Marketing Strategy

Communicating marketing value to the C-Suite: A strategic and agile approach for B2B Marketers

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.

July 22, 2024 Zoe Merchant Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Efficiency, Marketing metrics, Marketing Strategy

Feeling stuck? How to reignite your marketing strategy for 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.

July 16, 2024 Bolly Methakittiworakun Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Strategy

Download your cards to re–frame conversations and spark fresh perspectives.

Reframe Cards are an easy-to-use tool intended to stimulate conversations within teams, encouraging them to reconsider strategies and tactics by prompting thought-provoking discussions.

These cards aim to foster transparency and collaboration by prompting team members to share their thoughts and ideas openly. They can be used in various settings such as team meetings, workshops, or planning sessions to focus on goal-oriented actions and results.

The cards are designed to infuse creativity and agile thinking into team communication, aiming to drive discussions towards actionable solutions. Specifically, the Marketing Effectiveness edition of these cards targets marketing teams, aiming to enhance their strategic capabilities and improve results.

Download the Marketing Effectiveness Reframe Cards

Ready to reframe your mindset and your conversations? Download your Reframe Cards today!

Interested in improving the impact of your marketing?

Check our on-demand webinar on ‘How to maximise your marketing effectiveness’, our panel of B2B marketing experts address some of these key challenges, and share insights and practical solutions to address these issues – we’ll cover people, process, data and tech.

Here are some additional resources you may find useful:

April 10, 2024 Alaina Roberts Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Efficiency, Marketing Strategy

How to use content AI and remain authentic – practical guidelines

If you are someone who writes content for a living, you may have entered 2023 a little worried about your job following the launch of ChatGPT in late November 2022. There’s no denying that on first trying out the tool, it was impressive just how quickly it could write something that was clear, well-structured and seemingly accurate. But by the third or fourth go, you quickly realised that it all looked and sounded the same, and it was glaringly obvious when someone had copied and pasted straight out of it. Content writers everywhere breathed an audible sigh of relief. The robots haven’t replaced us just yet!

However, it’s exciting to explore how we can achieve productivity gains and access these vast knowledge banks to lift our own content, striking the balance between AI and human capabilities. Here are our guidelines on how to get the best out of content AI tools while still sounding “human”, authoritative and authentic.

Your research helper

Use ChatGPT or other content AI to help you research your topic and develop your key points for your piece, alongside your other previous research methods. It can also be used to research clients, client prospects, the state of the industry and so on. But asking the right questions is critical and you should never accept the first response you receive. So much so that some companies are now hiring “prompt engineers” with expertise in this area. You must keep refining your prompts to get higher quality responses and reach the level of depth you require.

Note that ChatGPT has limited knowledge of events after a certain date and nobody seems to be clear when that date is according to a recent article by ZDNet. You may need to stick with traditional research methods if it’s recent events you’re interested in. Take an agile approach to testing what research methods work best to produce an outline which is comprehensive and accurate.

Creating personas

Open AI has given ChatGPT a carefully chosen tone of voice which is designed to appeal to the majority and is best described as neutral and professional, i.e. a bit generic and boring. However, you can train ChatGPT to create content that reflects your organisation’s unique style, vocabulary and tone of voice.

To do this, you need to create a training dataset which consists of a range of content examples that reflect your organisation’s tone of voice. This should include blogs, social media posts, articles and client-facing emails and cover a variety of topics.

If you produce content for multiple organisations, you can create different ChatGPT personas for each organisation which reflect their individual writing style. Building on an agile approach, you could set up different personas for an organisation to help test different styles and see which achieves the most engagement.

Need for speed

Like the famous racing game series, the pressure to increase efficiency and speed impacts us all. Content AI can absolutely help you to write and produce content much faster than previously, by speeding up the phase that takes the most time — researching and planning your piece. This can allow you to focus on the tasks that require more creativity and innovation.

Be careful though, ChatGPT isn’t perfect and can sometimes generate inaccurate information. It’s only as good as the data it’s trained on and as with all things, fact-checking and a good pinch of common sense is required.

Overcoming writer’s block

Sometimes getting started is the hardest thing when it comes to writing and we all suffer from writer’s block from time-to-time. Asking content AI what it thinks about a certain subject can be enough to kick-start the creative juices. Once they start flowing again, it’s time to step away from the AI.

