Redactable’s AI-driven platform leverages natural language processing and machine learning to automatically detect sensitive information in documents and redact it. The company plans to use the funding to advance its market reach, visibility and operations.

“With so much confidential information being shared electronically, the risk of data vulnerability for both individuals and organizations is increasing exponentially,” said Amanda Levay, Redactable Founder and CEO, in a statement. “Too much time is spent using black markers or drawing boxes over sensitive data, which is not only inefficient but also ineffective.”

The post Redactable Raises $5.5M In Seed Funding appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The Nature Of The Broken System

Marketing is often seen as a unified department that works in unison to achieve shared goals. In reality? It’s more of a dystopia. Usually, the CMO will set the strategic vision and then MOps will be responsible for executing on it. While that might seem like a reasonable arrangement, it’s the breeding ground for numerous problems.

To start, CMOs tend to be visionaries in terms of strategy while MOps professionals know how to take tactical steps toward execution. So, when a CMO tells MOps the strategy they need to have executed, there’s a very good chance they don’t understand what it takes to actually do so.

The CMO might recommend implementing a certain technology and associated strategy, for example. But even though the idea might be a good one in theory, the CMO might not realize that executing on it is impossible given current tech constraints and systems. So, what gives?

Should MOps tell the CMO they need a new strategy? Well, they could try… but they usually won’t. Instead, they end up trying to maneuver the strategy to fit their tools, which often dilutes the original strategic intent or makes the whole ideal unravel. To say the process is neither efficient nor effective is an understatement.

The Status Quo Needs To Change

CMOs typically have excellent ideas, but they’re also used to operating at the highest level. They set strategies that are important and well-intentioned, like improving the bottom line, but they’re also incredibly broad. How do you even start to execute against something like that?

Additionally, there are parts of the execution that only hands-on practitioners really grasp. For example, the organization’s target audience, tech stack, customer engagement and more can make a difference in how a strategy is implemented. If the CMO doesn’t have direct visibility into these very tactical elements, it makes sense they wouldn’t know how to best shape their strategy around them.

It’s also helpful for such strategies to be rooted in process, people and technology. Their buyers’ buying cycles should be considered, as should the extent of their internal systems. A CMO setting a strategy on their own might be able to effectively grow brand awareness, but without knowledge of all these factors, they won’t be able to drive revenue like they want to.

How To Get It Right

While this might all seem like it’s pointing fingers at the CMO, it’s not intended to. Siloed organizations are usually that way because of how the business is structured and/or years of operating in a disjointed fashion. CMOs are usually doing their best; they’re just not set up to succeed.

Fortunately, the solution to fixing this marketing to marketing (M2M) relationship is actually relatively simple: It requires both parties getting in a room and collaborating about the marketing strategy before it becomes permanent. This way, the CMO can share what they are trying to achieve with the strategy they’re envisioning, and then MOps can offer insights into how feasible such a strategy is given all the factors covered in this article.

It’s worth noting that MOps’ contributions should go beyond simply telling the CMO that a strategy won’t work. They should use data analysis, tech evaluation and performance measurement to help inform the strategy and back up their opinions. Then, once a strategy is formed that everyone agrees is both realistic and promising, MOps can weigh in on how to optimize marketing processes so the execution can be done more smoothly.

The M2M misalignment problem is just as imperative to fix as the one between sales and marketing. Luckily, it’s not a hard one to solve; it just requires both parties being willing to share their individual insights and work together to create the right strategy and tactics that put the organization’s best interests first. As with all things in business, a lot can be improved by simply breaking down barriers and prioritizing honest, constructive communication.

Raja Walia is the CEO of GNW Consulting, a data-driven marketing automation agency.

The post The Other Alignment Problem That’s Not Sales & Marketing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

When we think of transformation initiatives, we often think of vision documents, project plans and work streams that help design and build new capabilities and structures. The success or failure of these transformation initiatives, however, is often determined less by the specifics of the core project deliverables and more by the degree to which stakeholders embrace and adopt the subsequent new ways of working. This is where the risks start to emerge.

Transformation initiatives often involve changes to workflow between different teams and shifts in the balance of authority and decision-making rights. This can prove uncomfortable for some and confusing for others. When marketing leaders are focused on project milestones and solving design challenges, they can overlook other important “environmental factors” that can lead to deliberate or inadvertent resistance across the teams and individuals involved in the new operating model.

