This February, Tourism Ireland is teaming up with a new IMAX documentary about Ireland to welcome travelers back after the enduring travel slump from the Covid-19 pandemic. But ensuring the partnership is successful has called for a lot more than Irish luck, it’s taken a sophisticated mix of integrated marketing and data management.

Launching Ireland on IMAX

“From a tourism perspective [the film] is a great opportunity with terrific cinematography just to showcase the natural beauty and authenticity of Ireland,” said Alison Metcalfe, executive vice president North America and Australia/New Zealand of Tourism Ireland. The organization is presenting partner for the release of the IMAX documentary, Ireland, which features Liam Neeson as narrator and is produced and distributed by MacGillivray Freeman Films (MFF), known for making IMAX docs like Everest and To the Arctic. “The IMAX movie is obviously the centerpiece, and we’re working with MFF in building out a whole promotional campaign which will play out over most of the next year.”

She added, “As different components come onstream and the film builds momentum, there will be publicity, social media and digital campaigns – lots of moving parts and a fully integrated marketing campaign around that.”

Aside from captivating scenes of Ireland on 70mm film, Ireland the movie, directed by Greg MacGillivray, also includes a premise that dovetails nicely with an integrated travel campaign. The film follows writer Manachan Magan and concert violinist Patricia Treacey as they discover cultural points of interest and connect people of Irish heritage all over the world with their homeland. Four traveling teenagers are also in the cast.

“Ireland for our company and our family has always been a place we’d wanted to make a film on,” said Shaun MacGillivray, producer of Ireland and MFF’s President. “We’ve made films all over the world, but we’d never done a film on Ireland, it’s history, and it had never been done in IMAX before. It seemed like just an incredible topic.”

The film wrapped shooting in 2020 right before the pandemic became widespread. With borders closed by St. Patrick’s Day in March, travel was put on pause, and Tourism Ireland had to change its message to travelers while remaining on their minds as a top destination once things opened back up.

Retooling a marketing strategy during the recovery

In March 2020, Tourism Ireland paused its paid media advertising.

“At that point, people didn’t know how long this was going to go on,” said Metcalfe. “In April we decided we needed to find a way to stay connected with our potential audiences at a consumer level, but also to stay connected with our industry partners, including airlines, tourism and media partners.”

They launched a global social media campaign amplified through their partners, as well as with paid social ads. It centered around nine different buckets of content or “passion points” to “keep people warm about Ireland,” Metcalfe explained.

Over a year later, in May 2021, Tourism Ireland pivoted again into “reassurance mode” promising travelers that Ireland would soon be open again now that travel restrictions were loosening in other markets.

“It wasn’t appropriate to talk about a ‘book now’ message at that point, but when the borders opened for international travelers and vaccinated Americans on July 19, we went into a more proactive message – now is the time to start planning that trip,” she said.

They kicked off the “Green Button” global campaign to officially restart welcoming overseas visitors.

The promotion around the IMAX release falls into the category of brand partnership, one of Tourism Ireland’s biggest. It branches off of the core “Green Button” campaign to connect with “culturally curious” new travelers.

Investing in marketing technology

“Over the last three or four years, we’ve invested significantly in our marketing technology, capabilities and infrastructure,” said Metcalfe. “Tourism Ireland has had an ambition to be world leaders in digital destination marketing. During the pandemic, we continued to invest in having the best digital relationship with consumers.”

Keeping their customer data in a data-management platform ensures that Tourism Ireland’s communications with travelers are personalized and are retargeting pools of interested prospects with relevant content.

“We’ve seen really good engagement from the current campaign, so it’s just leaning in to be more data-driven, and also getting to the point where we can identify that sense of presence and attracting people across multiple touchpoints, and continue to engage when they actually arrive in Ireland,” Metcalfe said.

She added that they now have a dashboard that gives marketers in offices around the world real-time access to see what digital engagement is working. Media across digital and offline is also managed in partnership with Tourism Ireland’s media agency, OMD.

The offical trailer for “Ireland”

Cinematic art backed by small screen content

With a data infrastructure in place to respond as the world opens back up, Tourism Ireland has a plan to gain more momentum from the new film Ireland.

“By following a writer around Ireland in the movie, you do get a sense of the past, as well as the present,” said Metcalfe.

