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- [00:01]
Ebony Ryan
99%, which is basically everyone of marketers say that their brand strategy is influential to their demand gen programs. So this is all about connecting brand and demand. And honestly I was a little shocked by this because brand and demand are generally pretty siloed parts of a marketing department. So to hear that 99% of the marketers who responded said that they are connected, that they are influenced by each other, was actually kind of shocking to me.
- [00:36]
Claudia Tirico
The B2B Marketing Exchange brings together B2B marketing and sales practitioners from across the country to get the latest tools and tips they need to succeed.
- [00:45]
Kelly Lindenow
Now we're bringing the insights from the stage to your ears.
- [00:48]
Claudia Tirico
I'm Claudia Tirico. And I'm Kelly Lindenow and this is the B2B Marketing Exchange podcast. Hello everyone and welcome Back to the B2BMX podcast. It's a bit of a sad day for us today as it is the finale episode of our milestone 10th season. I hope you all enjoyed listening over the past few months and keeping your fingers on the pulse of the latest trends and hot topics in B2B marketing. We are ending the season with a bang today. I've actually been saving this B2BMX session replay for the finale because I think it really ties a nice bow on everything we've learned this season and it'll leave you with some key insights to finish out the year strong. This session features Tamara Burr and Jen Holmes of GP as well as Ebony Ryan of Digital Zone who sat down to discuss the 2024 state of demand Gen. This panel of experts will uncover key insights from a recent Digital Zone survey about emerging industry trends and important benchmarks for 2024. You can tune in now to hear thought provoking answers to questions such as what demand gen strategies are actually working? How are marketers interacting with third party vendors? How are they using data to enhance demand gen? And how are marketers measuring and evaluating ROI of demand gen tactics? It's all going down in 3, 2, 1.
- [02:14]
Ebony Ryan
So we're here to talk 2024 state of demand Gen. Thank you for joining. And I am joined by these lovely humans on the right here to talk about all things demand gen. I'll do a little bit of intro so get us started and then we're going to dive in because we have a lot to talk through. Tamara Burr is the Senior Director of Global Growth Marketing at gp. She brings expertise in optimization and personalization and works to keep her finger on the pulse of ever evolving B2B buying behaviors. Jen Holmes is here with us, the Director of Demand gen at gp. Jen helped build the demand gen team at GP from the ground up. She knows how to stretch a dollar and hold vendors accountable for roi. And then we have Matthew Davidson who is the growth Marketing manager of Content syndication at Indeed. Matthew is focused specifically on content syndication channels and is passionate about data driven strategies. So thank you guys all for joining us today in this conversation. So I'll introduce myself. I'm Ebony Ryan. I lead the marketing team at DigitalZone. DigitalZone is a lead gen company that is really focused on disrupting the norm in the industry. We're doing this through leading with transparency and reliability and a really cool booth. So please check us out at Booth 301. I am not going to pitch you. That is not the purpose of this particular session. It's more so to provoke a meaningful conversation about what's going on in the industry and hopefully you guys can see yourselves in the conversation that we're going to have today. These are marketers from the industry who are actively on the field working and all the things that you probably are too. So we're going to go through some of the research that we've went through that we just conducted and just have a conversation marketer to marketer, if you will. Okay, so before we get into the research, I just want to do a quick recap. One minute. Hopefully on 2023 I have some of these news articles here and I think you guys can remember in November, right before we enter 2023, the mic was dropped by ChatGPT. It largely dominated the conversation last year and entered in a new conversation of all things AI that was pretty dominating last year and continues to do so this year. The other thing is there was whispers, if you can remember the first half of the year, whispers of recession. And then also in the industry we saw sweeping layoffs in tech and all things B2B. Elon bought Twitter. It turned into X. That was interesting and continues to be very interesting. Threads was a thing for a minute and I don't know where it is now. Streaming services cracked down on password control, which was kind of rude, but we'll continue to see how that progresses in the years to come. And then lots of privacy and compliance lawsuits across tech, which I think is going to become a new norm as we enter into the privacy future. I'll just go on the record, personally think that AI is going to help our ever complex jobs get a little bit easier. But we'll so we'll see how that also shakes out. We'll talk a little bit about that later. But this is just a quick recap of 2023 before we dive into the research. Hopefully most of you have at least gotten in your hands our Dimensions of Demand Gen report. We surveyed 1500 marketers globally and asked them a bunch of different questions about Demand gen and B2B marketing just to kind of understand what is going on, what are people experiencing and what, what is their strategies looking like for 2024? A third came from us, a third from EMEA and a third from apac. So we felt like we had a pretty good response to our survey and a really good idea of what's going on these days. I'm not going to read everything that's on the screen. We have four primary takeaways from our research. Please take a look, dive in. We're going to talk about three of the four. When we were prepping for this, my one and only concern is just how chatty these humans. So I'm going to try very hard to keep us on time because we just have so much to say about a lot of these topics. So let's get started. The first conversation, 99%, which is basically everyone of marketers say that their brand strategy is influential to their demand gen programs. So this is all about connecting brand and demand. And honestly I was a little shocked by this because brand and demand are generally pretty siloed parts of a marketing department. So to hear that 99% of the marketers who responded said that they are connected, that they are influenced by each other was actually kind of shocking to me. So my first question to my dear friend Tamara, how do you at GP delineate brand and demand?
