I think we’ll see more customer-centric CMOs. We’ll see more human brands, interacting with their customers in a more personal. Businesses will utilize Big Data Marketing and the power of all the digital information to create more personalized customer experiences.

Earlier this week I joined a group of super-smart and passionate folks on #ContentChat. Moderated by Jenise Fryatt (@JeniseFryatt), the Social Media Strategist for Smarter Shift.

The topic was the Future of Marketing and the main theme was that the future of marketing innovation will be all about the customer. Here is a recap of the main discussion but I would love to get your views…Please comment below and tell us what you think?

The #ContentChat Questions:

• What developments are having the most impact on the field of marketing today?
• Are marketers adjusting adequately to these changes?
• If trends continue, what will we be seeing more of in marketing?
• What practices are on their way out?
• Are there any potential disruptors to these trends that we should keep an eye on?
• How can marketers best prepare themselves for the future?

What developments are having the most impact on the field of marketing today?

This infographic was shared by Scott Lum (@ScottLum):

A1: The biggest changes are happening with our buyers. We know the digital story: social, mobile, local – all conspiring! #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:10 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A1: But it’s the convergence of all these, plus a new generation of buyer expectations that is breaking most marketing IMO #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:10 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A1: The world has changed dramatically in a few short years but most marketing is still stuck in the past #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:11 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

Are marketers adjusting adequately to these changes?

A2: Most marketing is literally inside-out. We go from products to pitches. Buyers are increasingly rejecting it. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:15 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A2: Biggest Mistake Marketers Make: our content and marketing strategy is all about us. Not about our customers / buyers. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:16 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A2: Marketers stuck in the past don’t understand marketing is now a 2-way convo and not a billboard. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:15 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@kleimkuehler

Katie Leimkuehler

@BrennerMichael Extremely true – new Forrester study shows “customer-obsessed” #content mktg = results: http://t.co/um4OWKzOfz #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:17 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@kgriwert

Katherine Griwert

If trends continue, what will we be seeing more of in marketing?

A3: #marketing future is personal. Companies are just a collection of people w/ emotions, great stories tell, need to connect #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:23 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A3: the future #Social Business gets out of the way and let’s employees, partners and customers connect. We need to enable. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:25 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

Balancing is key! MT @BrennerMichael A3: Future of marketing is also about data. So we have these 2 forces: humans & machines! #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:28 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@AmyL_Bishop

Amy Bishop

A3: Winners will be brands that can use data+insights to predict which types of stories on which channels allow them to connect #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:28 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

What practices are on their way out?

A4: What’s out? one-way, interruption, all-about-me, unsolicited, overly-promotional, spin, less than 1% response tactics #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:35 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A4 On the way out: Talking, not listening. Selling, not solving. Me, not us. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:39 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@SanneJolles

Sanne Jolles

Quick Recap: buyers have changed. most marketing stinks. we need to take advantage of data, storytelling to connect / humanize. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:39 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

Are there any potential disruptors to these trends that we should keep an eye on?

A5: Big disruptor: the combination of #Big Data and #InternetOfThings. Once everything is connected. The game changes big time. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:43 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A5: We’ll be talking more holistically about Relationship Marketing instead of Social/Digital/Mobile #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:44 pm via oneQubeReplyRetweetFavorite

@ScottLum

Scott Lum

A5: Imagine when every company can personalize customer experiences like Amazon? That’s disruption. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:45 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A5: In a way, content + empowered employees (stories) = the products of the future #socialbusiness #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:49 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

How can marketers best prepare themselves for the future?

A6: Rise of connected enterprise. We need to train all of our orgs to understand social & customer-centricity. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:54 pm via oneQubeReplyRetweetFavorite

@ScottLum

Scott Lum

A6: How to Prepare for the Future? First, we must become social storytellers. Then we need to empower others. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:55 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A6: We also cannot ignore the #Marketing #ROI question. Great content and empowered employees will generate a better return. #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:57 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A6: In effect, start by helping customers, then empower employees, and demonstrate how that helps the business grow #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:58 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@BrennerMichael

Michael Brenner

A6: The ROI is a Marketer’s Karma.. Can’t ignore it! #contentchat

May 20, 2013 3:58 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@NeerajT4

Neeraj Thakur

———-

Thanks to Jenise and all the folks who attended for the great discussion. Check out Jenise’s recap for the full transcript of the Content Chat and check out the next Content Chat (Mondays 3 PM EST).