For social and other digital media, the focus in spreading word about Ireland the film will be on hitting those passion points in music, food, literature and history that digital-first travelers will want to find out more about. Media partners are part of the plan, as well as influencers.

The new social media strategy includes producing social-first assets, and also producing assets with a specific job in mind, and fitting that into the customer journey. In the TV space, linear TV local buys in major markets are supported with CTV, as people have cut the cords, Metcalfe explained.

“When we go out and film these amazing projects, we capture a lot of content,” said MacGillivray. “We’re able to tell, obviously, that pinnacle story that is shown on that giant screen in science centers and IMAX theaters all over the world. But also we’re able to create bite-sized content for specific digital platforms, getting people excited about not only the film, but also these amazing places that we go to.”

“We’re looking to develop how we can bring the story to life,” Metcalfe said. “Particularly during the pandemic and the recovery: seeing is believing.”

About The Author

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.
Originally Appeared Here

It’s a truth increasingly acknowledged that human beings only have a finite amount of decision- making power in any given day. And it’s minimising the mental cost of switching from B2B to B2C decision making Zai global CMO, Andrea Linehan, was keen to avoid when she set out to orchestrate a global rebrand bringing two such teams together.

Zai is the new overarching brand identity for two fintech businesses that merged last year: B2B payments player, Assembly Payments; and Dublin-based, consumer-oriented peer-to-peer currency business, CurrencyFair. Both companies were originally established by Australian founders but with very different product sets, customer bases, technologies, geographic reach and go-to-market propositions.

Brought together off the back of investments made by Standard Chartered Bank, a repositioning effort inside and out was clearly necessary. Debuting in November 2021, this resulted in a house of brands approach: A fresh name, ‘Zai’, for the overarching parent company and Assembly Payments B2B brand; and retention of CurrencyFair in the consumer and business payments space.

Supporting this is a central services model featuring digital, content and product marketing functions, with time apportioned to different brands depending on the strategy required. While a couple of specialist roles specifically cover B2B and B2C content, the majority of staff have a leg in both camps, Linehan tells CMO.

“It’s therefore really important to remove as much non-value add decision making as possible, and to have things as streamlined and operationalised as we can,” she says. “This is often where marketing teams get tripped up. As marketers, we’re probably the slowest to operationalise our departments. It tends to be something introduced at a certain size, and often a mandate driven down by the company, rather than a purposeful decision by marketing.

“What I want to do is leave as much room for creative decisions from everyone in the team by removing reactive decision making. Because the mental switching costs between brands is enormous.”

B2B versus B2C marketing

The delineation between B2B and B2C marketing is something Linehan was thinking about well before the merger happened. The trigger for her appointment two years ago was pivoting CurrencyFair from a mission-based consumer approach to a consumer, SMB and enterprise proposition.

“We were going to essentially have one brand and three very different customers,” Linehan says. “I used the analogy of Toy Story, where you have shiny new toy, Buzz, versus old favourite, Woody. The question was how I would handle the people in the team that would end up working with the new brand versus those focused on the existing brand.

“My thinking was more from a team morale perspective rather than specialist skills. One thing I did know, however, was I wasn’t going to be able to build out two teams specialising in each area. We had to be hybrid and we were restricted by headcount.”

It was a scenario that made hiring particularly challenging, Linehan admits. “Just by virtue of having worked for longer, you’ll have senior people who have been exposed to both sides. But when you’re looking for those for more junior roles, you don’t expect them to have been exposed to both sides,” she says.   

The shift also meant changing marketing technology so attribution and churn models based on the consumer side could be supported by more permission-based, content-oriented inbound marketing for longer lead nurturing. It was a shift that saw the business adopt HubSpot’s platform.

Having undergone the rebrand of the merged businesses to Zai, Linehan is even more keen to ensure her team gets as much cross-exposure as possible.

“With those specialising on the B2C side, I’m ensuring 10 per cent of their time is being exposed to and getting involved in projects on the B2B side, and vice versa. That’s not only because I want them to expand their skills, it’s also smart from a diversification perspective,” she explains. “If we do need to backfill, all can get involved and they don’t feel alienated in every way.”  

Finding the right rebrand strategy

The sense of alienation and emotion that can come with a rebrand has certainly been top of mind for Linehan as she’s worked to combine Assembly Payments and CurrencyFair.

