opportunity.
Key strategies: Establish agile marketing practices and adapt them to your environment, conduct regular strategic reviews, and cultivate a culture that views change as a growth mechanism. Agile marketing methodologies enhance adaptability and operational efficiency, but you need robust change enablement communication strategies to support and accelerate any transitions.
Aligning KPIs and communicating effectively with the C-Suite:
It’s essential for marketing KPIs to resonate with C-suite executives and align with broader business goals, ensuring marketing is seen as a strategic partner rather than a cost centre.
Leaders discussed the challenge of bridging the communication gap between marketing functions and executive leadership, emphasising the need for metrics that clearly demonstrate marketing’s contribution to the company’s targets including CAGR in high growth firms whilst demonstrating bottom line savings through efficiencies and top line growth was important for corporate environments.
Key strategies: Develop impactful KPIs and tailor communications to the C-suite’s interests. A regular reporting cadence and clear articulation of the value of marketing efforts, from short-term demand generation to long-term brand building, are crucial. Establishing Revenue Operations (RevOps) fosters cross-functional collaboration and alignment on common goals so that everyone is working towards the same goals and outcomes.
AI Usage and Activation:
The potential of AI to enhance efficiency and engagement in marketing is significant, yet its adoption is inconsistent across industries.
Discussion highlighted that while many are optimistic about AI’s potential, there is a clear need for a framework to systematically integrate and leverage these technologies effectively. Some organisations did not allow or limited use of AI which has held back the marketing teams abilities to realise operational efficiencies and test and learn to understand where effectiveness improvements can support greater engagement across the buyer journey and within the existing client base. Other organisations were unclear where AI would add value and the risk of distraction rather than AI adding value was an issue.
Key strategies: Effectively use existing AI tools, develop clear use cases, and implement the Bright AI Activation Framework for a structured test-and-learn approach. Foster an innovative and agile organisational culture to support technological shifts.
Internal friction and the impact on marketing effectiveness:
Interfacing agile marketing teams with non-agile departments often creates friction, with resistance from individual team members or leadership exacerbating the issue.
The leaders shared how internal friction can derail agile marketing initiatives and discussed strategies for overcoming resistance to change.
Key strategies: Showcase agile marketing’s business value, facilitate change enablement communications, and provide leadership training to agree how agile principles will be activated within the organisation. Foster a collaborative culture to reduce collaboration drag and amplify marketing effectiveness. A book recommendation to read on this topic is The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt written in a fast-paced thriller style which outlines the theory of constraint.
Harnessing new generation talent:
Integrating Generation Z into the workforce presents unique challenges due to their different expectations about career progression and workplace dynamics. This generation’s digital prowess and innovative potential are immense, but their career expectations can clash with traditional progression paths.
Key strategies: Set realistic career expectations, provide continuous feedback, create opportunities for quick wins, cultivate a learning environment, adapt retention strategies, and harness their digital skills for organisational benefit.
Strategic outlook:
The discussions not only illuminated the shared challenges among B2B marketing leaders but also showcased diverse and effective strategies for addressing these challenges. Bright continues to stand as the preferred partner in navigating these complex landscapes, offering strategic support and agile marketing solutions that drive successful outcomes.
Our next marketing leaders’ dinner this Autumn, will focus on “Effective AI Activation in B2B Marketing,” to understand and explore the practical application of AI technologies, by invitation only, request a place on the waiting list here
