The past few months have been wild for the tech industry. Since 2022, we’ve lost over 240,000 jobs, with another 100,000 added last month (March 2023). The sector is facing many challenges, including the economic downturn caused by COVID responses, investor pressure, overhiring, and even the collapse of some banks. These things (and more) are causing havoc on an industry that has felt invincible for over a decade.
While the industry at large is facing these challenges, those of us in marketing have seen this quarterly for years. It’s one area of the business that is constantly on the chopping block to cut costs or to justify spending.
Even though we marketers deal with the pressures of doing more with less or even doing more with none, today’s environment forces us to dig deep into our experiences to weather the storm.
On Friday, April 21, David Gerhardt, Founder, Exit Five, and three panelists (Shauntle Barley, Director of Marketing, Demandwell; Jason Widup, VP of Marketing, Metadata.io; Margaret Kelsey, Founder, TatCo) had an open discussion about the current state of affairs. They cover various topics, including aligning the marketing plan with senior leadership, the best places to squeeze efficiency in your campaigns, and even express disdain for marketing playbooks.
Key takeaways from the webinar:
Find alignment with your CEO/Founder: Marketing success depends on having a shared language with leadership and being aligned on high-level goals with the CEO so they know the why of your actions.
Revenue Focus and Reporting: Tie everything back to revenue and use the funnel to communicate. It’s the marketing leader’s role to execute the CEO’s vision, and you can prioritize the right behavior by focusing on velocity instead of reporting.
If a CEO asks you for more reporting, it’s an indicator that they don’t understand or don’t know what you’re doing.
Back to Basics: In a down economy, it’s important to focus on the marketing basics and experiment with what you can to improve efficiencies. Test and play with what you can: audience, offer, message/story, channel, CTA, content type, conversion app, and timings (day of the week/time of day) are all good areas to explore.
Scrappy Generalists: The world is shifting faster than we can move, so it’s important to hire scrappy generalists who can test messages, explore different channels and build things from scratch.
Growth Positions: Growth and Demand Gen are important positions in marketing, and it’s important to focus on existing customers, automate in the background with targeted accounts, and create a 2-way conversation to understand the value prop.
Playbooks Play it Safe: If you’re following a playbook, it means someone else is doing the same. They’re like parenting books. You should take things from them, learn from them, and then make it your own – but don’t count on one playbook as a silverbullet.
Exit Five is a subscription-based community of B2B marketers to share ideas and crowdsource questions and feedback. While this webinar is free to all, I recommend joining the group to further your marketing journey and education. What sold me on it was the idea that no one goes to school for B2B Marketing. This community is a place to geek out with those who share a passion for B2B marketing and learn from real examples.
Enough read. 