Let me know what you think in the comments below. And please follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or Subscribe to the B2B Marketing Insider Blog for regular updates.

The post Marketing Innovation Content Chat: It’s All About The Customer appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

And that number is projected to rise to 50 Billion connected devices by 2020. This phenomenon is called the “internet of things,” “Machine-to-Machine” or  “M2M,” communications.

And it describes the world we live in now where our devices are connected to our homes, our cars, the products we buy and the things we do. This is not a question of if but when the future of marketing will be dramatically altered by all this “big data” and connectivity.

The question for me is how big will this impact be on our businesses? How will this impact our marketing strategies and plans? Will this technology and data avalanche finally force companies to put their customers first?

The Internet of Things and Marketing

I think the Internet of things will allow us all to become smarter marketers. I do not believe it will impact only consumer-based businesses as logistics, partner ecosystems, sales relationships – all can be improved with better insights and connectivity.

Ultimately, I believe the combination of the Internet of Things along with social, web and analytics “Big Data” will allow the truly social business of the future to gain feedback and insights into our buyers unlike never before.

This trend is changing more than just marketing, it has the opportunity to change the way we design and make products, to the way we market and sell them, all the way through to the way we interact with our customers.

I have already predicted that in the future social business, the marketing nerds will win. And my last post tried to steer us away from the discussion of tools and technology to understand that this Big Data Marketing strategy is all about the questions. So here I will provide a few resources I have found to help explain the “Internet of Things” and to provide ideas on the impact it will have on our future.

What is The Internet of Things?

According to McKinsey’s report on The Internet of Things “more objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks.”

Dan Rowinski from ReadWrite offers this great overview of the broadest definition of the Internet of Things: what it is, how it works and Dan discusses some of the potential impacts and challenges with all this data flying around.

The Internet of Things and Advertising

Harvard Business Review talks about how the internet of things will change the way brands advertise in ways that go well beyond your milk sending you a text message from your refrigerator that it is about to expire. It talks about how this connectivity will allow brands to crowd source their advertising creative, to gain real-time feedback on their products and to literally enable brands to have an ongoing dialogue with their customers – through their products.

The Internet of Things and Branding

Walker Smith argued that the internet of things will have a huge impact on branding when he said “Advertising and strategy depend as much on on-going feedback and experimentation as creative inspiration. Breakthroughs will still come from brainstorming, but more and more of the breakouts in performance will come from the incremental accumulation of test-versus-control insights.” We are already seeing this trend dramatically impact the way companies buy media with the evolutions in programmatic media buying.

The Future of Marketing and The Internet of Things

Finally this paper from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Center for Business Strategy claims that the Internet of Things is a “predictable surprise” that will dramatically change the way we conduct business. The author also suggests that this represents an opportunity for brand marketers to fix what is currently a broken marketing mechanism at most companies. He argues that machine-to-machine communications will allow the rest of us to personalize a customer experience the way Amazon does.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. And please follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or Subscribe to the B2B Marketing Insider Blog for regular updates.

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With more than 50 Million visitors per month and more than 100 million pageviews, slideshare is one of the top websites in the world and should be a key focus of any B2B content marketing program.

According to Comscore, Slideshare is used by business owners and business executives at a rate 5 times any other social network! The top categories in Slideshare are Business and Technology, followed by Education, Travel and Health.

In its own blog, slideshare released an infographic celebrating its 10 millionth uploaded presentation. They even curated a selection of resources to help you understand what to upload to slideshare.

Can marketers create effective slideshare decks?

I think we certainly get lots of practice. If you’re anything like me, you spend a good portion of your time as a marketer either creating slides yourself, helping others create slide decks, or listening to others present . . . (yes you guessed it) . . . slides.

So if we create slide decks as part of our job, why not turn some of those great ideas into something your customers can use? Think about the presentations you attend or create and consider how you can create external versions that answer key customer questions.

If your executives are presenting at conferences, ask them for the slide decks they are using along with a copy of their speaker notes. I have used this effectively for my own presentations as well as for some of our executives.

And if you are interested in additional resources to help you take advantage of the slideshare opportunity, check out some of these best-ever slideshare decks:  The Brand Gap, Death by Powerpoint, Mary Meeker’s internet trends report and a Steve Jobs tribute on presentation tips.

