What 2024 holds for events businesses (and AI)

by Helen Coetzee, on 10/01/2024

Back in May 2023, when AI was coming into sharp focus for all business leaders, we wrote this blog post about how senior executives in B2B media and events businesses should respond. Our challenge to business leaders at the time was ‘are you asking the right questions?’…before you start looking for the answers!

This piece from 7 months ago included Team MPG’s prediction that live events would become more important than ever – with these observations:

“…have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident that they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’.

…as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events.

…if anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve.”

Based on how well events businesses are performing and how attractive they are looking to investors as we head into 2024, it’s safe to assume we made the right predictions.

And it would be wise at this stage to revisit two more key points:

#1 If your tech stack and first party data are not well set up and managed you won’t be able to use the most powerful AI tools – for marketing, sales, creating value for sponsors, or growing audiences and engagement.
#2 The best martech and event tech platforms have offered machine learning for some time that most event organisers are still not using, and are now rapidly rolling out new AI features.

AI is not just about ChatGPT creating copy and Adobe Firefly creating images. These quite tactical generative AI tools were the focus of the hype in 2023. Easy and simple to deploy, these types of tools will probably have the least overall impact on events businesses.

The ‘game changing’ developments in the coming months will be in how AI tools are deployed to leverage your first party data to create customer experiences before, during and after your events that are more relevant, engaging, and valuable. And that is where the golden nuggets of AI will be found in 2024…

 

Team MPG can help you accelerate the growth of your B2B events – get in touch to find out how.

AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing and well managed data set, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Talk to Team MPG about how we can help you build a resilient, future-proof marketing function.

 

What our clients have said about working with Team MPG:

“MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!”

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI Group

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AI is not optional

by Helen Coetzee, on 29/09/2023

AI is now with us in a big way – especially for marketers. It’s not the future, it’s not optional, and it won’t steal your job if you see it as an enabler rather than a threat.

Team MPG has been working with AI tools for many years, including the ML and automation that has been available in CRM and marketing automation platforms for some time now. This is not new.

So, what is new?

Here are 2 things that have changed in 2023…

  1. Generative AI tools have become more accessible and affordable, enabling efficiency and scale in many marketing tasks such as planning, copywriting, video creation and image creation.
  2. There has been an exponential rise in how clever platforms have become in ensuring the right messages reach the right people, at the right time. Google Ads in particular are now delivering better ROI, as are email campaigns – when fed with well-structured data.

We’re very excited about what AI means for marketing.

Marketers can now be a lot more efficient, spend less time on repetitive, manual (boring!) tasks. They can now focus more on developing strategies and campaign plans that have a direct impact on the growth of revenues, profits, and enterprise value.

Below are just some of the resources we have recently created for MPG’s clients and wider network. (Have a look, and please let us know if you think we should be focusing more on some AI applications and tools not covered in these MPG Insights articles):

If you would like Team MPG’s advice on how you should be using AI for your marketing, please get in touch!

CONTACT US

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AI in marketing: insights from MPG’s roundtable for Renewd

by Lucy Peppercorn, on 14/09/2023

AI remains an area of particular interest for B2B marketers. At Renewd’s recent 3-part AI roundtable series for B2B subscription, membership and event professionals, MPG took to the stage for the marketing-focused session to facilitate discussion around the tech’s ongoing development.

Here are some of the key topics we discussed and what the senior marketing and business leaders in attendance told us:

Marketers are still in the experimentation phase with AI

When asked to name the tools their teams have been using, attendees shared a broad range. AI darling ChatGPT was the most mentioned, with transcription tool Otter.ai winning similar favour for its advanced note-taking credentials. GA4 – recently imposed on marketers, willing or not – excites with its AI data crunching capabilities.

Amongst the lesser-mentioned tools, applications varied. Automation from Zapier, image creation from Photoshop and Canva, and copy creation from copy.ai and Oktopost – to name just a few. Marketers remain open to trialling tools and pitting them against one another in various functions.

What’s clear is that marketers are still experimenting with tools – often with overlapping functionality – in a bid to find the ones that will make a real difference to their work.

The question is: will, or can, this experimentation ever end? With almost daily announcements of new AI tools and AI functionality additions and enhancements to already embedded tools such as HubSpot and Canva, we should expect ‘test and learn’ to be a bigger part of every marketer’s life.

Finding tools and understanding their usage remains a key challenge

We asked the roundtable attendees to score their teams on the most relevant skills to AI adoption and usage (graph below). The common weak areas remain those related to finding and properly deploying the AI in the first place. Prompting, a key competency for ensuring tools are working at their best, was the lowest-scored skill.

Marketers will need more time, and in many cases focused training, to get the best out of their new AI companions.

Score your marketing team on a scale of 1-5 on the following skills

… but marketing teams are well-equipped to harness AI once they understand its functionality

When it comes to the skills that will really help marketers long term, things were more positive. Attendees scored their teams higher on strategic thinking and soft skills – both key competencies if marketing is to continue being the champion of AI within businesses.

Understanding how AI fits into broader strategic goals will help marketers remain focused on improving output and results, instead of being distracted by flashy tools that don’t deliver value. 

In a similar vein, attendees were more confident that their teams have sufficient copy editing skills to refine the output of AI tools drafting emails, social and other content for them. Despite the impressive leaps in AI copywriting, a human touch is still essential – for now.

Creative vision will separate the early adopters from the laggards. Marketers who are not afraid to step out of their comfort zone and review existing processes through an AI-lens will find new ways of working, freeing up time for them to focus on more valuable strategic work.

The future is full of opportunities

Prompted on where they see AI going in the context of marketing over the next 6-12 months, attendees once again provided a range of opinions. From improvements in AI video creation options to implications for hiring new marketers – including making AI a competency to check for during the interview process.

However, there was a recurrent prediction of consolidation, with agreement around the fact that through competition and acquisitions – the AI options available will filter down to more elegant and comprehensive solutions that combine functionality that is currently scattered across different tools.

View the full session

You can view the full recording and access the slide deck we shared at the links below.

WATCH SESSION
DOWNLOAD SLIDES
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Marketing Strategy Briefing for B2B Intelligence, Media & Events Businesses – August 2023

by Helen Coetzee, on 23/08/2023

What will make the biggest difference to your marketing performance?

As we head towards the final months of 2023, we start focusing our ‘strategic minds’ on 2024 and beyond. The annual planning and budgeting cycle will start very soon and has already started for many businesses.

For senior executives focused on events, this can be a very challenging time, as the intense budgeting process overlaps with a very busy period of delivering important events that bring in a significant portion of 2023 revenues to fund 2024 operations and growth.

Marketing is emerging as a critically important function for business success. Strategically minded leaders are spending more time and money on ensuring they have the right marketing people, systems and processes in place to enable scale and profitability. 

Smart investments made in marketing over the coming months will move the dial for many businesses in 2024. Here is where we recommend you focus these investments:

#1 Optimise your customer database to reach the right audience with the right message

Those with strong 1st party data have been smashing it in 2023. By ‘strong’ we mean:

  • Good market coverage i.e. having enough of the right contacts on your database to achieve your commercial targets
  • Well-tagged contacts for segmented campaigns and targeted, relevant comms to successfully engage and monetise your audience
  • A well-defined and well-executed process to continually maintain and grow your compliant, relevant data set
  • A systematic method to analyse and act on customer insight on audience interactions.

