40 min
How to Build a Modern Industrial Marketing Strategy B2B Enablement
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- Marketing
Introduction: MJ Peters, VP of Marketing at Firetrace (Time stamped at 1:00)
MJ Peters has been in her position for two and a half years. Firetrace sells and manufactures automatic fire suppression systems that detect and suppress fires that start inside of equipment. They sell through OEM, distribution, and direct channels.
How should marketing be viewed inside of an organization and what is marketing's role at the executive level of the organization? (Time stamped at 2:00)
Marketing teams need to be deeply involved in marketing strategy and actively bring insights to drive the strategic direction of the company as a whole.
How do you structure a marketing team within an organization and how do you set that team up for success? (Time stamped at 3:30)
There are three marketing components. Product marketing, growth marketing, and product management. Product marketing is going out to market understanding your customers, what solutions are out there, and what opportunities exist. Growth marketing amplifies the value proposition that you bring to the right customer on the channels where they spend time. You can generate opportunities for the sales team regardless of the medium you're going to market with – traditional or digital. Product management is the whole lifecycle. It addresses things like:
What are the new product opportunities?
What is currently moving through the new product development pipeline and is it going to meet the customer's needs?
What's ready to launch and how are you supporting the launch of new products?
Does the sales team know what they're going out to sell?
Is the operations team ready to deliver it?
Is engineering ready to support it?
How should marketing manage the voice of the customer and how do you get those insights delivered back to the organization? (Time stamped at 10:30)
Try to set up conversations where the objective is not a sales call. The purpose of the call is to really find out what the customer needs. That will bring the most insights forward. Start broad and then zoom in. The first couple of questions you ask should have nothing to do with your product. You should aim to find out what they think are the most important elements of their job because it can help you uncover latent needs.
How do you set up customer meetings to capture insights? (Time stamped at 14:45)
It's easier said than done. Try working with sales because sales can open doors for you – especially with the customers they have good relationships with. But you don't only want to talk to your friends. You want to talk to customers that might have cooled off or customers you aren't selling to right now. You will need to do some cold calling – especially if your organization hasn't done customer research like this before. People won't always take your call, but if you send enough targeted emails you should be able to set up seven or eight calls and that's all it takes.
How do you determine the most effective marketing channels for your business? Once you do that, how do you begin to scale that strategy? (Time stamped at 17:20)
Start running experiments by channel type, and you need to start thinking of events as a channel, too. If you want to have good results you should only be looking at two channels at a time – especially if your marketing team is small. Use experiments to find out what works and then scale up or down accordingly. SEO and paid ads are a good place to start.
What are your thoughts on integrating MarTech and how did you start building your digital strategy? (Time stamped at 21:30)
Start working on the tech stack earlier than you think you need to. Having an effective tech stack (website feeding information to your CRM and then Google analytics) can accelerate your knowledge about the customer. MarTech systems, like Hubspot, can identify how your new leads arrived and you can learn more about the customers from their contact information. Tools like Hubspot can provide you with information that you
Introduction: MJ Peters, VP of Marketing at Firetrace (Time stamped at 1:00)
MJ Peters has been in her position for two and a half years. Firetrace sells and manufactures automatic fire suppression systems that detect and suppress fires that start inside of equipment. They sell through OEM, distribution, and direct channels.
How should marketing be viewed inside of an organization and what is marketing's role at the executive level of the organization? (Time stamped at 2:00)
Marketing teams need to be deeply involved in marketing strategy and actively bring insights to drive the strategic direction of the company as a whole.
How do you structure a marketing team within an organization and how do you set that team up for success? (Time stamped at 3:30)
There are three marketing components. Product marketing, growth marketing, and product management. Product marketing is going out to market understanding your customers, what solutions are out there, and what opportunities exist. Growth marketing amplifies the value proposition that you bring to the right customer on the channels where they spend time. You can generate opportunities for the sales team regardless of the medium you're going to market with – traditional or digital. Product management is the whole lifecycle. It addresses things like:
What are the new product opportunities?
What is currently moving through the new product development pipeline and is it going to meet the customer's needs?
What's ready to launch and how are you supporting the launch of new products?
Does the sales team know what they're going out to sell?
Is the operations team ready to deliver it?
Is engineering ready to support it?
How should marketing manage the voice of the customer and how do you get those insights delivered back to the organization? (Time stamped at 10:30)
Try to set up conversations where the objective is not a sales call. The purpose of the call is to really find out what the customer needs. That will bring the most insights forward. Start broad and then zoom in. The first couple of questions you ask should have nothing to do with your product. You should aim to find out what they think are the most important elements of their job because it can help you uncover latent needs.
How do you set up customer meetings to capture insights? (Time stamped at 14:45)
It's easier said than done. Try working with sales because sales can open doors for you – especially with the customers they have good relationships with. But you don't only want to talk to your friends. You want to talk to customers that might have cooled off or customers you aren't selling to right now. You will need to do some cold calling – especially if your organization hasn't done customer research like this before. People won't always take your call, but if you send enough targeted emails you should be able to set up seven or eight calls and that's all it takes.
How do you determine the most effective marketing channels for your business? Once you do that, how do you begin to scale that strategy? (Time stamped at 17:20)
Start running experiments by channel type, and you need to start thinking of events as a channel, too. If you want to have good results you should only be looking at two channels at a time – especially if your marketing team is small. Use experiments to find out what works and then scale up or down accordingly. SEO and paid ads are a good place to start.
What are your thoughts on integrating MarTech and how did you start building your digital strategy? (Time stamped at 21:30)
Start working on the tech stack earlier than you think you need to. Having an effective tech stack (website feeding information to your CRM and then Google analytics) can accelerate your knowledge about the customer. MarTech systems, like Hubspot, can identify how your new leads arrived and you can learn more about the customers from their contact information. Tools like Hubspot can provide you with information that you
40 min