If you’re really motivated, you could buy the book,  ”The Marketer’s Guide To Slideshare by my friend Todd Wheatland (@ToddWheatland). It’s really very easy to read and presents a solid case for the Slideshare opportunity, especially for B2B Conetnt Marketers, and also presents a roadmap to converting leads.

For something a little easier to digest, Zack Tyler just uploaded these 10 Tips for Landing on the Front Page of SlideShare to help get you started on the path to success with Slideshare.

After clicking through some of these resources and slides, tell me: do you think Slideshare is the biggest opportunity in B2B Content Marketing? If not what is? I’d love to hear your thoughts . . .

The post Slideshare Is The Biggest Opportunity In B2B Content Marketing appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

The opportunity lies in defining how Big Data can help you better reach your customers with your messages in a way that gets them to act.

And this starts with simple questions like: how did your last campaign perform? Which keywords drive conversions? What websites did my prospects visit before they came to my sites? Which social conversations are spurring the actions that lead to deeper engagement with your brand?

Big Data for Marketing is easy to say but hard to do. So here I will look to a few of the “experts” on how to take advantage of all this data and turn it into real business insights that drive real business value.

Big Data Marketing Is Like Gold Mining

Dean Bedard likens Big Data marketing to gold mining when he says “it’s not enough to know where the precious stuff is. In order to reap the riches, first they have to get it out of the ground and turn it into something they can use.”

He outlines four steps to prioritizing the road to mining Big data insights including:

• Setting up a cross-functional marketing and IT team
• Prioritization of the marketing goals Big Data can help you accomplish
• Mapping the data sources to obtain reporting on key metrics supporting the main objectives (KPIs)
• Creating an “agile marketing” implementation roadmap which develops against the highest priority areas to generate the quickest value.

Big Data For Marketing Requires ‘Destination Thinking’

Matt Ariker from McKinsey had similar thoughts when he suggests marketers start their Big Data projects by thinking of the end goal and then working through all the details. This so-called “destination thinking” will help the strategic marketer avoid the traps of many Big Data Marketing projects where the deliverable becomes the end goal itself instead of the business value imagined at the outset.

The Era of Big Testing

Scott Brinker (@ChiefMarTec) suggested in my own future of marketing interview series that we need to encourage more marketing experimentation and “Big testing.”

He believes marketing needs to take advantage of both new technology and new talent to start creating hypotheses. Then to use Big Testing to prove them out – right or wrong.

For Scott, “the key to scientific marketing is actually the embrace of marketing experimentation as a driver of continuous innovation.”

Marketing Offices As Trading Room Floors

Brian Kardon (@BKardon), CMO of Lattice Engines imagines a day when marketing offices resemble trading desks with screens of real-time data streaming in and marketers yelling “buy, buy.”

But he laments, the effort by most marketing departments to develop real-time dashboards are “dwarfed by countless marketing Powerpoints and never-read marketing plans.” Brian understands the power of questions. In his own office he has dashboards that tell him:

• What was the unsubscribe rate from that new campaign?
• Which version of the email performed better – the one with the orange button or the blue button?
• What deals are stuck in the pipeline for more than 60 days?
• Which reps had the lowest win rates this year to date?
• Is Twitter sentiment for our brand trending up or down?
• What % of our customers at Dell are using Lattice right now? How does this compare to yesterday, last week or last month?
• How many unique visitors came to our site today?  Where did they come from?

Big Data Marketing Must Be Illustrative

According to Jon Baron (@TagManJon) the difference between Big Data and Big Data Marketing is found not in the analyses, but in the insights that turn into actions.

Jon define Big Data as “a simplistic term which refers to the automated accumulation and analysis of audience data on a large scale.”

But emphasizes that Big Data for marketing must be illustrative of the target audience the marketer is seeking to understand. It must help us to be more efficient or effective at reaching a target audience and getting them to act on the marketing message.

Big Data Marketng Means You Understand Your Customers’ Questions

Finally in my own Big Data Marketing rant I talk about the need to understand the questions that our customers are asking when they do a Google search, visit a website or participate in a social media conversation.

I believe every marketing plan should start with an analysis of your companies “share of conversations.” This shows you not only how well known your company is in your solution space, but also how likely your customers are to act on that awareness (RT, comment and ultimately convert to a lead and a customer).

