Marketing Technology News: Creating A Work Culture That Drives Employee Engagement

However, diversity, in any of its many forms, is not a numbers game. Marketers like to think in terms of data and figures—how many qualified leads, what percentage of customers return, etc.—but achieving a cognitively diverse workplace requires a different approach. To succeed, marketers need to think more broadly and focus on creating psychologically safe environments where the strengths and potential of all individuals are acknowledged and appreciated. That is the only way marketing organizations can attain the level of varied, innovative thinking that will enable them to thrive in our ever more diverse world.

What can you do to improve cognitive diversity on your marketing team?

Get creative with recruitment

Broaden your outreach to include non-traditional students such as those enrolled in online colleges and at vocational or technical schools. Likewise, expand your efforts to smaller colleges beyond your usual list. Once you do, you’ll start connecting with students who may not have had exposure to career fairs and other opportunities afforded to students at larger universities. This can open the door to an entirely new pool of workers, including those who may not have even considered marketing as a career. Even if they don’t have a typical degree or standard path to entry, these students may have exactly the passion, drive, and determination your organization is looking for. At Sitecore, we consider these individuals vital for cultivating future marketing talent, and we encourage other organizations to do the same.

Embrace brilliant minds without limitation

Businesses need a plurality of mindsets and outlooks, and that means hiring people with a variety of backgrounds and upbringings. Those individuals will undoubtedly have their own life experiences and perspectives to bring to the business, enriching the discussion and decision-making process in ways that would not be achieved otherwise. This includes embracing neurodiversity within your workforce and employing more individuals with ADHD, dyslexia, or autism. Their neurodiversity should not be seen as a challenge or limitation but as an advantage, encouraging diversity of thought.

Examine internal practices to ensure talent is getting the proper support

Is your culture welcoming to all different types of people? Review your onboarding and orientation practices to make sure they are equitable and inclusive and that you are connecting people to the right resources early on. In addition, audit protocols for managing performance, career advancement, and succession planning. Analyze the results thoroughly and honestly, and then address any imbalances. Do employees have the mentors they need? Is your leadership pipeline based on information that is objective and accurate or is it guided by assumptions and unconscious bias?

Marketing Technology News: Balancing your Customer Experience and Employee Experience Through 2021

Inspire the next generation of talent

Nurturing a diverse workforce is an on-going process. If, for example, there are not enough data engineers to fill the growing number of vacancies over the next 10 years, marketing organizations will be facing an enormous talent shortage. That’s one reason why we need to get more young people excited about the idea of a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). A number of programs, such as Woman to Woman Mentoring and FabFems, have been created to do just that. These initiatives are helping, but organizations still have more work to do if they want to inspire a future generation of diverse individuals. Of course, your efforts do not have to be limited to encouraging technology or other STEM roles – marketers from all disciplines should take the time to speak with the next generation. In doing so, you’ll raise awareness about what a marketing career has to offer and better position your organization to recruit future talent.

Enterprises will benefit by fully embracing cognitive diversity. Doing so not only helps create a work environment that is more psychologically safe, inclusive, and equitable, but also helps ensure creative problem-solving and innovation are maximized throughout the business.

But, woe betides if you’re unveiling a new or updated CRM system. That one is the poison chalice because of its impact on every facet of your organization.

Speaking from experience, we recently re-launched our own upgraded Marketpoint CRM system for a large client with multiple divisions and thousands of users. So far so good! The success of this project is based on our careful selection of a core team that understands the project goals from start to finish. This VIP team communicates well and works well together under pressure.

Leading Change

Being a MarTech leader for a new CRM application can be an overwhelming task as you’re implementing significant change within an organization. People deal with change differently; some embrace it, while others reject it.

The ability to manage this time of change requires great leadership and determination. You need to be able to gain employee trust so they can see your vision. Evidence-based facts and statistics, success stories, customer insights and so on – these are all key to present to your team so they can envision what the future holds.

MarTech is a technical term, but while being data-driven is important, it’s people skills that determine the success or failure of a tech implementation. You have to see the problem from each individual’s point of view in order to tailor your approach to ensure a smooth transition period with maximum user buy-in. This requires time and patience.

With the right team in place, it’s time for implementation, which demands internal process changes. This can be a painful experience met with resistance. Your implementation strategy must extend beyond the launch. How will it be introduced, so that people are motivated and supported after the initial launch or relaunch? The key is to be the human face of the system, someone who is accessible—not a cold systems admin who does not understand how to drive end-user adoption.

Read More: Create Independent Thinkers Not Insight Bottlenecks

CRM Rules MarTech 

A solid CRM system is the center of the MarTech universe. It stores priceless prospect and customer data that delivers valuable customer insights, which is the lifeblood of the company. As the MarTech leader, it is your job to ensure your organization embraces this vital system where data is not only stored but cleaned and updated on a regular basis. But take heed: Often CRM discussions often invoke a big yawn, or worse, resistance from end-users, especially sales!

