Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer at Sensedia has a few thoughts to help implement better marketing-sales alignment that can aid the overall customer journey:

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Tell us about your marketing journey through the years and what you’re most looking forward to as Sensedia’s new CMO?

My journey has focused on high-growth brands, large and small, all with similar attributes. They’ve all offered excellent customer experience and exceptional solutions and were not well known in the market. That’s what drew me to Sensedia.

The company’s fantastic culture focuses on doing the best for its customers. It offers award-winning solutions and recognition, such as being named a 2022 Forrester Wave Leader in API Management. While well-known in Brazil, Sensedia is new to the US and LatAm markets. I’m excited about our growth opportunities and looking forward to building the brand and customer base beyond Brazil.

As a 7-time CMO, what are some of the core CMO practices, learnings and tips you feel CMOs in B2B don’t pay enough attention to but should?

Three areas come to mind.

First, a core practice all CMOs need to embrace is being laser-focused on positioning and branding. Too often, a disconnect happens when the pieces are outsourced, unfocused, or originating from different locations. This disconnect creates enormous challenges. The CMO’s role is to keep everyone and all channels working from the same framework with a well-designed playbook, so the message position and brand representation are unified and clear, no matter where it’s delivered.

Second, CMOs are chief unifiers. Twelve years ago, McKinsey shared that “We are all marketers.” Through social media and all the new channels we have in marketing, it’s as true today as it was then. Too many CMOs think solely about marketing to potential customers, not how they can amplify the brand and unify the internal team around the goals, strategies and results. CMOs need to evaluate the company culture and nurture internal brand champions. Being a chief unifier and creating raving fans within and outside the organization creates new opportunities.

Thirdly, think about design from the outside in, such as designing websites with the user experience at the forefront. Campaigns, messaging and positioning, developing apps, and anything that touches the customer should be thought about from the customers’ and potential customers’ shoes. The customer is the core. Design everything around them. What do they need? What do they want?

If there were five things about the state of B2B marketing that you could change in 2023: what would they be?

1. Spam emails. Seriously? Are we really still getting these?
2. Fluffy messaging clouds why people should care about the technology and solutions.
3. Improving virtual events from an experience and an engagement perspective.
4. More out-of-the-box connectors for tech stacks, so integration becomes much easier.
5. Clearer goals between sales and marketing. Ultimately, it’s all about the results teams get by working together.

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How can CMOs and Marketing leaders of brands wanting to build a strong foothold in global regions work on building more impactful strategies: what should their first few goals and steps entail?

1. Develop and use playbooks for market entry, market validation and market at scale. Use the playbooks to take a systematic and repeatable approach to entering new markets and validating and growing established markets.
2. Entering new markets is like building a startup. The first year or two, focus on scrappy brand awareness and big early customer wins vs. big revenue goals.
3. Ensure new and growing regions are immersed in and embracing company culture and powered for local execution. Newer teams may feel disconnected or autonomous and not part of the broader brand and culture.
4. Establish weekly rituals and huddles to celebrate wins, focus on results and communicate what’s needed.
5. Bring teams together several times a year to plan and work together.
6. Bring internal subject matter experts together to develop global centers of excellence. These centers advise and share best practices and ideas about what’s working in other regions to implement programs worldwide successfully.

For technology marketers within B2B, what are some of the ground-level processes they should follow on a daily/weekly basis to enable better output?

I break this down into three journeys in the customer experience cycle.

• First, focus on the demand-to-lead journey to find the right customers. What does demand-gen look like? What do ABM campaigns look like? Review all the steps required to get a qualified lead and give this journey daily and weekly focus for better output. Look at data, review results, adjust, and share what you’ve learned with other regions.
• Next, once you have a lead, there’s a lead-to-cash journey to make the sale. Evaluate sales materials and communications, accurately benchmark conversions, and ensure lead qualification and nurturing are getting done.
• Finally, the customer-to-reference journey reviews onboarding and how we are helping the customer get the most from their investment. Supporting customers on this journey helps them become references, leaders, speakers, and best-in-class clients in their field, which ultimately reflects well on everyone.

All these journeys require daily and weekly focus. They bring awareness to the customer, support sales, and ensure revenue and growth goals are met.

A few common misconceptions about the role of the typical B2B CMO you’d like to dispel?

It’s a myth that marketing and sales can’t get along, fight in every company, and are natural adversaries. Across the CMO roles I’ve held, I’ve always had great relationships with sales. At a previous mar-tech company, I became sales-facing and supported customers and prospects on strategies for their individualized marketing programs.

That experience opened my eyes to the selling process and how, as a marketer, I could help sales become more effective.

The right content, clear communication, a focus on the entire sales funnel – not just the top- and shared goals for MQL, SQLs, and closes- build a successful collaboration between marketing and sales.

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