Driving success calls for sustained commitment and the willingness to engage meaningfully with stakeholders outside the core project team to ensure their understanding and support on an ongoing basis.

The B2B Marketing Ecosystem Model Rests On 4 Factors

In our research about building a high-performance B2B marketing ecosystem, Forrester identifies four environmental factors: Accountability, governance, infrastructure and culture. If any of these are absent or lacking in definition or substance, the marketing ecosystem will be disrupted and the adoption of the new working practices will be compromised.

1. Accountability establishes a common definition of success and specifies the role that each stakeholder group will play in achieving the associated goals. A lack of definition or agreement on these across stakeholder groups can give rise to an environment of defensiveness and blame.
2. Governance describes the ongoing oversight, stewardship and adherence to established standards throughout the marketing workflow to ensure that the agreed goals are achieved. Without adequate governance, it can be difficult to identify, diagnose and address issues and disconnects — leading to a critical loss of momentum.
3. Infrastructure consists of the technologies, systems, tools and protocols that support marketing processes, teams and individual job roles. Without these in place, participants may struggle to adopt and apply new ways of working despite their best intentions.
4. Culture is the manifestation of an organization’s unity of purpose and associated behavioral norms and, on its own, can determine the success of its operating model. Challenging cultural dynamics across the organization will influence stakeholders’ willingness to embrace change and can significantly hinder efforts to attain and sustain high performance.

Issues associated with these environmental factors will tend to manifest themselves in stakeholders being unable, or even unwilling, to align to the new ways of working. A stakeholder’s inability to adopt a new process is often a solvable problem and within the scope of control of the core project team.

Operational gaps can be addressed, with new procedures or tools defined and rolled out. Dealing with a stakeholder’s unwillingness to adopt a new approach can be more challenging and time-consuming to resolve. Misaligned motivations among team members are often symptomatic of cultural rifts and divergent objectives higher up in the company’s operating model.

Success Does Not Happen By Chance But Through Focus, Discipline & Tenacity

The nature and strength of the environmental factors at play will influence the actions taken to mitigate those forces. We observe that those actions typically fall into four broad categories: Goal setting and ongoing measurement; process definition and governance; stakeholder enablement; and leadership and communication.

The most successful marketing leaders take care to assess and address each of these areas to mitigate the risk of environmental factors negatively impacting transformation efforts. As you look to foster the success of your marketing transformation initiative, ensure that:

• Objectives and goals for the initiative are crisply communicated, with the full understanding and agreement of key business stakeholders;

• A sustainable, manageable and enforceable governance framework is established to orchestrate key points of alignment and handoffs between teams;

• Both the strategic objectives and operational needs of stakeholders outside the core team are considered to secure their understanding, buy-in, and support of the new operating model; and

• Beyond sponsorship of the initiative, there’s a plan in place to keep leaders visibly involved in and supportive of the new approaches.

The biggest changes will be the product of a bold vision coupled with multiple, smaller steps. By taking the right steps at the right time, B2B marketing leaders can prepare themselves to not only anticipate transformational risks but also take the right actions to help their teams keep moving and stay on course.

Nick Buck is a VP, Principal Analyst and Executive Partner with Forrester’s B2B marketing executive strategies service.

The post 4 Factors Will Make Or Break Your Marketing Transformation appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

Each Forrester Decisions service brings together three powerful components to give organizations exactly what they need to make progress on their priorities and future plans:

• Bold vision research: Research such as empowered buying that helps leaders stay ahead of ever-changing markets, economic volatility and the expectations of empowered buyers to deliver on their customer-obsessed strategy;
• Curated tools and frameworks: Each Forrester Decisions service contains a core set of strategic models designed to help leaders take immediate action on their most pressing priorities. For example, the Forrester B2B Revenue Waterfall is the industry standard for B2B organizations looking to define their demand management process. It helps drive new pipeline and revenue opportunities in current accounts, turn buyers into advocates and fuel demand generation activities such as attracting net-new buyers’ attention and accelerating deal closing; and
• Hands-on guidance: In guidance sessions, leaders work with Forrester experts to apply frameworks, models and data to their specific context.

