Marketing Spark (The B2B SaaS Marketing Podcast)

While marketers mostly focus their efforts on attracting prospects, it's also crucial to connect with customers (aka the people paying for your product!). In this episode, Amrita Gurney, VP, Marketing & Community with CrowdRiff, talks about the company has heavily focused on engaging and nurturing its customers over the past six months. Amrita has great insight on best practices to develop a vibrant and active community, as well as thoughts on whether to use a platform.

As more B2B companies embrace content marketing, here's the question: what's more important: quality or quantity content. In other words: is less more or is more more? Dan Sanchez firmly falls into the quantity content camp. He believes that marketing success is driven by brands willing to create lots of content as way to perfect production. Dan also talked about the importance of brand positioning as a pillar for marketing success, and how podcasts are one of the best ways to connect with prospects.

Creating valuable,and interesting content is a huge challenge for B2B companies. There is so much competition that standing out is really difficult. Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO with Casted, says that podcasts are the way that B2B companies can create content that resonates. Podcasts offer companies the ability to connect with experts (customers, employees, analysts, media, investors) to have conversations that deliver amazing insight and information.  These conversations can, of course, be turned into podcasts. But, as important, they offer great content for blog posts, eBooks, social media, and sales collateral. Casted is a SaaS service that allows companies to manage, activate, and measure podcasts from end-to-end while engaging their audience,s increasing sales alignment, and quantifying podcast value with metrics that matter.

Why do so many companies take their customers for granted?  They invest so much time and money to acquire new customers but not nearly enough to keep them happy and loyal? In this episode of the Marketing Spark podcast, Jack Fussell talks about why knowing your customers and communicating with them is so important. "We should be customer-centric all the time. We should have in-depth insight into what our customers want, what their fears are, their aspirations, and their  goals." Jack, the managing partner with Campfire Social and a fractional CMO, also talks about the importance of branding at a time when many companies sound and look the same, as well as the rise of fractional C-suite executives.

Marketing can be painful for small businesses; spending money is a hard pill to swallow. As a result, they adopt a DIY approach that often goes badly. Tara Hunt experienced the small business marketing challenge while running a digital marketing agency. Work easily done as a freelancer no longer made economic sense. But rather than walking away from marketing-hungry entrepreneurs, Tara did something different. She and her team at Truly created a program called Phlywheel, a marketing platform that combines DIY lessons, templates, coaching, and community. It allows entrepreneurs to do marketing without spending a lot of money.

LinkedIn has emerged as a powerful platform for personal branding and establishing new connections. Powered by a steady stream of value-added content and relentless engagement with a growing network, Jason Vana has become one of the highest-profile marketers on LinkedIn. In this conversation, Jason talks about how he approaches LinkedIn and why he sees it as an effective platform to drive leads and make money.  

In the wake of COVID-19, it was easy for B2B companies to shrink marketing budgets and get rid of marketers. After all, marketing is a luxury, not a necessity, right? (well, not really). But as the economies recover in many countries, companies are beginning to spend more on marketing.  The question is whether companies will rebuild marketing teams or look for ways to outsource marketing by using agencies, contractors, and freelancers. Jamie Stenhouse, an Australian digital marketer, says outsourcing is an increasingly popular way to drive tactical execution. Jamie outsources a lot of his agency's work and sells a program to many companies on how they outsource their marketing.

What are the keys to building a successful marketing team?   Do you hire the best talent or put together a cohesive team that features people with different talents?   "Of course, all-stars," says Mitch Solway, a fractional CMO for startups, who I interviewed for the Marketing Spark podcast. "But all-star doesn't necessarily mean the top talent."   Mitch says one of the keys to success is hiring people focused on the right goals and, as important, people who can fit into the corporate culture.

Virtual events have received mixed reviews as a replacement for in-person conferences.   For some companies, virtual events have provided opportunities to connect. But many people have complained about the lack of interactivity and engagement.   For commonsku, which sells software to promotional product companies, in-person events have been a key part of its marketing and sales efforts.   As important, events have propelled Commonsku's community.   With in-person conferences off the table, commonsku has successfully leveraged virtual events to stay connected to customers and nurture prospects.   In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Graham, commonsku's co-founder and chief brand officer, talks about why and how virtual events have worked so well.   

What can brands do to position themselves to emerge from COVID as strong and dynamic players?   While many brands are struggling to keep their heads above water, the strongest brands are already thinking about what needs to be done outflank rivals with marketing that engages consumers in new and different ways.   On the Marketing Spark podcast, Ron Tite provides insight into how brands can build marketing momentum to pull away from the competition.