MarTech Interview with Mike Hicks, Chief Marketing Officer at Appspace

Mike Hicks, Chief Marketing Officer at Appspace talks about the various ways through which marketers can further enhance the quality of digital interactions they have with online customers:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Mike, tell us more about yourself and your role at Appspace.

First, thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with your community. I have a lot of marketing colleagues and it is always great to offer opinions and hear new perspectives that spark ideas and approaches on how to deliver more value.

As CMO of Appspace, I lead brand and demand marketing. I work closely with the partner and product marketing group to ensure we deliver the right content and quality interactions so our prospects and customers easily understand how we can help them solve their business challenges.

Our workplace experience platform is all about helping organizations unify the physical and digital workplace by connecting people, places, and spaces. This means our customers can easily create environments where communication flows, collaboration is simple, and employees feel safe and informed, whether they are working in the corporate office, on the front line, or anywhere in between.

I came to Appspace via an acquisition. This has been an incredible journey to integrate the marketing function and the entire organization into the Appspace company and culture. As many organizations are still structuring their return to office and hybrid work strategies, the timing is optimal for a marketer charting fresh territory in the workplace experience category.

For these new work strategies to be successful, organizations need to better understand how their digital interactions and connections with employees can be effective no matter where their employees work. This shift puts Appspace right in the center of these workplace conversations and related technology decisions.

So, on one hand, we are driving the conversation and our customers are case studies of how organizations can successfully implement workplace flexibility. At the same time, we’re listening to the market and using the feedback to continue our path of workplace experience innovation.

We’d love to hear more about some of the top modern-day marketing trends you’ve been observing in B2B and what you feel will persist in 2023 and beyond…

Early in my career, a CEO told me, “Don’t tell me what you caught, tell me what you’re fishing for.” This is something a lot of marketers forget. In the age of deep insight into lead analytics and prospect journeys, we have become so focused on whom we have engaged and exactly what they did, that we often lose sight of what we’re trying to catch. Executive teams spend so much time planning, designing, and building products for very specific audiences, but that’s not necessarily the same people the marketing teams interact with or reel in.

There will continue to be more focus on using analytics for better sales processes and outcomes – not just insights. We will see this play out in the budgeting decisions that marketing teams make in 2023.

This year we also saw a move back into physical events. This trend will continue with smaller and more targeted events that allow for deeper conversations. These smaller events also help companies better connect with prospects and customers and demonstrate a genuine interest in learning the best ways to overcome their business challenges. We will see more roundtables and events that combine thought leadership, product demos, and an interactive attendee experience.

There will be increased investment in intent data, particularly as this technology gets more intelligent. To be effective, this intent data needs to be integrated with the CRM and the MAP. All BDRs, AEs, and CSMs need to be fully versed in how to understand and act on it in a coordinated way. It also means getting good at ignoring the noise, so teams can concentrate on qualifying the leads that are most likely to convert.

A third trend increasing in popularity is short, authentic videos designed to build relationships. One example of this is a 15-second video to say “hello” to a prospect the day before a demo meeting, another is a video stating, “I read this article and thought of you, so I wanted to share it.” These short, personalized videos send a clear message to prospects that their business and time are valuable and, most importantly, that we view the relationship as a partnership, not transactional. With the right video marketing platform, organizations will gain great audience intelligence that can help inform future interactions and set them apart from the competition.

How can CMOs today build marketing journeys in a way so as to help boost company revenue and growth with quality leads and pipeline?

The best way is to continually work across the organization and think beyond the marketing function. There needs to be full transparency and collaboration between marketing, sales, customer success, and product. Best practices will vary depending on the industry, buying cycle length, and average deal size.

However, your question addresses a key point on the importance of thinking beyond the bottom-of-the-funnel prospects that are easy to qualify and convert. To be strategic and deliver quality leads, CMOs must focus on marketing initiatives that capture data at the highest level of the funnel, while determining the right number of calories to burn on qualifying those leads. It is about being efficient, but highly personalized, to your mid-funnel leads and pushing your teams hard on not having happy ears at events and webinars.

Creativity with digital engagement is extremely important. Have some sort of scoring model but remain flexible on it. This is where the marketing intangibles come into play. In my industry, for instance, companies may only replace some solutions like a modern intranet every 7-9 years. It can take a lot of upfront time to build relationships with prospects. Nurturing will happen over the course of several events, webinars, and year-long campaigns with eBooks, infographics, and even things like business case-building templates.

Organizations replace other solutions within our platform much more frequently. To that end, keeping our current customers happy is a top priority, along with thoughtful competitive, targeting to reach a prospect early in their consideration phase. The best-case scenario is to be the catalyst that causes them to re-evaluate their current providers.

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When it comes to marketing products in a tightly competitive marketplace, what do you feel marketing leaders need to focus on to drive that differentiated experience?