Who It’s For

The new portfolio will help executives, functional leaders and their teams — across technology, customer experience, B2C and B2B marketing, sales and product management — plan and tackle their most pressing initiatives and priorities for driving growth. For B2B marketing leaders, Forrester offers six Forrester Decision services:

• B2B Marketing Executives;
• Marketing Operations;
• Demand & ABM;
• Portfolio Marketing;
• Channel Marketing; and
• Forrester Market Insights.

What It Solves

Forrester Decisions helps managers and their teams shorten the distance between bold vision and superior business impact. It helps leaders understand and interpret market dynamics and develop a deeper understanding of their customers and competitors, apply proven approaches with confidence and accelerate progress on pressing priorities and develop skills and a shared toolset across teams so they can deliver on their vision. For B2B marketing leaders, these elements drive alignment to customer value across the revenue engine to make a measurable impact on growth, retention and advocacy.

What Makes It Special

Each Forrester Decisions service includes signature customer obsession research along with tools to make customer obsession a reality at an organization. Each of the Forrester Decisions services is expressly built around a unique set of priorities representing an organization’s most pressing opportunities and challenges. Each priority was created based on hundreds of pieces of feedback from clients and potential clients.

Guidance from experts is built into each Forrester Decisions service. Our team gets to know each business, providing thoughtful, timely guidance — from planning to strategy to execution — every step of the way to help achieve organizational outcomes.

Contact

Forrester
Alice Sneary, Director, Portfolio Marketing
asneary@forrester.com
(617) 613-60038

The post Forrester Decisions Seeks To Help Leaders Understand & Interpret Market Dynamics appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

With innovations that include advanced controls for customers — such as an enterprise tier of Operations Hub and a B2B payments solution, HubSpot Payments — the company is doubling down on its branding as a CRM for scaling companies by designing products that provide SMBs with similar capabilities as their larger corporate counterparts.

To learn more about the innovations and dive deeper into HubSpot’s mission of making technology and tools more accessible for all companies, Demand Gen Report sat down with Andrew Pitre, VP of Product Development for HubSpot, to discuss the new innovations and inspirations behind their creation.

DGR: Can you walk us through the creation of Operations Hub and what inspired you to create new features for it?

Pitre: Ultimately, HubSpot is a CRM and we go to market (GTM) through our hubs, which are designed to fit the needs of teams that spend their days working out of the CRM. The first hubs we launched were Marketing, Sales and Services, and we just built tools on top of the CRM to help those departments do their jobs better. We launched Operations Hub when we realized there are other departments in companies that were working through the CRM, but they were just a little more invisible than other departments because they’re doing complete set-up systems and helping to build business processes and reporting.

With Operations Hub Enterprise, our latest launch, we are offering a new tool called datasets. Technically speaking, it’s a reporting and data management tool that lets you do AI-style reporting, where you have access to all your contacts, new deals, emails and website visits, to name a few. Datasets allow you to join those objects together — similar to building an Excel query — without the need for deep data science expertise. It’s designed to provide organizations with the opportunity to join their data together, choose the properties they’re pulling together and run populations on top of that data to create a curated table with data to build better reporting inside of HubSpot.

DGR: What were some of the external industry trends that inspired the innovations to your Operations Hub?

Pitre: The biggest one we saw was the industry-wide move toward revenue operations (RevOps). What we really liked about RevOps was that it focused on what we’d been preaching as a company: Breaking down silos and eliminating gaps in customer experiences (CX). That made us want to focus on operations being the hero of the marketing story. At the end of the day, it’s the operations person who’s going to bring people together because they’re setting up the systems, process and data required for collaboration.

We also realized that companies of all sizes needed an operations team — small companies probably don’t have one, but they still have the need to connect systems and build a better business process. Over the years, we’ve heard from smaller companies saying they could use some sort of iPad system to connect their tools together and automation software. As a company, our goal is to look for tools for small businesses that often feel out of reach for them and build their CRMs in a way that makes them accessible to the average small business owner who doesn’t have a PhD in computer science.

DGR: Why is it important for companies to have highly accessible and connected CRMs?

Pitre: Marketers need the data from their CRMs to create great customer experiences. We always talk about silos, so at HubSpot we envision it as a flywheel instead of a funnel. It’s easy to draw a funnel, but the reality is it’s much more complicated than that. At the end of the day, you have someone who’s buying from you, and it’s not like there’s a distinction between how that person interprets the sales or marketing services. As humans, we all want to have a great experience with whatever company we’re buying from, and the company wants to have a great experience with us. CRMs house all the data about the people you’re trying to engage with as a company.

