Demand Gen Dialogue

This week, B2B marketers will gather in Boston for Brightcove’s annual PLAY event, taking place May 14-16. Brightcove CMO Sara Larsen sat down with Demand Gen Report prior to the event to discuss the short- and long-term goals she’s been working towards since joining the company in September, what attendees can expect at the event, how video marketing strategies are changing and more.

“[We can] use video in B2B to move beyond some of the rational components of what we’re trying to talk about and really tell the story of what an enterprise solution can do and what impact it can have,” said Larsen. “Video is really the best place to do that because you can bring all the senses together to tell that story in a much more emotional way ... The brands that have figured out how to tell a good story can now tell a great story with video because you can really amp up the connection with the viewer.”

New research from the Altimeter Group shows that 55% of marketers plan to spend more on influencer marketing in 2019. But according to Principal Analyst Brian Solis, marketers must rethink their approach and strategies to influencer marketing in order to be successful.

In a conversation with Demand Gen Report, Solis shared what he has named “Influence 2.0,” a new approach that includes building long-term influencer relationships and working with influencers to engage buyers at every touchpoint.

“Trust in companies, brands and executives plummets every year, but trust in peers or people ‘like me’ is always at the top,” said Solis. “At the end of the day, that’s what [influencers are] about ... I think it is an under-appreciated strategy in the marketing arsenal.”

In a conversation with Kevin Cunningham, CEO of MRP, he discusses the current state of pipeline measurement in the B2B marketplace. Cunningham also shares his thoughts on how B2B organizations can leverage emerging AI capabilities and predictive analytics to enhance their pipeline measurement initiatives, while also sharing examples of how progressive companies are leveraging these types of insights to understand their pipeline.

In a discussion, Scott Vaughan, CMO of Integrate, shared some of the main qualities that he has seen have a positive impact on the growth of the industry. Vaughan also discussed Integrate’s recent B2B Game Changers Revenue Marketers Spotlight Awards, in which they spotlighted 43 marketing professionals that are going above and beyond to orchestrate technology, data and processes in their own businesses

In a quick interview at INBOUND 2018, hosted by HubSpot earlier this September in Boston, Demand Gen Report’s Brian Anderson sat down with Scott Brinker, HubSpot’s VP of Platform Ecosystem. Brinker is also notoriously known for mapping out the martech landscape on the Chief Marketing Technologist blog.

During the interview, Brinker shared how he has seen HubSpot’s partner ecosystem grow during his first year at HubSpot. He also discussed how the need for easily integrated solutions has grown evermore important over the past couple of years, as well as where he thinks partner ecosystems need to continue evolving to meet the needs of tech adopters in the space.