Run a pilot

We always recommend taking an agile approach and running a pilot to test and learn before deciding which content AI to adopt within your organisation. This provides the opportunity to demonstrate to leadership how the tool can help improve your team’s productivity without compromising on quality. As with all AI, privacy and security should be a key consideration. Leaders need to ensure guardrails are in place for their teams to be able to test and adopt AI solutions safely. This agile approach enables you to test and learn then quickly scale where value is demonstrated.

Human’s rule

ChatGPT and other content AI are still powerful tools and can speed up the content writing process, but they cannot replace human creativity, intuition and empathy. It’s essential to strike a balance between AI and human capabilities to achieve the best outcomes. Any piece of content should always reflect your organisation or client’s tone of voice to ensure it remains consistent and authentic.

Content AI can’t compete with your insider knowledge about your market and your audiences. Always remember you are the expert in your area!

Get in touch to find out how Bright can help you harness agile marketing to deliver your marketing strategy in 2024.

Resources/reading list:

December 20, 2023 Alaina Roberts Leading Change, Marketing Strategy

Discover new possibilities with Reframe Cards!

Download your cards to re–frame conversations and spark fresh perspectives.

The Reframe Cards are designed to bring creativity and agile thinking into your team’s communication.

By offering specific prompts, these cards encourage team members to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions more openly, fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration.

Each Reframe Card aims to stimulate problem-solving discussions, driving the team towards actionable, goal-focused solutions.

Reframe your thinking

Ready to reframe your mindset and your conversations? Download your Reframe Cards today!

Great to use in team meetings or to kick-start internal workshops, these cards cover the following areas:

⭐️ Design thinking – Challenge conventional strategies, embrace a fresh perspective and find innovative solutions to complex problems.

⭐️ Activating agile – Unlock agile methodologies to enable adaptability, perform efficiently and drive a results-focused approach.

⭐️ Experimentation – Experiment with new ideas and strategies, encouraging a culture of continuous improvement and learning

⭐️ Growth mindset – Re-think your current practices, iterate towards exciting outcomes and deliver exceptional results through continuous learning.

⭐️ Change enablement – Say goodbye to outdated approaches and enable your team to embrace change to stay ahead of the competition.

Here are some additional resources you may find useful:

December 14, 2023 Alaina Roberts Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Efficiency, Marketing Strategy

Journey through time: A curated reading list for the retrospective of 2023

Welcome to a curated collection of thought-provoking reads and podcasts as a retrospective of 2023. Embark on a journey through the realms of AI, agile marketing, design thinking, and growth mindset with our carefully selected recommendations.

AI Insights for content marketers

Articles:

Seven ChatGPT experiments content marketers should test now – Uncover ideas from InformaTech on experimenting with ChatGPT for compelling content and enhanced market research.
Black Mirror meets marketing: The ethical implications of AI Delve into privacy and ethical concerns around AI from Informa Tech.

Podcast:

The future of search in B2B marketing – Join Kate Cox, CMO at BrightBid, in a podcast exploring how AI is set to revolutionise search engine marketing for B2B.

Activating agile marketing

Book:

Agile Marketing” by Neil Perkin – Explore adaptive marketing principles and practices, offering guidelines to redesign marketing structures fit for today’s changeable environment.

Design thinking unveiled

Books:

Alchemy: The magic of original thinking in a world of mind-numbing conformity by Rory Sutherland – Discover the alchemy behind original thinking with insights from TED Talk superstar Rory Sutherland.
Value proposition design by Alexander Osterwalder et al – A practical guide to creating compelling value propositions using design thinking for business growth.

Podcast:

Design together” hosted by Abby Guido – Explore how design thinking can solve complex business problems, including marketing challenges.

Embracing a growth mindset

Books:

Start with why & leaders eat last by Simon Sinek – Gain insights into leadership with Simon Sinek’s renowned works.
Mindset: How you can fulfill your potential by Carol Dweck Delve into the concept of mindset and its impact on personal and professional growth.

Podcasts:

Adam Grant: ReThinking – Engage with Adam Grant’s podcast exploring innovative and transformative ideas.
Elizabeth Day: how to fail – Join Elizabeth Day in her podcast that celebrates the wisdom that comes from failure.

