Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges

On this episode I spoke with Eric Nystrom on location in Los Gatos, California. Eric is VP of Brand Development at Everyone Social, an employee advocacy platform used by top brands in the retail, high tech, software, finance and CPG industries. Eric and I discussed why employee advocacy is so strategic to brands across all industries.

Visit our show notes pages for a link to the e-book we discussed in this episode:

http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/podcasts/how-to-unlock-the-power-of-employee-advocacy

What drives the success of a sales team today? Knowing how to engage the digitally savvy modern buyer. And modern buyers need modern sellers.

While digital marketing is a mature ecosystem with proven processes and practices, digital selling is still evolving. Many sales organizations were reluctant to implement a digital sales transformation until COVID-19 came and forced everyone into remote selling.

Today, digital selling is more important than ever.

In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, I talked with Ed Terpening, Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group, who recently released the 2020 State of Digital Selling research report. This survey sought to understand the capabilities and key success factors enabling the digital transformation of selling among B2B businesses.

It was based on a survey of 506 sales professionals across North America, Europe, and China, and it offers a comprehensive view of how B2B sales teams are leveraging digital in their sales processes.

Listen to this episode to learn about the key findings of this report and how you can apply that knowledge to your organization.

Ed provided some great insights on the key findings from the report. Here they are:

The customer is the center of experience in any business. Marketing is the front end of customer experience. They then go through sales and then they go through service and customer success.

So it's really important to connect all of those dots between those organizations and think not just about digital marketing but also digital selling and how they work together and then customer success and service.

“All of the teams that touch the customer must have a consistent view,” Ed says. They have to understand what white papers the customers are reading from marketing, what service problems they're having, what kind of value propositions work in the sales process.”

Their research found that those selling teams that had a well aligned Marketing, Sales and Service teams always did better than others that didn't.

According to the report, a sales team with a strong digital culture will accomplish its objectives and perform better, as sellers trust the value of data and the tech tools they use.

“The technology industry really outperformed other industries when it came to digital selling,” Ed says, “because they have a digital culture, they're in this business and they're actually much more effective in this world and achieve higher results. Making that culture mindset shift is so important.”

The seller's mindset needs to really shift and think about engaging digitally through value.

Automation in sales has been rapidly growing in the past few years, but Altimeter Group’s research found that it underperforms when compared to other high-touch approaches, such as Account-Based Marketing and Account-Based Selling, which are more customer-centric.

Cross-functional teams that partner on key accounts are more effective in achieving revenue and customer success goals than sellers who rely on automation.

“This reinforces the fact that it's not just digital, it’s people teaming together and getting the highest results,” Ed says.

Listen to the episode to learn about the three models of selling they tested and which one performs better.

The fourth key finding was that top sales organizations prioritized customer satisfaction above metrics such as sales quota achievement, recognized and addressed the diversity of B2B buying committees and customized sales approaches by industry vertical.

“Successful companies are focused on the customer,” Ed says. “Digital sellers that were not as mature were focused on things like revenue growth, rather than leveraging existing customers and really optimizing the value from those customers. Instead, they tended to seek out new customers.”

Part of having the right focus is knowing that the modern B2B buyer expects sellers to understand their industry to the point that they become a trusted partner in their own success.

Digital marketing automation is a matu...

Social audio has become very popular recently with the advent of Clubhouse. According to Edison Research 15% of social media users 18+ say they have used Clubhouse.

Podcasting is a form of social audio. And, it continues to grow as a content channel. According to Edison Research’s Share of Ear study, which began tracking audio consumption in 2014, podcasting’s share of all audio listening is now 6% of consumption. This level marks an all-time high for podcasting, up from 2% in 2014.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have launched or plan to launch social audio functionalities.

I’ve had a love affair with podcasting for nearly 10 years. In fact, I listen to many podcasts. MME is my second podcast. My first podcast ran for 49 episodes. I co-hosted it with a buddy of mine. We bantered about digital marketing topics. The big difference between my first podcast and my second podcast is that I didn’t have a strategy with my first podcast. I had fun recording them. But, there was no strategy.

We just horsed around, recorded them and published them hoping something good would come of them. In truth, some good did come from the first podcast. But, we all know that hope is not a strategy, right?

So, what is my B2B podcast strategy?

My strategy is relationship building. I set out to build relationships with marketing executives working at B2B brands.

The method is simple: I provide a platform to feature marketing executives. I interview each guest and share their experience and wisdom with my audience.

This relationship-building strategy in podcasting has a business benefit.

First, it starts with a human connection. I genuinely try to connect with each of the guests I’ve had on the podcast. I don’t mean just connect on LinkedIn. I mean, I want to make an authentic human connection with each guest.

