Amanda Costanzi, Head of Marketing and Communications at Swisslog Healthcare shares a few tips on driving deeper business relationships in B2B in this martech chat:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat Amanda – we’d love to get to know more about your marketing leadership and key highlights from your marketing journey so far?

Thanks for having me…In my case, being an empathetic marketing leader comes partially from having worked in many different environments. I started my career in agencies and moved to Corporate America. After years of supporting well known global brands, I dipped my toe in the world of emerging markets and start-ups. I have run my own company, consulted with other marketing service providers, and leveraged a plethora of marketing vendors. While the use of tools and technology changes daily, two consistencies throughout my journey are building strong teams, and focusing on business-to-business strategies. A certain highlight for me is having earned the “most impactful team” award with a company for whom I hired and led the entire marketing team.

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Tell us more about your new role at Swisslog Healthcare and as a new incoming marketing leader, what are some of the key focus areas for you going to be for the near-term?

In my new role I look after marketing and communications for the North American division of Swisslog Healthcare. This includes product marketing, go-to-market strategies, marketing automation, marcom, employee communications, philanthropic efforts, and publicity. While our company, and those we have acquired have been strong players in healthcare technology for decades, our brand recognition is comparatively nominal. In 2022 we will focus on awareness campaigns and broadening our reach to hospital systems across the U.S. and Canada.

When it comes to the challenges marketers typically face in the B2B Tech marketplace, what are some of the top best practices that can be of help?

The single biggest challenge with B2B Tech is reaching qualified decision makers. In most cases this doesn’t mean bypassing the gatekeepers but instead it is about first winning the gatekeepers over. A normal marketing strategy should include a multi-touch, omni-channel approach. In this space that is even more crucial because effectively there is more than one target audience. Understanding their challenges leads to influencing their decisions. Capturing their attention with compelling storytelling and useful information sharing leads to building strong relationships that last from pre-sale to post-sale. And, the careful use of marketing metrics leads to swift pivoting along the way.

Take us through some of the martech you’ve often relied on to power your marketing goals?

Marketing goals are a subset of the overarching business objectives. At Swisslog Healthcare we use the OGSM process to outline company goals and from there we devise strategic marketing targets, strategies, and tactics to align with the bigger picture. Using the right components of our marketing technology at the right time begins two things: the intended customer experience, and the ability to measure the outcome. Specific martech powering our goals includes use of a robust CRM platform capable of tracking a full prospect and customer journey, a customized marketing automation platform that is used to create and manage logic-based sequencing, and a team of marketing experts who utilize these tools to reach each market segment and track overlapping projects.

A few thoughts on how you feel martech as a segment will move in 2022?

Marketers are smarter than ever. Long-gone are the days when subscribing to martech systems was based on a one size fits all solution. I think we’ll see even more demand for specific capabilities and less acceptance of bundled packages going forward. And who will make these demands? Likely it will be a CMO or the CRO at the top of that communication funnel. While the CIO and CTO must be an integral part of the conversation to ensure proper integration, these decisions begin with the impact to customer experience. However, the speed of implementation is key to executional efficiency, especially with continued virtual or partially virtual operations. Therefore, no and low code technology solutions will continue to be desirable.

Some last thoughts, takeaways, digital marketing and martech tips and best practices before we wrap up!

1. Ensure your database is tidy: Because everyone’s target market now expects personalization, it is important to begin with a clean and accurate data base. Segmentation works only as well as the data from which the segments are created. Take the time to tidy up the CRM so you can realize more success in the future.
2. Offer choice to your constituency: A strong CTA certainly helps you to track their interest. But consider what is also helpful to them. People like choice and are more likely to stick with you rather than opt out if you give them options for actions they can take…even if it’s not opting out of your campaign completely.
3. Establish KPIs that matter: Measure the things that impact your specific strategy and pivot from there. A robust dashboard is flashy but when it comes down to it, not all of the metrics matter to all of your efforts.

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