Dive into these resources to prepare yourself for 2024. Each recommendation is carefully chosen to enhance your understanding and inspire insightful discussions.

December 13, 2023 Alaina Roberts Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Strategy

AI, RevOps and emotion! A look back at the top B2B marketing trends of 2023

It’s that time of year where we all start to reflect on the trends that have had the biggest impact in 2023. At Bright we’ve spent our year reinventing marketing with our amazing clients, including injecting greater agility into how marketers work together and with other revenue generating teams to refocus on the customer. It’s been a big year for marketing transformation. Marketing is emerging stronger, leaner, more data-driven and able to be more effective and efficient at engaging audiences.

It’s been a rollercoaster from a macroeconomic perspective and as a business founder and MD there’s been a lot to navigate personally, as well as helping clients become more adaptable and able to manage change.

One of my highlights was being selected as a juror for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for the B2B Creative Lion. Not only was this an amazing experience but it gave me unique insights into some of the biggest trends and critical success factors in B2B. Ranging from why you need to forge an emotional connection with your audiences, to the need for investment in long-term brand building to augment your demand and performance marketing.

As well as this, we have seen the growth of AI and RevOps (my personal favourite), and marketers moving further away from a traditional funnel to a fly wheel model. Throughout all of this, an agile marketing approach is fundamental to being able to quickly test and adopt these developments by staying responsive, data-driven and collaborative.

The importance of emotion and patience

During my time as a judge at Cannes Lions it was clear that a shift towards a more creative approach (akin to the boldness of B2C) is increasingly evident and showing results in B2B. It’s evident in successful campaigns such as Workday’s Rockstar and Disco’s Lady J [add links] B2B marketers to use emotion in their campaigns to achieve cut through and connect with their audiences.

Research has shown that using emotion, storytelling, and humour leads to better audience engagement. Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) with only rational content according to neurosciencemarketing.com. This is still fairly new ground for B2B marketers so using agile principles to test and measure what works and what doesn’t is key.

The other trend I saw emerging at Cannes Lions was that patience is a virtue in B2B. From the entries we consistently saw more of a focus on long-term brand building, and a move away from over-reliance on performance marketing. According to LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing Benchmark report, 59% of B2B marketing leaders say their C-suite has increased the importance of brand building given economic conditions. Fellow B2B Creative juror Ty Heath, Director of Market Engagement at LinkedIn’s B2B Institute commented: “Brand building is the single greatest opportunity in B2B. We see that most B2B marketers are over-leveraged in lead generation, but brand building is what drives future cash flows.”

The AI wild west

No 2023 wrap-up would be complete without mentioning the impact of generative AI. This was the year when AI really started to disrupt B2B marketing, and beyond. The areas where we have seen the biggest impact from generative AI has to be in content generation with the launch of ChatGPT back in November 2022, what a difference a year makes! Other content AI tools soon followed. Lead generation tools such as LeadIQ and Kartra are also helping to identify and generate high-quality leads for B2B marketing campaigns.

AI in marketing offers unpreceded opportunities, with many starting to realise efficiency gains through simple use of AI apps within their existing martech. Longer term marketing leaders will need to understand which types of AI to test and invest in and how to approach it. Privacy and security related issues are a key consideration. Leaders need to set up their teams to be able to successfully test AI solutions by putting in place the guardrails for successful and safe adoption of AI. This points to an agile marketing approach and being able to test and learn then quickly scale where value is demonstrated. Marketing leaders need to be careful to safeguard and remain customer centric and authentic. Quick efficiency gains could spell disaster without proper consideration around effectiveness and the impact on engagement. There is plenty of upside in AI adoption as long as developed within a proper framework.

From funnels to fly wheels

The move away from a funnel view of our customers to a fly wheel model continues to gain traction. In a traditional marketing funnel model, the focus is on attracting customer prospects and then converting them to purchasing customers. But marketers have realised that it’s not just about acquisition and customers can fall out of the model. Smarter marketers are recognising the full value of a customer and the need to market to clients at every stage of their lifecycle. By fostering loyalty and advocacy you can maximise the customer lifetime value.