Studies by Google and Boston Consulting Group have found that using 1st-party data to engage audiences with personalised marketing results in 2.9x revenue growth and 1.5x cost savings.

A valuable, optimised database relies on having an ongoing, systematic process. Much of MPG’s work in 2023 has focused on helping our clients put this process in place to achieve sustainable growth. We use HubSpot’s easy-to-follow Database Lifecycle Management Model, a simple 5-part framework that delivers good results. The 5 parts are:

  1. Data cleaning: contacts can become unusable over time and may need to be suppressed, refreshed or removed. 
  1. Data collection: capturing the right types of contact data and enrichment data is key to success. 3 methods need to be in play here at all times:
    • Lead generation/data capture forms
    • Data cleaning via automated and manual processes
    • Data acquisition – which we recommend is done via a trusted 3rd party data research specialist (contact us for a list of recommended providers)
  2. Data usage: when deciding what data to collect, it’s important to understand how contacts will be used for marketing purposes. Impactful, targeted campaigns rely on well-tagged data.
  3. Data storage: all customer and prospect data should be stored in a fit-for-purpose system or well-integrated tech stack. This is absolutely essential if you want to scale your business. (MPG are official implementation partners for top-of-the-range systems, including HubSpot, Adobe (Marketo) and Active Campaign. Get in touch if you need help sourcing and putting in place the right system for your business).
  4. Data maintenance: your customer and prospect data should always be ‘ready to use’ and this requires ongoing, systematic maintenance via automated and manual processes.

Can we help you develop, maintain and continually grow your 1st party data?

MPG’s database experts have extensive experience in planning and managing the essential work needed to give you a strong database that enables effective, targeted marketing and sales campaigns. Contact us to find out more.

#2 Use analytics for data-led decision making on your marketing investments

‘Shooting in the dark’ is no longer an option. Using marketing and sales analytics in the right way is a priority for the smartest business leaders. Team MPG has seen that a well-structured reporting and decision-making process based on robust analytics delivers good results – again and again. 

In today’s data-driven landscape, it is essential for marketers to have analytical skills to understand customer behaviour, track campaign performance, and create effective strategies. 

If you use Google Analytics, you need to make sure GA4 has been set up in the right way to give you the data points you need. Google’s previous analytics product – Universal Analytics (UA) was phased out in July.

Here are some of the key features of GA4 that make it a much more valuable tool than its predecessor:

  • Cross-platform tracking: GA4 can track users across multiple devices and platforms, which gives you a more holistic view of your potential customer’s behaviour.
  • Flexible reporting: GA4 has more flexible reporting options, so you can create custom reports to meet your specific reporting needs. In addition, GA4’s default attribution model is data-driven attribution – a new, dynamic approach that uses algorithms to distribute credit for conversions based on each channel’s click interaction, taking into account all touchpoints throughout the customer journey
  • Enhanced predictive analytics: GA4 uses machine learning to provide more accurate predictions about user behaviour. This can help you to improve your marketing campaigns and make better business decisions.
  • Better integrations: GA4 is more tightly integrated with other Google products, such as Google Ads, Google Search Console and Google Marketing Platform, making it much easier to optimise campaign performance.
  • Metrics and dimensions: GA4 has a new set of metrics and dimensions designed to be more flexible and comprehensive than UA. For example, GA4 has a metric called “Active Users” that tracks how many unique users have interacted with your website (or app) in the past 7 days. This metric is more helpful than UA’s “Total Users” metric, which only counts the number of users who have visited your website or app at least once.
  • Enhanced predictive analytics: GA4 uses machine learning to provide more accurate predictions about user behaviour. This can help you to improve your marketing campaigns and make better business decisions.
  • Data model: in UA, data was collected in sessions, which are defined as a group of user interactions that happen within a certain time period. In GA4, data is collected in events, which are individual interactions that a user takes. This makes GA4 more flexible and scalable, as it can track a wider range of user behaviour.

Can we help you get your marketing and sales analytics and reporting into good shape?

MPG’s analytics experts have extensive experience in auditing and implementing GA4, as well as training our clients in-house marketers and analysts on how to get this tool working optimally.
We have also built marketing and sales reports for many businesses to give senior executives and marketers ‘at the coalface’ the intelligence they need to make good strategic and tactical decisions.
Contact us to find out more.

#3 Be more effective and efficient with AI marketing tools

ChatGPT has sparked many debates about the opportunities and challenges presented by AI. Participants of a recent roundtable hosted by MPG shared how AI is being used in their businesses, and how they’re approaching AI going forward. The 6 key takeaways from this Marketing Leaders discussion were: 

  1. Most marketers are in the early stages of adoption, experimenting with various tools. MPG has identified the following tools to help event marketers.
  2. AI is augmenting, not replacing existing processes – for now.
  3. AI tools cannot replicate the deep understanding marketers have of their audiences and products.
  4. AI used well should help marketers’ automate more processes, meaning they will have more time for this kind of strategic thinking and planning to better support revenue generation and business growth.
  5. Marketing technologists who can deploy AI well will play a more important role going forward.
  6. Governance and privacy issues raise tricky questions, and marketers are being encouraged by inhouse lawyers to exercise caution – or not use tools like ChatGPT at all.

MPG sees one of the most important applications of AI being attribution modelling – ensuring you have strong visibility at all times of which marketing initiatives are delivering a good ROI, and which ones are losing you money. Here is more on this important topic.

Do you need a marketing strategy that includes tried & tested AI tools?

Technology should not be the tail that wags the dog, but is a very important enabler to marketing success. MPG’s marketing strategy and martech experts can help you develop a marketing strategy that incorporates AI to help you reach the right audience with the right message more effectively and more efficiently, and measure the performance of various marketing initiatives with
Contact us to find out more.

#4 Get maximum mileage out of your marketing budget

Marketing campaign budgets have come under pressure 2023. This is unlikely to change in 2024. Marketing leaders need to make sure the money they put into various marketing channels and tactics delivers results, and these results are visible.

Email marketing will continue to be an incredibly important marketing channel for all marketers, especially for attracting high-quality event attendees and generating leads for sponsorship and exhibition salespeople. Here are some conference email marketing do’s and don’ts to help you get this channel working at its best.

Another important channel for event marketing is paid media – sometimes referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) and digital advertising. PPC can quickly become expensive if you don’t approach it strategically and with the necessary rigour in execution. When set up and managed well, paid media can be a cost-effective way to attract and engage event attendees and generate leads for your sales teams to convert to bring in more sponsorship and exhibition revenue.  

Social media also plays a crucial role in boosting brand recognition, generating awareness, and delivering organic leads and registrations. Social media is also important for maintaining year-round engagement with your community. Effective social media usage relies on:

  1. Messaging and content strategies backed by a deep understanding of your audience gleaned from social listening and competitor analysis
  2. Posts optimised for discovery and using high-quality, on-brand creative assets
  3. Amplified reach by leveraging brand advocates and influencers 
  4. Automated processes for streamlined posting, monitoring, tracking and measuring

Can we help you achieve better results from email marketing, paid media or social media?

MPG’s marcomms experts have a wealth of knowledge about how to make all your channels work well and deliver strong ROI.

Contact us to request a call to have a chat about where your marketers could be doing better.

