MarTech Interview with Christina Mautz, EVP of Marketing @ Valid8 Financial

Christina Mautz, EVP of Marketing at Valid8 Financial breaks down the changing role, structures and processes of a typical modern B2B tech marketing team in this short chat with MarTechSeries:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Christina, tell us about your marketing journey so far and what you are looking forward to in your role as EVP of Marketing at Valid8 Financial?

In my 30-year career, I’ve been fortunate to have led both domestic and global teams and held leadership positions at large companies (Amazon, Yahoo!) as well as executive roles at a few tech startups. When I began working at my first startup, it was quite a wild ride into the unknown — I felt like I had to learn marketing all over again because, for the first time in my career, I owned the full stack end-to-end. And it was awesome! I loved that everything I did had an impact I could see. Startup marketing is not for everyone — you have to check your ego at the door and know that it’s all about testing and learning. I personally find the broad scope of the role plus the ability to move fast exhilarating. My role at Valid8 Financial continues that wild ride, as I’m marketing to audiences I’ve never worked with before. I’m energized by learning about their challenges and educating and informing them about how we can help.

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

In many organizations, B2B marketing still operates in a near or actual silo. In order for B2B marketing teams to be the most effective, they should be understood to be a critical part of the cross-functional go-to-market team, owning the full customer journey from pre-sale to purchase to post-sale in collaboration with product and sales teams. This expanded view enables B2B marketing teams to develop a more comprehensive focus on the customer, and the collaborative ownership of go-to-market helps ensure strategy alignment across the organization for more efficient revenue growth.

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?

B2B marketers rise in the ranks to become CMOs in different ways, and there are a plethora of experiences, skills and attributes that make the best the best. Regardless of the industry we work in, one new trend we are all experiencing is the change in B2B buying committees which are now increasingly more likely to be composed of Millennial and Gen Z digital natives, with the expectations that follow.

For this reason, it’s critical that B2B marketing leaders have a strong understanding of multichannel digital marketing, spanning both organic and paid channels. With this comes the often-overlooked ability to think and act both creatively and analytically. While companies are more likely to understand the need for analytical ability in today’s increasingly digital world, the assumption is often that we need to be just creative enough. But the greater — and I would say more critical skill — for modern marketing leaders is to harness our creativity for problem-solving. We’ve all faced those times when, even with all of our experience and analytical ability, we are stumped by the way our target audience behaves. It’s in these moments that we rely most on our creativity.

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

We’ve all been there: We purchase the shiny new martech that we’re so excited about implementing. We’re sure it’s going to make a big impact. We go through the onboarding with our team, and then… nothing. The need to get just one more thing done gets in the way because the old way of doing something feels faster than creating the muscle memory needed for behavior change. Or maybe we are using the tech, but we’re only using that one killer feature and ignoring the other ten things it could do to make our marketing more effective or efficient because it would mean figuring them out and changing our existing workflows and processes. It can be helpful to plan for how and when you will use new tech before you purchase it. Think about what else your team might need — new processes? Different types of content? Cross-functional dialogue about reporting? Work on getting those things in place before you go on a martech buying spree. And don’t forget about the power of having an internal champion — enlist someone on your team to become a power user who shares the real-world benefits as they are experienced.

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

There are two major trends taking a lot of brain space for marketing leaders in 2024: the ongoing move to digital and the (delayed but still coming) end of Google’s support for third-party cookies.

Driven by the recent pandemic, the digital transformation that started many years ago finally accelerated. We saw industries that had been slow to adopt a digital-first approach take the first steps, and while they are still in their infancy, their adoption of digital continues to grow. This means that as marketers, we need to prioritize efforts and budgets not just on paid digital advertising, but also on our digital content (webinars, ungated content), our websites, SEO and organic social. We also need to look at our other channels through a digital lens – like the impact of PR on website traffic, for example, or even the impact of offline sources on digital awareness and engagement.

But, in 2024, the biggest impact is likely going to be preparation for the end of Google’s support for third-party cookies. While Google announced that it has delayed cookie deprecation, it seems inevitable that it’s going to come at some point, though many of us are wondering if it might not be as final as initially indicated. For B2B marketers running remarketing and intent-based campaigns, it makes sense to continue to build and test alternative cookieless strategies.

The top on my (and most others’) list are:

1. Put more effort into building our first-party, opt-in email database.
2. Focus on where we can still use remarketing, like in a closed social network (e.g., LinkedIn).

The only way either of these strategies is going to be successful is by going back to the fundamentals: go deep to understand our ideal customer profile and invest in highly personalized messaging.

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

I’m no expert in using AI in marketing, but I can tell you that every time I use it, I find value. Like many marketers, I lean on AI when I’m stuck and need inspiration. Need more topics for your blog or your next lead magnet? Thinking about trying out a new organizational structure and wondering about what others have tried? Want to get into the head of your most valuable persona? (This can be a really fun exercise — train a generative AI platform to talk like one of your primary personas and ask it questions that help you hone in on more personalized messaging and offers.) As AI continues to be integrated into marketing tech, it’s also helping us work more efficiently.

Like the AI-powered platform Valid8 (the company I work for), which helps forensic accountants follow the money faster, I think AI is becoming more valuable when it’s behind the scenes, working in the background to help us execute with higher quality, faster and more efficiently. I find it’s key to leverage AI when I need to quickly open my mind to new ideas, broaden my perspective or gain a deeper understanding of a topic or persona. It’s like tapping the collective intelligence of hundreds of people at the same time without the need for months of focus groups. But, as many others have cautioned, AI must be guided by human intelligence to be most effective.

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

1. Immerse yourself in the voice of your customers: Start your day by listening to the podcasts they favor and reading what they read — the blogs, the newsletters, and even the emails from other vendors in your space trying to reach the same audience.
2. Tackle the little tasks quickly so you can keep working on bigger initiatives: Our to-do lists are never done, so it’s important to balance responding quickly to immediate needs while also continuing to move the bigger, more strategic initiatives forward.
3. Check in with your team: Touching base on a regular basis gives you a pulse of their daily work and what they might need from you before they know they need it; be available to them but trust them to own their functional areas.
4. Stay in touch with your peers: The best way to know what’s happening in B2B marketing is to go beyond just reading the trades and join networks that have a diversity of members (different industries, different levels of experience) to share ideas, experiences, wins and losses.
5. Make room to think: Block an hour at the start or end of each day to reflect. Think about your plan, what’s working, what’s not, and what you need to dive deeper into and possibly revise or optimize.

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