My own 4-step plan to Big Data Marketing Insights:

• Define your customers’ top keywords and topics through search analysis. Starting with a simple look at Google Trends.
• Social analytics to show what % of social conversations include mention of your brand. This is where the data gets really big.
• Insights from your Website analytics will help you understand which keywords and referring domains drive conversions.
• Finally, combine these 3 massive big data sets to help to make decisions on marketing plans, tactics and budget.

So here is a curation of thoughts from folks I follow. But let me know what you think in the comments below.

And please follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or Subscribe to the B2B Marketing Insider Blog for regular updates.

The post Big Data For Marketing? It’s All About The Questions appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

In response to my post defining social selling, I realized that I needed to take a step back and define “What is a social business?”

There is a lot of talk about the social business and too often it involves a discussion of social tools and channels. In this article I’ll offer my own definition as well as plenty of links to other resources you can check out for more ideas on how to help your organization transform into a social business.

A social business is not a business that sends a lot of Tweets or has a ton of Facebook likes. A social business is one that realizes that it operates in a more transparent and social world. And so it makes customers and employees equally as important as its shareholders and profits.

What is a Social Business?

A social business places equal value on the needs of its customers, employees, partners and shareholders.

This is not all that different from the concept behind one of the first posts I wrote 3 years ago this month. In that post, I talked about a book called “The Service Profit Chain” that inspired a lot of my early professional thoughts on marketing strategy.

The basic theory presented in the book was that happier employees generate more customers who create more profit for the business. Makes sense, right? Yet in the race to quarterly profits, many businesses still struggle with the concept.

More recently I talked about the many reasons why social business is important and I presented my own roadmap to become a social business including the need to define a social strategy that empowers social employees, activates effective content strategy and addresses the issue of culture.

Peter Kim from the Dachis Group offers his own definition of the Social Business as well as a Social Business Design. He identifies “culture, connections, participation and analytics” as the main drivers of an effective social business.

Charlene Li from Altimeter Group recently presented on the Evolution of Social Business and talked about the 6 stages of transformation: “Planning, Presence, Engagement, Formalized, Strategic, and Converged.” They surveyed a large swath of companies and found a small minority (28%) have achieved any level of social business maturity.

And then there’s my friend Jeremiah Owyang who not only nailed how to bring content strategy into the social business but also defined the next phase of social business as “the collaborative economy” which he defines as “where brands will rent, lend, provide subscriptions to products and services to customers, or even further, allow customers to lend, trade, or gift branded products or services to each other.”

Edelman’s Michael Brito writes that “social business is not about communication. It’s not about technology or Enterprise 2.0. It’s about change management. I believe this to my core.” And I think he’s absolutely right.

But what is the role of the Marketing leader in this emerging social business and collaborative economy?

In my view, marketing is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. As more employees become socially active brand ambassadors and build their personal brand, marketing can act as the shepherd guiding the flock with good old fashioned marketing communications techniques that put the customer first, that are aligned to the business strategy and that deliver business outcomes.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. And please follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or Subscribe to the B2B Marketing Insider Blog for regular updates.

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Social selling is not just about starting the sales process with social tools like Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter. Social selling is about sales people building a strong personal brand. It is about understanding the role of content and how content can be used to tell a powerful and emotional story. And it is about growing your social connections.

I even predicted that social, content and personal branding would drive the future of business in 2013.

What is Social Selling?

To me, social selling is simply the process of helping social buyers become customers. We are still trying to get our potential customers to know, like and trust us. In order to do this, sales people need to learn new ways to reach prospects through their own social networks, to create and share valuable content and ultimately, to grow their personal brand.

Social Selling is an extension of the Social Business imperative. Social Businesses are transforming their view of the world and their entire operation from an inward focus to a customer focus. Empathy is the key ingredient to the success of business in this increasingly social world.

What is Personal Branding?

To get the best answer, I turned to personal branding expert Dan Schawbel. Dan defines personal branding as:

Those characteristics that make you unique and how you communicate that to the world. The objective of personal branding is  professional success and is directly linked to the success of the company we serve.

Personal branding means you are not wasting your time because you are on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin during company time. It means that your time spent on social networks is helping you to find and nurture your next customers and grow the business.

Social + Content = Personal Branding Success

To be successful in social selling, sales people need to build a strong personal brand. This starts with putting a stop to the overly-promotional content marketing echo chamber. It means our sales people start to grow strong social connections and become effective storytellers. It means they start to pay attention to the factors that help them raise their social influence on platforms like Klout.