#5 Embed important skills in your marketing function to future-proof your business

Doing marketing well is difficult. A marketing graduate straight out of university should have good, theoretical knowledge, but typically very little understanding of how to apply this to your business. And more experienced marketers from other sectors who have not worked in B2B media or events previously may find their way of marketing is not fit for purpose for your product set.

There 4 ways to get the marketing skills you need, and MPG recommends doing all four in combination:

  1. Hire the right people

    Look for analytical marketers who are good at problem-solving. You need people who are organised, systematic and productive. They also need to be good communicators and great at stakeholder management.
  2. Complement your in-house team with external experts – engaging partners strategically for long-term success.

    Having a flexible, skilled supplementary workforce who can fill important skills and resource gaps is a huge advantage. Having strong partners on board and supporting your in-house team will help you retain your best marketers and consistently deliver good results in all areas of your marketing.
  3. Train your in-house marketers in the kind of marketing they need to do:

    There are specific and different approaches needed for marketing to attract delegates to conferences, visitors to exhibitions, sponsors and exhibitors.

    These approaches are also very different to how subscription marketing should be done to attract and retain subscribers. Don’t underestimate the differences in marketing these different types of products.

    Your marketers also need help in getting to grips with the critical data, martech and digital tools they need to deploy confidently and competently.

    Invest in their training to keep your marketers performing well, motivated and engaged.

Build a stronger, future-fit marketing function with MPG

MPG Academy’s trainers are B2B marketing practitioners whose ‘day job’ is delivering strategies, operations and campaigns for a range of B2B media and events businesses.

Get in touch to find out about the training we can deliver for your team.

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AI applications: 4 key learnings from MPG’s roundtable of event marketing leaders

by Lucy Peppercorn, on 20/07/2023

Marketers of conferences and exhibitions are starting to find practical applications for AI tools.

That’s one of the key learnings we took away from MPG’s recent roundtable discussion for marketing leaders – B2B Event Marketing: AI Implications and Applications. This event took place in London on 12th July, and was a resounding success!

Joining us to share how AI has already been integrated in their businesses, the marketing leaders we spoke to were cautiously excited about the prospect of AI-enabled marketing, and were keen to share their ideas on where it could go next.

In this post, we share the key takeaways we had from a busy afternoon of debate and discussion. If you’re interested in joining a future roundtable, make sure you’re subscribed to MPG insights to be the first to know all the details.

4 key takeaways from MPG’s event marketing leaders AI roundtable

#1 Most marketing teams are in the early stages of adopting AI, and are moving to embrace it

As AI appears across tools – both familiar and new – marketers are still trying to get a handle on practical applications and the benefits they bring. With AI opening up new possibilities, marketers are cautiously experimenting with new ways of working.

One new skill that is needed in marketing teams is prompting, i.e. the act of briefing AI tools in the most effective way to get the output you need. With different tools having different quirks for how they like to be prompted, gaining familiarity is an important first step before moving on to practical application in day-to-day tasks.

Some businesses are creating ‘AI Councils’ – with representatives from all functions – to ensure AI is being carefully considered and incorporated into strategies and workflows where applicable. It seems many businesses are looking to their marketers to lead the AI discussion and adoption in their organisations, as the marketing function is seen as best suited for exploring new tech.

The tools and applications being used by marketers right now vary significantly, with different businesses finding different tools, and different ways of using them. Examples include condensing articles to allow research teams to speed up their work, scoring leads in a more automated manner, writing copy, creating and editing images, reviewing performance data, and even supporting ventures into the metaverse.

Results of AI implementation so far have been mixed, but show promise. Some marketers have found current iterations of AI are not capable enough to fully replace humans in areas such as copywriting, data management and analytics. Instead, marketers are finding ways for AI to augment their existing processes to both speed up work and improve results.

“We see AI as a superpower that can help us produce better work, faster – but only if we can adopt it in the right way.”

– Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#2 Governance and privacy raise questions

Marketers are finding resistance within their own businesses due to concerns over governance, privacy and security. Some AI tools – such as those that work with data – require sharing of sensitive information, forcing a need for clarity on how AI tools process the information given to them before they can be used.

Similar questions exist over content ownership. Image generation tools like Adobe Firefly assure that their AI is trained on Adobe Stock images only, removing the risk of a 3rd party claiming ownership when their image is inadvertently used as part of an AI generated one. With so many tools cropping up, securing assurances over commercial usage is slowing down implementation as legal teams demand clarity – especially as the topic currently remains a legal grey area.

Due to these issues – as well as some general scepticism in businesses over the necessity to invest in AI – marketing is finding itself in a tricky position to influence upwards and getting their colleagues on board with AI. Tangible results will secure backing, but implementation isn’t always simple.

“Who owns an AI created image?”

– Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#3 Right now, AI can augment existing processes – not replace them

Marketers who have tried handing over too much to AI all at once have found themselves burnt, as the tools fail to replicate the level of quality a human can achieve.

As intelligent as AI tools are becoming, they cannot yet replicate the intimate understanding marketers have of their audience and products. Drafting alternate captions for a social media post? Easy. Writing a messaging strategy? Not quite yet.

Practical applications found so far include editing images with Photoshop Generative Fill – a new tool that allows non-designers to edit images to a level of quality even seasoned Photoshop pros would struggle to replicate. Marketers have used this tool to replace missing shoulders in speaker photos, change backgrounds and expand images.

MPG roundtable AI generated
In this photo from MPG’s roundtable, all of the image outside of the green rectangle is AI generated – using Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill – taking approximately 5 minutes to create.

The marketers at our roundtable agreed that this is the most visible and practical ‘game-changing’ application of AI so far.

“Most AI is not built specifically for event marketers. We have to experiment to figure out how it can work for us as event marketing is different from other types of marketing.”

– Attendee of MPG’s marketing leaders roundtable on AI applications

#4 An evolution, or a revolution?

Attendees of our roundtable generally agreed: AI will be an evolution, not a revolution to marketing. New jobs could appear for AI specialists, and existing event marketers should find themselves with more time, energy and headspace to focus on more impactful, revenue-driving and value-creating work.

Overall, AI presents exciting possibilities for marketers to improve and speed up their work. Careful consideration is needed when implementing any AI tools, but solutions won’t be found without practical experience. And, for the foreseeable future, marketers remain irreplaceable – especially if they are spearheading AI adoption across their organisation.

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Questions B2B media/events business leaders should be asking about AI to win in 2024

by Anna Stone, on 23/05/2023

The hype around AI is ramping up, and most leaders and senior marketers in B2B media/events companies are still trying to work out how to react.

There is a palpable fear in some businesses that competitors and future disruptors will ‘eat the lunch’ of those who don’t adapt quickly, as well as great excitement in those who see embracing emerging tech fast as a means of gaining a competitive advantage.

Some of the most progressive businesses are seriously considering how they should disrupt themselves before someone else does.

From MPG’s perspective, we see the following as some of the most important questions B2B media/events businesses and those responsible for their marketing should be asking themselves:

  • What tools should our team start using straight away to increase efficiency and productivity?
  • How should AI tools be added to our existing tech stack to enhance what we already have in place?
  • Do the tools in our current tech stack offer AI functionality we’re not yet using? And for all tools in our tech stack, what is their roadmap to introduce more useful AI?
  • How should we manage the risk around ‘betting on’ AI tools? How do we mitigate this risk?
  • How can we get all our staff on board the AI journey, especially the most skeptical, and those who fear they will be replaced with AI?
  • How fast do we need to move to adopt AI? How much time do we have to figure out our AI strategy? How quickly will today’s best AI tools be replaced by the next generation of best AI tools?
  • How much is ‘getting AI’ going to cost us? How do we build an investment plan to pay for this, and build a strong business case for each investment to gain board approval?

