Social Business Engine: The Enterprise Podcast On Social Media, Content Marketing, Social Selling And Employee Advocacy.

Social audio has become very popular recently with the advent of Clubhouse. According to Edison Research 15% of social media users 18+ say they have used Clubhouse.  Podcasting is a form of social audio. And, it continues to grow as a content channel. According to Edison Research’s Share of Ear study, which began tracking audio consumption in 2014, podcasting’s share of all audio listening is now 6% of consumption. This level marks an all-time high for podcasting, up from 2% in 2014.  Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have launched or plan to launch social audio functionalities. I’ve had a love affair with podcasting for nearly 10 years. In fact, I listen to many podcasts. MME is my second podcast. My first podcast ran for 49 episodes. I co-hosted it with a buddy of mine. We bantered about digital marketing topics. The big difference between my first podcast and my second podcast is that I didn’t have a strategy with my first podcast. I had fun recording them. But, there was no str

B2B influencer marketing is not the same as it is in B2C, where you have celebrities like top athletes and Hollywood actors endorse a brand and post on Instagram about it. B2B marketing leaders can leverage industry influencers in their marketing efforts with a solid plan. That is the topic of conversation with my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Amisha Gandhi, SVP of Marketing at Tipalti. Amisha is a groundbreaking B2B innovator with deep marketing and communications expertise across multiple industries and geos. She was recognized in PR Week’s Women to Watch 2020, Top 50 Influence Marketer by Talking Influence and Top Digital Marketer on LinkedIn. Amisha is also an accomplished speaker at multiple industry conferences including Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, and many others. Listen to our conversation to learn how to find and work with B2B influencers. What is a B2B Influencer? Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging internal influencers at your co

Most CMOs favor external communications (demand generation, content marketing, etc.) over internal communications. Why? Because these external activities seem to create more measurable ROI. However, with the modern workforce internal communications are now more important than ever to motivate and activate people within the organization to be a channel of communication. My guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, Mark Derks, has great insights about how much effort marketing should put into internal communications. Mark is the CMO at BlueGrace Logistics. Founded in 2009, BlueGrace Logistics is one of the fastest growing leaders of transportation management services in North America. As a full service third party logistics provider (3PL), BlueGrace helps businesses manage their freight spend through industry-leading technology, high-level freight carrier relationships and overall understanding of the complex $750 Billion U.S. freight industry. Listen to our conversation to learn the pros an

How would you plan the marketing strategy for a new brand? What are some factors that marketing leaders should take into consideration when rolling out a new product? That is the topic of conversation of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, with my guest Armen Najarian. Armen is the CMO at RSA Fraud & Risk Intelligence, which is part of the larger RSA Security, a 38-year old global brand. As his division expanded and with more revenue and customers around the globe, they decided to transform the Fraud & Risk Intelligence division into a stand-alone business. As the CMO, Armen was responsible for creating and implementing the marketing strategy for this new business unit. Listen to the episode to learn how he did it and some key lessons you can implement in your own organization. Creating a Marketing Strategy 1. Assemble a Team “I'm spending a lot of time on organizational design,” Armen says. “I'm working very closely with the HR leader for this business and really plotting up the next

How do you formulate an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy? How do you decide which accounts to target? And what is the role of analytics in ABM planning? That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest, Chris Rack, President at PureB2B. PureB2B leverages a database of B2B decision-makers in combination with their predictive analytics technology, to provide a full suite of solutions that help their clients meet their specific B2B demand generation sales and marketing revenue goals. Listen to this episode to learn how to plan a successful ABM strategy. Building Your ABM List Who is responsible for creating the ABM list? Marketing or sales? Chris says it should be a very collaborative approach, “taking a data approach and combining thought and feedback from both leaders, frontline sellers, sales leaders and front line marketers to come up with a real collaborative list.” Marketing must go through a process of digital marketing transformation to rely on data and analyti

B2B buyers have changed dramatically, especially during COVID. Consider these three recent trends, for example: B2B buyers are looking critically at any opportunity that comes to them, whether it comes from marketing content or from a sales conversation. B2B buyers are giving less access to sales people and traditional conversations. In fact, 83% of the buyer journey does not include a sales rep. B2B buyers place a greater priority on perspective and recommendations from people who aren't sales people, from their peers and from subject matter experts via content marketing. So, as marketers, how do we approach the modern buyer? That is the topic of conversation in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine with my guest, Spencer Wixom, Sr. VP Marketing at Challenger. Listen as Spencer unpacks marketing’s role in the modern sales experience. The 3 Pillars of the Modern Sales Experience 1. Role of messaging to the buyer “I think it's really critical for B2B marketers to think about how we are interacting with

Marketing professionals need to have a strong grip on data. These uncertain times have inspired marketers to rely less on qualitative insights and more on data-driven insights.  This is what my guest realized during 2020. Paul Cowan, CMO at FreshBooks, joins me in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast to talk about why they are doubling down on customer data marketing in 2021. FreshBooks serves mainly the small business owner segment with easy-to-use accounting software. As many organizations, the pandemic affected their business initially but it then bounced back and they started to experience growth in 2020. So, they decided to invest in a direct sales force, target international markets and focus on demand generation to accelerate growth. Join our conversation to discover how you can use customer data in your own marketing organization. Leveraging Customer Data Marketing Paul says that after 15 years of operations, FreshBooks realized they were sitting on a lot of data they had not previously