From its foundations in peer-to-peer lending, CurrencyFair had been building out a footprint with banking licenses, partners, currency corridors and a broader product roadmap. Assembly Payments was a largely domestically focused business with a focus on enterprise technology.

“We looked at typical M&A brand strategy from conservative to aggressive, and what could cause alienation with our customers, stakeholders and employees. We also looked at how to signify a shared future while not prompting that alienation, and to sustain brand equity,” she says. “That’s a challenging thing to measure unless you have big investments with the brand equity agencies or a big liquidity event.

“The other piece was trying to understand what we were going to be going forward. We were going through the delicate pieces of merging two companies together, so cultures and all the pieces that go with bringing two infrastructures together was already sensitive. We knew the symbolism of a rebrand could help with that. But it also could hinder us.”

Minimum viable branding

Enter the concept of what Linehan calls ‘Minimum viable brand’ (MVB). “The one thing we couldn’t do is drag this out in terms of a big brand journey. It can take 12 months to do a rebrand properly,” she continues.

Read more How Konica Minolta’s marketing leader is harnessing internal innovation for brand rejuvenation

Step was of the process was building a clear understand what the group’s intrinsic brand was, going back to the foundations of vision, mission and values, personality and what it stood for. Linehan orchestrated an array of workshops, pulling people from across both organisations into a rebrand taskforce and working with a human behaviour expert to facilitate activities. Names and logos weren’t mentioned during this stage: It was intrinsic identity first.

“These were to tease out what we wanted to maintain from the separate companies, and more importantly, who we were going to be,” Linehan says. “It was transformative for lots of reasons. It helped fostered relationships that had to be fostered quicker than was happening organically and across time zones from just having meetings.

“We used a human behaviour specialist to take us through our workshops because there was so much emotion and built-up beliefs over many years. That was about drawing the best out of everybody’s thinking.”

The next step was to look at the visual and brand identity and whether it was fit for purpose. Having considered a merger of names, reverse horse forward or backwards and more, the team went for something that was “more transformative than just trying to shoehorn into each other”, Linehan says.

“It’s one thing to bring together CurrencyFair Enterprise and Assembly Payments – they have a shared customer,” she continues. “But the consumer business had a very different customer. The brand equity there, and time, investment and marketing spend required to build a consumer brand is enormous. We know we have a very strong brand, sitting beside the likes of WISE when it comes to FX review sites or discussions. We had to strategically consider the future, or if we eventually wanted to spin off the consumer side, do a trade sale – so a lot of considerations.

“So we parked the CurrencyFair brand and said let’s keep that as standalone and adopt a house of brand approach.”  

By contrast, Assembly Payments had been assembling pieces of technology and infrastructure that took it beyond a payments proposition. The term ‘assembly’ was also felt to be too reflective of automation rather than the agility and humanised values the overall business was looking to exhibit.  

Working with Bangkok agency, Brand New Day, and looking to avoid a predictable fintech approach, teams eventually landed on Zai. The key value supporting the new brand is ‘Transforming financial services into an ecosystem of limitless opportunity’, while the moniker is ‘Agile, humanized, progressive’.  

Employee buy-in

“The buy-in for all teams in creating this was transformative,” Linehan says. “It’s not a blank slate though – we were taking everything we had built over the last decade across both businesses and using that as a strong foundation. It wasn’t just customers or stakeholders but the culture we’d built across both. We wanted to carry that forward and we feel we have achieved that.”

Read more Explainer: What marketers need to know about cryptocurrency

Credit: Zai

Throughout the process, Linehan says she’s focused on employer brand as much as corporate identity. One initiative staged was a competition to come up with a new employee slang term. The winner was ‘Zaitans’, and a logo has debuted on various items of swag for staff.  

“This was a fun thing to do but it’s more meaningful than that. Artefacts are an important anchoring mechanism for building and bedding in the culture of an organisation,” Linehan comments. “A re-brand effectively takes away the visual identity, the tribe, that employees had attached themselves to. So it’s vital to provide a new identity that represents belonging and gives reassurance a stronger tribe has emerged from the merger.”  

Interim brand guidelines have been another key element of Linehan’s MVB approach. “We are exploring our visual identity in a live environment while we develop our full set of guidelines,” she says.