- [07:26]
Tamara Burr
Yes. So at gp, the brand team owns search engine optimization and the website and I'm sure all of my demand gen friends probably feel a certain type of way about that. But the thought behind that shift and actually the demand gen team did at one point manage those two areas, but the thought around the shift was that the brand team is closest to our positioning and our, and our, our messaging. So obviously those two, those two areas are very critical to funnel performance. So we do work very closely together to make sure that we are very, very aligned on goals and our strategy.
- [08:12]
Ebony Ryan
And then Matt.
- [08:14]
Matthew Davidson
Yeah, very similarly, you know, at indeed we do have pretty siloed brand and demand organizations, but the delineation really stops there because once you start looking at full funnel marketing and demand and attribution, you start to see how those two overlap quite a bit. You know, I work in the content syndication space and a lot of what I do is top of funnel. That could be considered brand marketing, even though I'm in a demand gen function. So it really shouldn't be siloed as much as it is because through the full funnel, we're looking at top of funnel content and awareness stages as part of the demand gen function anyway. So any overlap that we can have and communication can really only increase our overall reach and ultimately comes down to better roi.
- [09:11]
Ebony Ryan
Okay, Jen, how are you incorporating brand into your demand gen strategy?
- [09:17]
Kelly Lindenow
Yeah, so kind of, as Tamara touched on, our brand team owns a lot of the stuff that we need to use for our jobs every day. So we get our creative from them, we get our content, our messaging from them. So they're really giving us everything we need to do our jobs in demand gen. So really we're very close with them and it's really nice because we give them feedback on, you know, they've given us all the assets, we tell them what's working in the market, what our prospects, what our customers are responding to, and then they can go and improve their outputs. So we're actually not siloed at all. And it's just really nice to have, you know, them invested in what they're doing, which is on a lot of teams, demand gen. But for us it's brand, so we're very close.
- [10:03]
Ebony Ryan
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I know that a strong brand just makes it easier for demand gen. Right. Like it makes your demand gen efforts more effective when you have a notable brand, which is oftentimes what makes it so difficult for small to medium sized businesses. Right. To kind of go up against the big guys who have that brand power. And so oftentimes I feel that the little guys have to rely more on demand to kind of push forward that brand messaging when it comes to top of funnel content syndication, but also just across the board, that demand ends up having to be a little bit stronger, a little bit more of the spotlight of the marketing team. So I definitely see how both have to work together. 99% say so. Okay. When it comes to reducing uncertainty, 39% of marketers expressed a concern about lack of buyer journey insights. I think that buyer journey insights are critical. If we know how to get them from point A to point B, that kind of makes our jobs a lot easier. But we've also found that this is really hard to get to, especially as data continues to be pretty siloed across marketing organizations. So in talking about this, really question for all here, however we want to pass the mic is what data are you using to inform your demand gen strategy?
- [11:22]
Tamara Burr
Yes, so we use demographic and firmographic data to really understand our audience and inform our capture, prioritization, nurture, retention, growth strategies. So what it really does is help us, like I said, really understand our audiences, which audiences are successfully engaging with our programs, and also gives us an idea of where to focus our dollars and our resources and also who to create content for.
- [11:58]
Kelly Lindenow
Yeah, I would say a lot of the data that we use, we rely on the data that's in our marketing automation platform. So lead scoring is a big thing for us, which we're always looking at. Reevaluating, determining what actions or characteristics made someone move farther down the marketing funnel and adjusting our lead scoring accordingly. We're also using demographics, of course, to make sure we're personalizing our campaigns as well as, let's see, content. What people are using for content will determine what content we want to give them next that we think will be helpful based on what they've been consuming.
