MarTech Interview with Andrew Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer @ Conga

Andrew Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer at Conga chats about the state of B2B marketing and what practices will help drive more marketing impact in this MarTech interview:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Andrew, tell us about yourself and what inspired you to foray into the Marketing realm?

Before I joined Conga as CMO, I had a few roles at enterprise work management platform Smartsheet, building their digital marketing and demand generation function and then leading commercial sales before becoming CMO. As CMO of Smartsheet, I led the company’s brand, demand generation, product marketing and digital marketing teams through the company’s growth to over $1B in Annual Recurring Revenue.

My time as an entrepreneur is what initially led me to develop a passion for marketing. I ran an outdoor recreation brand, Deneki Outdoors, and business was running smoothly, but I knew I had to become better known and find customers online. That’s where my original foundation in digital marketing grew as I was pulling all the levers myself between social media, website, doing a/b testing, and paid ads. I saw a big impact on my small business by marketing well online and learned these principles apply across businesses of any size.

What about today’s state of B2B marketing needs to drastically change in your view?

In today’s B2B marketing landscape, there’s a principle of connectedness – we know there are many people involved in every buying decision. As marketers, the systems we run can be very complex – it’s important to obtain measurable signals when we can. But, we can’t always fully quantify the impact of what we do.

So beyond leveraging data, marketers need to make sure that every aspect of what shows up in the market shows pride and authenticity. From messaging to branding and integration, it’s important to show why the company stands out and to communicate a consistent message that lands with the audience, reinforcing trust and differentiation in the market.

How would you define the role of the typical modern B2B CMO? What skills and responsibilities do you think every modern day B2B CMO needs to sport?

Today in B2B, every CMO needs a solid understanding of data and analytics. It’s important when it comes to operating a marketing team AND in having conversations with leaders like a CFO, CEO, and board members about the impact marketing is having on the overall business. Modern CMOs have to be ableto talk confidently about impact with a solid understanding of data.

At the same time, modern B2B marketing is really diverse. You’re never going to be the expert in everything your team touches, intersecting with various functions like sales, finance, and so forth. So, as a CMO, it’s essential to be able to identify and collaborate with leaders that are experts in all those domains, empowering them to lead and be accountable, and to make sure that every aspect of the business receives the specialized attention and expertise it needs to help land the right messages in the market.

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What should today’s B2B marketers today do more of to ensure they are optimizing use of their martech/salestech stack among their teams?  

Today’s B2B marketers need to really look end-to-end at the marketing plays they’re running together. So many systems today span different teams in marketing and in sales – if you’re only looking at signals relative to your piece of the business, you’re not going to get the big picture of impact.

For example, when B2B marketers implement new tech that’s meant to give sales a better view of a new source of intent, they can fall short because it doesn’t get properly used. It’s really important to understand signals from martech that extend to other teams like sales, in order to understand what’s really having impact. This is especially important in environments with a lot of overlap between teams, because it ensures alignment and transparency regarding the tools being utilized and what they’re trying to accomplish across teams.

Can you talk about the state of modern B2B marketing and martech and what trends will dominate the space in 2024?

In 2024, I think the impact of AI will be huge as it relates to how the big ad platforms are using AI for targeting and optimization.

Gen AI is obviously helping content creators become a lot more efficient, but the real game-changer lies in platforms like Google using AI to drive targeting and conversions.  We need to understand AI-based bidding and how it’s changing online ad platforms. Your competitors are using AI-based targeting – you need to stay in front of this massive shift if you want to win.

How have you been using AI to drive impact in marketing: what takeaways do you have for early adopters?

As it relates to Gen AI specifically, modern marketing marketplaces and platforms like Google and Bing are fundamentally good at serving people what they’re looking for. Marketing effectively is never easy; if you think you’ve come across some silver bullet based on AI being in the driver’s seat, you’re probably wrong. At the end of the day, genuine content and providing the right results is what will work best. Marketers can’t use AI to trick the system. But AI is an extremely useful tool in driving new ideas and efficiencies when paired with the creativity and intelligence that human marketers bring to the table.

If you had to leave every reader here with five daily best practices to drive marketing in B2B: what would they be?

My advice of five daily best practices to drive marketing in B2B include:

• Know your data well and look beyond the top-line metrics so you really understand the impact of your programs.
• Work hard to build and maintain a good relationship with your sales team. When there’s mutual trust and support, it’s beautiful.
• Make sure you’re not operating in silos. Think about how you want your brand to be seen and ensure everything you’re doing is integrated at every level in support of that.
• Communicate with precision and focus on articulating the tangible business value to your audience, making sure each interaction resonates with their needs.
• Create a culture of cold objectivity when analyzing results, embracing failure as an opportunity for learning and future growth to inform ongoing marketing strategies. Avoid running a program and then cobbling together data to make it look like it worked and instead focus on transparency and prioritizing genuine insights. Failure is okay as long as you use key learnings from those experiences.

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