Gagandeep Singh, Vice President of Global Marketing at Blancco Technology Group talks about the changing B2B marketing landscape and what modern marketers need to be focusing on more in 2024:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Gagandeep, tell us about yourself and more about your role at Blancco Tech.   

Great to be here! As the VP Global Marketing at Blancco, my role is all about driving brand awareness and targeted revenue growth. With over 15 years in marketing, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with diverse businesses worldwide, from startups to blue-chip organizations.

Over the last eight years, my focus has been on serving tech organizations through an innovative, integrated, and measured marketing approach. At Blancco, a leader in the security industry for over three decades, we’re not just keeping our leadership; we’re expanding and innovating sustainably to keep our customers secure and compliant. We’re already known as the industry standard for data erasure, and we are on a mission to educate our audience about data sanitization as an ongoing management philosophy rather than an end-of-life solution. It is your last line of defense.

My role at Blancco will involve underscoring our dedication to enhancing our market presence and furthering our commitment to innovation and sustainability. My journey here has started with spearheading our Blank is campaign, which marks a significant shift in the industry narrative surrounding data erasure.

Take us through some of your core marketing strategies through the years and the martech that has helped drive all of it?  

Throughout my career, I’ve focused on implementing results-driven marketing strategies, understanding buyer challenges, and how they like to engage. Its imperative to know your baseline as you can only improve what you measure. Use data-driven insights to make smart decisions. Depending on the priorities of the business, available resources and needs, there are plenty of effective and reliable tools that have improved outcomes for me. Think of intent tools for peeking into the ‘dark funnel,’ dynamic retargeting for more clicks, and clever display platforms that hit the right people at a pre-set acceptable cost.

These tools help us keep an eye on how our campaigns are doing, understand our audiences, and shoot out messages right where our buyers research and engage. But tools are only as good as the person using them. Having the right skillsets and people across the team is critical to maximizing the potential of these toolsets.

And then, there’s content marketing – this is by far one of the most important parts of any marketing machinery. We create awesome content that fits each step of the buyer’s journey. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving – making us look like leaders and getting our audience hooked on different channels. Teamwork is the name of the game, with Sales Enablement, Product Marketing, Content, and Inside Sales all playing together.

Automation is another sidekick that handles the laborious, time intensive work that can be boring. From snagging leads to keeping them interested, automation lets us add that personal touch at scale. It’s the key to a smoother user experience and refining our strategies along the way.

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How are you using the latest in AI to drive further business impact and marketing goals?

As a lean team, we’ve already started to embrace various AI tools to meet the demands of our teams and stakeholders. For example, we’re diving into tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Powtoon to elevate our game. ChatGPT helps develop internal playbooks and lightweight social media posts, while Powtoon enhances our video tutorials and product walkthroughs.

Exploring AI for website optimization is on the cards to improve the user journey. We’re in the early stages, but the potential impact on our work volume and quality is promising. It goes without saying, whilst the available tools are not 100% reliable, they do help us save tremendous resources considering we are carefully auditing all output to ensure accuracy, quality, and relevance.

What in your view should B2B marketing leaders be doing more of in 2024 to drive actual business ROI and support business and sales pipelines more effectively?  

For B2B marketing leaders in SaaS, the focus should be on revenue. Forming forums to discuss Lead to Revenue, Cost of Acquisition, and solving challenges as a team is key. Track and improve awareness metrics like Share of Voice and organic traffic, ensuring that awareness efforts reduce the Cost of Acquisition and increase impact on revenue. If it goes the other way around, it is a good indicator that your strategy may be ineffective and imbalanced.

How will generative AI eventually play a more important role in the marketing and martech domain: what are your top thoughts and observations around this?  

Generative AI is poised to play a pivotal role in marketing and martech. Its maturation is evident in significantly improving output quality and scalability. Marketers should prioritize understanding AI’s applications and impact on businesses, as this revolution is anticipated to surpass the internet’s invention. However, concerns arise regarding AI’s wider enterprise usage in 2024, especially regarding security, data governance, standardization, and the potentially prohibitive costs associated with storing massive datasets for AI training. These challenges underscore the need for a thoughtful approach to AI integration.

Can you talk about some of the leading B2B tech brands you feel have a robust online framework that resonates well with end users: what takeaways from those would you leave us with here?  

Hubspot, Salesforce, and Adobe are leading the pack with a strong online framework. They put high priority on user experience, emphasize content marketing for trust-building with customers, foster community engagement to get regular feedback on product development and improvements, and stay innovative to meet evolving business needs. These principles are crucial for any B2B tech brand aiming to resonate effectively with end users and drive business outcomes that directly meet the needs of customers.

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