The flywheel model focuses on keeping existing customers engaged and turning them into repeat customers who are also willing to act as promoters for your business. The flywheel business model is more effective and should drive higher revenue because it prioritises the customer.

The rise of RevOps

Another big trend in B2B marketing this year has been the growth of Revenue Operations or RevOps . Aligning your revenue generating teams – sales, marketing and customer success functions across the customer life cycle to drive growth and keep teams focused on the same metrics and KPI is quickly becoming table stakes. This cross-functional alignment clearly requires an agile approach, breaking down siloes to improve communication, collaboration and alignment to business goals.

Agile remains key

What’s clear is that 2023 has been one of the most exciting years for B2B marketing. All of these trends have the potential to transform how we engage with our audiences and increase marketing effectiveness. While the developments and trends in our industry are exciting, it can get overwhelming to keep up and remain innovative. An agile, growth mindset, alongside the related tools and processes enables marketing teams to respond quickly and effectively to changing customer preferences, market conditions and developments to ensure they are delivering the best results for their companies and clients.

Get in touch to find out how Bright can help you harness agile marketing to deliver your marketing strategy in 2024.

Resources/reading list:

December 7, 2023 Zoe Merchant Leading Change, Marketing Strategy

AI in marketing: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges

Elevate your marketing strategies and dive into the world of generative AI at our latest Smarter Marketer panel event. Whether you’re grappling with how to harness the potential of AI to drive business growth or seeking actionable tips on how to integrate AI into your marketing efforts, our event covers it all.

Our exclusive panel discussion simplifies the complexities of AI’s challenges and guides you towards pragmatic solutions that work for your organisation. Witness first-hand the positive impact generative AI is already having on marketing strategies and outputs.

Our Smarter Marketer panel event delves into:

Generative AI tools unveiled: How AI is revolutionising content creation strategies.
AI in action: Implementing AI for maximum effectiveness.
Testing and adoption incubation: Implementing and testing AI tools.
Operational excellence: Vital considerations for governance in your marketing operations.
Risk management: Identifying, assessing and mitigating risks.

Missed the session, watch it on demand!

Unlock the AI advantage – activating AI

Ready to embark on your AI journey? Our tools and use cases for marketers resource is a great place to start – download yours today.

Meet the speakers

Mark Breslin

Chief Product & Technology Officer, Informa Tech

Mark is responsible for leading the Product & Technology at Informa Tech. This team focuses on working with the leadership teams across the business to shape and create product strategies and roadmaps for new and existing products and services.

Kate Cox

CMO, Bright Bid

Kate is an experienced CMO with a focus on marketing for the digital age and is a native AI marketer in her current role at Bright Bid, an adtech company using AI and human expertise to improve the effectiveness of paid digital activity

Zoe Merchant

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, Zoë founded Bright to help tech, engineering and consulting firms get the most from their marketing investment. 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.

Interested in reading more about the capabilities of AI in marketing?

Check out our reading list here – Ignite your knowledge: The ultimate AI adventure begins

September 25, 2023 Paul Keegan Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Efficiency, Marketing Strategy

As the days grow shorter and the nights get cozier, there’s no better time to embark on a journey into the world of AI. To kickstart your adventure, we’ve curated a list of unmissable reads and listens that will light up your path to AI enlightenment.

For the bookworms:

Rewired – The McKinsey & Company guide to outcompeting in the age of digital and AI.

MIT study: Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence – Examining the productivity impact of the assistive chatbot ChatGPT.

AI-powered marketing and sales reach new heights with generative AI – McKinsey & Company discuss how AI technology, particularly generative AI is transforming the fields of marketing and sales, impacting both B2B and B2C players.

10 Ways PPC Automation and AI Can Improve Your Campaigns – A look at AI and Automation in PPC campaigns from BrightBid.

Black Mirror meets marketing: the ethical implications of AI – A look at the privacy and ethical concerns around AI from Informa Tech.

Seven ChatGPT experiments content marketers should test now – Ideas from InformaTech on how to experiment with ChatGPT to create compelling content and improve market research and analysis.

For those always on the go:

The future of search in B2B marketing– Podcast with Kate Cox, CMO at BrightBid, which examines how AI will change Search Engine Marketing for B2B customers and B2B marketing.