And probably the most important question of all based on personal interest of senior executives, and how they can put themselves in a strong position to answer all the questions above:

  • Where do I find the most relevant information about what AI means for me and my business?
  • And how can I stay plugged into this valuable source of relevant information to help me stay up to date with AI developments?

It’s the last two questions that B2B media/events business leaders should be considering more laterally…

Your B2B media/events brand puts you in a great position to be the conduit of AI learning and information sharing for your community. You have probably already published reports and articles on AI for your audience, sold AI focused webinars to your clients, and incorporated AI into your event programmes.

But…have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’.

AI will certainly help enhance the in-person event experience, and smart event organisers are already using AI to engage and serve their event audiences more efficiently and ‘personally’, i.e. based on what each audience member finds most valuable – en masse (e.g. matchmaking tools). AI will also deliver even more valuable marketing solutions for sponsors and exhibitors as data and analytics can be used to deliver a better and more visible ROI for clients’ marketing spend.

But, as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events.

If anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve. This will be especially important for brands that have built membership offerings where events are a key part of a membership package. As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT reduce the need for search engines, businesses that rely on search traffic to drive visitors to content-heavy sites may find digital engagement from web traffic falling off a cliff. Engagement with events will probably need to fill the gap.

Therefore, information brands with ‘flagship’ annual events they rely on to engage and serve their community members should recognise that the accelerated adoption of AI will make it more important than ever for their flagship events to take, and hold, a market leading position.

A strong, content-led, annual flagship event will always successfully drive community engagement, membership growth and overall revenue – as long as the marketing of the event is planned and executed well.

As we approach the halfway point of 2023, here are the two things event organisers should be putting in place now (if they have not done so already) to ensure their flagship events in 2024 will hold or take the market leading spot:

#1 A strong event product development strategy and team:

Your subject matter experts (i.e. editors, analysts, etc.) and event programming experts (i.e. conference producers) should already be doing the work needed to create a valuable programme for your 2024 flagship event.

The earlier a strong product is created (with strong speakers confirmed), the better chance you have of capturing the 2024 budget your customers will be putting towards sponsoring, exhibiting or attending events.

#2 A strong go-to-market strategy and marcomms plan:

  • Analyse your target market

    • Define your total addressable market, as well as the size and profile of key segments. Consider both your event audience buying tickets, as well as vendors who will buy your exhibition stands and sponsorships – both markets need to be defined and well understood.
    • Evaluate your current database in terms of data contained and how it is structured in relation to the size and shape of your overall target market and key market segments. Will your database give you the targeted reach you require to attract all the visitors/delegates and exhibitors/sponsors you need for commercial success and a market leading position?
    • Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you audit, structure, grow and maintain your database to create business value and ensure your database gives you a competitive advantage.
  • Define your value proposition i.e. unique selling points (USPs) and benefits. How will your event be differentiated from competitors in a way that makes customers choose yours?
  • Determine what key messages will resonate with different market segments. What tone, words and phrases need to be used in all your marcomms to attract, engage and convert customers so they not only register for your event, but also turn up on the day?
    Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you develop more relevant, compelling and engaging messages than your competitors.
  • Martech, data and analytics: evaluate your martech, salestech, database and analytics tools in terms of how well you can reach your target market in a scalable way.
    • Where are the gaps in your data?
    • Which tools need to be better set up and optimised to work as they need to?
    • What integrations are needed for real-time, efficient data flow and compliance are missing?
    • What tools are missing in your tech stack?

If your data, tech and analytics tools are not set up in the right way, you won’t have an efficient and scalable business so that your flagship event can get and keep the ‘top spot’.

It is also worth bearing in mind that to use marketing automation and other AI tools you need a good tech and data setup.

Get in touch to ask for case studies on how Team MPG have helped many B2B media/events businesses improve their martech and data to enable scalable growth (MPG are official partners to HubSpot, Marketo and various other leading martech platforms)

  • Create a better event marcomms plan than your competitors…
    The detail on how to do this will be in our next blog post! Sign up here to get an email notification every time MPG publishes a new Insights piece like this on.

 

Team MPG can help you accelerate the  growth of your B2B events

AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing database, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Get in touch with Team MPG today to see how we can help you build a resilient marketing function that is well set up for future success.

“MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!”

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI – Alternative Insight

Take a look at this short video by MPG’s own Dominic Bird at a recent Gleanin event that explains how AI is being used to gather insights, understand customer behaviour, and personalize marketing strategies. Watch the full video here.

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Unleashing the power of AI in B2B event marketing – a practical guide

by Alicia Drew, on 11/05/2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising digital marketing by providing insights, automating processes, and personalising customer experiences, leading to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and better ROI.

  • Analysing customer data: AI algorithms can analyse large amounts of customer data, including their preferences, behaviour, and interaction history, to identify patterns and insights. These insights can help marketers understand their customers’ needs and preferences better and develop targeted strategies to engage with them more effectively.
  • Automating customer interactions: AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive tools can automate customer interactions through various channels, such as social media, email, or messaging apps. These tools can handle basic queries, provide personalised recommendations, and offer real-time assistance, freeing your marketers to focus on more strategic or critical tasks that only humans can do.
  • Personalising customer experiences: AI can help marketers personalise customer experiences by using customer data to offer relevant product recommendations, content, and promotions, creating a more personalised and engaging experience.

But as AI becomes more accessible, many B2B media and events marketing leaders are still unsure about how to utilise the power of AI in a practical way. Below are just some examples of how AI can be leveraged for high-performance marketing.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising:

  • AI can optimise ad campaigns by analysing user behaviour, search queries, and other relevant data to target ideal consumers with personalised ads.
  • AI can also automate bidding strategies, reducing the workload for advertisers and ensuring that ads get the most clicks and conversions.
  • AI-powered tools can also use natural language processing and machine learning to generate ad copy for PPC ads that is more likely to be clicked on, taking into account factors like audience demographics and campaign objectives.
  • AI can be used to generate long-tail keywords that are more likely to convert. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords, which means that they are more likely to result in clicks and conversions.

Email Marketing:

  • AI can analyse audience behaviour and preferences, which means you can create personalised email content that resonates with your audience and increases click-through rates.
  • AI copy tools can be used to help marketers create impactful subject line ideas that feel more personal and are likely to increase open rates.
  • AI newsletter automation tools can be used to create personalised newsletters with a custom curation of articles and adverts that are aggregated from multiple sources which will help you grow your relationships with your audience while executing mass personalisation.
  • AI can also be used for generating html code for emails, which can save marketers time and effort, and it can help to ensure that their emails are always professional and effective.

Social Media Marketing:

  • AI can recognise different social media platforms, enabling marketers to create channel-specific draft posts. These will be highly generalised though as AI will never fully understand your target audience in the meaningful way your marketers do, so you’ll still need some human intervention for increasing engagement and growth.
  • AI can also analyse social media conversations, providing insights into customer sentiment and engagement rates, enabling marketers to refine their campaigns and improve their social media presence.