Keep simplicity and authenticity at the forefront. Some may find this approach counterintuitive in highly competitive markets where everyone is jockeying to break through. Most companies take the “Six Million Dollar Man” approach, claiming they are the best, the fastest, and have the most features. They spend a lot of time justifying these statements, which works against them by coming across as complex, sales-y, or downright desperate. The companies that rise above, keep things simple and typically “show” rather than “talk” in superlatives about what makes them unique. They also make the buyer’s pain point the focus of their marketing messages. Notice, I did not say pain points. I kept it singular. This comes back to the core topic of targeting and being specific about what you are fishing for.

Yes, you will find some value when your net falls outside of your primary target. However, by focusing on the number one problem that you solve, you will catch more of your ideal customer. That’s going to be the most profitable situation for your organization and deliver the best ROI.

As marketing for B2B evolves, how do you feel the future of this space is set to look like? 

I will reiterate an earlier point about the importance of collaboration between marketing and other departments, especially customer success, R&D, and product management. There is the old thinking (and a lot of business jokes) about marketing and sales constantly clashing. Strategic and successful organizations eliminated those silos a long time ago. That said, the future of B2B marketing will become inherently more involved in customer satisfaction and customer health. This synergy is becoming increasingly important to companies like Appspace, which provide more than point solutions and want customers to rely on us for their entire workplace experience.

The opportunity for increased organic growth will continue to change marketing strategies. When marketers are involved early in product roadmap discussions, we also can build strategies and campaigns that reach prospects and customers to create excitement and awareness.

Finally, B2B marketing will continue to evolve to meet and address globalization. We sell our workplace experience platform to global brands, and we will continue to seek marketing and sales opportunities in new regions. Finding the marketing teams and martech tools that can efficiently and adequately reach different audiences with consistent messaging will be key.

Some last thoughts on the future of martech and its role in marketing? 

I’ll take a slightly different perspective on this question and look beyond the actual martech, to focus on the people responsible for it. Most marketing teams that are beyond the start-up phase have a similar tech stack that encompasses more than the basics of a CRM and marketing automation platform.

The difference between the teams that shine, and the average performers is the people. The strongest marketing operations leaders see the big picture and have a handle on the details. They work with sales teams to optimize time from lead to converted opportunity and hold BDRs and AEs accountable for prompt lead follow-up. They advise on future campaign investment decisions based on past performance. They are the glue that holds it all together. So, in a world of comparable tech stacks, I would rather invest in building an amazing team vs. adding one more piece of martech to the mix.

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Five predictions you have for the B2B tech industry in 2023 and beyond? 

There are two things a CMO can always count on; budget pressure and the need to prove ROI. After two years of many organizations seeing flat budgets, we will see some loosening. As I mentioned earlier, based on the available intelligence and prospect targeting, the expectations for performance will continue to rise. So, in an environment of flat budgets, here is what we likely can expect in 2023:

1. Marketing tool consolidation. One way to free up funds for new tactics is to save on infrastructure and tech costs. You also get a bonus and often a lower price tag when existing vendors offer additional tools and capabilities that are more tightly integrated. If we can reduce the number of siloed products in our tech stack, we can simplify our admin and get more bang for our buck.

2. With continued pressure on the use of cookies to target, we will see more organizations focus on ABM and get stricter about it. Higher ABM demand by marketers also might start to bring costs down or encourage more software providers to enter the field to help ease some of the price pressure. Is this a direct contradiction to point #1 above or part of existing vendor innovation and service expansion? I’ll let your readers be the judge.

3. Marketers will shift to smaller events that are shorter in duration. With controlling operational expenses as a priority for many businesses, sending multiple team members to large tradeshows and conferences over several days is not ideal or budget conscious. Companies still want to support employee growth and encourage networking so there is an appetite for events that are closer to home and involve less time away from the office – whether that is a home office or a traditional workplace. Smart marketing teams will leverage their digital interactions to warm prospects up before the physical event and continue the conversation and exchange of value well beyond the actual conference.

4. Renewed focus on the existing customer base. This makes good business sense and ties back into point number 1. Industry consolidation and innovation will continue at a rapid pace, but it does not only apply to the martech vendors. There is a good chance most of your readers’ companies are expanding their offerings through new development or acquisition. This opens the door for organizations to deepen their relationships and deliver more value to existing customers.

5. For this last prediction, I’ll bet on outdoor advertising, even for smaller B2B organizations. With so many people working from less traditional places combined with new advances in location-based targeting capabilities, I predict outdoor advertising experiments will find their way into marketing budgets next year.

I enjoyed this topic and answering the questions so many of us are discussing within our organizations right now. I appreciate the opportunity to share my insights with your readers as they plan for 2023 and beyond.