For marketers, the advantage of having all of that data in one system is that it informs you of a customer’s previous interactions or purchases with the company or product. Even just knowing if they’ve had a bad or good experience with your support team or product completely changes how you might target or reach out to them in your messaging. Bringing all that data together in one system allows you to better target and have more effective conversations with your customer base.

DGR: Before we go, I’d love to touch on HubSpot Payments, HubSpot’s new B2B E-commerce solution. Can you walk me through the creation process and inspiration?

 It’s simple: We noticed that a lot of our customers don’t have an online payments solution. While you have companies like Shopify providing E-commerce solutions, there are a bunch of customers who don’t sell online and feel they don’t need a payments solution.

We built a feature into our sales product that enabled users to put a payment link in their quote generation system, so what we’re releasing now is the ability to place that payment link directly on their website. We realized that if our users can embed a payment link inside of a quote they’re sending to a customer — a pretty standard interaction — why not skip sending the quote and just send somebody to a web page where they can just buy something? We imagine users listing their services and enabling people to buy directly from there, without having to speak with a salesperson again.

The post Q&A With Andrew Pitre, HubSpot: How The Company Increased CRM’s Connectivity & Interactivity To Promote CX appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Much like the chorus you can’t get out of your head, we rounded up the most impactful quotes we heard throughout the series. Behold, the greatest hits:

“RevOps can provide your company with a significant competitive advantage, such as higher efficiencies, cost savings and seamless customer experience. But it can only happen if your RevOps team has time to think, strategize, analyze and plan.” – Brandi Starr, Tegrita

“When creating content, look for ways to link what’s already familiar to your audience’s brains to something they might find new.” – Carmen Simon, Corporate Visions.

“GTM isn’t just about launching a new product: It’s about creating a repeatable and scalable process.” @Terminus‘ @sangramvajre is helping us identify and fix the issues in our GTM strategies. Tune in to the Best of #B2BMX now to learn more: https://t.co/jjhouqBLmc pic.twitter.com/mmUBFI4QaE

— Best Of #B2BMX (@B2BMX) September 27, 2021

“You want your internal teams to have the same ‘lingo.’ Without that, your sales will go down because your marketing isn’t talking the same as your sales teams. But if you have a process in place to show that in your tech stack, it will help them all talk cohesively.” – Christina Kay, ResellerRatings

“At the highest-level, ABX takes all the best principles of the customer experience movement and combines them with the best of account-based marketing strategies.” – Jon Miller, Demandbase

“What you are trying to do in any ABM campaign is find your people and tell them your story. You are telling them why you are better than your competitors and how can you solve the problems they are having. But it needs to be done in a manner that is short, crisp and makes the people want more.” – Kushlani De Silva

“We get ahead of ourselves when we’re creating content because we just want to achieve an outcome, which is getting people to engage and measuring that. But the best place to start is with what you stand for. Because ultimately, that’s the perception people already have of you.” – Kanaar Bell, Foundation Marketing

“Virtual selling is the new normal, so you need to work with sellers jointly and collaboratively on building rapport with clients, creating a virtual community throughout the selling journey, fighting virtual fatigue and ensuring customer service doesn’t falter.” – Roderick Jefferson, Netskope

“Influence is the new currency in the channel — avoid that influence, avoid working with influencers and avoid becoming an influencer at your own peril. Increasing your channel chief’s exposure and brand is critical for success and the continued engagement of the right partners in the channel.” – Janet Schijns, The JS Group

“[Marketing Ops] is not an individual job; it’s not a team; it’s not a process or function. It is a discipline, a mindset with a lot happening behind the scenes. Marketers need to think about how to move this maturity curve from Marketing Ops as a job to a strategy.” – Helen Abramova, Verizon

“You need to put the same amount of effort that you put into understanding your customers to understand your salespeople. Create a sales persona where you define ‘I need marketing to do this,’ and follow suit on that model.” – Pam Didner, Relentless Pursuit

“Storytelling is the emotional transfer of facts and data. In #B2B, the emotion transfer is the glue that holds the story together, as that what buyers are looking for.” – @mirirod of @Microsoft #B2BMX https://t.co/wIO0ROcM1j pic.twitter.com/Jy6uhmQeWu