Content Marketing:

  • AI can be used to repurpose existing content into new and engaging formats. This can help you to extend the reach of your content and to reach a wider audience. For example, you could use AI to create infographics, video scripts, or use transcription tools to transcribe video and webinar content making it much easier for marketers to repurpose the content for social posts, blogs etc.
  • AI can be used to track the performance of your content and to identify what is resonating with your target audience. This information can then be used to improve your future content marketing efforts so you can create more of that content to keep them engaged. It can also be used to personalise content for each individual user for example, to recommend articles to users based on their past reading history.
  • AI can be used to generate high-quality, relevant copy on a consistent basis. AI can also be used for proofing copy by placing your already written copy into the tool, it can be quickly scanned for errors, repetitive words and phrases and alternative copy can be recommended. It is important to remember however that AI is just a tool and cannot replace the human touch. A human copywriter will still need to review the AI-generated copy to ensure that it is on-brand and resonates with the target audience.

Websites:

  • AI chatbots can improve customer engagement and satisfaction by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and helping customers navigate your website’s content or products.
  • AI can analyse your audience’s web behaviour (pages viewed, content searches, forms completed) and purchase history to create personalised product, content and promotion recommendations.
  • AI can also help optimise website content and structure for search engines, by analysing keywords and other factors affecting SEO and make recommendations on how to improve rankings and visibility.

Marketing and sales automation:

  • AI can be used to automate tasks such as qualifying leads, and scheduling appointments. This can free up time for your salespeople to focus on more strategic and commercial tasks, such as building relationships with customers and closing deals.
  • AI can be used to personalise the sales and marketing process. For example, AI can be used to send personalised emails to leads or to create personalised landing pages. This can help to improve the customer experience and to increase conversion rates.
  • AI can be used to track and analyse data. This data can be used to identify trends, improve targeting, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to improve future marketing efforts.

AI is evolving fast, with new tools being released daily which can make it difficult for marketers to stay up to date with the latest technologies and their practical applications. We recommend appointing a dedicated AI Champion (or even multiple champions), who can help your business stay on top of the latest tech, analysing the practical implications for your business and feeding this intelligence back into the team.

  • Copy and text solutions – for creating copy for ads, emails, blog frameworks, keyword generation etc:
  • Audio to text solutions – many video conferencing tools now have this as native functionality but if you do need additional tools for generating transcripts of webinars or podcast content for easy repurposing you could try:
  • Text to image solutions – e.g. for generating images to be used in blogs, social media, ad graphics etc.
  • Other solutions:
    • rasa.io – for personalised email newsletters with curated content
    • AdCreative.ai – for generating ad and social media creatives including images and AI generated copy

But remember, while AI has the power to revolutionise your marketing and your business, if you don’t have a clear marketing strategy that is aligned with your business objectives, a strong value proposition, a well-maintained and growing database, an integrated sales and marketing tech stack and a website that is well-optimised for lead generation and conversions, then you’re unlikely to realise the true benefits of AI.

 

Team MPG can help you develop a marketing strategy inline with your event and business growth strategy and then deliver best-in-class marketing execution.

Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your revenues faster.

 

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1st party data has been hot in 2022 for B2B media & events. In 2023 it will be even hotter…

by Team MPG, on 01/12/2022

1st party data has been one of the hottest topics of 2022 – coming up in almost every conversation we’ve had with an MPG client, prospect, or partner. In 2023, this seam of precious stuff that runs through every B2B media and events business is going to be even more important.

Why? Because the captive audiences and communities of B2B information and networking-based brands produce 1st party data that will be more valuable than ever, as:

  • A high degree of relevance within a good customer journey becomes essential to engage and monetise customers, and
  • Google Chrome is phasing out 3rd party cookies. With 65% of the world using Chrome as their main browser, and considering Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox have already phased out 3rd party cookies, this will have a big impact.

Arguably the most valuable asset a B2B media or events brand could own is a targeted and growing customer data set that is compliant, well structured and well maintained, while being enriched by every engagement with an audience member and fed into well-designed intelligence reports.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s make sure we’ve got the basics covered…

What is 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data?

  • 1st party data = any customer data you collect directly and store in your own database. It can be collected from websites, apps, social media, surveys, and more. You can track this data in analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, and you should ideally store it all in one place – i.e. a CRM system such as Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.
  • 2nd party data = 1st party data from a known and trusted source (e.g. names, company names and job titles collected from social media profiles or surveys).
  • 3rd party data = collected, stored, and deployed to ‘resell’ someone else’s audience to multiple sellers of products and services e.g. Google in-market audiences.

Why is it important for you to collect 1st party data, and manage it well?

Despite the fact that having more data can bring more opportunities, there are certain risks in gaining and using data from 2nd or 3rd parties, because collection methods and compliance can be unknown. Additionally, advertising providers relying on 3rd party cookies to collect their data are finding it harder to accurately target the right people.

1st party data, when well-managed, can be very accurately profiled and targeted. This will enable you to promote the right product, to the right person, with the right message, for strong engagement and ROI. Tracking user interest and interactions of your own audience gives you a goldmine of opportunity around monetising your audience.

How is cookie data collection relevant?

A cookie is a file from a website that is stored within a browser, which the same website, or any other website, can retrieve at a later point. Cookies hold the information so servers know which users have visited which websites or specific web pages.

When you drop a cookie on your own website and can see a user completing a certain set of actions across multiple visits to your website, this is classed as 1st party data. Service providers (e.g. Hubspot) can also drop cookies on your behalf, and these are classed as 1st party cookies because they are used to collect information on your behalf to store in your own database.

Larger digital companies that sell advertising based on data, e.g. Google and Facebook, currently also drop cookies on other people’s websites that allow them to track users across a variety of websites. These are called 3rd party cookies.

Where are the emerging opportunities?

Most businesses will have built up a database of 1st party data of their past and present customers. Going forward, there should be a growing demand for access to a targeted audience, enabled by 1st party data.

B2B information businesses that track what their audience members are engaging with on their websites and at their events will be able to put targeted, relevant messages in front of their audience to better monetise their content, community interactions, and audience members – directly (e.g. by selling delegate places) and indirectly (e.g. by selling advertising).

Advertising sold by companies like Google and Facebook that rely on 3rd party content and cookies are likely to become less targeted and less effective. We predict that more advertisers will be willing to pay a higher sum to B2B media and events businesses to more directly and accurately reach relevant target customers more effectively and efficiently.

This is a great opportunity for businesses in the media/events industry to grow their revenues from advertising, sponsorship, and exhibitions – especially if their products are highly relevant and valuable for quite a niche audience.

What should you do about all of this?

The top priorities for any B2B media or events business (or any business for that matter!) should be to:

  1. Ensure your content is unique, valuable, and engaging – so that you can continually attract relevant visitors to your website and events.
  2. Ensure your combined digital, martech, salestech, and data ‘infrastructure’ i.e. integrated systems and processes are well set up to collect, structure, store, maintain, and manage 1st party data.
  3. Ensure you have Google Analytics 4 – or another ‘future-proof’ analytics tool – well set up on your website in a way that allows you to track user behaviours.
  4. Ensure you have dashboards or reports set up that give you strong and real-time visibility of your audience(s) and how they’re engaging with your products and content.

Even if 3rd party cookies weren’t being phased out, 1st party data can be a huge asset to your business – if you make the investment needed to manage and monetise it well.

Do you need help with your 1st party data?

Find out more about MPG’s 1st party data services on this webpage, and please get in touch today if you’d like to have a chat with one of our friendly team members about how to get your 1st party data in good order.