So, what’s the benefit of this relationship building?

Life is all about relationships. People do business with people they know, like and trust and that is relationship-based. Some have become friends. And, some of my guests have become clients of Vengreso.

And, in some cases I was able to offer something of value to my guest in the relationship whether it’s an introduction to someone or an endorsement or whatever.

The purpose of the MME podcast is for me to build relationships with marketing executives at B2B brands – it’s that simple. And, if you’re thinking this strategy is over simplified, you’re right because it doesn’t need to be more complicated than building authentic relationships with no more agenda than that.

However, there is something I do behind the scenes that works really well for this relationship-building strategy. Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn what it is.

This episode is the last one of the MME podcast.

The reason is that I’ve accepted a new opportunity at a different company and the Vengreso leadership team has decided to sunset the MME podcast.

Vengreso has a sales-centric podcast called the Modern Selling Podcast, hosted by Vengreso’s founder and CEO, MMJr. He’s published more than 175 episodes at the time of this recording. It’s a wildly popular podcast and you and or your sales leader at your company should definitely check it out.

Additionally, Vengreso has a live show called the Modern Sales Mastery show, which is broadcast live every Friday at 11:30 am ET.

I tell all about my journey at Vengreso and my next steps in a blog post here.

Finally, I want to thank you, for listening to the MME podcast. I TRULY hope I’ve delivered value to you through the modern marketers I’ve interviewed on this show. It has been a privilege.

B2B influencer marketing is not the same as it is in B2C, where you have celebrities like top athletes and Hollywood actors endorse a brand and post on Instagram about it. B2B marketing leaders can leverage industry influencers in their marketing efforts with a solid plan.

That is the topic of conversation with my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Amisha Gandhi, SVP of Marketing at Tipalti.

Amisha is a groundbreaking B2B innovator with deep marketing and communications expertise across multiple industries and geos. She was recognized in PR Week’s Women to Watch 2020, Top 50 Influence Marketer by Talking Influence and Top Digital Marketer on LinkedIn. Amisha is also an accomplished speaker at multiple industry conferences including Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, and many others.

Listen to our conversation to learn how to find and work with B2B influencers.

Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging internal influencers at your company or industry who are experts, analysts, bloggers or public speakers who have active networks of influence. They can influence their audiences to help you achieve your business goals.

“It's about people,” Amisha says, “it's about community. B2B influencers aren't celebrities, but they could be celebrities in the business world. They've written books, some of them are even academics.”

Start by asking yourself:

• Whose audience do you want to reach?
• Why do you want to reach them?
• What are you trying to convey and what is the outcome that you hope to achieve by working with influencers?

Amisha says there is definitely a process to identifying and selecting influencers. There are specific tools you can use, but you can start by using Google and search for the top influencers in your industry. Then use LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Clubhouse.

“It just depends who you're trying to reach and how you would like to relate to your audience.” Amisha says. “You have to find out where your audience is and who they're listening to and who they’re influenced by. Look at the conferences, third-party associations and other places where people are speaking, you'll start seeing some names popping up.”

Then you have to look deeper at the content these people are sharing and the level of engagement their content has.

Once you have a list of potential influencers, you should assess which ones can help you achieve your goals in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Amisha says you should look at influencer marketing as a holistic practice that you can apply across the entire customer journey. For example, can you get some good top funnel content? Can you create some demand? Can you create a community of advocates?

“Once you find folks that are really influencing your audience, reach out to a couple of influencers, start talking to them, see if they’d like to work with you. Say, ‘we're thinking about doing this upcoming campaign, what do you think?’ And have a conversation, because they may tell you, ‘I don't think that's going to work for my audience.’ That will help you frame up your campaign and make it even better than what it is.”

Start with top of the funnel activities, like a podcast, to create awareness with their audience. Then you can go into demand generation content like co-authored ebooks or a webinar series where people are willing to give you their information.

“There are some influencers who are very speaker heavy and they don't do long form content. They are thought leaders and they do more podcasts. That's why you have a group of influencers. You're going to have some people that are going to do top funnel and events and some people who are great speakers and great on video. There are some people who are great only in voice and folks that do longer form content.”

Over time some influencers can become advocates. This happens when they keep talking about your brand even when not taking part in your marketing campaign, because they consider your content to be of value to their audience.

Listen to episode 299 for specific ideas of what you can do when working with an influencer and some of the pillars and best practices for co-creating content and sponsored content.

Finally, Amisha reminds us that customers can be our best influencers, so we should take care of them.

An introduction to The Social Business Engine by Bernie Borges.