— Best Of #B2BMX (@B2BMX) September 28, 2021

“If you want to move beyond 1:1 and do account-based [marketing] at scale, we have to find a way to cluster and comingle these accounts. Aligning accounts by factors such as region and industry is important for understanding and engaging accounts at scale.” – Kelvin Gee, Oracle

“Respecting your buyers and developing a true solution approach is really about understanding what buyers buy from their partners. A buyer aligned strategy — the route of customer obsession — is critical to understanding buyer needs and drives solution mapping.” – Maria Chien, Forrester

The post Top Quotes From Best Of #B2BMX appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The service seeks to provide teams with the information needed to move quickly, “de-risk” decisions and save time and money when tackling high-priority items across technology, marketing, customer experience, sales and product management. It offers a personalized digital experience to help users intuitively navigate and share content, consisting of three core components:

• Boldvision research that showcases the latest insights, trends, predictions and market forecasts to stay ahead of changing customer and market dynamics;
• Curated tools and frameworks to tackle priorities with strategic models and plug-and-play templates; and
• Hands-on guidance sessions and events to educate users on the best applications of Forrester research.

“The pandemic dramatically altered B2B buying behaviors, spurring the need for new approaches,” said Sharyn Leaver, SVP of Research at Forrester, in a statement. “In 2021, 43% of B2B buyers are involved in large, complex buying scenarios affecting multiple departments with executive oversight, up from 28% in 2019, indicating increased scrutiny and due diligence on B2B purchases. As a result, B2B CMOs must move fast, build a strong coalition among their peers and proactively engineer cross-functional alignment to better engage with buying groups. Forrester Decisions equips B2B marketing leaders with the resources to better understand their customers’ changing behaviors, navigate complex buying scenarios and ultimately achieve business outcomes faster.” 

The post Forrester Introduces Forrester Decisions Services For B2B Marketing Leaders appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

It can be argued that no company represented the expansion and evolution of the role and practice of demand generation more than DemandGen International. Over the past decade, the company has been credited with helping a prestigious list of B2B brands apply the methods and technologies for driving growth, including disciplines for successful lead nurturing, lead scoring, ABM and other key demand generation programs. Therefore, it was of significant note last week when DemandGen International announced it had signed a definitive agreement to join forces with BDO Digital, a subsidiary of BDO USA, that helps middle market and enterprise organizations harness innovation and capture the full power of technology to drive growth.

Coming during a flurry of M&A activity in the B2B agency space, the pairing is of particular interest as it brings together DemandGen’s unique expertise in digital marketing consulting services with BDO Digital’s deep reach with mid-market and enterprise companies.

To learn more about the merger, Demand Gen Report sat down with David Lewis, Founder and CEO of DemandGen, to discuss how this combination will expand and enhance DemandGen’s capabilities, the primary factors driving merger and acquisition growth and the overall future of the entire DemandGen team.

Demand Gen Report: Your company helped shape the category of demand generation, and I’m assuming you have been approached for mergers or acquisitions in the past. Why did you decide that now was the right time for the deal? How did this come together?

David Lewis: One of DemandGen’s guiding principles is growth; we’ve always been committed to growing the business. We’ve done that organically for the past 13 and a half years, but for the last several, we realized that we needed a much bigger platform to have the impact that we want on our clients and marketing in general.

What we’re finding is that the complexity of our clients’ marketing and sales operations is growing. They need a plethora of technologies to keep up, and they need to align internal teams. It was overwhelming and daunting for them, so we’ve been expanding our capabilities in consulting, technology services and managed services to support our clients. We needed to find a different way to grow and scale to support this massive demand.

DGR: Why was BDO an ideal partner? What did the search process look like?

Lewis: We had 200 companies respond with interest, and we cut that list down to 22. We had in-depth conversations with those 22 companies, and the majority were private equity companies that wanted to invest in growth and build a business, with a handful of strategics mixed in. And, candidly, when I received the tear sheet in advance of the meeting with BDO, I wondered why they were so interested in this space, because their business spanned 100 years and is really rooted in tax, audit and advisory services.

However, when I got on the video call with BDO, I literally knew in five minutes that we had found our new partner. It was immediate to me because our mission is “making marketing heroes,” and BDO’s core purpose is “helping people thrive every day.” I could check every box from our aligned mission, purpose, culture, services and vision for the digital transformation landscape. Not only would our clients benefit from the combination, but we learned that BDO’s expansive base of clients around the world were searching for answers on how to approach digital transformation, and BDO had already made strategic moves to help its clients with that transformation. DemandGen filled a key piece of the puzzle by providing our expertise around the methods and technologies for driving growth across marketing and sales.