Get in touch today

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Top 5 marketing investments for sustainable growth

by Team MPG, on 06/10/2022

The world has changed so much in the past 8 years, and so has B2B marketing! Since MPG was launched in early 2014, we’ve had a privileged ‘insiders view’ of the marketing approach of a large number – and great variety – of organisations.

It has been fascinating to witness the continued evolution of B2B publishers – where the most successful organisations have developed ‘brand platforms’, serving up intelligence and connections to their ever more niche audiences.

A customer-first approach has meant the leading organisations – large and small – are ruthlessly focused on delivering what their customers need, how they need it, and when they need it. They know that to engage, monetise and scale, they need the right blend of digital and in-person experiences, with a strong brand at the centre of everything.

In this article we explore the six areas that need ongoing marketing investment – especially at times of uncertainty (including economic downturns).

#1 Brand trust

Building a strong, trusted brand should always be the top priority for every marketer. This requires a strategic investment in developing clear brand positioning and strong brand identity, and then ensuring that every place where a customer engages with your brand has a particular ‘look and feel’ that is recognisable, unique and reassuring.

The cost of engaging a top creative agency can be prohibitive, especially for a niche B2B brand. The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to undergo a costly and time consuming ‘rebranding’ exercise to achieve brand trust.

The very nature of ‘trust’ is that it is based on something genuine. It’s about ‘substance’ more than ‘style’.

If you know what really matters to your customers, and what they genuinely value about what you deliver for them, make sure this is:

  1. Evident in your messaging across all your marketing channels
  2. Well understood by every member of your team, and embedded in mindsets and behaviours

Being a steadfast presence for your customers, and coming across as genuine and reliable at all times, will win you a great deal of brand trust.

It is also very important to ensure your brand design is of a good standard, and that your visual branding is consistent everywhere, including fonts, colours and design devices. A good graphic designer should be able to make this all work well for you.

And if you can afford to bring on board a good agency to help you develop stronger branding than you have now, then do it! It will be worth the investment.

#2 Martech

Martech is no longer an optional investment, and it isn’t an area where you can afford to buy the cheapest solution. The technical debt you will incur by trying to cut corners in how you approach your martech stack is almost guaranteed to hold your business back.

You simply cannot grow your customer base or your revenue above a certain level without good martech tools in place, well integrated for data flows, and with the right processes in place to ensure they do what they’re meant to do. You cannot scale without good tech.

Don’t ignore this area of your marketing because you don’t know how to invest well in it. You may not be able to expertly analyse or optimise your tech stack yourself, but you’ll have a good sense of what is and is not working, and where the biggest issues are that are holding you back from growth.

If this is a weak spot in your marketing, get it seen to as soon as you possibly can. Investing well in the right tech stack for your marketing will make a world of difference in how you can serve your customers – and build your brand.

 

As partners to HubSpot, Marketo, Ingo, Guild and Saltbox, and having set up, optimised and worked in many other platforms such as Mailchimp, Adestra, Sailthru, Zapier, Salesforce and MS Dynamics 365 over the past 8+ years, Team MPG has a strong track record in enabling B2B marketers with the right tools. Get in touch to find out more.

#3 Website

For every B2B brand, your website is by far your most important marketing channel. The perception your customers will have of your brand will first and foremost be based on your website, and nothing will damage brand trust more than a poor website user journey.

Therefore, as with martech, choosing the cheapest solution for a website will almost always cost you dearly in the long run – both in terms of real spend (having to redo your website), and opportunity cost.

Engage a good agency with a strong reputation (make sure you get at least two references), and make sure they follow the step-by-step process laid out in this MPG Insights resource.

When considering the development framework, for smaller companies with relatively simple sites, a good option for a purpose-built site is usually WordPress. For larger projects, we recommend Headless CMS, alongside Laravel to build the backend, and Vue JS to build the frontend (mainly for good loading speed). This combo is more expensive and takes longer to build, but is much more robust and secure.

#4 Analytics

Without analytics set up well across all your marketing channels, starting with your website, you won’t have the intelligence you need to really understand what your customers care about, and to make good marketing decisions.

As business leaders start becoming more focused on marketing ROI, Team MPG is seeing a surge in demand by B2B brands for real-time dashboards and reports that give their marketers and senior executives strong visibility of important marketing metrics.

There is also a stronger appetite for measurement against ‘joined up’ marketing and sales KPIs. This MPG Insights article shares a useful guide on how to achieve strong sales and marketing integration – which is more important than ever.

We’re also seeing B2B brand leaders asking for customer insight reports to deliver intelligence into their content/editorial teams, showing levels of engagement with certain content themes, and often specific pieces of content.

MPG’s experience in building and deploying these kinds of reports are highly valuable for a content-led B2B brand, as long as they are:

  1. Kept relatively simple
  2. Focused on key data points presented with good data visualisation techniques
  3. Easily accessible
  4. Updated in real time

 

Team MPG can help you make better business and marketing decisions by setting up your website and marketing analytics tools in the right way, and building custom dashboards to deliver valuable intelligence to your team. Get in touch to find out more.

#5 Database

Every week we have at least one conversation with a business leader who is immensely frustrated with the state of their customer and/or prospect database!

This foundational part of your 1st party data simply cannot be ignored as you cannot effectively or efficiently communicate with all your existing customers, or find new customers, if your database is not well organised, up to date, and populated with the right data.

This is an essential area for ongoing investment, with the following two key areas needing particular attention if you want to grow your business:

  1. Targeted research to constantly clean, append and grow your target audience data sets – so your marketing can reach all members of decision-making units, not only the main buyer.
  2. Tracking of engagement, at contact level, with your marketing and sales efforts.

Without these two essential pieces in place, your database isn’t the kind of asset you need for business success.

Your database is an asset that needs ongoing investment, delivering a direct, strong and measurable return.

 

Team MPG can help you get your current database into good shape, and we can help you continually grow your data sets to become valuable business assets that consistently deliver a strong return. Get in touch to find out more.

The world and marketing may be changing constantly. But don’t let constant change derail your long term, strategic focus.

By investing in the five areas explored above, you cannot go wrong – as long as you do so in a measured, focused and deliberate manner.

Knee-jerk reactions, looking for the cheapest marketing solutions, focusing too much on ‘quick wins’, and insisting on unreasonably high returns in the short term will set you back.

Play the long game, as the world’s most successful and valuable B2B brands always do.

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If you don’t integrate marketing & sales – you can’t grow

by Team MPG, on 14/07/2022

Scale requires well integrated sales and marketing.

‘Sales and marketing integration’ feels like one of these jargonny terms that we’ve all started screening out.

It’s over-used in the content marketing pushed out by martech and salestech providers who promise the world – and frustratingly often seem to underdeliver.

Why is that?

Because, the people and process piece is MUCH harder than the tech piece.

While the tech companies are delivering the tools, the ‘people and process’ piece on how best to use them is failing. The teams in the businesses buying and using the tech are not developing and following the strategies and processes needed to make the tech work. One might argue it’s the responsibility of the tech vendors to offer more support on the ‘people and process’ piece. But, regardless of who will do it – it needs to be done!