- [12:39]
Matthew Davidson
In addition to just typical lead scoring, I like to implement a demographic scoring approach to have levels of filters that suggest a better audience. You know, that's very unique to each organization. But it helps me to signify a good, better, best in demographics as well as traditional behavioral lead scoring metrics.
- [13:03]
Ebony Ryan
Okay, and Tamara, where does buyer journey data fit into the mix? Into the data mix?
- [13:10]
Tamara Burr
I mean, it's right in there, right? It's right in there. But we use it to understand, again, prospect and customer behavior and where they are at each stage. And what that allows us to do is tailor our content and our programs to make sure that we are matching what is needed at that stage. So I'd. I definitely think it's critical and I know it's not perfect in some stages. For example, the really top of funnel awareness where we're leveraging third party intent and hoping that they are actually in market. But it is not perfect. But it's helpful in giving us an idea of where we should focus, how we should personalize in order to increase the opportunity of engagement and conversion.
- [13:58]
Ebony Ryan
Okay, can I go to the next slide here? Another question about reducing uncertainty. And I think you guys all knew this. The foreshadowing was there that we have a question about AI. This was another piece of data from our research that I found a little bit surprising. And it is 9 in 10, 90% of marketers say that their organization is using AI to create personalized content for their target audiences. Considering ChatGPT kind of broke the Internet in November of 2020, two, like, our ability as marketers to adopt AI this quickly was shocking. Like almost unbelievably shocking. But I want to have a couple questions for you guys. Tamara, how are you incorporating AI into demand gen this year?
- [14:56]
Tamara Burr
Yes. So we use it for lead and account prioritization and it's a great way to scale those efforts. We have a lot of leads coming in that we pass over to our business development team. It also helps increase efficiency. I know that for our team we are focused on finding ways to leverage AI more. My motto for the last two years has been automate that stuff. It's actually another four letter word, but I'm not going to say it here. So I think there's always opportunities to find to make our jobs easier and to allow us to focus on what matters, which is the customer.
- [15:35]
Ebony Ryan
And Matt at indeed. How are you guys leveraging AI testing?
- [15:39]
Matthew Davidson
In a word, AI has given us the capability to AB test quicker than ever before. Right. The ability to change, you know, copies and images and headings and emails and everything can be done so quickly and with a quick turnaround time with AI that it allows for deeper and more progressive testing to occur than ever before. With, of course, the human oversight that AI can sometimes lack in its early stages right now. But with that, with that human to human connection, AI can really improve testing and opening new channels and new avenues for revenue streams.
- [16:21]
Ebony Ryan
Okay, Jen, how does this statistic, this 9 in 10 situation actually marry up with what you're experiencing?
- [16:30]
Kelly Lindenow
So I definitely think adoption is increasing, I will say that. So maybe I think there's a different degree of incorporating AI and I think a lot of the tools that we're using every single day as marketers, they're all getting AI as part of it. So we're seeing that, particularly our email system and our chatbot, they have AI capabilities now and we're experimenting with how we can adopt that. You know, it's definitely not a fully baked plan, but we're looking at it because as we know, AI is the way of the future. And one way I think everyone can use AI without any tools with AI is just, you know, marketing teams are very lean these days and it's almost like another brain for you to have at your side. So if you need to get started on something, I know I have a hard time like getting started. So you use AI to start and then of course you need the human intervention to kind of make it sound like you would sound like your brand would sound. But I think that's a good way for Everyone to use AI as just a starting point because we all have so much to do with fewer resources and fewer team members and you can just have AI be another little team member for us.
- [17:44]
Ebony Ryan
Yeah, that's a really good point. There's a lot of brainstorming to be had within any AI platform. I think one of the things that we had had a conversation about was just how prevalent AI is already in the tech. Let's talk about even before ChatGPT, whether that AI looks like machine learning or some other sort of algorithm that's embedded in the tech. This has kind of been prevalent for a while. So you might be able to convince me 9 and 10, if we're talking about all of the ways that AI, machine learning, all of that is already integrated in the things that we put fingers on keyboards on every day. But to see it kind of what it's going to do in the future I think is going to be really interesting to watch. Next question. If the pandemic and continuous conversations about recession taught us anything, it is that measuring ROI is it okay? It is all that matters. So what strategies are you using to optimize roi? And this is everyone. Whoever wants to go first, I'll start.