Taking our thriving business to the next level has been a top priority. We’ve been bringing on more and more global enterprise companies, and we’ve had to scale tremendously. So, we said, we can either go the private equity route or the strategic route. The reason we didn’t go the private equity route was because I wanted more than just investment — if we took investment by a third party, that leaves all the growth responsibility on us. That will probably end up in a private equity path taking the business we built and selling it to another third party; that’s traditionally how that path goes. That’s not the way we wanted to go, we wanted to find a true partner to help us scale in terms of services and team members overnight.

DGR: Mergers and acquisitions in general are hot right now in the agency space — what do you think is driving this spike in activity?

Lewis: I think two things are driving it. One is that Covid accelerated the digital transformation priority for every company; it was a wake-up call that the traditional ways that they go-to-market will no longer work. In fact, companies that had events as their main go-to immediately shut down. Companies had to make a fast pivot online.

Additionally, the buying process and the buyer’s journey was changing and empowering the buyer. We’ve always said that buyers make informed buying decisions before even talking to your sales teams. While this made every company aware that their sales team couldn’t meet people face to face, they needed a digital presence to engage with audiences.

Every business must rethink and retool how they go to market and since there is massive demand for the expertise and services to get them there, acquisitions enable market leaders to stay way out in front.

DGR: What do you think the merger will mean for the future of DemandGen’s offerings, as well as for your team? Do you anticipate expanding your offerings? Do you think most of the team will remain in place?

Lewis: Some of the areas we’re going to expand is our data services and expertise in governance and the legalities surrounding digital marketing. Digital sales are getting stronger and more complex, so governance is an important advisory service to help our clients ensure their data is secure and being used and managed in a legal way. We’ve been working on expanding our data services and joining BDO enables us to expand more rapidly because of their expertise in machine learning, AI and data management.

We’re also expanding our CRM capabilities with the addition of BDO Digital’s focus in Microsoft CRM. Most of our clients historically have used Salesforce, but we’re seeing increasing growth in Microsoft CRM usage. Another area of service expansion is with the Adobe stack. Adobe has a wide range of digital tools, like Adobe Experience manager, so we have plans to dramatically expand our capabilities across the Adobe platforms.

DGR: What will your role look like going forward and how will the team integrate in to BDO Digital? Is your team coming with you?

Lewis: One thing I want to make clear is I’m staying on. I plan to retire at BDO Digital; I have no interest in or no plans of leaving their company or riding off into the sunset. My journey is not over. Again, one of the things that I really liked about BDO Digital is the opportunity to serve their U.S. and global clients. So many of these middle-market customers have not really gotten started on their journey. I’ll be leading the demand generation group within BDO Digital as a partner, and 100% of my team is coming over — no one is leaving, and there’s no restructuring.

The post Q&A With David Lewis, CEO DemandGen: How Joining Forces With BDO Digital Will Help Even More Businesses Transform Digitally appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

This is where marketing operations comes in. Across sectors, as the importance of data grows, marketing operations (“ops”) teams have taken on an increasingly prominent role in their organizations. Often seen as the “maestros” of marketing technology systems — the ones who understand data, processes and logistics best — marketing ops teams have grown in prominence, and even raised the bar for traditional marketers who are now expected to have the skills and know-how ops professionals typically hold.

Even so, there’s one channel that marketing ops professionals have struggled to incorporate into their overall data strategy: events. With in-person events only gaining momentum in the marketing stack, and more event data at marketers’ fingertips than ever before, the opportunity is big for marketing ops teams to step in and streamline processes to drive better results and improve the efficiency of these key moments for the business.

The Challenges With Events

Without the right solutions and teams in place, today’s companies face a number of obstacles when it comes to executing successful events that make the case for how marketing operations can play a greater role.

The first is inconsistent tools and processes: oftentimes, events are run and executed on a number of different solutions that aren’t strongly integrated with the rest of the marketing technology stack. Naturally, data from all of these disparate outlets fails to paint an overall picture of an event’s success. Then, with inconsistent and incomplete data, the leads process is more difficult to manage and return on investment (ROI) is difficult to realize.

