THE TECH MARKETING PODCHAT Gwen Lafage

Declan Mulkeen lives in Spain and is an ABM expert. CMO at the strategicabm - the Account-based Marketing Agency, he also hosts the podcast 'Let's talk ABM'. Strategicabm partners exclusively with B2B tech brands to help them win, grow, and retain their most important accounts. 

So who better than Declan to talk ABM, right? 

We discussed the why and the how of planning and implementing successful ABM programs.
A few myths debunked:
- ABM is not = to B2B marketing or lead gen
- ABM is a strategy, not a marketing tactic
- ABM is not for everyone
- It's more an account based experience and goes beyond marketing

Enjoy our discussion!

Liam Boogar-Azoulay is an American marketer in Paris and also VP Marketing at Scaleway. A San Francisco native, he had to go to France to find the world of Tech! In 2011 he launched Rude Baguette - France's Startup Blog and went on to work at many successful tech companies like Algolia or MadKudu.
Scaleway is a leading European infrastructure cloud provider - the cloud that makes sense. 

Liam started at Scaleway only a few months ago so we shared experiences on joining fast growth tech companies recently and how to plan for success from day 1. We discussed building a marketing team for growth and making every team member accountable for revenue. Liam gave us the download on how his team is structured and how he makes sure to set clear OKRs for everyone so that they are all moving in the same direction and scaling fast. 

Jonna Ekman is Marketing Director at Storykit. With a background as a journalist, she knows a thing or two about creating content and engaging audiences at first glance. Storykit is revolutionizing how businesses create video, through its smart platform for video creation. They provide an easy tool for everyone to tell engaging stories with videos.


We talked about the emergence of videos to engage audiences and why video is key to winning on social media. We discussed how to approach video creation, and how not every single piece of  animated content needs to be overly produced or overly expensive. Video can be scary, but Jonna explains why it shouldn't and how everyone can become a creator. We also discussed webinars to create dialogues with audiences, bring value and create connections without always pitching. 

Welcome to the post-text future!

Steffen Hedebrandt is cofounder and Chief Revenue Officer of Dreamdata. He is also a talented growth hacker with a successful track record of scaling businesses and building teams.
He created Dreamdata to solve b2b revenue attribution. Long sales cycles, multiple decision makers, multiple media channels, complex tech-stack - the b2b buying (and selling) process is complex and multi-touch. So how do you know where to focus your marketing efforts to generate deals?
Dreamdata collects all your revenue related data, joins it and presents it in a clear, insightful way that can add massive value for your business.

As a bit of an attribution sceptic myself (less measuring, more doing!), I talked to Steffen about revenue attribution and its benefits and challenges to align sales and marketing, to drive demand, to build a strong brand. Doesn't focusing on attribution limit creativity or can it help drive it? Can attribution help you find the secret sauce of doing digital marketing right for delivering deals, and not just leads? 

Find out more about B2B Attribution here: https://dreamdata.io/b2b-attribution

Nicolas Breuil is Global Head of Marketing, Brand & Comms at Stuart - and also my first French guest!
Nicolas came from a PR background and got started in the b2b tech world without the preconceptions and the over-used playbooks that all other b2b tech companies might be using. He is carving his own path and it looks like his creativity is paying off!
Stuart is a a leading last mile delivery platform that connects small and big businesses to a fleet of geolocalised couriers.

I talked to Nicolas about his experience with Stuart, from being the first marketing hire to growing his team to 20 marketers in 5 years (including 5 designers!). From day 1, Nicolas set his own path, focusing on creativity, thinking outside the box, using his clients in his communication approach and going beyond in supporting his sales team. His secret: don't follow what everyone else is doing and aim at standing out from your competition!

Luke Richardson is a British national established in Denmark for many years. From studying arts to producing videos, he didn't follow the linear path to become a b2b tech marketer. He is now the Director of Brand and Comms at the Fintech company Pleo.
Pleo simplifies bookkeeping and eliminates expense reports by offering smart company cards that give power back to the people. 

When your head of brand has an unusual background, you can expect your brand to embrace an unconventional approach too. Pleo's brand is fun and unique so of course we talked branding and design.
We also talked about the team Luke put in place to create, manage and grow the Pleo brand and how they collaborate with the rest of the marketing team. Luke's approach has been to follow the Mailchimp model and bring a lot of talent in-house.
We talked about creativity, humour and building a human brand that people would love.