Kristi Melani, CMO and GTM Strategy at Telesign chats more about why demand creation needs to be a top priority on every marketer’s list while discussing the current state of B2B marketing in this Q&A with MarTechSeries:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Kristi, tell us about yourself and the biggest moments in your marketing journey so far…

Working in marketing for almost 30 years has been a wild ride.  It’s a journey that has had many curveballs, twists and turns because it’s always changing. When I started my career, newspaper ads were the first thing people would suggest. Today, it’s all about digital, one-to-one high touch engagements, or even AI.

Some of the biggest moments in my career were moments where we got to toss things on their head. I have had the honor of working with some great companies and taking them through major transformations, acquisitions, new brands, new messaging, and more.  The moment I will never forget is working on the launch event when Plantronics purchased Polycom.

We announced the new look and feel, name, product strategy and message track all at Enterprise Connect. We had a display at the event covered in big blue satin drapes, with a big red ribbon around it, like a present. There was a countdown clock and a two-story booth. It was all surreal.  We were considered the “darling of the show” that year, and it was such an amazing, proud moment watching my team execute on what seemed like only a dream.  It’s up there on my top moments that I will never forget.

What are some of the common myths surrounding the state of B2B tech marketing that you’d like to dispel?  

One common misconception is that B2B audiences aren’t actual people. We forget that an IT decision maker is a person, a mom at nighttime, a gamer on the weekend, and they respond to marketing messages just like the rest of us, the consumer.

We need to talk to them like they are people, with needs, and with pains that we can help solve. Treating them like a person with feelings and emotions makes you think about the marketing initiatives differently.

When it comes to shaping marketing needs and teams given today’s challenges: what tips and best practices come to mind?

As much as I love the softer side of marketing, the demand creation engine needs to remain on the top of the priority list.  Being able to show that marketing can be a profit center, and not just a cost center is key to not only establishing your teams internal brand, but it also protects budgets, and creates a tighter alignment with sales. The organization will see the value that marketing brings and will want more.  You want other people to say, “we can’t do without marketing.”

Can you take us through some of your most relied on marketing strategies and the martech that you’ve used to drive impact for them?

I’m a big fan of paid media, retargeting and look-a-like targeting. Marketing is about building an audience, and if you just rely on your install base or established database, it leaves you with a limited reach. By using digital tactics such as pay-per-click or focused SEO content development, you can start to see the impact that marketing has, whether it’s at an impression level, share of voice, or lead generation.

From there, you need to move beyond lead generation and focus on closed won business that can be attributed to marketing. For this, you’ll need a martech tool that allows you to track at the first touch, last touch, and all the touches in between.

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For B2B tech marketers and martech-ers looking to revamp their core marketing models and martech to align to revenue goals (seeing how marketing is now meant to drive pipeline and performance more than ever), what thoughts come to mind?

You need to assess what your targets are, and how they fit within the rest of the company’s goals (especially your sales and customer service organizations). That being said you should be monitoring on an ongoing basis what your performance metrics are and how you are tracking to those goals.

Can you comment on the growing use of AI in this space and thoughts around AI and the future of martech?  

Good content is still king; it has been for decades. But the volume required is tough to keep up with.  It’s not good enough to say you have a whitepaper, or one nurture. You need a lot of varied content, targeting different audiences. AI can help with the scale. But remember, it’s not an actual brain, you can’t just set it and forget it, but rather you can use it as starting inspiration to help you expand your content quickly.

Before we wrap up, take us through five must-dos you feel every B2B marketer needs to follow on a daily basis

• Don’t overthink things. Marketing methods are changing too fast, so the longer you noodle on something, the more likely you will be passed up by new trends, or worse yet, passed up by your potential customers.
• Measure, measure, measure. You have to know if what you are doing is working, or not working. And don’t be shy to say when it’s not working.
• Always have an evergreen campaign in place. You need PR, you need a brand campaign, you need a global theater to local model that can scale, and you must have an always-on presence. One-off campaigns won’t have the impact you want if you don’t feed the brand engine.
• Prioritize your spend. 100 dollars in one region vs. 8 dollars will go much further. Work with sales to determine where you should spend your money.
• Understand your customer. Remember they are people. We are often not our own company’s target audience, so talk to your customers, talk to sales, listen to what is being said and desired by your customers and cater your messaging to meet those needs.

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