As an example, she pointed to Zai’s Season’s Greetings visual, which saw the design team experimenting in real time. “These experiments will inform the ‘rule book’ before we create it,” she says.

It’s also seen the team reskin Assembly’s digital footprint so that it became Zai’s minimum viable footprint. “This was sufficient to allow us to launch and build brand awareness without sacrificing time building for perfection,” Linehan says.

Different markets and differing levels of brand recognition will also require localisation as Zai tackles 2022.

“I am a big believer in being brand-led but marketing formed. We are going to be cognisant of what each of the markets is telling is in terms of how they want to be spoken to and approached,” she says.

“As we go into the US for example, I expect there will be some aspects of how we position ourselves that we will have to localise. It’s the same for the UK market. We’re more focused on localising the product and technology for the British market right now. But as we start to plan the go-to-market for the UK, we are going to have to do a deeper dive. It’s not going to change the name, but it’s how we position ourselves, talk to people, language was us.”

Read more A new frontier: CMO50 and their team leadership firsts in 2021

In Australia, where both brands were well known, initial marketing efforts focused on re-educating the market on the story from Assembly Payments and CurrencyFair to Zai by plotting out the progression of both companies side by side.

“Australia is our prime market, and we want to regain our position as a market leader, which Assembly Payments once had. A major piece is to win that back in 2022. That’s not just about revenue or customer, it’s going to be driven by brand,” Linehan says.  

“It’s so easy for people to forget all the people, touchpoints, events to get us to Zai. I want to keep the story alive so we’re always adding to it.  

“But from January onwards, it’s going to be about thought leadership and marketing that’s heavy on content and inbound. We’re taking over digital publications, and it’s about being on the ground to work on the relationship building and meeting people. Too many companies think this isn’t a scalable way to get the brand out there, but it’s the most future proofed, significant and material way you can build brand. It’s all about people.”

Don’t miss out on the wealth of insight and content provided by CMO A/NZ and sign up to our weekly CMO Digest newsletters and information services here.  

You can also follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia’s Linkedin company page      

 

 

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Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5WPR predicts leading 2022 B2B trends. Torossian says it’s safe to assume that most of the marketing approaches that B2B companies adopted throughout the pandemic are going to continue to influence campaign measurements. While those companies must adjust for any changing circumstances and adapt their strategies, things aren’t going to go back to the way they were before the pandemic.

Tech Stacks 
One of the biggest marketing transformations in the last decade for B2B businesses has been the increase in marketing technologies. In the last decade, there have emerged over 8,000 different marketing tech solutions available to B2B companies. Although plenty of businesses had to cut their marketing budgets at the start of the pandemic to adjust to economic uncertainty, that shifted in 2021 with more companies investing in marketing tech. It’s likely that this trend is going to continue, but B2B businesses will also be looking for ways to simplify their marketing tech stacks. That way, they’ll be able to cut down their tech solutions to more manageable levels. Some of the biggest trends in B2B tech are going to be digital outreach for lead generation, measurement solutions that will allow businesses to compare campaign performances, and smaller, in-person events.

More Insights 
When the pandemic made in-person events impractical, B2B companies turned to digital outreach and ways to measure digital engagement, such as downloads, form completions, and clicks. However, in the coming year, companies will want to go beyond simple engagement data to truly figure out the way that downloads, form completions or clicks, influence sales. More specifically, businesses will look for ways to understand precisely how those engagements are reflected in the buying journey of consumers, as well as in their revenue. That’s why in the next year, companies will be looking for more clarity and at different tools that can provide the aforementioned information. By using more insights, companies will have a better opportunity at figuring out which channels and programs are driving revenue, which at the end of the day, matters the most.

Account-Based Marketing 
Overall, marketing campaigns are all about personalization. However, companies in the B2B industry have a big challenge when it comes to creating highly targeted content and messaging. That’s mainly because the buying journey is typically a lot longer, and the outreach is more complex. A few years ago, B2B companies used account-based marketing to provide more personalization in their campaigns, and to ensure that the right consumers received the right messages. However, the strategy was only useful for well-defined, small audiences, and wasn’t intended for big campaigns. Fortunately, these days, companies have the technology to increase the scale of account-based marketing efforts by using different data points that can personalize their campaigns. That’s why in the coming months, those types of strategies are going to evolve while more businesses take advantage of their capabilities and provide more targeted campaigns.