Getting Sales OnBoard

Often the biggest hurdle to introducing a MarTech solution such as CRM is getting Sales, Marketing and Customer Support to use the technology.

The ability to put yourself in their shoes is crucial. Really, try to understand their reluctance to change and explain how technology can benefit them personally, in addition to the organization as a whole. You must be able to articulate and motivate the benefits, such as demand generation, prospect and customer insights, revenue generation and excellent service that creates happy, loyal customers. Try creating dashboards to visually illustrate to individual users their progress using the system.

Champion the Cause

As the MarTech leader, the onus is on you to demonstrate to the Sales team how a particular CRM will enable them to be more successful in meeting quota.

Find an internal champion who has influence in each user group, someone who will go above and beyond to make sure the team has an open mind when incorporating the system into their routine. This ‘superuser’ needs to involve, energize, and communicate the benefits of the CRM system in a clear, demonstrable manner so others are motivated by and follow their success.

Communication is key. Some of the most effective channels of communicating may include email updates, lunch and learns, drop-in clinics and online discussion boards.

Common challenges such as a lack of change management, lack of executive leadership, insufficient data models and unclear strategies will result inevitably in inadequate user buy-in and the rejection of your system. As the MarTech leader, you must be an ally and a catalyst to help overcome these pitfalls.

A true MarTech leader goes the extra mile to be the key point of contact throughout the process to ensure that each user is supported. This is essential to gaining maximum user buy-in. If there are any roadblocks when a salesperson is working their way around a new system, they will give up and go back to their old ways of conducting business. Provide interactive manuals and face-to-face “CRM clinics” to encourage adoption and reinforce training.

Read More: The Best CX Metric Déjà Vu

Integrate MarTech and CRM

Another big problem is the lack of CRM integration with other Marketing systems, which can result in non-adoption. But this is where the MarTech leader can become a star. Ensure these solutions are tightly integrated to maximize your tech investment:

• Marketing Automation
• Inside and mobile Sales automation
• Customer support/call center
• Tradeshow lead retrieval
• Content Management

Your goal is to get all these systems integrated so that data is stored centrally as a single version of the truth. Once this mission is accomplished, you and your organization will have reached nirvana!

Be Human

As we have discussed, the ability to add a human touch when implementing new technologies such as CRM is key to gaining user-buy-in, which will make or break your project. Successful MarTech leaders understand the impact new technologies have on end-users and help them manage the changes. By embracing a big-picture perspective and gaining end-user buy-in MarTech leaders ensure CRM systems will have the intended impact and deliver a measurable return on investment in 2020 and beyond.

Read More: The Circling Sharks of Deep Learning — Three Mistakes to Avoid

What has been so alarming at this time is the dramatic speed in which these changes have happened.

On both sides of the Atlantic, our own Zuant system business had been energized massively by shows like the K-Show in Germany, Web Summit’s record turn out in Lisbon, at the tail end of last year, and then straight across to CES and NRF Retail events this January. The takeaways were huge growth and new opportunities for us and the industry as a whole.

And then it stopped. 24 hours before stepping on a plane to Himss TechMed show in Florida, the show was called off. And within the last three weeks, as we all know, all live events have been canceled. 

Silver Linings

I’ve heard a lot of people predict this will mean fewer people go to live events in the future. I could be biased because that’s our business, but I think there will be three positive effects on the events industry:

1. A lot of businesses will discover they don’t need their current amount of office space as more people can actually work from home very effectively with the tools now available. Maybe office space will become more sociable with hot-desking and better conference room facilities for running big internal and virtual events more easily.

2. With less face-to-face business contact, events and tradeshows will become even more important as one of the only ways to meet and get to know customers and prospects in-person to solidify these connections.

3. By trying virtual events in the meantime, a lot of the technology and ways of doing things will encourage companies to apply these new discoveries to enhance their physical events – Virtual success will encourage event planners to blend in these virtual tactics for delegates who physically can’t attend the actual live event.

After talking with clients and event organizers these last couple of weeks, the general consensus is tradeshows will be back with a vengeance come fall and into 2021, as you’ll have the regular calendar mixed in with all the postponements. WARNING: This could get frantic!

Read more: How MarTech Leaders Unlock CRM Success in 2020 and Beyond

Virtual Options to Weather the Storm

The other consideration is a huge risk with the suppliers to the events industry.

A lot of these suppliers rely on outdoor events, music festivals, movie productions and the like to get a return on all their expensive equipment, let alone all the temporary labor which ebbs and flows with the event calendar.

Unfortunately, a lot of these companies will not be able to survive, which again will cause even more pressure in this hectic period coming up, as purchasers will be loathed to commit deposits to companies that may vaporize.  These are tricky times indeed.