AI will save the world with Marc Andreessen and Martin Casado – Co-founder of a16z, dives into the world of AI, aiming to quell concerns about its impact on humanity.

Which tool to start with?

With so many AI tools out there, here are a few sites that can help you decide which tools to get started with:

There’s an AI for that: https://theresanaiforthat.com

Futurepedia: https://www.futurepedia.io

TopAI.tools: https://topai.tools

And finally here’s a site which lists all the comparison sites!

Interested in hearing more about the capabilities of AI in marketing? Check out our panel discussion “AI in marketing: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges” for more insight, as well as helpful AI resources.

Happy reading from the Bright Team.

September 21, 2023 Paul Keegan Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Strategy

Developing a strategy for your website continuous improvement

What does Continuous Improvement mean to you?

Identify, plan, execute, review. Continuous improvement is a well-known process in the world of supply chain and business operations, but its benefits in marketing activity and website management are often overlooked.

It’s a common misconception that once a website is launched, the hard work is done, and we move into the ‘set and forget’ phase. In reality ongoing maintenance and continual improvement of the site and its assets is crucial to performance and success.

The role of your website in achieving business goals

Technology updates and trends move so quickly that it’s easy to fill up your task list with changes and reworks. However, a website is often the greatest go to market tool a company has, and a comprehensive website strategy helps to give your work purpose, map a path to reach your overall goals and informs how you measure results. Here are five things to consider when building out your continuous improvement strategy for your website.

1. Identify your current state

There are different considerations to make depending on the status of your website – have you just launched a new site? Are you aiming to drive new visitors or diversify and expand your offering? Understanding your priorities will help guide you towards your plan.

As soon as people begin visiting your site, behaviour data starts to build – what pages they’re visiting, whether they are on their phone or computer, what they like (and don’t!). This data helps you understand your current website and where potential gaps are.

Undertake a full evaluation of your current content. Having an aim to regularly update and refresh your content will ensure your website flexes and develops alongside your business. By analysing your content and identifying your strong and weak spots, your content plan will begin to develop.

2. Map your goals and objectives

So now you know where you are, but how does this align with where you want to be? Your website is an important tool for your sales, business development, and customer engagement teams. Aligning your digital goals with your overall company vision and purpose will help you unlock the potential of your platform and ensure the work you are putting in will be delivering for the organisation in the long run.

As your website continuous improvement and content development has no real end-date, it’s easy to get disheartened and feel overwhelmed, but by outlining clear KPIs for the short, medium, and long term, you’ll be able to celebrate those successes along the way to keep energy levels up and stay focused on optimisation.

4. Focus on your audience

There can sometimes be a gap between what your company thinks the audience wants and what your audience actually needs. To continue to build improvements into your platform, you need to think as the customer. Is it easy for your users to work out where they need to go to find the information they need? Optimise your navigation, page load times, and test different design elements and ways of using content.

5. Create your content

Keep watch for opportunities to create fresh content and ensure you are getting the maximum value from it by implementing SEO best practices and technology updates. In the same way that a Google Bot will trawl your content and learn to adjust its own algorithms, you can keep your SEO practices up to date to stay ahead of any changes.

When in doubt, use targeted survey questions and feedback forms to get a direct line to your audience and make changes based on their feedback.

Bonus consideration: Experimentation

Experimentation is a great way to drive your continuous improvement. Improving understanding of your audiences, user design, conversion and doing it quickly. Using clear, time bound experiments to increase the effectiveness of your website. When experimenting with your website think about:

Your experimentation shouldn’t be about vanity metrics – it needs to focus on where you can drive the most business impact. So, places to start are:
- Pages, sections or areas that have the highest impact
- Starting at the end of the funnel
Don’t just focus on A/B testing – think about big radical ideas that drastically improve the user experience. This is where you’ll see the biggest improvements

Remember to be agile – when it comes to continuous improvement it should be about spending your time where you can drive the best possible results – for your audiences and for your business goals. Test, learn and build on your findings.

Your continuous improvement journey

While website development and maintenance is a never-ending cycle, the benefit it can bring your business is tangible. By being purposeful and consistent in your continuous improvement strategy, you’ll drive better engagement with your customers and ensure you are well positioned to adapt quickly to an ever-changing digital environment.

September 15, 2023 Sian Heaphy Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Strategy