Since 2014, MPG has been working with business leaders to grow their B2B brands – enabled by marketing strategy, analytics, tech, data and digital. The sales and marketing alignment piece is usually a problem when companies approach us to help them achieve better outcomes from their marketing. And this is what we have witnessed in the most dysfunctional businesses:

  • Sales people are determined to defend their turf – wanting to claim revenue as ‘sales revenue’, even when marketing makes a significant contribution. Why would marketers want to work hard to support sales if they don’t get at least some of the credit (or the commission)?
  • At the same time, marketers are still not being held accountable for commercial results, often hiding behind ‘tech and data jargon’. They’re usually very, very busy, but are not taking responsibility for the outcomes of their spend on tech, data and all those very busy marketing people.
  • Senior executives – including Sales Leaders and Heads of Marketing – are not taking real responsibility for the close collaboration, joined up processes and combined KPI’s that the integrated marketing and sales funnel should deliver.

This is all very dangerous, because how B2B customers buy has changed in a BIG way.

Customers are buying very differently now to how they were 2 years ago, and if Sales and Marketing Leaders don’t get their heads together and work out how to optimise the full customer experience, their businesses will:

  1. Lose customers
  2. Be less efficient
  3. Be less profitable
  4. Struggle to scale

It is incredibly important for your marketing and sales teams to be integrated if you want to grow your business. If you support sales effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring marketing is well set up with the right strategy, processes, tools and resources, you will be able to:

  1. Reach and engage with a larger number of potential customers
  2. Qualify and nurture leads better to achieve higher conversion rates, higher average order values and shorter sales cycles.
  3. Measure important KPIs critical to achieving growth.

 

To learn more about how you achieve faster and more profitable growth by integrating your sales and marketing function better, thereby ensuring the whole, combined funnel is fully optimised, download the MPG’s guide here.

 

This resource walks you through the following 3 stages of the sales and marketing funnel:

 

#1 Awareness (top of funnel)

  • In this stage, prospects are indicating there is a problem or opportunity that they may be able to address by investing in your product.
  • Prospects are starting to educate themselves, conducting research to understand, frame, and give a name to the problem or opportunity they are facing.
  • This is where you should focus marketing efforts on building brand awareness, interest and an audience of relevant prospects through inbound marketing and data acquisition. Email marketing targeting relevant people should also be used at this stage of the funnel, especially for very time-sensitive campaigns, such as those that support B2B events.
  • Here your aim is to draw in as many of the right people as possible – with the overall goal of pushing them to your website.

 

#2 Engagement (middle of funnel)

  • In this second stage of the funnel, the prospect has defined their issue or opportunity, and they want to do more in-depth research to understand all the available approaches or methods for addressing a challenge or making the most of an opportunity.
  • Due to widespread, rapid adoption by consumers of more digital behaviours, and preferences for more control of their own buying journey, marketing needs to play an important role here in terms of serving up content-led and product-led messages across multiple channels and tactics – all working together with joined up messaging.
  • At this stage of the funnel, marketing needs to grow engagement and convert people who pay attention to their marketing into qualified leads – giving them ways to signal their intent and readiness to buy – before they are contacted by a salesperson.

 

#3 Conversion (bottom of funnel)

  • This third stage is where sales people need to get involved – and as part of a joined up process with marketing, ensure they call the right people (i.e. those people marketers have identified as relevant and ready to buy) at the right time (i.e. soon after they have indicated intent – because at this time they’re probably also talking to your competitors).
  • Marketing still needs to play a part here in terms of further nurturing your leads until sales people get the opportunity to speak to the prospect. It can often be quite difficult for a salesperson to pin down a prospect for a call or meeting, and in that time they can go cold or pay more attention to competitors. So marketing needs to play it’s part here by continuing to engage and persuade this lead with strong content and collateral – where the USPs and benefits of your product come through loud and clear in regular reminders to your lead that they should be picking up the phone when your salesperson calls.

Unfortunately, what often still happens, is that both marketing and sales work on the awareness stage, but only sales focuses on the engagement and conversion stages. This means that sales people have less time to spend on selling, and they are trying to sell to people who are not yet ready to buy. This has a negative impact on sales cycle length, average order value, conversion rates, the number of sales made and amount of revenue one sales person can generate.

What should happen is that marketers take full responsibility for the first two stages of the funnel (awareness and engagement), and be held accountable for the quality, quantity and sales-readiness of leads being delivered to sales. This then means that the sales team can spend more time focusing on conversions i.e. doing the actual selling that they’re so good at.

 

You need to get your funnel working in a way that enables more scalable digital marketing to reach and engage more people in the top two thirds of the funnel, and therefore have your sales team focused on conversions at the bottom of the funnel. Once you have achieved this, you would have unlocked profitable, sustainable growth with economies of scale baked in to your business in way that will generate higher profits and add significant value to your business.

 

To learn more about how to manage your scalable, profitable integrated sales and marketing funnel download MPG’s guide to B2B Sales & Marketing integration.

Do you need your marketing team to deliver more leads for your sales team?

Team MPG can help you attract new clients with targeted, lead generating marketing campaigns. We can also help create marketing and sales performance dashboards so that you can measure your joined up marketing and sales KPIs and ROI.

Get in touch today to find out how we can help you.

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6 practical marketing considerations when expanding into new markets

by Team MPG, on 25/05/2022

Renewd recently hosted a Renewd International Virtual Roundtable discussion, where a group of senior executives from B2B media and events businesses came together to discuss practical considerations when expanding internationally.

To receive Renewd’s next newsletter, which includes the key takeaways from this event, please join Renewd here – membership is free.

The Virtual Roundtable discussion was led by Frances Rose, Founder & CEO, The Share Theory. The attendees discussed what they have learnt from expanding, including cultural differences to take into consideration, and how to hire and effectively manage people in foreign countries.

Based on this discussion, Team MPG’s marketing strategists have been considering six important marketing elements to consider when seeking international growth:

#1Be clear about your specific goals when expanding into new markets

In order to grow and develop your customer base in a new market, you should define what the role of marketing is in this growth plan, and specific marketing communications objectives. These objectives should form part of a comprehensive marketing plan, to ensure your marketing activities show visible and strong ROI against your objectives.

#2Understand your target audience very well – your messaging may need to be adjusted for a new market

Before you write a single word of copy or design any marketing materials, you need to gain a good understanding of your audience in the new market you are targeting. MPG recommends using our community mapping approach. This is a useful tool to understand the composition of your end-user target market, which will be useful when building the right kind of monetisation model to generate revenue in your new market. You need to consider cultural differences, so that from day 1 you’re building brand trust.

Once you have completed your community map, and take into account culture in your new market, you should develop a buyer persona in order to define USPs and benefits for your key market segments. These USPs will help you differentiate your product from the competition – which may look different in your new market compared to where you have previously operated.

You can then move on to building impactful messaging by:

  • Defining the tone of voice you want to deploy
  • Creating a messaging strategy that will inform the core copy you repeatedly use. This should include a strap-line that incorporates your USP, and a series of succinct bullet points focused on your benefits
  • Execute this messaging down the whole marketing funnel. As your prospects become more engaged, ensure your messaging becomes more detailed and persuasive – this creates the ‘desire and action’ which makes them want to enquire or buy your product

#3Build the right brand advocates to help grow your business

To effectively attract and engage the right kinds of customers in your new market, it is helpful to have local team members and advocates who know the cultural differences. You need to find the right people who can help you ‘activate and amplify’.

These early community members are needed to bring others to come on board. If they believe in your brand and your purpose, they will be valuable advocates. Build on the momentum gained from these early adopters by holding open events and running community gatherings to gain more insight and build your followers.