So let’s look at virtual events in the meantime. Certainly, we’re all inundated with emails telling us how to switch to ‘virtual’. Here size matters. There’s a vast difference between a true virtual event and a webinar. Effectively switching a 100-person live meeting to virtual and a 5,000+ person to virtual is humungous. 

If it’s small, then a well-planned webinar may do the trick. But large events are another animal altogether. To successfully engage large audiences, planners need to think about the reasons people attend face-to-face events and simulate the same experience virtually. And that isn’t easy.

FACT: Most large events span several days with multiple session tracks and dozens of presenters. 

The first question is what’s the objective? Is it to showcase the new technology, expose new customers to your brand, provide a networking forum for users, drive leads, entertain, or all of the above? 

The second question is, what format will be used? Here are three options: 

1. Live Streaming

When a speaker is presenting live and it is streamed for an audience to view and interact with, in real-time:

– Chat with one another 

– Take notes on points that are important to them

– Engage in live Q&A

– Participate in polls and surveys

2. Pre-recorded Content

This format works best with session tracks where organizers are sharing a lot of content. It can still be engaging for your audience. In fact, through public and private chat, participants can personalize their schedules and interact with other attendees and presenters in much the same way they would in a live session. 

3. Hybrid

Some of the sessions take place live and other sessions are pre-recorded. Perhaps build excitement with a live stream keynote before offering the audience pre-recorded, interactive sessions and tracks.

Amazon-Style Networking 

Whether physical or virtual, the key to any large event is successful attendee networking. A big priority is enabling event participants to connect with one another around common interests. This is so important to recreate the buzz of a live event. Visitor match-making works by recommending connections based on company, job function, topic, and other interests during and between sessions, creating a virtual networking experience for the visitor. 

Another networking tool is providing virtual guests with the ability to set up online appointments in the same way they would if they were attending a face-to-face event. At the end of the day, easy networking opportunities can really make or break an event. 

In the same way that networking is important, offering highly-relevant, personalized content is also critical to a large event’s success. To accomplish this, allow virtual attendees to create their own curriculum, similar to mobile event apps. Then, based on the sessions they attend, make additional session recommendations to keep them engaged.

Think Amazon for virtual events!

Read more: Marketing’s Role in Digital Transformation: Why Sales Owns the Last Mile

Virtual Event Sponsors 

Don’t forget your event sponsors. Here are a few suggestions to attract them to your virtual event:

1. The Virtual Tradeshow enable visitors to access sponsors and meet their reps, just as they would in a face-to-face exhibit hall.

2. Rotating Web Banners are a powerful way to give sponsors additional exposure to their target participants.

3. Mini-Videos are a good way to showcase sponsors before and after pre-recorded promotional content.

Remember Lead Follow-up

And last but not least, is the subject close to my heart: lead retrieval and follow-up. Make sure that, just like a normal tradeshow, you record your visitors’ interests and follow-up requirements, and have a lead follow-up mechanism in place. The good news is this could be an easier time to actually reach prospects directly after the event either by phone, text, email or social since they won’t be traveling to events. 

As we navigate this challenging time, remember the show will go on, whether live or online.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel. Be open to new ways of connecting and stay healthy and hopeful.   

Read more: What’s in a Face? The Challenges and Rewards of AI-Fueled Facial Recognition

We recently added facial recognition to open the Zuant app when scanning badges at tradeshows so you’re not constantly fiddling around looking for or trying to remember your password. It’s a great timesaver, as remembering/inputting passwords are huge irritations in our digital world. I’m a big fan of Dashlane, which has greatly lessened my password hell!

Adoption Factors:  Privacy Concerns

One of the big factors holding back the adoption of facial recognition is to worry about its wider use in day-to-day life. It’s a bit like all those old concerns on the use of CCTV. It has always worried me in the background, with a feeling of Big Brother watching. But now, many years later, most of us accept that the benefits outweigh those lurking fears.

But, those worries are certainly back with a vengeance with facial recognition combined with AI, which could be the perfect storm.  For instance, this is true in Britain right now, after it emerged recently that London’s Metropolitan Police plan to deploy cameras with facial recognition and AI capabilities. Local newspapers dubbed it “Big Brother Goes London Wide” – and all sorts of groups started screaming about potential privacy breaches. The police insist these cameras are merely the latest weapons to fight crime. It’s hard to know where to draw the line in a world of CCTV!

Read more: Smile: You’re on Candid Camera! Facial Recognition Comes of Age

Then there’s an intriguing Intel-sponsored research paper: ‘AI Among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems’. Six locations were studied where facial recognition is used: two in the US (a school and a police force); and four institutions in China, including schools.

In China, the researchers found the technology is already so commonplace that it sparked little comment among those interviewed. “Facial recognition interactions in China are stunning because they are so normative and normalized,” the paper notes, describing how the researchers observed people “smiling” at cameras as they use bank machines, buy things or enter buildings.