The pandemic hit just about every industry hard and many companies are still trying to recover. That’s why stories of B2B companies helping out others around them are so encouraging. And I’m excited to bring you one such story in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast. My guest is Kathie Johnson, CMO at Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact center, unified communications and artificial intelligence software provider. Customers use their contact center software to scale and improve their customer support experience. Traditionally, customer support was limited to call centers, which involved agents receiving phone calls. But today they're really contact centers because when people reach out for service or support or to even purchase online, they use many different channels, not just the phone. “We like to say we're the best solution for those companies who are customer-obsessed,” says Kathie. Listen to this episode to discover how Talkdesk became a mission-driven organization during the Covid crisis. Mis

What is the future of buying and selling? How do marketing and sales approach digital native decision-makers? That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine with my guest, Dave Boyce. Dave is the Chief Strategy Officer, XANT, where he divides his time between corporate development, corporate strategy, and operational strategy. He is also a board member of Forrester Research Inc. since 2017. This episode was inspired by two articles that Dave published on LinkedIn: The Future of Buying The Future of Sales Join us in this conversation to learn why marketers must understand the modern buyer. The Journey of the Modern Buyer Both marketers and sellers must be aware of the changes to their buyer personas in the past year.  Today, our buyers are sitting in their living room, the people who are signing purchase orders are at home, almost nobody is at an office. That means that almost everyone involved in the decision process is using digital channels to research potential suppliers. Dave says t

This is a different, but very special, episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast. My guest is Hang Black, VP, Revenue Enablement, Juniper Networks and I invited her to talk about her new book, Embrace Your Edge: Pave Your Own Path as an Immigrant Woman in the Workplace. This book has the potential to be life-changing for some. Hang says the idea for this book was in her head for a decade. It not only describes Hang’s experience as a Vietnamese immigrant to the United States, but also deals with important issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. So don’t miss our fascinating conversation about inclusion, diversity and access from a perspective you haven’t seen before. Tokenism Although Hang was raised in a diverse culture, she really never felt included or excluded. As an Asian, she wasn’t shunned from the black community when growing up, but neither was she fully embraced -- and the same thing happened within the white community. “One of the reasons I wrote the book was there's a lot of conve

What drives the success of a sales team today? Knowing how to engage the digitally savvy modern buyer. And modern buyers need modern sellers. While digital marketing is a mature ecosystem with proven processes and practices, digital selling is still evolving. Many sales organizations were reluctant to implement a digital sales transformation until COVID-19 came and forced everyone into remote selling. Today, digital selling is more important than ever. In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, I talked with Ed Terpening, Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group, who recently released the 2020 State of Digital Selling research report. This survey sought to understand the capabilities and key success factors enabling the digital transformation of selling among B2B businesses. It was based on a survey of 506 sales professionals across North America, Europe, and China, and it offers a comprehensive view of how B2B sales teams are leveraging digital in their sales processes. Listen to this episode to learn abo

The year 2020 has brought a lot of pain and confusion due to the pandemic, but also many opportunities for companies to show compassion and generosity. And that willingness to help others can sometimes reap rewards in the marketplace. That’s exactly the story my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Adriel Sanchez, CMO at Newsela shares. Newsela provides instructional content to K-12 schools in the United States, serving 35 million children.  What do they do exactly? They take content from reliable sources around the web and incorporate changes to make it ready for the classroom. First, they rewrite every piece of content at 5 different reading levels, so in a single class every student can access the content at their own reading level. Then, they surround content with instructional support for teachers, so it would be easy for them to embed the content into their lessons. And finally, Newsela attaches the content to individual grade standards by state (over 130K in the US), through machine le

Sales messaging is a vital part of a sales reps’ daily work. It’s how they engage with prospects and it can make a big difference in their results. While the perfect sales message will connect and engage the buyer (eventually leading to a sale), a weak sales message will just be ignored, or worse, will damage the reputation of your company. In this article and episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, my guest, Mario Martinez Jr., CEO and Founder at Vengreso, discusses what marketing and sales leaders need to know about sales messaging and some actionable tips you can start implementing today. Plus, he announced a new tool Vengreso created to help your sales team deploy a consistent message throughout your sales organization. Now, it is self-evident that sales messaging is crucial for sellers, but why is sales messaging important for marketers? Mario says that marketers should be supporting the sales team with all of the right messaging, from the Go-To-Market messaging to the messaging to engage with bu