It is also important to accept that starting and building good relationships take time. Therefore, you need to focus on this area well in advance – if you leave it too late, it could mean you have less leverage in terms of value exchange. This could lead to reduced advocacy and campaign effectiveness.

#4Data management and the importance of knowing GDPR and other country-specific data privacy and direct marketing rules and regulations

In order to expand, you will need to build a strong database of contacts by following the relevant data rules. Having a well-organised database will allow you to grow multiple revenue streams, drive higher, more consistent engagement, and make smarter investments.

When expanding into new markets, you need to take into account their various rules and regulations around data privacy, data protection and how data can be used in direct marketing. There are quite big differences between jurisdictions – e.g. the state of California has different rules compared to other US states. What counts here is where the data subject (customer or prospect) is based – not where your company is based.

It is important to do the thorough research and planning for the jurisdictions you want to expand into, because how data can be used will determine the marketing tactics allowed; as well as how your products, systems and processes are set up to be compliant.

#5Investing in the right marketing technologies to enable expansion

To scale effectively and efficiently (and follow data privacy rules), you need the right marketing tech stack.

Having a strong martech stack:

  • Improves customer experience, and allows for a smoother transition between each stage of the customer lifecycle
  • Allows you to track your customers’ progression in the customer journey
  • Helps you make impactful investments, which will mean you can monetise and scale your audiences well, in a more digital world

The right marketing technology is critical for any business expansion, including entering and growing in new markets.

#6Develop marketing dashboards to monitor expansion progress and ROI

To be able to measure the success of your marketing activities when expanding into new markets, you need visibility of your marketing metrics. The best way to get this visibility is to build dashboards that ideally pull data automatically from systems and show you key marketing metrics in real time.

To have fully optimised marketing dashboards, you need to have the right marketing analytics in place to measure the success. A marketing analysis and reporting process is useful to gain insight on how your customers, prospects, and leads interact with your marketing channels. Having your website analytics set up in the right way (with GA4) is critical for understanding how they interact with your site, and can help you create remarketing and retargeting campaigns to build your customer database.

If you’re aiming to enter or grow in new markets, then considering these six marketing elements will help you well on your way!

MPG supports Renewd in building an open network community of specialised subscription, membership, and event professionals. We help organise and participate in roundtables and other community events, such as networking dinners.
To receive Renewd’s newsletters, you can subscribe here for free.

Do you want to grow your business in new markets?

Team MPG’s marketing experts can help you develop the best marketing strategy to grow your customer base and revenue.

Get in touch today to discuss your marketing opportunities, challenges and requirements.

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A guide to advocacy and referral marketing

by Team MPG, on 05/04/2022

In a recent MPG blog, we covered why advocacy and referral marketing is so powerful, and how having an amplification strategy can help your business be more resilient and grow.

Team MPG have helped many clients efficiently and effectively accelerate growth by tapping into their strongest brand advocates and most loyal customers for referrals. Here we outline the 5 things you need to keep top of mind when creating and executing an advocacy and referral marketing strategy:

#1 Find the right people to help you ‘activate and amplify’

To identify the people or organisations most likely to be good advocates for your brand and/or products, carefully consider the value exchange: what is in it for them to refer you to one of their colleagues or respected peers? Think about what you can do to make it worth their while. 

Usually, the following types of advocates have something to gain by sharing your marketing messages and collateral with their relevant networks, thus advocating for you. Always remember: these advocates will help you reach large groups of relevant people who are not all on your database for emailing, or could be hard for you to reach and engage with by other means.

  • Media/association partners: research and identify the key publications, digital platforms and associations with subscribers, members, readers or communities that best fit the target audience you want to reach. Then, consider what you can offer to make it worth their while to advocate for you, e.g. a discount for readers, subscribers or members; or special access to additional value like an exclusive networking part of an event, or other high-value elements of your product. For example, you could offer a ‘premium’ product for the same price as a ‘standard’ product as a benefit for their own customers.
  • Advisory board members: if you don’t already have an advisory board, you should consider forming one! Individuals suitable for your advisory board should be carefully selected by you to provide valuable input on your overall strategy and value proposition. They would also typically have excellent and highly relevant ‘little black books’. By being an advisory board member, an individual should gain credibility and even stronger networks – so make sure you give your advisory board members these types of opportunities they would most value. In exchange, you should be able to tap into their growing and engaged professional networks.
  • Content contributors and event speakers: individuals who are respected in their industry as thought leaders are often keen to keep building their profiles and further strengthen their reputations by agreeing to speak at events, contribute to reports, and write articles and blogs for you. These individuals are likely to be some of your very best advocates. They are likely to actively promote to their networks the event or content they’re contributing to in order to raise their own profiles – and in so doing they provide powerful advocacy for your brand or product.
  • Sponsors/exhibitors: companies investing in your events and marketing solutions will probably be open to raising awareness of your brand/product to make the most of their sponsorship/exhibitor status. Your potential reach via their own customers and prospects is great! So work closely with them to help them see the value of advocating for you, and then leveraging their advocacy well.
  • Customers: people who have chosen to already spend money with you, register for your event, subscribe for your content, or give you their time and attention in some way, are probably your best salespeople! MPG has partnered with Ingo to help our clients create a powerful, automated referral engine via customers. To find out more about this – please get in touch.

When you successfully activate any of the above types of advocates, you are activating the most powerful marketing approach of all: WOM (word of mouth). And WOM in the digital and social age is more powerful, scalable, and important than ever!

 

#2 Help the messenger – make advocating easy

The easier you make it for your brand advocates to share their support for your brand/product, the more likely they are to do it! 

For advocates, create partner packs with ready-made assets such as web banners, images, video content, email copy/HTML or infographics, that are easy to access and share. The easier you make this for them, the more likely they are to advocate for you.

Consider using an automated referral marketing tool. This will enable very efficient and strong amplification of your messages, to very large audiences – so it is worth the investment (as long as the tools are deployed in the right way!). Get in touch to find out how MPG can help you do this.

 

#3 Quality over quantity

A common mistake is to sign up too many advocates to manage effectively. Putting the effort into developing a strong and mutually beneficial relationship takes time and effort. Make sure this is closely managed!

 

#4 Have clear agreements in place

This is most relevant for media or association partners, although you may consider including some advocacy or promotional activity into your speaker or sponsorship contracts, e.g. obliging them to share your content via social media. 

Once you’ve found the right partners and come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, make sure you both have a copy of a written agreement that clearly articulates the deliverables for both parties.

 

#5 Monitor effectiveness

As with all marketing channels, you should closely monitor the effectiveness of your advocacy and referral marketing efforts throughout the campaign. The relative performance of every advocate will help you determine which partnerships you want to renew and further invest in. There will be some that just don’t work at all, so make sure you know which ones they are, so you don’t keep pursuing them!

Understanding which of your supporters are generating the most leads or customers will also enable you to reward the most loyal and effective advocates, further enhancing their trust in your brand, and increasing the likelihood they will continue to advocate for you within their valuable network.

DOWNLOAD MPG’S ADVOCACY MARKETING PROCESS & KPIS

If activating advocacy and referral marketing is a strategic priority for business resilience and growth, get in touch. Team MPG’s marketers can help you attract and convert more of the right customers with a robust advocacy and referral marketing strategy, and followed by rigorous execution.

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