As the researchers put it: “In a society that has had overt and everyday surveillance in human and institutional form for over 70 years, the emergence and deployment of recognition through cameras has been far less controversial than in the USA.”

Clearly, part of this may reflect the difficulty of expressing dissent in China’s authoritarian system, as well as censorship of news stories about the more controversial uses of facial recognition; we only have to see how the Coronavirus outbreak was hidden too long from the start to re-appreciate this.

Pros vs. Cons

The key to all this is what makes facial recognition and AI so sensitive to most of us.  We must weigh the pros and cons of these powerful technologies. This is often contradictory and can change over time. Clearly, looking at the Intel research, it’s going to vary across cultures in ways we might ignore if we’re not careful.

In the marketing world, fortunately, there’s really no Big Brother issue. Most people show attendees are comfortable registering online for a show to receive a barcoded badge on a lanyard. And these folks are just as happy to supply a photo of themselves to ensure a smoother, faster service moving through an event and attending different sessions. And for event organizers, of course, this improves security immensely. An API integrates into existing event management platforms, enhancing the attendee journey from registration to check-in. Attendees register before the event with one click using their social media profiles. Alternatively, they can upload a picture or take a selfie with their own device; it’s that simple.

So far, we haven’t seen this tech get into mainstream events and shows, but it won’t be long now. And you’re going to wonder how you ever managed without it!

Read more: Is Facial Recognition the New Business Card?

If you missed the first half of our top trends of 2020, be sure to go back and read part 1. If you’re up to speed, here are five of the trends our team sees leading the Marketing industry in 2020:

1. A New Level Of Prospect Personalization

When you talk about personalization, it’s no longer just the things you can find out about the person online or something you uncover in one of the first meetings. Field Marketing and Salespeople have to really know the business so they can personalize every prospect’s experience with relevant information that provides value to their unique situation.

In 2020, revenue teams will join forces and come armed with real insight about their buyers so they can create a personalized experience from the very first touchpoint.

– Lisa Sharapata, VP Demand Gen and Content Strategy

2. No More Forms

As marketers, we spend tons of time creating killer content — everything from ebooks to whitepapers — then gate that content hoping we’ll persuade credible leads to reveal themselves by filling out our forms. But, they don’t. Modern buyers don’t want to give up their anonymity to find out about your solution, or even just to read your content.

In 2020, marketers will stop gating content as a way to attract “hot” leads (or the ones we think are more likely to close) and use to power of AI to uncover which accounts actually have the highest buying propensity.

– Latane Conant, CMO

Read More: A-Z Glossary For Good TV Marketing – Part 1

3. No More Spam

Spamming buyers with a bunch of irrelevant emails aren’t getting you any business, but it is getting your message sent straight to unsubscribe island! Rather than bombarding buyers with messages, they’re not interested in, marketers will harness the power of intent data to understand what buyers really care about in 2020.

By pairing that with predictive analytics, marketers will uncover what stage those buyers are in so they can ensure emails are providing a valuable message that aligns with the exact timing of their specific buying journey.

– Lisa Sharapata, VP Demand Gen and Content Strategy

4. No More Cold Calls

You got it. No more forms, no more spam, and NO more cold calls. If your Sales team is still making cold calls to prospects, it means you haven’t warmed up the account enough for your Sales team to even stand a chance at being successful.

To avoid this problem in 2020, Marketing and Sales teams will align and use AI and clean data to nurture prospects throughout the phases of the buying journey, all the way from awareness to purchase!

– Michael George, VP Brand and Solutions

5. ABM Is Here to Stay

A couple of years ago, few knew what “ABM” meant. Now, Account-Based Marketing is becoming the way marketing gets done. Forrester predicts that by 2025, the term “ABM” will disappear as account-centric becomes the way most B2B organizations identify, plan, manage, and measure buying and post-sale motions — but ABM is here to stay. Like anything else, it just has to evolve. Those already executing an ABM strategy are simply early adopters.

In 2020, we’ll see revenue teams stop the manual flows and guesswork associated with traditional ABM and engage their buyers with insight-led experiences powered by AI orchestration.

– Latane Conant, CMO

As companies continue to adapt, innovate and evolve, the Marketing space will only get more competitive. At 6sense, we’re always looking ahead for the latest Marketing trends to ensure our customers stay on top. Getting a jump start on tackling these trends will help your team conquer the competition in 2020.

Read More: Your Smartphone is Your TV: The Rise of OTT Video Apps

As a CMO planning for a new year, here are the top five Marketing trends I’m looking at in 2020:

1. Say Hello to Scaling ABM

In the last few years, Account-Based Marketing has taken over as a better way to engage with modern B2B buyers — but without the ability to scale those efforts to more than a handful of accounts, “ABM” is really just good marketing. To reach the promised land of delivering a better prospect experience, marketers are looking to uncover and orchestrate critical buyer insights for their account-based initiatives across hundreds, even thousands, of accounts.