In recent history, there have been three important events that have led marketing teams to shift their focus and embrace digital marketing transformation.  The first event was 9/11 in 2001 and how fear and uncertainty gripped the U.S. (and others) which hindered planned marketing activities including travel and events where thousands of people congregated. The second event was the economic crisis of 2008 which had both businesses and consumers concerned about the repercussions that came out of every dollar spent. Third, is how COVID has affected many lives and how we conduct business.  March 2020 provided the world with a new chapter. Those who accepted and embraced the changes with compassion for each other have figured out ways to conduct business, despite the challenges many businesses have faced.  My guest this week on the Modern Marketing Engine podcast is Sara Larsen. Sara’s experience and “marketing scars” come from years of marketing leadership roles at organizations such as IBM, SAP, and Dassault Sys

What is the most effective way to attract and retain customers if you sell to consumers through distributors? According to Paul Ackah-Sanzah, it’s an Omnichannel marketing strategy. Paul is VP of Marketing at Phantom Screens and a 20-year marketing veteran. Paul has an impressive career journey at Phantom Screens, starting out as their retail sales manager, moving to brand marketing manager, and has been their VP of marketing for two years.  In this episode of The Modern Marketing Engine podcast, I dive into what a B2B to C organization does when their target market is both distributors and consumers and how this affects the customer experience. Listen to this episode to learn about Omnichannel marketing, B2B to C marketing, and how to ensure quality when selling through a wide array of distributors. Who is Phantom Screens? Phantom Screens manufactures and sells retractable screens which are installed in residential homes as patios, porches and lanai screens. They offer many useful features including ventilat

A unified marketing and sales funnel is the solution to better prospecting in any organization. In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, my guest, A. Lee Judge, Global Digital Marketing Director at Hexagon GeoSystems, discusses his approach to digital marketing and how it is contributing to sales prospecting with a focus on quantifiable attribution.  B2B Marketing leaders are being held to a higher standard in 2020. CEOs and CROs want to see marketing drive activities that demonstrably help salespeople be more productive. Sales prospecting is one of the most undesirable activities in sales. Marketers are asked to deliver marketing programs that enable sales prospecting to be more productive.  Listen to this episode to learn more about how marketing can help sales to prospect better. This podcast is brought to you by Postal.io. A Sales and marketing engagement platform that generates leads increases sales and improves customer retention. Request a demo to learn how to integrate direct mail and g

In 2020 with in-person conferences being redirected to online events, marketers are looking for alternative ways to continue to grow their demand generation efforts and ensure that they can drive quality leads into the sales funnel. One of those ways is gift marketing. Marketing teams are allocating budgets and efforts toward gifting, as opposed to sponsoring virtual events, as some marketers are not seeing the ROI from a $10k+ sponsorship. How can you use gift marketing in your company and what are some great use cases? That is the topic of this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest, Nick Grant, Head of Marketing at Postal.io. Postal.io is an integrated direct mail platform for sales and marketing teams that leverages machine learning to automate and optimize the creation, delivery, and reporting of personalized physical assets (a.k.a. gifts) in the sales process. The Postal.io platform integrates into HubSpot, Salesloft and Salesforce.  Postal.io activities can be tracked in CRM, such

Podcasts are becoming more popular each day (there are more than a million podcasts and more than 30 million episodes available). So it’s not surprising that marketers are deciding to create a B2B podcast as a strategy to reach their buyers. But how do you start a B2B podcast and how do you make it work? That is the topic on this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast with my guest Rachel Clapp Miller, Vice President of Marketing and Digital Engagement at Force Management.  Force Management is a B2B sales effectiveness consulting firm that helps its clients define sales solutions and create management tools that produce measurable results. In her role, Rachel manages communication and content generation that drive leads and client engagement.  She is also the host of The Audible Ready Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and revenue-driving executives, who share their best insights on how a focus on sales effectiveness can help companies increase revenue, improve sales margins and gain m

Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine on your app of choice. The year 2020 has seen many marketing events cancelled, postponed or gone virtual due to COVID-19. And Content Marketing World, the largest event for content marketers held in person each fall is going 100% virtual as well.  My guest on this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine is Cathy McPhillips, VP of Marketing at the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the organizer of Content Marketing World, which is one of my favorite marketing events (I have never missed one since its inception), by the way.  Cathy oversees all marketing efforts for CMI, their events, their Chief Content Officer magazine (now digital only), their research, CMI University and all other CMI properties and happenings. Her goal is to grow the CMI community and audience online and offline. Pre-CMI, Cathy has 20+ years experience in marketing, including agency life, B2C, national restaurant and nonprofit marketing, and her own marketing consulting business. She’s currently also a

Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine on your app of choice. There’s a powerful analogy used to describe the difference between an outbound and an inbound marketing strategy: an outbound strategy is like chasing or hunting for leads, while an inbound strategy is like attracting or luring leads to you. And although both marketing strategies have their merits and their limitations, my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, found great success for her organization when she shifted from an outbound to an inbound marketing strategy. Cynthia Barnes, Founder and CEO of National Association Women Sales Professionals (NAWSP) is a repeat guest here on my podcast. Cynthia is a LinkedIn Top Sales Influencer, highly sought-after keynote speaker, and Champion for Women in Sales, known for motivating others to feel confident, empowered, and brave. She founded the National Association of Women Sales Professionals (NAWSP) with one simple mission: to help women in sales reach the Top 1% and end gender in