Eric Williamson, CMO at CallMiner talks about the key changes impacting how B2B marketing teams function based on evolving customer and market trends:

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Hi Eric, tell us about your marketing journey and more about being CMO at CallMiner…

My marketing journey dates back 20+ years ago where I spent about half of that time on the agency side. I actually started my career out of college as a business development rep. Although that may not seem connected to marketing at all, there are a lot of CMOs and CROs that start out in BDR roles – you learn all of the fundamentals selling. And ultimately, marketing is a form of selling.

During my ad agency years, I worked primarily for B2C companies like Google, Microsoft, JetBlue, and other major B2C brands. Much of my focus was on where I focused on a combination of digital marketing as part of a larger integrated strategy as well as several big branding projects. As I transitioned to the client side, I leveraged the knowledge I’ve taken into positions at B2B technology companies since then, including at Acquia, an open DXP platform built around Drupal, and how I approached the rebrand for CallMiner as CMO.

I’ve been CMO at CallMiner for about a year and a half now, and it was interesting to start toward the beginning of the pandemic. I had never started a job fully remote before and it was a learning curve to not have met anyone on my team in-person before starting. I joined knowing I was going to take CallMiner through a complete rebrand (besides our company name), as well as overhauling the entire marketing program to make it more intent/account-based marketing versus solely inbound.

As a CMO who led marketing through a pandemic, what were some of the top lessons you and your team came away with?

While my team has been incredible with working remotely – we’ve been able to stay aligned, motivated and productive every step of the way – I have to say that it is so great to be able to get back to doing some things in-person. There are things, like in-person strategy meetings, that just can’t be replicated on Zoom.

From an execution standpoint, the pandemic changed everyone’s digital engagement strategies. In-person events are an essential part of any brand’s marketing strategy and being able to deliver your pipeline to your sales team –  they’re the lifeblood of B2B tech.

Like other SaaS companies found out, CallMiner quickly realized that it’s hard to duplicate the networking that happens in-person in webinars or virtual events. But as we’ve picked up more in-person events again, we’ve learned that we can swing fully back to 100% in-person events. Every event we put on and attend has to have some aspect of both in-person and virtual options. I don’t see that going away.

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How do you feel B2B marketers today need to revisit their core plans in 2022 to adapt to newer market conditions and customer needs?

I firmly believe that data is key to adapting to newer and changing market conditions and customer needs. Leaning into data makes it possible to evaluate what changes need to be made and identify areas for improvement. That’s what we’ve been doing as a marketing team since our new brand launched this time last year. We’ve used data to make improvements around CTAs on our website, landing pages, and more.

That’s also exactly what the CallMiner platform delivers to our customers — we help organizations gain insights from customer conversations and interactions that happen in the contact center as well as other touchpoints, and then use those insights to inform business decisions and strategy across the enterprise. Not only does our solution allow businesses to capture and analyze data from customer interactions, it also helps them make meaning from this unstructured data and improve business decisions.

What, in your view, should CMOs in B2B be doing more to drive core business value through marketing efforts?

I believe that many B2B companies often suffer from a lack of understanding and/or appreciation of really smart positioning and branding — that’s why it’s important for startups and established companies alike to have a killer marketing team that truly understands how to develop a brand and bring the brand identity to life.

Beyond the strategic positioning level of branding I also think B2B tech CMOs need to focus on their team’s writing skills to ensure clear and creative messaging. A way to do that is to look to the B2C side of the house. When I came over from the agency side, I was shocked with how formulaic everything was, and the lack of creativity and emotion in B2B tech content.

If you only do the bare minimum to put out obvious messaging, you’re missing the whole point of injecting meaningful emotion into the message and driving customer loyalty. At the end of the day, the people you are trying to engage with are human and when they have challenges and pain points related to their organization there is emotion connected to that. Not losing sight of this in your copy is essential.

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A few thoughts on the future of martech and B2B marketing? 

There has been a continued shift in the B2B marketing world. It used to be classic inbound marketing, and now it’s a combination of inbound marketing and highly targeted intent-based marketing with account-based marketing.

Additionally, there has been a change in mindset regarding events and the role they play in anyone’s overall marketing strategy. While we are seeing in-person events return, thankfully, I think events and business travel overall have permanently changed from the pandemic experience. Not only will crowds be smaller, but there is the expectation of some form of hybrid approach or at the very least, a post-event digital version of the content that is made available as part of your demand gen strategy. This connects to the idea that B2B marketing will need to rely on data now more than ever, and arrange their overall strategy and spend to be more agile. Agility is needed to be able to quickly navigate changes that occur within your industry or at a macro level.

I also believe how we work has changed forever. As we’ve already seen, there has been a slow return to in-office work, but most B2B marketing teams will never be 100% in office. A mix of in-office flex and 100% remote teams is going to be the norm and that means CMOs are going to need to update their playbooks for how they recruit talent, as well as how they align around core strategies and execute the tactics. We will need to think of ways to occasionally get the team together (e.g. quarterly summits) to ensure that there is a tight bond and shared vision.

Lastly, the pandemic shined a spotlight on the value of bringing people together to solve common challenges. This applies to your own organization and team, but among your customer base as well — there is a huge opportunity to lean into bringing your customers together in some form of peer-to-peer community. You are the host and instigator and to some degree the platform for these interactions, but this community can become a major part of your overall value proposition.

Some last thoughts, takeaways, before we wrap up?

Don’t underestimate the power of smart positioning and branding — make sure you are always injecting emotion into your messaging.

Also, it’s time to embrace the new post-pandemic reality and constant change and use it as a strength that can differentiate your company over competitors. This includes looking outside of your industry and even B2B for inspiration on “what good marketing looks like”. Some of the best innovations in marketing are happening beyond your immediate line of sight and if you are not spotting it and thinking about how to adopt it appropriately, your competitors will.