Where Marketing Operations Can Play A Bigger Role

With all of this in mind, the need for a more streamlined approach to events and event data is clear. So, why is marketing ops best positioned to lead this charge?

At its core, even as the role has evolved in the last few years, marketing ops has a critical eye for improving operational efficiency and always mapping objectives to greater ROI. What’s more, marketing ops professionals have a strong understanding of what insights to look for and collect to help determine the next best sales and marketing actions.

A prime example of marketing operations and events in action can be seen with manufacturing technology company Rockwell Automation, which transformed its marketing ops organization globally — and their approach to events as a result. The Rockwell team developed set data standards to reset on data best practices and ensure consistent information was being collected across all of their events. Beyond that, the company also created step-by-step playbooks for their global events teams that defined processes for everything from registration to leads follow-up. As a result, Rockwell experienced increased productivity and greater results across their events.

Together with event marketing and sales teams, marketing ops can help simplify events processes, and provide a single source of the truth when it comes to making sense of event data and proving ROI. In 2020, as we continue to see the proliferation of data and the increasing importance of events, marketing ops teams are poised to play a leading role in transforming how businesses develop and execute on a successful events strategy.

James is the VP of Marketing at Certain and brings over 16 years of enterprise marketing and sales experience in B2B technology. James is responsible for accelerating growth and bringing Certain’s unique story to the market. In his spare time, James stays active enjoying the San Francisco Bay Area and rooting for the local sports teams with his wife and daughters.

The post Why Marketing Operations Is The Secret Weapon To Strengthen Your Events Strategy appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Research from Demand Gen Report shows that close to one-third (32%) of companies either have Marketing Ops, Sales Ops or collaboration between the two tasked with accessing and updating the company’s database. This is a clear sign, along with increased discussion of the topic at events such as LeanData’s OpsStars event, that businesses continue to rely heavily on Operations roles to connect disparate insights for a holistic view on prospects.

However, industry experts agree that the role of Operations within B2B businesses is expanding beyond the table stakes of seamlessly integrating disconnected technology and data.

“Leadership wants to know what [Ops teams] are doing to actually facilitate the conversation with the buyer,” said Justin Gray, Founder and CEO of LeadMD. “I think that has left Marketing and Sales Ops on its heels a bit because that’s something that has just gotten away from them as a primary skillset. They’ve been making things work together, but now they’re being asked to really influence and ensure that their systems are driving the conversation with that buyer.”

This comes at a time when B2B leadership is looking to create a streamlined, customer-first experience for its target audience. Therefore, ensuring leadership and Operations teams are aligned on this goal has grown vital in continuing the development of the revenue engine.

“This buy-in ensures organizations don’t lose sight of the very mission of the organization, which is to optimize and increase revenue across the whole organization,” said Howard Brown, Founder and CEO of the sales engagement platform ringDNA. “Too often, teams either deploy RevOps individuals without a cross-departmental mandate or, worse, they hire multiple RevOps with only departmental responsibility. This perpetuates the siloed approach that the best RevOps teams are deployed to help solve.”

Kerry Cunningham, Senior Research Director for Marketing Operations and Demand Management at Forrester, added that one of the biggest challenges for Ops teams is to identify, interpret and respond effectively to buyer signals.

“There are more and better tools available for collecting and responding to signals from individuals,” Cunningham said in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “But in B2B, more than 80% of purchases are made by teams or groups of three or more individuals. The nature of the challenge is that standard tools do not allow organizations to recognize when buying groups are active, to aggregate individual signals to the group/team and to respond appropriately in that context.”

CenturyLink Expands Ops Function To Act As A ‘Reliable Third Party’

At the Fortune 500 company CenturyLink, Operations as a function has become pivotal in ensuring all customer-facing teams have the tools and insights required to offer seamless experiences. Kate Federhar has been part of the company’s Marketing Operations practice for roughly seven years. As the Senior Manager of Marketing Operations, she noted that CenturyLink’s expectations of her and her team continue to grow.

“My role is only expanding,” Federhar said. “Everybody keeps talking about specializing and being a specialist, but I feel like we need to really make sure that we are ready and willing to accept challenges in other areas — because we touch so many parts of the business. That’s how our roles are going to expand.”

Federhar said that CenturyLink’s Marketing Operations team is split into two different functions: one focuses on internal operations while the other focuses on external operations.