5 Steps To Social Selling Success

Social selling success is comprised of both making new connections and sharing great content. You start by identifying your target audience and connecting with their network of influencers. With content, you seek to surround your target audience and those who influence them with content they want to consume.

Social selling success does not need to take hours a day. You can find time for social media by cutting out activities that do not grow help you help your social network. Recently I was asked by one of our sales leaders to define a “day in the life” of a successful social sales person. Here’s my 5 steps to social selling success:

The post Social Selling: A Day In The Life of A Social Sales Person appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

This was one of the main points on “the art of storytelling” presented by Julie Roehm, Chief Storyteller at SAP at the Inbound Marketing Summit on April 3, 2013.

Julie showed many visual and multimedia examples of how storytelling has been around for as long as humans have walked the earth.

The first TV ad was run by Bulova in 1941. The first political TV spot was run by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Apple’s “1984” helped propel Superbowl advertising to the heights we see today. And Yahoo started the shift to online media when it ran the first banner ad in 1994.

Across the ages, brands have been using the art of storytelling to reach their audience. According to Julie, “Today with digital media and emerging technologies, the challenges, and the opportunities are boundless.”

But, she continued “to break through the clutter, meaningful, one to one conversations with our customer is now more important than ever.”

Bottom line: we need to tell more human stories. We need to touch our audience in a personal way. And we need to tell stories that people want to hear.

One great example Julie showed included one of my favorite commercials for Google Chrome.

She then showed one example of how SAP is telling more human stories through the voice of our customers – showing how we help our customers to help their customers and improve lives.

To read more about Julie’s presentation, check out this summary and enjoy the full presentation below.

You can follow Julie on twitter @jaroehm.

SAP’s Chief Storyteller, Julie Roehm on “The Art of Storytelling.”

The post The Art of Storytelling [Video] appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

Previous interviews covered Social Business, Creativity, Big Data, Customer Experience, Thought Leadership, Content Culture, the Future of Search, the Science of Marketing, Content Brands and much more.

Today’s post comes from Velocidi CMO Margaret Molloy (@MargaretMolloy) and includes her coverage of the discussions at the recent CMO Club Summit.

With more than 100 CMOs in attendance, the agenda was packed with fantastic panels and superb peer-to-peer conversation. Though the lessons from the event were numerous, I believe that the key insights I gleaned were that there are five major mindset shifts that CMOs need to make today, or risk missing opportunities to deliver tangible impact.

1. CMOs must walk in customers’ shoes

Top performing CMOs consistently recognize that customer-centricity is more than a buzz word—they understand that having a first-hand knowledge of the end-to-end customer experience is critical. Katrina Klier (@KatrinaKlier) from Accenture, put it plainly: “Be a user, trier, tester. Don’t rely on the experience of others, get your hands dirty.” The benefits of this field-based approach are manifold. As Sandra Zoratti (@sandraz) from Ricoh pointed out: “The best way to give an idea a sense of urgency is to invoke the voice of the customer.”

As it relates to getting closer to customers, it was clear that big data was top of mind as a means to help marketers “walk in customers’ shoes” at scale. But while big data may serve as a new route to customer insight and behavior, it hasn’t yet fully lived up to that promise. Perhaps data alone is not the answer—intuition and action are required. Jonathan Becher (@jbecher), SAP, spelled it out, “It’s about big decisions, not big data.” I believe CMOs must walk in customers’ shoes (often), ask the right questions, and be guided by experience to deliver the right outcomes for their businesses, and their clients.

2. Firms need to differentiate through brand experience

This was a recurring theme throughout the conference. Cammie Dunaway (@cwd8) of Kidmania took it a step further by linking customer understanding to engagement: “True engagement is about changing customer behavior.” Mary Ann Fitzmaurice of American Express OPEN shared the impact of the Small Business Saturday initiative, a program designed to help small businesses: “Our customers love us because they know we have their backs.”

In addition, Jonathan Becher of SAP underlined the magnitude of this desired shift: “There are now more mobile phones in the world than people.” When we look at mobile and social together, it’s clear we are now in an “always-on” era. Becher emphasized the urgency of the situation: “Business will need to run in real time to facilitate personalized engagement with customers.”

