Transforming B2B Marketing

Shownotes

This episode of Sunnyside Up explores the importance of engaging with an audience on an emotional level in B2B marketing. Matt Quirk, Head of Digital Marketing for Insight Enterprises, joins us to discuss how understanding customer pain points and using emotional triggers can lead to successful campaigns. He shares his experience in applying psychology to marketing for Fortune 100 companies and small businesses alike and explains how organizations can pivot quickly to remain client-centric. Matt also provides insight into marketing and sales collaborations, multi-touch attribution, feedback sessions, optimization meetings, and other tactics that can drive digital transformation projects. He dives into an incredible project of his own which began with a single idea from marketing and resulted in vision work, machine learning, AI, data storage, cloud security, and more.

About the Guest

Matt has been helping businesses grow since 2009 by building meaningful connections and sharing the real and actionable value that builds trust and creates massive amounts of goodwill in the marketplace. Today, he leads Digital Marketing for the Solutions GTM team at Insight Enterprises. They focus on building engagement with the audience, capturing leads, driving pipeline, and building lasting relationships with their clients.

Connect with Matt Quirk

Key Takeaways

• Some industries, such as the software as a service (SaaS) industry, are particularly effective at connecting with customers and prospects on an emotional level.
• It is important for marketers to be willing to test and learn and to learn from failures to improve their strategies and better connect with their target audience.
• Successful outreach and engagement can sometimes come from seemingly small actions, such as content syndication or following up with a BDR team.
• A feedback mechanism is important for making small changes to the process and improving lead-scoring models, multi-touch attribution, and the overall effectiveness of marketing efforts.

• The relationship between marketing and sales is often described as a “tennis match,” but it can be more effective to think of it as a collaborative “soccer team” working towards a common goal.
• Strong relationships and open communication between marketing and sales can improve outcomes and enhance the customer experience.
• Targeting can be improved by understanding the buyer’s role and behavior in different contexts, and by continuing to engage with them even after initial meetings or projects have been initiated.

Quotes

“I don’t care if you fail, but I do care if you didn’t learn anything from your failure. So let’s fail, but let’s fail forward and learn from it, and implement those things.

– Matt Quirk

Highlights from the Episode

Can you give our listeners a little bit about your background?

Matt has a background in video and audio production and graphic design. He has worked in the screen-printing industry and as an illustrator at an internet gaming company. Matt has also worked with the Rich Dad Company as a front-end web designer and developer and has a passion for psychology and understanding how people make decisions. Matt has been working at Insight for the past five years, starting as a marketing specialist and eventually taking on a management role and leading the digital marketing team for the company’s solutions-focused teams. Matt’s experience includes working in service industries and building communities around services.

You mentioned earlier that marketing speaks to people, it doesn’t talk to businesses. Can you explain this thought to our listeners?

Matt explains that in B2B marketing, it is important to tap into the emotional component of the person being targeted. By addressing the pain points and emotional triggers of the target audience, a business can stand out and effectively market its solutions. The software as a service industry has been successful at this, but other industries can also succeed by testing, learning, and being open to failure while also learning from those failures. It is important to document and share these learnings with different teams within the business to improve marketing strategies and address customer needs.

How do you identify buying committees? How do you prioritize who to reach out to? How do you drive that engagement?

Matt and his team identify buying committees by using both third-party data and their engagement data, with a focus on who is engaging with what. They use a funnel system that consists of awareness, consideration, and decision, and they look for trends between these stages. They also use a feedback mechanism to make small changes in their process and are working on redoing their lead scoring model to track multi-touch attribution. The team also prioritizes who to reach out to by looking at who has shown more engagement, such as downloading assets beyond just an ebook, and uses a BDR team for follow-up. To drive engagement, they focus on conducting the most meaningful digital transformation projects and ensuring that all teams, including marketing, demand gen, BDRs, sellers, and delivery, work together towards a common goal.

How do you make the relationship between marketing and sales more collaborative to improve outcomes and impact the customer experience?

Matt emphasizes the importance of strong relationships between marketing and sales to improve outcomes and impact the customer experience. In his organization, the digital team serves as a support team for other teams, including demand gen and practice and portfolio, and has open access to anyone within the organization. Matt also has direct contact with sales and other senior leaders and works with them to align messaging and targeting. In addition, Matt and his team are looking at ways to continue engagement with potential clients even after initial meetings or project discussions, and are building communities around thought leadership content to strengthen relationships and provide value to clients.

How are you and your organization adapting to the current economic downturn?

Matt explains how Insight is adapting to the current economic downturn by reinforcing its client-centric approach and working closely with clients to help them pivot in response to the pandemic and other challenges. This includes helping clients transform their operations and processes to adapt to working remotely and ensuring security for handling financial transactions. In some cases, the economic impact has also presented opportunities for Insight, such as when a client asked for help implementing machine learning and AI to improve their marketing efforts. Insight’s approach is to be there for their clients, offering guidance and support as needed, and to look for opportunities to help their clients grow and thrive.

Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners?

A book:

• The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

A newsletter:

• The Magnetic Marketing Newsletter by Dan Kennedy

Shout-outs

Lisa Cox — Director of Marketing at Teak & Twine

Mason Cosby — Director of Growth at Gravity Global

Frank Kern — Marketing Consultant and CEO at Frank Kern INC