The Schulich Marketing Association’s (SMA) Winter Conference on “Digital Disruption” faced a significant “disruption” even before it started. With the Teaching Assistants’ strike and picket lines being set up at York University, the SMA organizing committee had to scramble and arrange an alternate venue overnight. The event took place without a glitch on the morning of March 6, 2015 at the Toronto Star building on 1, Yonge Street.
MintCopy was delighted to participate in the B2B Panel Discussion, sharing the stage with other esteemed panelists, Liz Da Ponte, digital strategist at PwC Canada, Hanoz Tabak, digital marketing manager at GE Capital and Jazz Kamra from Google Canada. Robert Kozinets, the Chair of Marketing at the Schulich School of Business expertly moderated the discussion raising some very pertinent questions and getting all the panelists fired up! Not to forget the immensely interactive and enthusiastic MBA students from Schulich who made the event a runaway success. Kudos to all!
8 Key Takeaways on B2B Digital Communications and Content Marketing
We always aim to bring you valuable insights, trends and best practices across various industries when it comes to content marketing. At the Schulich Marketing Association’s B2B Panel Discussion, it was wonderful to hear these practical tips and advice from digital marketing practitioners out there in the real, big and fiercely competitive world of mega brands. Whether it was Hanoz from GE Capital or Jazz from Google or Liz from PwC Canada, they were all singing from the same song sheet. Here are some key takeaways from the panel discussion:
- Know what your customers really want to hear and add value with quality content: don’t put out volumes of content simply for the sake of being an active content marketer.
- Take an integrated approach: the digital landscape does not exclude traditional, offline marketing methods. Buyers spend a lot of time online, no doubt, but they still exist in the real, physical, offline world. You have to appeal to their emotions and sensibilities.
- ‘Personalized’ does not mean ‘personal’: know the difference and approach your customers with the content and solutions that are relevant and meaningful to them.
- You cannot ‘automate’ customization: the worst thing that can happen is a strong perception in the minds of your target audience that your brand is robotic and attempting to be all things to all people. BUT, it is easy to get carried away with the latest tools and technologies that allow you to automate one-to-many communications. The human touch, the relationship factor, the social conversations, these are all very important and irreplaceable even by the most advanced marketing automation systems.
- Focus on ROI: no matter how much you may try to demonstrate that your social media marketing and other initiatives are working, at the end of the day, it’s about showing ROI. Have the right metrics in place to measure and monitor your content marketing campaigns.
- Be ready for the long haul, but be nimble and show results quickly: the C-Suite has little patience. It’s all very well to think long-term marketing strategy and even plan for it, but the bottom line has to start showing results quickly before the carpet is pulled from under your feet!
- Build customer lifetime value: every customer is important, but how long every customer remains a customer is far more important. Quality over quantity is critical. B2B organizations have a constant challenge of dealing with a complex, longer sales cycle and multiple influencers or decision makers. In order to enhance the lifetime value of a customer, these companies need to optimize customer experiences across every touch point: online and offline.
- Innovation is key: but unless it solves a problem, it’s meaningless innovation. What is the C-Suite really saying when they tell marketing to be “innovative”? They are saying, “avoid mistakes, show results now and keep the customer happy”. Marketers have to deliver on all three demands while being innovative and only then can they achieve both, top line and bottom line growth.
MintCopy would like to thank the Schulich Marketing Association for inviting us to this year’s Winter Conference and to participate in the exciting B2B Panel Discussion. We had a great time!