In 2020, marketers will say so-long to their generic “ABM” solutions and welcome a solution with real insights AND AI-orchestration to fuel their entire go-to-market strategy for a next-level prospect experience.

2. Four Pillars of Personalization

Personalization doesn’t mean slapping a name on your generic email and sending it off to clutter your audience’s inbox. It’s more about ensuring your message adds value. To really hit home with your buyers, and avoid them hitting the unsubscribe button, you have to encompass all four pillars of personalization when it comes to ABM: the account, persona and buying team, behavior and timing.

Next year, B2B marketers will step up their personalization efforts by implementing an intent solution that uncovers branded and generic keywords prospects are researching, helps tailor their message and content to these keywords and ensures those stage-based high-value messages actually get delivered at the right time.

Read More: Why GDPR Changes Everything…for the Better

3. Siloed Team Stacks, Make Way for the Unified Revenue Stack

It’s common knowledge that the MarTech stack has gotten WAY out of control. To prevent marketers from fumbling around with 20 or 30 different tools, we saw the consolidation of siloed point solutions into one platform in 2019. As Sales and Marketing teams continue to unite, we’ll see individual teams ditch their disparate platforms and adopt one all-encompassing revenue platform with AI and Big Data built into the core so they can successfully uncover, orchestrate and utilize valuable buyer data.

4. In-Market Is The New Inbound

Most marketers believe that inbound leads are the ultimate prize for all of our hard work. But, the truth is, we can’t wait around for our buyers to raise their hand before we engage. The early bird gets the worm in the Marketing world — and waiting for an inbound lead means you’re one step behind. We have to know what buyers want before they make themselves known.

Next year, marketers will shift from an inbound approach to an in-market approach by using real buyer insights to focus on the accounts with the highest buying propensity. Then, they will have the power to influence the entire buying journey, ensuring their outreach lands at exactly the right time.

Read More: How Can Marketing Team Up with Sales on Personalization’s ‘Last Mile’?

5. The AI Expansion

Ten years ago, AI played no role in the Sales and Marketing tech stack. Some early adopters developed customized AI/ML/Big Data solutions in the early days, but these were expensive to build and maintain (data scientists aren’t cheap!) Gone are the days of mapping out linear-based journeys on a whiteboard in 2020. The role of AI is expanding and will drive “next best” actions, content and channels next year.

It’s safe to say the Marketing industry has changed more in just the last five years than it has in the last 50. So, if you think these are the only trends that will be making waves in the wide world of Marketing next year, think again! Stay tuned for part 2, where my team dives into more predictions on the 2020 Marketing landscape.

Read More: Social Selling Is Risky Business: How to Mitigate the Dangers

In the last 10 years, Web Summit has grown to be both largest and outrageous tech event in the world – The beauty of Web Summit is it adaptability – The producers are constantly evolving and adjusting the show to accommodate the world around it, whether it be canceling their RISE event in Hong Kong due to the current troubles, or moving the Collision show so that it can become established in Toronto in the summer. And already we have a sense of anticipation for the 2020 show in Lisbon next November.

Words cannot begin to describe the sheer excitement that surrounds Web Summit! Being on-site a couple of hours before the doors officially open, when it’s completely silent, is a crazy juxtaposition to what happens next – Like the calm before the storm, suddenly the doors fling open, like air rushing into a vacuum, and the onslaught of over 70,000 visitors from 160 countries rush in from the main hallway all the way to the main stage. If you’re thinking of going in the other direction, forget it!  It would be like swimming against a tsunami!

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AI Improves Human Life and the Planet

And for all the Zuant team, we’re one of the myriad of partners at the event. We are in a unique position as exclusive suppliers of the show’s entire lead retrieval system for all exhibitors. Who’d have thought just a couple years ago that Zuant would have clients such as Microsoft, Samsung, and Lenovo using our iOS devices capturing all their lead data?

This reality mirrors the rapid pace of change happening in the tech industry overall. Only a year ago AI would send a shudder down your spine with the sort of Terminator-style loss of control to the humanoids. But now, Web Summit is real evidence that people are starting to really embrace the positive and incredibly powerful potential of AI to change the way we live. As humans, we will have the data to allow us to make better decisions on almost anything. And deeper than that, systems will be designed that monitor Big Data and spot tiny aspects that can make adjustments in our daily lives automatically. For example:

• Health monitors that pick up subtleties in medical conditions, that can be early warnings to trigger the right treatments immediately
• Travel that becomes so much more efficient with advice on when to leave for work, e.g. car sharing availability that will reduce the traffic on roads and of course our environmental footprint

The later is the big one of course. AI will give us the data that we urgently need on the eco-side and tell us what we absolutely have to do to protect our planet for the future. Frankly, AI can’t come soon enough.