“I run external-facing Marketing Operations. So, I manage anything we’re doing to communicate with our customers and prospects, as well as the technology and tools that we need to accomplish that,” Federhar said. “I have a counterpart who runs internal Marketing Operations, which focuses on how marketing operates, how we budget, how we formulate workflow tracking and more.”

Over the past two years, CenturyLink’s Operations team has had to pivot managing more than just the traditional marketing operations technology — such as its Marketo instance and anything directly associated with its email and lead generation efforts. Federhar noted that this has expanded to include web technology from Adobe’s suite of solutions, as well as some advertising technology.

“We’re starting to treat Marketing Operations less like a traditional marketing-operation shop and more of a technology shop,” Federhar said. “We’re here to enable people to be able to do the very best work they can, regardless of platform or technology, and regardless of everything else.”

While senior Operations leadership is expected to adapt to ever-changing business needs, Federhar noted that individuals on her team are tasked with owning specific aspects of the tech stack to ensure colleagues know exactly who to connect with to learn how to better enable themselves with the tech and insights at their disposal.

“Everybody does not have a hand in everything. I’m part of a team of about eight people. I have portions of my team that run advertising technology, somebody on my team that runs the Adobe relationship and so on,” Federhar said. “We have specialists within the larger team, but everybody sits on the larger team.”

This setup has better positioned Federhar’s team to streamline communication across the different departments and business units within the organization. She explained that this process has turned her team into somewhat of a customer service organization within the company.

“We treat ourselves, and our work, almost like we’re our own agency,” Federhar said. “We act like we are an independent third party. So we are constantly in communication and updating people on what’s going on with different things and what the net-new features and functionalities are — all of those kinds of elements and all of those key parts are really important. I have my team structured so that everybody knows who to go to for everything. There’s a single point of contact that they can have a conversation with and that’s really important.”

Federhar added that the business has benefited from breaking down silos within CenturyLink, enabling teams to focus on the priorities that drive business goals.

“We’re not as worried about infrastructure, and we’re not as manual anymore,” Federhar concluded. “It’s so much easier under a single leader and a single vision, where traditionally everything was split apart, to start doing the right thing every single minute of the day. It just works, and now we have that.”

Operational Success Requires Alignment Around The Revenue Engine

Experts agreed that the continued expansion of operational roles in B2B businesses comes down to the continued focus on driving revenue and streamlining success. Cunningham noted that the whole concept of RevOps is to have greater alignment across the “revenue engine,” which is made of Sales, Marketing and Customer Operations.

“Many organizations are tempted to simply change titles to RevOps to solve for better alignment,” Cunningham said. “But title changes don’t change anything. Others rush at an organizational realignment, often putting Marketing and Sales Operations under a single leader. That can drive alignment only if process and systems changes accompany the organizational change. It is perfectly possible to implement necessary systems and process changes to drive alignment without any change of title or organizational change.”

Cunningham went on to describe his company’s “Revenue Operation Charter” that defines the key areas that must be addressed to streamline a revenue engine.

“It starts with revenue engine leaders agreeing on a common vision for how the organization is going to operate and a set of goals that support that vision,” Cunningham said. “From there, all the key disciplines within the revenue engine should be subject to review for how they can interoperate with each other more effectively. These disciplines include things such as data, systems, personnel and process definitions for things like lead management, customer marketing and other related processes.”

LeadMD’s Gray also noted that there is a necessary shift required for Operations teams to become more attuned to traditional marketing skillsets around creativity, content development, messaging and more.

“Since we weighted the deck so heavily around marketing, technology and sales technology, we’re now left all standing around asking, ‘Who’s developing a way to speak to prospects and engage them? And based on those behaviors, how are we responding?’” Gray said. “I’m seeing that deficit in marketing skill sets as a pretty dominant gap within most organizations that we’re talking to.”

Ultimately, it comes down to creating a customer-first mentality not only in the creative aspects of the marketing department, according to Gray.

“Operations requires understanding who the TAM and ICP are, how they’ve been segmented and aligned to internal resources — either by territory or by target account — and then really facilitating and understanding the buyer’s journey,” Gray concluded. “Marketing and Sales Ops folks that we really see excelling are individuals that understand that customer journey explicitly.”

The post B2B Ops Roles Expand Into Customer Experience Enablers To Streamline Revenue Engines appeared first on Demand Gen Report.