Dunaway also offered a powerful analogy to illustrate the contrast between a customer and an advocate relationship to a brand: “The difference between customers and advocates is like the distinction between tourists and citizens in a country.”

In my view, to motivate customers to that level of devotion requires CMOs to deliver great experience at every customer touchpoint.

3. The CMO role is a great gig, but it requires major skills

The CMOs in attendance engaged in candid discussion on skills and careers. Tom Seclow (@SpencerStuView) of Spencer Stuart presented a case study with the message that CMOs’ tenure continues to climb as they become more entrenched in their roles and expand their influence across their organizations. However, he warned that: “Short-term thinking and focus on quarterly earnings is a big challenge.” Douwe Bergsma (@douwebergsma) of Georgia-Pacific laid out three critical requirements for the role: “CMOs need to be 1) scientists 2) storytellers and 3) army generals.” And if that wasn’t enough ground to cover, Maryam Banikarim (@maryamb) of Gannett told CMOs that they need to “have creative agility, be connectors, [and] use interpersonal skills.”

Despite the heavy responsibility, the mood about the CMO role was upbeat. Mark Wilson of Avaya captured the sentiment when he contended that: “There has never been a better time to be a marketer.” Terri Funk Graham, Chairman of The CMO Club Presidents Circle (formerly of Jack in the Box), made an assessment that resonated with me in particular: “The most important skill of a great CMO is courage.”

I’d like to add curiosity. Without curiosity you don’t ask the great questions that will inform the intuition and insight to fuel that courage—as well as all the other necessary skills listed above.

4. Marketing teams need to behave more like smart startups

The innovation imperative surfaced many times during the Summit. SAP’s Becher hammered home the importance of culture: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so fix your culture to make your strategy work.” Kidmania’s Cammie Dunaway also offered pragmatic analysis: “Changing organizational behavior, is as much about muscle memory as resistance.” Stephanie Anderson of Time Warner Cable, reinforced that point: “We need to continually train and educate internally.”

Nancy Smith of iRobot (@NancyDSmith) also offered practical tips based on iRobot’s rule: “Leave at least 5 percent of your budget for crazy stuff (aka experiments). Why not give everyone on your team an opportunity to do a cool project, to be a part-time intern?” On organization, Denise Incandela of Saks Fifth Avenue advised: “Create an environment that rewards innovation and rapid testing. Don’t say yes to every new thing, focus and do what your firm can do well. Think scalable programs.”

To me, this body of advice can be summed up in a simple idea: marketing departments need to behave more like high-performing startups. CMOs must embrace experimentation, fail fast, get close to the customer, reduce internal approval cycles, and focus on fewer, more actionable metrics.

5. The B2B versus B2C dichotomy is becoming irrelevant

CMOs drawing inspiration from an artist who’s embraced change.
(L-R) Katrina Klier, Stephanie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper and Margaret Molloy.

We had a vigorous debate over dinner about whether the B2B/B2C divide was still meaningful. Jonathan Becher of SAP nailed it with his pithy insight: “Glass buildings don’t buy software, people do.” Although there are differences in tactics in B2B versus B2C models, the need to engage buyers with relevant content, in their vernacular, and in a timely manner is common to both B2B and B2C. David Newberry (davidnewbs">@davidnewbs) of Pitney Bowes reasoned that: “The widespread availability of information means that all buyers are more informed than ever before.”

This erosion of asymmetry of information, the consumerization of IT, and the lower entry-point pricing of many products (e.g., freemium models) is compounding the need to think of all buyers as people—whether they are acting in a B2B or B2C capacity. Becher captured the shift well: “Marketing’s job is not to help sales people sell, it’s to help buyers buy.”

I left the Summit inspired, eager for the next opportunity to engage with colleagues, and in awe of the opportunity that we as CMOs have to drive real value for our businesses, and most importantly, our clients.

Did you attend Summit? What mindset shifts do you believe CMOs most urgently take?

For additional perspectives on the Summit, I encourage you to read these great posts by fellow Summit Bloggers Drew Neisser and Lana McGilvray.

Margaret Molloy is CMO at Velocidi, a full-service digital marketing agency. (margaret.molloy@velocidi.com). Follow her on Twitter (@MargaretMolloy) or connect on LinkedIn for additional insights from her CMO conversations.