Speakers from All Corners Reveal AI’s Superpowers

Back to day-to-day life, it was fascinating to experience many of the individual sub-stage presentations, such as the Head of Digital at IKEA telling us about robotic furniture to change the shape of living spaces automatically in ever crowded and expensive city apartments. It will literally adjust the home to suit the time of day, whether bedtime, breakfast in the kitchen or lounging in front of the TV when you get home from work.

I was blown away listening to Mrs. Koenigsegg talk about the evolution and development of their supercars as the electric age starts to gather pace!

Web Summit is not just about big business. The theme is the new tech that is making an impact, whether from startups looking for funding to the largest corporations. And sometimes the presenters don’t talk about business at all, but rather are influencers for the world in which we live.

The kick-off main stage event was a giant livestream of Edward Snowden, the exiled whistle-blower, made famous in 2013 for revealing the extent of US government data snooping. And on the other end of the scale, Guo Ping, rotating chairman of Huawei, appeared on the Center Stage moments after Snowden. Immediately two personalities who wouldn’t have easily found a stage in some other parts of the world. Ping explained that 5G and AI represented a “tipping point” for tech. Specifically, promoting “5G+X”—the “X” being technologies like AI, VR and AR, among others—as the “new electricity.”

Read More: 4 Factors That Are Defining the Future of Customer Experience

AI Charged with Driving Profits and Efficiency 

Ronan Dunne, Executive VP and CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, reinforced the overall feeling from the event this year that businesses and consumers haven’t really yet discovered exactly how revolutionary this technology truly is: “It’s so powerful, that in truth, the best way to think about it is as a wholly new technology, ushering in a new era of transformation.”

And back at the sharp end, it was refreshing to get a focus back on profitability – something missing of late with sky-high pre-IPO valuations. Think WeWork.

Ravi Viswanathan, Founder of NewView Capital:

“I actually do think it’s very healthy because it forces boards, management teams, investors and everyone in all the other constituencies to really look within themselves and make sure these companies become durable,” he said. “And if they aren’t durable, then maybe they’re not a public company, maybe it’s some other exit.” Meanwhile, Rytis Vitkauskas, a partner at Lightspeed, said it was less a matter of venture capital pivoting toward profitability and more of a “focus [on] how sensible the growth [of startups] is and the efficiency.”

So that’s just a taste of Web Summit 2019; it’s all about tech, the future and making sure it’s profitable and sustainable this year and for the foreseeable future.

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That is the impact of digital on B2B marketing – the customer’s brand experience now incorporates multi-channel interactions across sales and the whole customer-facing organization. If that challenge doesn’t drive Sales and Marketing alignment, nothing will. But it’s not all bad news.

Baron Manet of Per Se, a brand experience company, advises marketers to compete in the attention economy by recognizing these three core beliefs:

1. Attention is earned.
2. Empathy is experienced.
3. Trust is ongoing.

My only addition for B2B:

1. Only people are truly personal.

Many marketers are embracing these beliefs and implementing Personalization in their campaigns and digital experiences. They have turned to Automation and AI to deliver a personalized experience at scale. In B2B, we have forgotten that personalized experienced is really the personal relationship between buyers and sellers. Marketing is missing an opportunity to earn attention, build empathy and ultimately trust by enabling their sales teams with engaging, authentic content.

Read More: 2020 Mobile Tech Prediction: NFC Replaces Barcode Scanners at Events

Marketing Needs to Make Some Friends in Sales

It never starts with technology. Sales and Marketing teams that attended our customer conference shared the need to build relationships with each other to ensure success. Building this relationship opens lines of communication that lead to empathy and understanding each others needs and objectives. I lost count of the number of times I heard the number one reason a program fails basically boiled down to a lack of empathy between program leadership (Marketing) and the participants (Sales).

Often it’s the same techniques that are so effective externally – getting to know the person and sharing experiences online and offline – that work with internal relationships. Successful Marketing leaders spend time in the field offices or host weekly calls to share knowledge and best practices. The best marketers behave like coaches – setting the agenda and guiding the conversation but more often letting Sales leaders lead especially when it comes to establishing trusted relationships with the ultimate clients and buyers.

Beyond practices, I believe there’s a mind shift that’s needed in Marketing when approaching Sales. Marketing can only effectively target three or four buyer personas with content and often only for a limited set of industry verticals, which can miss the mark on achieving real personalization. Limiting the messaging and content to these targets is the only practical way to be effective, but often wildly misses the scope and needs of the market. To illustrate, one of our clients targets 50 different verticals with a marketing team of one.