Ronn Torossian is one of America’s most well-respected public relations experts.

Originally Appeared Here

PrizeLogic Named in “Now Tech: Consumer Data Marketing Services”

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As we dive headlong into 2022, businesses continue to search for new, innovative technology to reach consumers. But, where does that leave small businesses? While many lack the funds to pay for AI platforms, they can find other ways to leverage technology and continue to thrive.

Street thinks more businesses will bring their services to consumers through short video apps such as TikTok and YouTube in the new year. Provided

As we dive headlong into 2022, businesses continue to search for new, innovative technology to reach consumers.

Out-of-home advertising — especially digital-out-of-home — appears to be thriving as businesses explore opportunities to grab potential customers. The retail and restaurant industries have been dealt a blow from the pandemic. To counter the losses from COVID-19, businesses are investing more into outside advertising to drive consumers through their doors.

Street

In addition, many businesses plan to experiment and implement artificial intelligence in 2022. It’s predicted the labor shortage will continue well into 2022, prompting companies to find other means of delivering goods and services to patrons. That opens the door for AI. If AI functions well and consumers feel comfortable using the technology, businesses can rely less on human employees.

But, where does that leave small businesses? While many lack the funds to pay for AI platforms, they can find other ways to leverage technology and continue to thrive.

Daniel Street serves as CEO of Scorpion, a marketing technology provider that helps small businesses. Scorpion, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2021. Street shared his 2022 predictions on how small business will utilize digital marketing in an email interview with Digital Signage Today.

Q: What role will marketing AI have in the business world this year?

A: Marketing AI will finally beat humans in advertising, SEO and targeting to redefine what it means to compete as a business. With the ability to quickly serve up market intelligence and other data-driven insights for more personalized user experiences and smarter decision making—all while automating time-consuming tasks—AI-enabled marketers will run circles around any non-digitized competitors who let themselves fall behind.

Q: Why is it so important for businesses to build and online brand and go all-in with social media?

A: More small businesses will turn to short form video, flocking to social sites like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to drive traffic, build an online brand and even make a little extra money participating in the creator economy by showcasing their expertise.

TikTok will become particularly popular among local businesses as word continues to spread on the new geo tagging features that allow creators to market to local users. TikTok’s audience is also tremendously hungry for DIY content.

While it might seem counter-intuitive for a plumber to show people how to switch out a garbage disposal rather than call a professional, we’ve found customers are more likely to call on the service providers they’ve seen on TikTok for help with more complicated fixes and installations down the road.

Q: With people spending more time at home during the pandemic, they’re finally tackling those long overdue home improvement projects. How can local businesses use digital marketing to promote their services and help with do-it-yourself projects?

A: Some local service providers will find they’re not just competing with each other, but increasingly with customers themselves. We all know home improvement stores enjoyed massive growth through the pandemic, but with rising costs, all the extra time spent at home and, increasingly, an unwillingness to wait out service delays, many people, particularly millennials and members of generation Z, are taking the time to learn how to solve plumbing and other household issues and maintenance on their own.

This is a good time for local service providers to get in on the DIY game. There’s large demand for videos that walk people through various home projects plus the opportunity to pick up those customers when they’re unable to finish a job or do it right.

Originally Appeared Here

FORT MYERS — A Chicago area real estate development firm that says it’s focused on the Midwest and Southeast recently announced plans for its first project in Florida: Gulfside Twelve, a 12-unit, waterfront luxury residential project in South Fort Myers Beach.

The developer, Dublin Real Estate Investment Group, under the entity Carousel Beach Redevelopment LLC, paid $4.5 million for the land for the project in a deal that closed Oct. 8, Lee County property records show. Dublin Real Estate and Carousel Beach are controlled by Tim O’Neill, who was previously in the technology and marketing services for the auto industry. 

At  6240 Estero Blvd., Gulfside Twelve will consist of a dozen five-bedroom residences, each with 4,000-square-feet under AC, according to a statement. In addition to “unobstructed views of the Gulf of Mexico,” each home, the release adds, will feature an open concept living room, hardwood floors, outdoor living spaces and kitchens with a high-end appliance package.

