Kieron McCann of Cognifide, Hendrick Isabaert of Showpad and Paul Cash of Rooster Punk
Customer experience is now inseparable from your product, according to Kieron McCann, director of marketing and technology at Cognifide.
Product management is now a constant process of innovation, and just as ‘digital marketing’ is now business as usual so too will be digital integration into the product management process.
As such, it’s a big mistake to separate your digital and customer experience functions as products will either be enhanced by digital, or will have to change because of digital.
He concluded: “Product management is where all these things come together, and it’s product management that’ll take this out of being a transformation programme into a way of doing business.”
The best buyer experience wins!
Hendrik Isebaert, VP of sales, at Showpad believes firmer collaboration between sales and marketing when it comes to content is the key to a better customer experience.
Following the influence of buying behaviours in the B2C market, sales conversations in B2B have similarly transitioned to a focus that is entirely personalised to individual customers and their needs rather than a products features and price.
Customers now have the internet at their fingertips and can find out almost everything there is to know about a company and their offering before even coming into contact.
That’s why, as Hendrick explains, sales engagement needs to provide added value and a trusting relationship and this means sales and marketing working together to create, select and deliver content to individual prospects that will really resonate with them.
Three ways to address the change in the market:
Paul Cash, CEO at Rooster Punk, offered up his 10 #CashHacks for B2B marketers, showing you how to win audiences and create compelling content.
Focusing on the human side of marketing, from emotional campaigns to entertaining audiences, Paul emphasised the need to focus on the consumerisation of B2B in the tech space.
Every marketer in the past five years is a storyteller, he said. “People buy stories as much as products,” said Paul, urging brands to compete on their stories, mining the 13 different narratives every brand has at its disposal, from its origins story to its purpose.
If you are a purposeful value driven organisation you can command up to 40% more value in the market, Paul said.
Fed up of losing out to ‘accidental hero’ Apple, Samsung reframed its cause. Focusing on its long battery life and indestructible glass, it ran a campaign about creating more good days at work thanks to reliable technology, which won B2B Marketing’s best SMB campaign last year.
“I’m convinced 90% of people buying tech are living in a permanent state of fear,” said Paul. Your job is not to market to the fear zone, he urged, but to make buyers feel brave and engaged, avoiding the frustration and apathy that can fill the market.