MarTech Interview with Zarina Stanford, CMO at Bazaarvoice

Zarina  Stanford, CMO at Bazaarvoice catches up with MarTechSeries to talk about a few best practices that every CMO and marketing leader should follow when in B2B:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Zarina, tell us about yourself and what made you foray into marketing? We’d love to hear more about your time as CMO at Bazaarvoice.

I am the youngest of five siblings raised single-handedly by an amazing mom who was our best coach, fan, and role model. I spent the first half of my career in sales and loved it, particularly spending time with customers in the field. Mid-career at IBM, I was asked to lead marketing as they needed someone who understood sales. I fell in love with marketing, particularly given the strategic nature of what we do.

As CMO at Bazaarvoice, I am in the best of all places. It is always a great spot to be in when you champion your brand, your products, and your customers, while all along, serving yourselves and your families! As an avid shopper, and an everyday consumer, I sense and know that I am on a mission to protect and advance the single premise that Bazaarvoice was founded on some 17 years ago  – the power of the voice of the customer.

As a B2B CMO: What are some of the things you swear by in your day to day marketing work?

Love this question. Since my first CMO appointment years ago, I believe that there are three things that all marketeers and CMOs must do:

1. Be relevant; to the customers, to the team, and to the business and brand I serve.
2. Get things done. Deliver on our promise.
3. Have fun. Love what I do and do what I love, as the saying goes.

A few fundamentals that you feel marketing leaders need to strengthen in their B2B marketing processes/teams to drive faster output?

First and foremost, be a business leader first, marketeer second. Marketing is about top-line and bottom-line growth. It’s about being strategic and assessing opportunity costs. It’s about impact – to the customers, to the business, to the team, and to our personal growth.

Second, it isn’t just about brand, or demand, or advocacy. It is about all three. It is the one single engine and discipline that cuts across the entire customer experience journey.

Third, speed and time to value is important. Equally importantly, however, is the chance to make a lasting impact.

Tell us about some of your most recent observations/trends uncovered through recent research: we came across Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Preference Report recently and would love some key highlights.

I think that the biggest takeaway is, even amongst pending recession, consumers are prioritizing experience over price. One may say it is all about value and time to value. Today, shoppers are seeking experiences that will not just inform, but entertain and reward them as well. In fact, they’ll pay more for those experiences: 98% of the consumers we surveyed said there is at least a certain case where they would buy something based on experience vs. price.

In order to satisfy their customers’ cravings, brands and retailers need to work to provide offerings that will take their shoppers’ experiences to the next level, including rewards programs, gamification, AR and VR, and one day, opportunities in the metaverse.

What do you feel can enable marketers better to face market dynamics and meet customer expectations and trends?

Marketers are armed with a special balance of art and science.  We are creative and innovative.  We are data and evidence driven. We are great at listening, seeing patterns, and we’re also intuitive. Market dynamics and trends are the basic building blocks of every marketing plan – and for that matter, every business plan. This brings me back to the importance for marketing leaders to think, act, and lead like a business leader first and bring along with us the broad and deep spectrum of marketing competencies and acumen to capitalize on changing markets and trends.

A few thoughts/predictions on the future of martech and how you feel this space will shape up and evolve further over the years.

At the risk of dating myself, I remember vividly when the first wave of martech came in full force with marketing automation, digital marketing, and the analytics and insights that came along with it. Over the last 15 or so years, thousands of technology providers came into place, addressing or attempting to address every marketing puzzle, including the holy grail of end-to-end attribution.

1. Consolidation of martech solutions and technology providers. The first of these waves is already in motion.
2. Martech providers will continue to solve the attribution challenge. At the end of the day, marketing is just like every other business function; proving value, ROI, and business impact is key.
3. Correction of the content supply chain, particularly in the B2B2C and the B2C space:
   • For years, brands have been fixated with creating and delivering the most impactful content and we all carry the bias that we have to create compelling content ourselves: brand content, PDPs, ebooks, demos, and so much more.
   • We own the supply side of the content supply chain in market, or so we think.
   • The truth is that consumers trust authentic content generated by other shoppers like them. UGC is seen 2.4X more authentic than content that comes from a brand. According to Bazaarvoice’s 2022 Shopper Experience Index, 83% of shoppers surveyed trust organic posts from influencers more than sponsored posts*
   • And most important of all, we brands can’t create content fast enough or cost effectively enough to meet the insatiable demand for product content by today’s always-on shoppers!
4. Consumers will continue to influence other consumers, accelerating the move to C2B and C2C. Over the next 12-18 months, the “Cs” will include communities in addition to consumers.

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