Tim O’Neill anticipates delivering on the first units of Gulfside Twelve by the end of 2022 or beginning of 2023

“Our team of talented and accomplished development, construction and real estate professionals is excited about bringing Dublin’s opulent — yet relaxed — style to the Southwest Florida community for years to come,” O’Neill says in a statement.

In an email to the Business Observer O’Neill says the project is in its first phase, and builders have started mobilizing site pilings. He anticipates delivering on the first units by the end of 2022 or beginning of 2023. Units, priced in the mid-$3 million range, are in presale mode. “We want to delivery a great luxury product at a great value for our clients, so they are buying below market in today’s real estate market,” O’Neill writes. 

Dublin Real Estate Investment Group is based in Des Plaines, Illinois. An entity under the name Dublin Real Estate Investment Group of Florida LLC, also controlled by O’Neill, with an address on Marco Island, was formed in July, according to Florida Department of State records.

O’Neill says he and his wife Deinse spent the past 18 years building DPSCRM.com, an automotive marketing, technology and digital innovation firm that served multiple luxury brands, including BMW of North America, Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz and Porsche, among others. The company, which stands for Dealer Products Services, had 350 employees and an estimated enterprise value of $500 million when a New York City private equity firm acquired it, Tim O’Neill says. The O’Neills remain active equity shareholders in the business, and Tim O’Neill holds a seat on the board and continues as an advisor to the business. The O’Neils, through TDKL Enterprises, are also angel investors in tech and health and wellness companies.

 

Originally Appeared Here

I recently jumped from a B2C marketing department at Western Governors University (WGU) in the online higher education sector to a B2B marketing department at Zuora that provides subscription management software in the SaaS space. This change has made me think about the value of the B2B and B2C categories.

Perhaps it is more helpful to consider the differences between industries instead of differences between B2B and B2C. For instance, there are definitely differences between the online higher education and SaaS sectors, and that’s where I’m noticing the source of most of the differences in my current situation.

While I believe that the B2B and B2C categories have utility, I’m not sure how useful they are for my experience as a martech maestro. It is very likely, however, that they have significant utility for other marketing operations and technology practitioners.

Not such a clean-cut distinction

There are many ways to distinguish B2B from B2C. For instance, B2B might imply that more than one person is involved in decision-making, while in the B2C context it may only involve one person. However, to state the obvious, that’s not always the case.

An SEO tool that costs only a hundred or so dollars a month is a B2B situation that really doesn’t require many people. Someone as junior as an intern can select it and simply ask a superior who can quickly approve. They then can pay for it using a corporate card without much fuss. Not all B2B products are really so expensive or complicated that they require many stakeholders to evaluate and approve over a long period of time.

WGU provides low-cost bachelor’s and master’s degrees with flexibility. With the exception of the group that tries to strike and sustain partnerships with businesses and organizations to help incentivize their employees to pursue a WGU degree with a discount as a perk, WGU’s marketing efforts are mainly B2C.

Despite the great value, a prospective student likely needs to consult with a partner or employer to discuss finances — let alone make arrangements for lifestyle factors like childcare, as a student has to commit significant amounts of time over several years. Thus college degree programs and other high ticket items (some electronics, automobiles, travel, real estate, etc.) can require significant input and agreement from several different people, and that can take plenty of time.

Similarities between B2B and B2C

Further, B2B and B2C marketing share plenty of common aspects.  

Most marketing departments need websites, analytics, marketing automation, CRMs, and many other major types of systems. Data hygiene is certainly important in both contexts, too.  Additionally, marketing involves persuasion, segmentation, targeting, research, creativity, and many other tactics regardless of the context.  

B2B marketers use firmographics and technographics for their ICP/TAM models, while B2C marketers use demographics and consumer research for their personas and lookalike modeling.  Heck, one could argue that technographics apply to B2C; an iPhone case maker certainly doesn’t want to expend money and effort marketing to Android phone owners.

Besides, both B2B and B2C marketers themselves deal with plenty of B2B marketers as they research, procure and use various stack components.

The maestro perspective

Martech maestros keep a strategic view over the entire tech stack. Thus, they’re generalists, in a sense, when it comes to individual components and they help orchestrate the bigger picture. I argue that this is a benefit since a maestro can help a component-owner or power-user see a broader perspective than they get from working in the weeds with the component. The maestro can help identify and test assumptions and see how the component fits with the department and organization’s broader stack.