- [18:49]
Matthew Davidson
I remember when I first saw this data point, I remember thinking increasing number of channels and reducing number of channels are both among the top options for optimizing roi. And I thought, why is that? It's because for each organization it's different. Perhaps scaling down is better, perhaps scaling up is better. It's very much dependent on variables that are undefinable by a panel or by one specific instance. But for us personally, we are always looking to expand our reach with a big brand like indeed to expand the number of channels to test new things. That's a big one for us. But I did think that was kind of interesting.
- [19:40]
Kelly Lindenow
Yeah, I'll say. Updating activecampaigns has been big for us. We've done a ton of demand gen programs over the years and we've gotten a lot of leads. And it costs obviously more to acquire new leads versus to nurture and make sure you're really taking the best care you can of your existing leads. So we are focused on that. And another thing I would say is really making sure that you have a great relationship with your demand gen vendors. I know we're constantly in communication with our vendors. We're talking about lead quality, we're talking about optimization, and all of that matters in making the, you know, the investment that we do have. Go as far as it possibly can go. And you know, we've built these great relationships over the years and that really does matter. And our vendors that, you know, we're currently using today care about our success as much as we do and that, you know, inevitably will make a better return on investment.
- [20:38]
Tamara Burr
Yes. So mine is different from all of those. It's rebalancing, retention and acquisition. And over the last year I took on the lifecycle marketing team at GP and it was a big shift, but also I think it was a very eye opening experience working through the funnel because we all love a new shiny deal, but in reality it costs more to acquire new customers than it does to retain the existing customers. So we are really looking at building out the customer life cycle beyond acquisition. We've gotten good at the touch points in the acquisition area, but now we're shifting over to retention and loyalty and looking at how do we re engage lapsed customers because at the end of the day that's going to make our dollars go much, much farther and we know that we need customers to survive.
- [21:42]
Ebony Ryan
Yeah, that's a hard sell though, at the top. It's a hard sell at the top for the reasons that you said, which is that the new deal, the new logo is so bright and shiny that it can be so difficult to take the focus off of that and put it towards the clients that generally make up the majority of your revenue year over year. So it's. Yeah, I definitely agree, but that's a tough one to say.
- [22:06]
Tamara Burr
Yes, yes, it is. And I think what's really great is that our executive team understands this and they are pushing it as well. So for example, we have dollars for acquisition. They're asking us, okay, what about the dollars for customer? And you know, we love that pressure one because it makes sure that we're all aligned, but it helps us know that we will be good with doing that and there won't be any shouts from the top.
- [22:32]
Ebony Ryan
Yes, it's helpful to have a helpful C suite. Okay, this is the last question. I actually idea what the time is because our clock never started, but I'm hoping that we're on time. All right, so 2023 was the year of AI. That feels pretty accurate from most of our perspectives. 2024. We're going to go around the horn here. 2024 will be the year of what? Fill in the blank.
- [23:00]
Tamara Burr
Rapid fire efficiency.
- [23:02]
Ebony Ryan
Oh, I like it.
- [23:06]
Kelly Lindenow
Optimization.
- [23:08]
Matthew Davidson
I thought long and hard about this one, but AI 2.0.
- [23:14]
Ebony Ryan
Yeah, yeah, I actually kind of agree. I think all of those kind of talk speak to AI 2.0 though, in a lot of ways, because I think we were just kind of scratching the surface. 2023, we're all kind of just getting our feet wet with AI and playing around with ChatGPT and MidJourney and all of the really fun tools. And I'm hopeful that in 2024 we'll get that efficiency and optimization in AI 2.0. Yes, better tools. We'll all figure out a little bit more about all things AI. Okay, that's all we have for you guys today. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Thank you to our speakers. Please check out more of the report, swing by the booth. We'll be around for a while to answer some questions. But thanks so much guys for joining us.
- [24:06]
Claudia Tirico
All right, folks, that is a wrap on our esteemed panel replay from Scottsdale. I really hope you all have a better understanding of the modern B2B marketer and the state of the demand gen industry as a whole. With that said, season 10 has reached the finish line. Thank you all so much for tuning in today and every week. We're so grateful for your support. And now it's time for us and me specifically to get the finishing touches done and dusted for the upcoming B2B Marketing Exchange east event. I'm flying out to Georgia in just a few days and I really hope to see some of you there. Of course, it is not too late to register, so be sure to check the show notes for an exclusive listener discount. We'll be back with season 11 before you know it, so be sure to subscribe on your podcast player of choice so you don't miss that first episode drop. Until then, everyone take care and thanks again for listening.