F E B R UA RY 2 017

B2 B M A R K E T I N G . N E T

The marketing department

of the future

K E Y CO M M E NT S A N D TO P TA K E AWAYS

B2B LE A D E R S

The marketing department of the future

1 When it comes to recruitment, senior marketers are chasing a veritable flock of golden geese. First, they’re looking for individuals who can work across different functions and join the dots when it comes to marketing strategy. Second, they’re looking for marketers who understand data, having the ability to draw out useful narratives and relay their meaning back to the wider business.

2 Marketing leaders should think about reviewing their team’s core competencies more frequently. At least a couple of leaders highlighted their plans to review the skills gaps within their teams – with such an emphasis on new digital skills, the importance of a spread of core marketing skills across the team is sometimes forgotten.

3 Recruitment remains a persistent bugbear, with many leaders admitting that while attracting senior talent isn’t too challenging, finding more junior team members can be problematic. Added to this, assessing soft skills such as communication and flexibility is key: too many leaders find themselves hiring people who are the wrong cultural fit. Digital marketers are also particularly hard to find: they’re either generalists who’ve decided to ‘specialise’ in digital, or digital natives who lack writing skills or an ability to join the dots and develop an overarching marketing strategy. Attracting top talent will always be challenging, but having a strong recruitment brand in place will definitely ease the pain.

4 Linked to this, strong writing skills were highlighted as particularly lacking in the majority of candidates. Whether this is down to an increasingly digital word or a changing educational system is unclear, but it’s causing major headaches for marketing leaders. The answer? Seek out writers with experience across a range of formats (short-form, long-form, social, web), prioritise those with strong technical knowledge of your sector (trade press can be a good place to start) or nab yourself a pro copywriter – although they can be expensive.

5 The most desirable skill or trait that all marketers should be looking for in new recruits is curiosity: those who seek out new ways of doing things and question the status quo. Make sure you’re expecting, encouraging and rewarding such behaviour – it shouldn’t be a nice-to-have, but a top-of-the-priority list no-brainer.

6 When it comes to recruitment, beware of false advertising. It’s not unknown for candidates to pass off agency work as their own. Introducing a writing test pre-second interview is one way to remedy this, as is asking candidates to offer their plans for a particular campaign you’re working on.

7 The modern-day marketing department needs to have a close relationship with the sales team and a deep understanding of their targets and goals. To this end, one marketing leader revealed that he’d recently convinced his sales director to fund the salaries of two new marketers to sit within the sales team itself. The days of siloed working won’t cut it for businesses looking to thrive in a modern world.

Marketing’s come a long way since the days of bland whitepapers and direct mail. Business buyers, priorities and processes have all transformed the way marketers work, and the response so far has centred on a suite of techniques and tech solutions. But how are marketing

teams adapting and future-proofing themselves against an increasingly digitised – not to mention competitive – landscape? At February’s roundtable we heard from 20 CMOs and marketing directors about their biggest concerns and tried and tested solutions.

8 Managing teams of digital specialists can feel overwhelming, with some leaders admitting their own lack of technical understanding does make them question the validity of what they hear from their digital specialists. (The phrase ‘smoke and mirrors’ comes to mind.) Remembering that digital is just another channel, and that the core marketing element of the role remains the same, is crucial.

9 To say the modern marketing team needs a handle on its data is a colossal understatement. Not only this, but knowing how it relates to your strategy will ultimately determine your overall success (or otherwise). One marketing leader admitted 60% of her budget was being spent on about 9% of her customer base, and that she’d recently introduced a customer engagement dashboard to highlight which channels customers are using and thus where to direct budget.

10 In an increasingly digital world, the importance of channels like website and videos only grows. One marketing leader said that a recent website redesign at her company led to three contracts being signed within a couple of months, all of which were generated via inbound leads. Her advice? Strip back the amount of copy per page as well as the overall number of pages. Easy navigation and strong design is key.

11 Video, too, will become an increasingly utilised tool in the marketer’s arsenal, particularly with dwindling attention spans and an avalanche of content. Where a five-minute talking-head piece would have done the trick five years ago, today’s consumers are all about minute-long videos, complete with subtitles, animation and useful snippets of information.

12 External agencies do make a valuable contribution to inhouse marketing teams, but the slow mechanics of the biggest international agencies can at times prove frustrating. A number of leaders highlighted their increasing partiality for smaller, niche players who can provide a different perspective, tend to remain more focused on the job in hand, and respond in a more agile way to a rapidly changing environment.

The B2B Leaders programme is a network of the most senior figures in the B2B marketing space, from heads of marketing to global CMOs of leading brands.

Members benefit from a unique and invaluable opportunity to regularly network and collaborate with senior-level peers, share insights and discuss strategic challenges.

Membership is by invitation only, and includes:

• An annual Leaders Forum ticket, the only B2B marketing leaders’ event of its kind.

• Regular roundtables focused on key marketing leadership topics.

• Monthly roundtable findings reports.

• The annual B2B Leaders Report, with key research data and insights.

The B2B Leaders programme counts senior marketing names in Deloitte, Oracle, Atos, Dell, HSBC, KPMG and Adobe among its members, all sharing ideas on topics ranging from team development to board interaction.

To register your interest in the programme, call +44 (0)20 7014 4920

About B2B Leaders

B2B MarketingClover House147–149 Farringdon RoadLondonEC1R 3HN

Tel: +44 (0)20 7014 4920

info@b2bmarketing.netb2bmarketing.net/b2b-marketing-leaders-programme