Therefore, while maestros should have a good idea of how various types of systems function (CMS, CRM, DAM, etc.), they will likely have to continually deal with all sorts of situations as stacks have a lot of components. That means that there is always something new to learn. Whether they’re assisting with a B2B ABM platform or a B2C-focused CDP, they should employ similar strategies and frameworks to help the stakeholders make more deliberate decisions, interact with other stakeholders and ensure favorable ROI.

Why we should care

As business professionals, we use broad categorizations and labels to help us better understand what we do and what others do. When we use B2B and B2C in marketing, we need to remember that these two broad categories aren’t as clear-cut as they may appear.  Thus, we may make inaccurate assumptions and decisions regarding a situation or interact amongst ourselves.  

For instance, when we discuss different case studies and tactics, we sometimes discount the value of listening and considering insights than the other context. While insights may not translate from a B2B situation to a B2C one (or vice versa), the different categorizations may not be the driving force in that disconnect. Something else might be the culprit. Further, a B2B insight may apply to a B2C situation. Finally, B2C insights don’t universally apply to all B2C situations, and vice versa.

Conclusion

The B2B and B2C categorizations certainly offer value. But do they provide significant value in the context of marketing operations and technology? At least when it comes to maestros and overall stack orchestration, they don’t seem to offer much value — at least not from my perspective.

I’m interested to hear what you all think. For instance, should we indicate which type of marketing we work in? I’m going back and forth on how to represent this, for instance, on my LinkedIn profile.

About The Author

Steve Petersen is a marketing technology operations manager at Zuora. He spent nearly 8.5 years at Western Governors University holding many martech related roles with the last being marketing technology manager. Prior to WGU, he worked as a strategist at the Washington, DC digital shop The Brick Factory where he worked closely with trade associations, non-profits, major brands, and advocacy campaigns. Petersen holds a Master of Information Management from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brigham Young University. He’s also a Certified ScrumMaster. Petersen lives in the Salt Lake City, UT area.
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Through an elegant reimagination and representation of the brand’s enduring values, rich heritage, and upscale atmosphere, Tambourine has further differentiated the AAA Five Diamond property with subtle, understated nods to the beachfront lifestyle, including a new, refined logo, fresh iconography, and an island-focused color palette that mirrors the natural beauty of Grenada.

“Communicating the Spice Island Beach Resort story is no simple feat. It takes intentionality, inspiration, creativity and curiosity to present exactly who we are. Tambourine has been an exceptional partner in bringing our vision to life, balancing history and heritage with a stunning new aesthetic. We are confident this rebrand will be the driving force in our next chapter of success together,” said Janelle M. Hopkin, President & Managing Director, Spice Island Beach Resort.

About Tambourine
Tambourine continues to shake up the hospitality industry with custom integrated marketing solutions for hotels, resorts, and destinations worldwide. The company’s emergence as the market leader for both branded and independent hotels is a testament to their core values: putting customer service center stage, setting the standards for hotel website design, and making performance digital marketing easier and more profitable for its valued partners.

Media Contact:
Thomas McDermott
954-975-2220
[email protected]
www.tambourine.com

SOURCE Tambourine

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Entrepreneur Peter Pru established a multimillion-dollar ecommerce empire through a self-taught process shaped by the lessons of failure. From that experience, Pru founded Ecommerce Empire Builders in 2016 to help students navigate the competitive world of online sales. Now, Pru is sharing his proven blueprint to building an ecommerce empire in a new book.

‘Ecommerce Empire: The Definitive Guide to Starting & Scaling a Future-Proof Online Business’ distills Pru’s 13-year story of triumphs and setbacks into a complete vision for success. Released Jan. 1, 2022, the book teaches everyone how to build an ecommerce business quickly and without experience.

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‘Ecommerce Empire’ is more than a how-to manual. Pru has created a comprehensive guide to creating an ecommerce business from scratch. The program answers the key questions to starting and growing a business. For instance:

• How do I find the perfect product niche?
• Where do I source products?
• How do I design the right sales funnel?
• How do I solve customer problems better than the big online retailers?