That’s where Sales comes in. In communications and buyer experience, Sales represents that ‘last mile’ for the message. Only Sales has the capacity (and the incentives) to tailor the message to every single sub-vertical and influencer they are targeting and achieve the desired direct outcomes including financial results. When Marketing approaches their relationship with a service mindset, the team will be much more effective.

Read More: Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Driving Sales?

Tools Are Needed to Tailor the Message at Scale

One useful way to think about how Marketing and Sales can partner to enable a digital and social selling initiative that drives revenue is to take a known concept, for example, Inbound Marketing, and pivot to the Sales equivalent, inbound selling. Imagine working to accomplish the same goals but in less than five hours a week and more likely less than one hour a week. Authoring becomes sharing, repeated messaging becomes curated and targeted, complexity becomes simplicity.

Content management is critical to tailor the message in two key conversation stages: nurturing and converting. Nurturing conversations engage buyers over time – they allow for the many touchpoints it takes to build trust. Converting conversations are focused on the ‘moments of truth’ – where Sales needs to answer the questions “Why me? Why now?” The most critical of these conversations is the pitch. Both pivot on content.

Nurturing conversations can be direct (direct message) or indirect (mass communication). With some exceptions, they can occur in multiple channels – email, text, or social. Content relevance tools like Grapevine6 help to curate the content for direct and indirect conversations by applying AI to match content to interests.

Sales Enablement Automation (SEA) platforms are critical in driving converting conversations. They enable Sales to rapidly personalize Marketing content for a specific opportunity and even for a specific contact. These platforms enable Sales to assemble the relevant content to match the opportunity often by applying AI to learn the effectiveness of different content to the context of the conversion conversation.

Finally, Marketing cannot afford to ignore the inherent risk in these distributed digital conversations. There’s another class of capability that’s purpose-built and uses AI to protect the brand and in some cases prevent regulatory risk. It’s important to prioritize the indirect conversations such as social posts due to the public or semi-public nature of the communications. Outside of our own intelligent content controls, we work with two leaders in this field – Proofpoint Digital Risk and Safeguard Cyber to extend the protection to the digital identities of your customer-facing people.

Success in establishing digital client relationships at scale is achievable by Sales and Marketing teams. It starts with empathy and having a good understanding between Sales and Marketing for how digital channels are used and the gaps and challenges that each face. Finding ways to create and deliver targeted messaging at scale is a common goal that can be supported by tools in order to drive nurturing and converting conversations that achieve financial objectives.

Read More: Why GDPR Changes Everything…for the Better

While GDPR and Y2K evoke high anxiety, there is a major distinction: GDPR is a real legislative approach to adopt better privacy laws to which most consumers and marketers aspire. Unlike tabloid headlines, companies will not be fined millions of dollars for a small infringement. Let’s leave that to the Facebooks, Googles and British Airways of this world!

The intent of GDPR has and continues to be to encourage companies to move in the right direction. That is, respect the privacy of the individual consumer and put in place appropriate systems that facilitate this. This conversation is particularly timely, now that we are also a few months before the new Californian Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which comes into play on January 1, 2020.

As you’ve gathered, I am a GDPR fan. What’s holding it back is its complexity and an understanding of the value it brings to the table. With CCPA being so similar many of our clients have begun to apply GDPR as an all-encompassing global policy. This avoids the cost of individual country applications and a unified global voice.

Customer Preference Rules

The key to all of this from a marketing point of view is establishing a customer preference center. These are so easy to manage as a contact profile on your CRM system with inputs predominantly coming from three main areas:

1. Website traffic from inbound prospects
2. Email campaigns
3. Data on Sales reps’ mobile device

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the options available today – A simple approach should include your customer’s preferred channels of communication such as phone, email, text, etc. And updates from you on products and services should be disseminated according to what your customers have asked to receive, i.e. their unique areas of interest.

Like other aspects of Sales and Marketing, it’s essential to have a central CRM system so that other requirements of GDPR can be handled easily – Some of these requirement include ‘subject data access’ requests, where the customer asks to see what information you have collected in your database and the ‘right to erasure’, which is a request to delete personal data.

Beware of Mobile

You might be surprised by the mention of your Sales teams’ mobile devices as part GDPR, but it’s a huge area of risk. This overlooked aspect of data management is where large chunks of personal contact data are stored without any opt-in requirements.

Once again, mitigating this risk is easy when driven by Salespeople who guide the customer through the preference center so they receive their desired contact format and level – This 1:1 personalized interaction is comparable to meeting with clients face-to-face at a tradeshow or other venue.

ABCs of GDPR

With just a few easy steps, a company can embrace GDPR in a positive, Sales supporting way. First, we recommend you appoint a Data Protection Officer or DPO. Who you choose is critical. They mustn’t be seen as an enforcer, as their role is to educate, encourage and demonstrate tangible benefits of an opt-in customer program. If this person is seen as a police, loopholes will be sought and the program will fail.