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Those are the words SAP Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Becher (@jbecher) used to open his keynote presentation to the CMO Club during their recent summit meeting in New York City on April 11-12. The event included more than 100 Chief Marketing Officers from some of the world’s leading brands.

In a world of accelerated change, Jonathan highlighted the trends that are causing marketers to rethink the future and make fundamental transformations to their business. He urges CMOs to embrace the changes, which have led to an unprecedented empowerment of people: “the convergence of trends is creating an opportunity for us to rethink the future and embrace change. We are at an inflection point.”

The three types of changes that are converging to create the most profound and rapid changes in our history:

• First, an emerging middle class across geographies will create a new segment of customers that represent extensive growth opportunities for businesses. At the same time, pressure increases on natural resources and social services. Consequently, every aspect of your business strategy and execution – manufacturing, supply chains, and employee base – can become stretched and overloaded.
  Implication: Businesses will need to find a way to manage existing and shared resources better.

• Second, more than one billion people are engaged in social networks today. By 2013, more than 15 billion devices will be capable of connecting to the Internet, from cars, to washing machines, to the clothes we wear. Both factors are resulting in an explosion in the volume of data – creating a phenomenon called Big Data. As a result, more data has been created in the last five years than in the entire history of mankind. Unlocking the secrets inside this data presents breakthrough opportunities for businesses.
  Implication: Businesses will need to find a way to manage Big Data and find ways to use it to their advantage.

• Third, the way the information is created and consuming has changed. There are now more mobile phones in the world than people. Combined with social and device connectivity, we are now in an “always-on” era.
  Implication: Business will need to run in real time to facilitate personalized engagement with customers.

The collective result of these trends is the unprecedented empowerment of people – as consumers, as employees, as citizens, and as societies. Rethinking the future implies making fundamental transformations to your business. This transformation involves getting closer to your customers on a personalized engagement basis – a “segment of one” with more insights, delivering to their needs with speed (in real time), while still maintaining the efficiencies of managing operations and resources better.

Check out the slides below. Watch the SAP Run Like Never Before video Jonathan showed the audience. And follow Jonathan on Twitter @jbecher.

The post The Future of Marketing [Slides] – From SAP CMO Jonathan Becher appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.

I have been asked by the good folks behind the B2B Content 2 Conversion Conference to deliver my view on how to build a content marketing hub. Enclosed here you will find my slides and main speaker notes. Once the video is ready, I will post that too.

Preparing To Build Your Content Hub

Before you can begin building your content marketing destination, you need to understand (and be able to articulate) that your role as a B2B Marketer is not to explain to the world what it is that you sell. But to show the world how what you sell helps your buyers. That’s right, B2B Marketing is not about promotion. It is about telling stories. Stories from your customer’s point of view on how what you sell has helped them.

In my presentation I present a brief history of how the world has changed for marketers. And yet, stories remain a critical component of marketing. Stories present an opportunity for B2B Marketers to not just meet the needs of our buyers, but to delight them as we enable them during the buying journey.

The Content Hub Business Case

The next step is to present your business case. To build a content marketing hub, you need to show how your current content marketing efforts fail to meet the needs of your buyers. A couple of ideas:

• Search metrics: show how your business is missing out on vital conversations happening in the earliest stages of the buying process.
• Web analytics: show how most visitors to your site already know who you are.
• Content analytics: show how the content you create is mostly late stage or isn’t being downloaded by anyone. Calculate the costs of this waste.

Once you’ve presented your business case and gained the approval to move forward, you can take the following steps to build your content hub.

8 Steps to Build A Content Hub That Converts

1. Design: Look at existing market examples to help you design the site. Weigh the pros and cons of building within your existing domain or creating a new one
2. Branding: Define how subtle or prominent the branding will be on the site
3. Keywords: Conduct a ton of keyword research to determine the topics your audience is interested in
4. Content Strategy: Define the content strategy and sources of your content: how much will you create, curate or syndicate the content that meets your buyers’ needs
5. Conversion: define the processes that will pull your visitors into an active relationship that converts down the sales funnel. Focus on creating value for the user and test different approaches.
6. Editorial: Create an editorial board including all your brands’ content resources
7. Goals: Articulate your goals and report on them consistently
8. Test and Learn: dream up new ideas to test, analyze the results, learn and repeat.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. And please follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or Subscribe to the B2B Marketing Insider Blog for regular updates.

The post 8 Steps To Build A Content Hub That Converts [Slides] appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.