Pru takes his students inside the foundation of online sales, sharing the three keys to selling anything to anyone. ‘Ecommerce Empire’ puts people in charge of their futures with a clear, simple-to-use program that details the essential steps to creating a profitable, sustainable, and fulfilling business.

“You don’t need sophisticated skills in data analysis or marketing to be successful in ecommerce,” Pru says. “You also don’t need a rich benefactor or investors. What you do need is control, and this book will give anyone the confidence to be in control of everything they do.”

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PHOTO:
Pattarisara

In 2021, we learned how to navigate new restrictions. We learned how to adapt with new software and also switched to hybrid or virtual workspaces. But nonetheless we survived 2021. Before we get our brand new business year started, let’s see what we reflected on in our last week of 2021.

Quick, Catch Me Up:

• CMSWire’s Top 10 Digital Marketing Articles of 2021 Dom Nicastro | Dec. 27. Marketers confront the challenge of complying with existing consumer data privacy rules, navigating new ones due in 2022 and maintaining customer data — all while dealing with factors like the demise of third-party cookie tracking. Having said that, 2021 left an indelible imprint on digital marketers, with plenty of lessons learned.
• 2021 Contributors of the Year: Ali Alkhafaji Siobhan Fagan | Dec. 20. “That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles,” Ali Alkhafaji’s first piece of 2021 illustrated the unexpected repercussions of third-party cookies. He told a tale of how targeted adverts spoiled a surprise gift for his kid. Ali recognizes that these tales help people learn and understand concepts, but he backs up his storytelling with information gleaned from his more than 20 years in the IT industry.
• CMSWire’s Top 10 Digital Customer Experience Articles of 2021 Dom Nicastro | Dec. 20. Even in the midst of the pandemic’s economic uncertainty, digital customer experience (DCX) teams remained aspirational and focused on progress and growth. Of course, difficulties such as fragmented systems, technological integration, limited insights into customer wants or customer journeys, money, in-house experience and skills, and cooperation continue to be major concerns for DCX practitioners.
• CMSWire’s Top 10 AI in CX Articles of 2021 Scott Clark | Dec. 22. Over the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot issue, and it has continued to expand into a technology that is transforming the landscape for organizations all over the world. AI is already playing an increasingly important role in customer support, product suggestions, personalization, marketing, and, of course, customer experience.
• Why Marketers Are Thankful This Holiday Season Gabrielle Rodgers | Dec. 20. Marketers have dealt with countless forces of change as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. Marketers are still remaining thankful, whether it is their marketing team, social media, technology, or their health. Marketers have been through a lot as a result of the pandemic, and they are grateful for the opportunity to celebrate and reflect with their coworkers and family.
• Financial Services Customer Experience: 3 Success and 3 Failures Phil Britt | Dec. 27. CX is consuming a sizable portion of financial services organizations’ expenditures. According to a Microsoft Dynamics 365 survey of insurers, banks and other financial services organizations, 86% assign 25% or more of their overall budget to customer experience, where nearly half (45%) assign 50% or more.
• 2021 Contributors of the Year: Lisa Loftis Siobhan Fagan | Dec. 28. Tunnel vision is a condition that impairs a person’s peripheral vision. Lisa Loftis’ peripheral vision is a strength, allowing her to focus on the one thing that matters: the customer, despite the hustle and bustle of the corporate world. Lisa applies this undivided attention to her position as a principal management consultant at SAS Best Practices, as well as her monthly articles, where she’s written about the cookies demise, the pandemic’s continued impact on the customer experience sector, and more.
• CMSWire’s Top 10 Call Center Articles of 2021 Scott Clark | Dec. 29. Customer service has never been more crucial than it has been in the last year, as customers’ shopping and purchasing habits have changed. The call center for a company has evolved into the hub of customer service, and it may mean the difference between a pleased, loyal client and a former one.
• CMSWire’s Top 10 Leadership Articles of 2021 David Roe | Dec. 30. While some may claim that the pandemic prompted a shift toward digital transformation, in actuality, digital transformation had already begun prior to COVID-19. The pandemic hastened the pace of change, putting organizational leaders under pressure to cope with the repercussions. While technology made remote working possible, it could not and did not provide a method for managing the expanding number of remote and hybrid work patterns. That task was delegated to enterprise executives, who lacked a well-defined plan for dealing with the difficulties that come with the role.

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