Once your DPO is chosen, classic marketing initiatives should flow smoothly:

• Single, profiled view of the customer
• Integrated Marketing Automation, Social Media, Contact Center system feeding back into a central CRM solution
• Mobile devices included as part of the system

In our experience, few companies have embraced GDPR in a positive way in terms of people, process and technology. When these three areas are in sync magic happens and both companies and customers win. GDPR, CCPA, and other legislations are here to stay and come with big business benefits. Now is the time to embrace the change or be left in the dust.

Read more: 4 Tips for Scaling Your Event Programs in the GDPR Era

P – Programmatic TV

Traditional ad slots were once bought and sold over the phone, but automated trading is increasingly the go-to. ‘Programmatic’ is an umbrella term for all ad inventory purchased via platforms such as DSPs (Demand Side Platforms). With PWC predicting that Programmatic TV will account for a third of global TV ad revenue by 2021, marketers can no longer afford to leave programmatic off the agenda. Programmatic is often referred to as addressable TV as it ensures users are exposed to tailored ads. Using sophisticated algorithms (powered by AI), brands can learn far more about consumers’ individual interests, and deliver a more targeted approach across Connected TV devices.

 Q – Quantifiable Reach and Impact

In the TV advertising industry, attribution metrics are continually improving to provide marketers with more granular insight about the effectiveness of a campaign. Quantifiable refers to the ability to measure the immediate and longer-term impact of TV spots, quantifying response by day, daypart, program, network, genre, creative, audience segment – and even households.

R – Ratings

One of the most used metrics for measuring TV campaigns; rating estimates, define the size (and age demographics) of audiences viewing ad spots. It’s a traditional method for evaluating the success of ad campaigns, but ratings don’t account for middle-of-the-funnel activity and the wider engagement that TV can drive. While good for assessing audience reach, advertisers need to consider other metrics to understand overall performance.

Read more: A-Z Glossary For Good TV Marketing – Part 1

S – Second Screening

Consumers are now in the habit of using multiple devices at all times without even realizing it, with more than 70% of adults using a second device while watching TV to find out more information about a show, look up information on products featured or access social media. In each of these scenarios, second screening represents a huge opportunity for advertisers to interact with primed viewers while they are online.

T – TV Itself

In the 1950s, a television referred to a small box with a six-inch-square screen that enabled viewers to watch terrestrial programs from the comfort of their own living room. Today, TV is an entertainment multiplex that consumers can use to view an ever-increasing range of content – either live or on-demand – from various channels, record their favorite shows, surf the web, gaming, make video calls… the list goes on.

U – Upfronts

To kickstart crucial advertising sales periods, networks and major advertisers will participate in Upfronts to allocate ad spots several months before the start of the television season. In recent years, Big Data and sophisticated Analytics have aided this process by justifying the dollars spent on inventory.

V – Video On Demand (VOD)

As consumers are accustomed to watching TV when it suits them, VOD makes it possible to watch shows on-the-go (via a mobile device), at their desk (on a tablet, laptop or desktop) or when relaxing on the couch in front of a connected TV. For marketers looking to build on their Omnichannel Marketing strategy, ad-supported Video On Demand (VOD) platforms offer advertisers a new channel through which they can reach a variety of audience segments.

 W – Wastage

Wasted ad impressions were once accepted as an inevitable part of TV campaigns, as linear TV was a broad-reach tool and there was simply no way of differentiating between – and then targeting – particular audience segments. However, with the level of consumer insight now available to marketers, it’s possible to eliminate wastage by identifying and targeting shows, dayparts, etc. and serving tailored content accordingly.

X – TV Is Not eXtinct

Although for some households, watching traditional television by itself is less common, the fact is, linear TV is still a major part of the overall viewing experience – globally. In the US, live or time-shifted television still has a reach of 88%, meaning that advertisers can’t afford to ignore the impact of a strong TV marketing strategy. And TV isn’t just linear – it’s VOD, SVOD, OTT, etc.

Y – Yield of TV Advertising

TV has always been a dominant force in the world of advertising, with consistently high yield (or response) rates, and although the dynamics are shifting to include a range of different channels and formats, this is only making the opportunity greater for advertisers. By determining how much inventory a buyer has access to, at what CPM and through which channels, the yield is used to measure how effective an impression is.

Z – OptimiZable Campaigns

One of the main differences between 1950s TV advertising and today’s ad campaigns is the ability to optimize a campaign to improve its effectiveness. The speed at which consumer insight is now collated, analyzed and actioned (i.e. it happens in real-time) means that ‘in-flight’ and continuous campaign optimization is becoming the norm for many advertisers.

For a “traditional” Marketing platform, TV is holding its own and even helping its digital counterpart achieve greatness. Hopefully, with this handy three-part guide, you now have the knowledge to make TV work smarter for your brand too.

Read More: A-Z Glossary For Good TV Marketing – Part 2